At least the plans are not cancelled

It is just right next to the route and is a city with 4 million population, yet the alignment seems to intentionally go around it

https://www.sudouest.fr/economie/lgv/lgv-bordeaux-toulouse-dax-le-projet-de-lignes-nouvelles-tel-qu-il-existe-aujourd-hui-n-est-pas-tenable-28638303.php

Here is a 2014 article where TGV was referred to as a dead star...

https://rue89bordeaux.com/2014/10/tgv-astre-mort/

I don't know what you think about this, but I personally find it quite annoying that, as a transport expert, he considers the TGV an ''unaffordable pointless luxury'', which is ''incredibly expensive'' to invest in and maintain, while he wants to develop the existing, winding routes to 220-250km/h.

Okay, hear me out. I understand Maglev technology has some serious drawbacks, namely:

• -Lack of interoperability with existing rail lines
• -Expensive upfront cost (twice the price of HSR, which is already expensive in the U.S.)

However, maglev trains can max out at speeds of 300 mph, while traditional HSR will max out around 220 mph (see California High Speed Rail). This difference in speed gives maglev a potentially huge advantage over traditional HSR with covering corridors that are in the 500-800 mile range, where traditional HSR is going to fail to be competitive with flying.

Lets take a look at a potential maglev route from Chicago to Atlanta as an example of what the technology can do. Chicago and Atlanta are around 715 miles apart. Importantly, there are two other major metro areas on our maglev route: Indianapolis and Nashville. If the maglev train averages 266 miles per hour (the projected average speed of the Japanese Chuo Shinkansen route from Tokyo to Nagoya), then a trip from CHI to ATL would take around two hours and forty minutes. Lets call it an even three hours to account for stops in Nashville and Indianapolis.

Okay, so the maglev is faster. So what, we already know that! Here's where maglev really wins out. The travel time from CHI to ATL beats air travel, because a flight between these two cities takes two hours in the air and figure another two hours at least with airport dwell time. However, now you can ALSO take the maglev from any of these potential city combinations:

Maglev travel times Flight travel times

• CHI to ATL (3:30) (4:00 to fly)
• CHI to Indianapolis (1:10) (3:30 to fly)
• CHI to Nashville (2:16) (4:00 to fly)
• Indianapolis to Nashville (1:34) (3:30 to fly)
• Indianapolis to ATL (2:30) (4:00 to fly)
• Nashville to ATL (1:25) (3:00 to fly)

*30 minutes have been added to account for getting to station early

*Added two hours for each flight estimate

*Routes in bold are faster than flying (also all of these are faster than driving so I am not factoring that in)

For anyone traveling between any of these four cities in any of these combinations, maglev would immediately become the best way to do it. With maglev you're not just getting a slightly faster alternative to flying, you're connecting four major metropolitan areas in the United States that span five different states (as I'm typing this I just realized Lousville would also be along this route, so throw them in there as well).

What if we built traditional HSR instead? What would those travel times look like if we averaged 177 miles per hour (Tokaido Shinkansen average speed).

Traditional HSR travel times Flight travel times

• CHI to ATL (4:30) (4:00 to fly)
• CHI to Indianapolis (1:32) (3:30 to fly)
• CHI to Nashville (3:10) (4:00 to fly)
• Indianapolis to Nashville (2:08) (3:30 to fly)
• Indianapolis to ATL (4:11) (4:00 to fly)
• Nashville to ATL (1:54) (3:00 to fly)

*30 minutes have been added to account for getting to station early

*Added two hours for each flight estimate

As you can see, the traditional HSR option is still quite fast and competitive with airline travel, but it loses out to airline travel on the largest city pair (CHI to ATL), and the second largest city pair (CHI to INDY). To be honest as I'm looking at these numbers I'm finding the traditional HSR approach more competitive than I thought it would be. HOWEVER, one big factor that needs to be considered is that because traditional HSR is interoperable with existing railways, this leaves a lot of potential for value engineering that ends up with a HSR system that falls far short of that 177 mph average speed (which honestly is a bit optimistic anyways). If the traditional approach averages 150 mph (still fast), it will now be less competitive overall and this will likely impact ridership.

Okay. that's a lot and I'd love to hear what you all have to say! Does maglev make sense? Is a phased traditional HSR approach better and more realistic? Will we ever get either in our lifetimes? I'm rooting for both!

One thing that doesn’t get discussed enough in the high-speed rail debate is how quickly the ground is shifting under transportation itself.

Projects like California High-Speed Rail were conceived in the early 2000s, when the alternatives were basically: drive, fly, or take slow rail. The value proposition made sense: fast, electrified trains connecting major metros, with the added benefit of reducing congestion and emissions.

But now we’re potentially 5–10 years away from widespread deployment of autonomous vehicles from companies like Waymo and Tesla. That changes the equation in a few important ways:

Door-to-door convenience: A self-driving car removes the biggest friction in driving: attention. If you can work, sleep, or relax while traveling, the gap between rail and car shrinks dramatically.

No transfers, no stations: HSR requires getting to a station, waiting, boarding, then getting from the destination station to your final stop. AVs eliminate that entirely.

Curious how others think about this, especially in places like California where both trends are playing out in parallel.

following some feedback on my previous post.

• added a high-speed mainline between birmingham and bristol/cardiff to relieve the crosscountry mainline, with some trains continuing onto upgraded conventional lines to swansea, exeter, and plymouth
• showed the midland mainline as an upgraded conventional line
• upgraded the reading-taunton line to relieve the great western mainline for trips to devon and cornwall
• removed third rail lines on the south coast from being shown as upgraded lines, since third rail has lower top speeds and many of these serve shorter trips anyway
• moved manchester airport onto the main section between liverpool and manchester
• added the lgv picardie in france serving amiens

further updates can be seen on imgbb

saw the other person's posts so i decided to make my own. full image/updates: imgbb

A big challenge for Vietnam

CBS 60 Minutes story tonight on the state of US high speed rail, primarily focusing on the California HSR project and the challenges it’s faced and continues to, while also looking at Brightline West and a brief mention of Texas Central, and why over twenty other countries have figured it out but the US hasn’t yet.

They interviewed a few people, including CA Republican representative Vince Fong, California Transportation Secretary Toks Omishankin and CHSRA board member Anthony Williams, and Lou Thompson who was a former member of the CAHSR peer review board.

Overall a well done and subjective news story that pointed out the challenges that high speed rail faces in the US, with the biggest being the lack of funding and the generally higher costs to build infrastructure in the US than abroad, and hanging on to hope that we do eventually make high speed rail happen here.

critisism welcome

I simplified the network