After a grueling 14 hour flight to Japan, I look forward to riding the train from Narita Airport to Osaka. When my plane leaves the gate 5 minutes late, it’s still on time. When the Japanese bullet train, the shinkansen, leaves the station 1 minute late, it’s 1 minute late. It’s hard to relate seeing a transportation system run on schedule to someone that’s never seen it happen. With as much flying as I do, I give up on scheduled arrival times and hope to make it to my destination on the scheduled day.
I attribute this to a lack of imagination and a history of poor management that caused people to dismiss rail in the US. With my limited experiences on Amtrak, I’d agree with those who say that high speed rail is no replacement for air travel. However, if a company brought shinkansen-style travel to the US, I know people would be impressed.
Trains travel at roughly the same speed that they did for much of the last century. Airplanes travel significantly faster than cars or trains and still beat both for regional travel. Travel in the US hasn’t really advanced since the advent of modern jet aircraft.
Comparing the advancement of travel to semiconductors (two industries which have no relationship with any basis of comparison, except for the mental exercise):
In 1978, a commercial flight between New York and Paris cost about $900 and took seven hours. If the principles of Moore’s Law had been applied to the airline industry the way they have to the semiconductor industry since 1978, that flight would now cost about a penny and take less than one second. — via Upgrade: Travel Better
We continue to cling to our historical view of travel. Aviation is public transportation. It uses common resources to transport people. It’s not a bus traveling on roads, but a plane traveling in the air. The concept remains sound. The US government committed massive resources to improve air travel: better air traffic control technology, more runways, larger airports (majority owned by governments), yet we don’t draw a parallel between that investment and the investment in other modes of public transportation. I agree that air travel is a different case: the same runway that I use when I fly to Japan can be used to fly to Paris or to Charlotte.
A euphemism in aviation is that a mile of road takes you one mile but a mile of runway takes you anywhere. A mile of railroad track is a less useful investment than a mile of road because a mile of road can at least get me to the grocery store. Imagine, though, 250 miles of rail linking Atlanta to Charlotte. The 4 hour drive becomes a 1.5 hour train trip. With limited stops, a 200 MPH bullet train replaces air travel on the route for people going to either city for a day for business. This rail line excites economic growth in both cities.
Extending the line to Greensboro and Raleigh links some of the largest cities in the Deep South. Once there, it’s not hard to imagine connecting to Richmond and Washington, DC. In a little over 4 hours on a bullet train, you can travel from downtown Atlanta to downtown Washington, DC. Sure, you can do that on an airplane today in about the same amount of time, but you don’t have the option of stopping in 3 other major cities along the way to conduct business. The same trip using more expensive maglev technology would take less than 2 hours.
JR Central is marketing two types of trains in the U.S.: the shinkansen, which travels as fast as 330 kilometers per hour [200 MPH]; and the magnetic-levitation, or maglev, train, which can run up to 581 kph [350 MPH], but is more expensive and in only limited use so far. JR Central has already spent more than $1 billion developing the technology behind it. — via The Wall Street Journal
And now a replacement exists for regional air travel, allowing airlines to focus on the more profitable long haul and international travel routes. It also requires we invest less in aviation because fewer resources are required to keep the National Airspace System operational. Yes, it’s a change in technology. But so was the jet engine.
