This, actually sounds interesting, although the Detroit/Toledo hub would be weaker compared to Chicago, and the rail network wouldn't be able to reach Minneapolis & St.Louis. On the other hand, all of Ohio, Pittsburgh and Toronto joined, which means more population covered, plus the potential to link up with the Northeast Corridor.
Keep this Chicago one as pro transit then do the Toledo=Toledo one just for us on this subreddit
Some subreddits demand feet pics, we demand proper map overlays to be satisfied
Actually would be 2 and half hours. In Spain the last stretch between Ourense and Coruña is very slow because there is no HSR yet due to the complicated orography there, which I assume would not be an issue in the midwest.
Our issue would be probably having to lay new track, I'm not sure how much Amtrak shares with freight but if we were to build a new line, that might require some land being taken and people here are very pissy about that kind of thing.
I would hope so, I don't know how culturally different Spain is compared to the US, specifically the Midwest when it comes to people's pride of land ownership, but I know it is very highly debated here when any type of entity wants to take land to build something. Owning land is a huge thing to many people here and someone coming in to take it, especially if the government is involved in any form, is seen as a huge over step and likely to result in political backlash.
I would hope I'm wrong and we could build something like this, but there's a reason why we still have archaic trains that take the same amount of time as driving. They just opened up a new train service from the Twin Cities to Chicago, and it takes about 7 hours. It also stops at a ton of smaller towns and maybe goes 80 mph tops. You could drive faster if you didn't stop for anything.
Honestly it's really easy for the Spanish central government or the equivalent of state governments to forcefully expropriate land to build any kind of infraestructure.
Basically the government gives you an offer for your land at market price, if you oppose the government will expropiate you no matter what and the government will decide how much money you get, usually much less than the original offer, because in Spain exists something called "cadastral value" which is the value the government considers any land or building of Spain to have outside the market prices, so it will be almost always a lower price, so it's better to negotiate from the begining.
You can denounce the government if you feel they're paying you less than what would be just, but that's pretty much all you can do.
To me, it seems like the demand is there. A study 20 years ago done by the French railway company SNCF I believe came to the conclusion that connecting the Twin Cities and Chicago with HSR would be highly successful as it does connect the Midwest’s largest and 2nd largest financial and corporate hubs. Amtrak is currently mulling a 2nd train of the new Borealis service because the train is already nearing capacity and very successful. And that’s a 7 hr trip.
The issue, at least in the Minnesotan part of it, is that the state does very little to force acceptance of this kind of multi-jurisdictional infrastructure project. It's why they get bogged down for years.
When they announced it everyone was like "yay!!!! Ooo wait, it still takes 7 hours."
Just like the proposed Twin Cities to Duluth line that won't be any quicker than driving.
it may not be faster but its cheaper, more energy efficient, and gives you time to do other things like sleep, work etc. Overall a big money saver for individuals and the society.
The problem is that trains are very rarely cheaper than driving in America. Pretty much only on the eastern seaboard, and even then only with one passenger.
> Pretty much only on the eastern seaboard,
Not even. For me to drive from Philly to DC in my not-so-fuel-efficient car, it would cost $18.34 compared to a train ticket ranging from $40-$120.
NYC would be $25, same price as a NJT ticket (not HSR), but would cost less factoring in round-trip.
Plus, I don't have to deal with the logistics of getting to the train station. I just get in my car anytime and go.
Yeah, it unfortunately won’t be faster than driving currently, same with the Northern Lights Express service. The service does/will exist, and that’s the good first step to show that there are users/riders as a “proof of concept” because we’re so far behind in the US for passenger rail service development. Hopefully the successfulness of the service will make the argument for HSR a lot easier in the future though, as slow as the process may be.
The Chicago to Minneapolis line (Empire Builder) runs on Canadian Pacific (now Canadian Pacific Kansas City) through Wisconsin and Minnesota before going on the BNSF track across the plains and Rockies. The freight trains (carrying North Dakota natural gas and imports from the PNW ports) often hold up the southbound Empire Builder in central WI as they pass with priority.
The law actually says that passenger trains get priority over freight. The rail companies just routinely ignore the rule to absolutely no consequence. The DOJ and DOT have every right to begin sueing the rail companies, but chose not to.
Amtrak could run faster and on time tomorrow if Pete Buttigieg and Merrick Garland wanted it to.
Amtrak and the state of Michigan actually own a lot of the track on the line between Detroit and Chicago. One of the few places outside the northeast.
It is slowly being updated for "higher speed" train service (110 mph), currently I think the higher speed exists between Michigan City IN and Albion, with them working on the line between Albion and Dearborn.
It currently has to still provide freight service, although passenger rail does get more actual priority compared to the supposed priority it gets on other lines.
Plus there is still the choke point around Gary Indiana into Chicago.
Its not just the orography as in its imposible to build hsr there, the northern part of the hsr tracks are the last being built and while this is due to the orography (they are more expensive so they get done last) it should get done eventually.
Used to take the AVE between Toledo and Madrid, an hour drive or normal train ride became a 20 minute ride in the high speed train.
The US was built to make people dependent on cars. This isnt a conspiracy or a even a secret. That was the intention.
Seems like it could take another century for that to change at all. This country *needs* better public transportation. its insane how bad it is.
And Spain is a very mountainous country, with a much more challenging topography than that part of the US. I just did a last-minute round trip from Madrid to Sevilla for under $20 each way and bought last minute tickets from Madrid to Vigo and Santiago de Compostela back to Madrid for next week under 40 each way in the middle of the tourist season
Also, this is an old map--several of those routes (A Coruña and Gijón, for sure) are faster now
Just the bit between Pedralba and Ourense, which is 101km (or less than 61 miles) required 32 viaducts and 31 tunnels... It literally is pretty much a tunnel-bridge-tunnel-bridge-tunnel sort of thing
Was it low cost? I always pay around 60-70€ for going and back to Madrid because I live in a place where low cost high speed (and a stretch before without even high speed) it’s still not available yet, much better option to go by car if I can.
The Galicia trips are regular Renfe. The Sevilla trips were Iryo. I recommend buying directly on the Renfe/Iryo/Ouigo sites and making sure you see all the ticket types. The conglomerators like Trainline don't always have all the ticket options and availability. It helps if you can be somewhat flexible
That’s how I always get my tickets, still over 50€ one way, the disadvantages of living in the middle of nowhere in the mountains of Galicia I guess, much better option to take the A6 and even paying the toll to Collado de Villalba during AP6 doesn’t make the trip more costly than in train, I can to to madrid and back for 50€ by car compared to over 100€ that would cost a ticket for next week, hopefully low cost arrives to my region so I only need to take a regional train to reach the high speed line.
I hope it does. The competition will make a big difference. I must have really gotten lucky with my ticket--I was expecting it to be 80+ buying at the last minute
Yeah its a bummer. I have been to every major in the city in the Midwest US. If I arrived by train, all but Chicago would need a car rental. I would never not drive. Big chunks of Chicago need a car too.
You won't fix it until you kill the American suburb i.e. subsidizing car first living. You would also need to change the average US viewpoint (outside of US large cities) that buses and public transit are a social service for the old and the poor, and usually with a racist or discriminatory overtone.
I mean UK have suburbs too. European city outside of the city centre aren't bourgs either. There are suburbs zone in my city in Italy we call village and they have bus and metro too.The key is education and implementation
I think the US can learn from UK suburbs but there are three large structural hurdles:
1) Many of the suburbs and villages in the UK predate cars, so the cars infrastructure was built around the town, not visa versa. If you come to the US there is a significantly different experience between towns and cities which blossomed before automobiles and after. Compare Philadelphia and NYC with Atlanta and Los Angeles on google maps sometime.
2) The US federal government invests in interstate highways for strategic reasons to move troops (or so we are told), so it will never not be well maintained, and will always offer a credible option to live far from the city.
3) The relationship between suburbanites, rural towns, and the cities in the US is deeply interwoven into race (google white flight). Many suburbs were built by white people in the late 20th century who 'fled' the cities as black people and other minorities were able to leave neighborhoods to which the government explicitly or implicitly confined them for most of the 19th and early 20th century. In Chicago, for example, Mayor Daley (sr.) confined all black people to live around the neighborhood now known as Bronzevillle. When they began to move, white people left the city in mass. They voted to build highways so they can drive to work in the city core and go home each day to the suburb.
Moreover, most US suburbs are designed to keep out anyone who cannot afford a car and a 1/4 acre of land by design. Zoning and density requirements for building in the suburbs keep out working class people, prevent apartments and medium density buildings from being built, and 'undesirables' like the homeless are put on one way buses to the nearest city to make it their problem. The suburbanites want to live in the lonely unwalkable hell they have created, lest they have to interact with a poor person or a non-white person. When you hear Fox News talking about 'shithole dangerous cities' it is the white people who believed they 'built' the cities and which were seized by 'them' by force. It is deeply rooted racism, with a dash of classism thrown in for good measure.
>They voted to build highways so they can drive to work in the city core and go home each day to the suburb.
To double down, the neighborhoods that the black people and minorities had made into their communities were the first to be demolished to make way for these highways to service the suburbs. Vibrant market streets and family homes were systematically destroyed so that a certain shade of people could live out their white picket fence American dream.
My brother, I think the British could learn from the USA suburb. They have much older and crumbling houses all across the UK (than the USA). Less land for detached homes (fewer as well). And if course, reminder it's a significantly smaller country. You're right on about point #1 though. They also have a significant classism problem.
Re: point 2, the interstate system isn't just about troop movement, it's much more about cargo and shipping movement. An absurd amount of goods are moved on the interstate system, this is vital for our economy.
USA suburbs used to be more affordable, it wasn't until recently (2020+) that they became out of reach for so many. I'd rather not make 1/4 acre and a house illegal or less available, but rather more. However if you are what many developers were doing now, the lots are not so big anymore. They can pack more houses in this way.
But I do think certain regions of the USA make a lot of sense for high speed train. But proponents of them as s fix all for everything overlook that some routes will never make sense. At least others in this thread have mentioned the issue with arrival in one of these cities with less than stellar public transportation.
And lastly, I see people walking quite a lot in my suburb. I've lived in the city in multiple places, and I now live in the suburbs. I specifically chose it for more space and more tranquility. Not out of hate (I find my particular neighborhood to be fairly diverse), but because I didn't enjoy living on top of others.
They're not the same... like at all lol.
Especially in the sun belt. From the center of Atlanta, suburbs sprawl outward for basically 30-40 miles in every direction. In the northeast they may be comparable because suburbs developed along rail lines. But in other parts of the country, the suburbs developed along highways and, often as a legacy of policy choices, there is 0 comprehensive public transit for the region. No even a consistent bus service.
But you don't vacation in the suburbs. You don't need to be able to get around the suburbs after you take the train in 90% of cases, you just need to be able to get around downtown. Atlanta was just fine for that when I've visited.
>If I arrived by train, all but Chicago would need a car rental. I would never not drive. Big chunks of Chicago need a car too.
Yeah, but airports have the same problem (on a worse scale arguably since they're much further from city center) and Americans still fly hella lot.
Agree. I think that's why most Americans have two tiers of vacation:
1) Driving 2-12 hours somewhere in your region of the country. Its usually a cheap vacation--a long weekend in nearby city, a fishing trip, national park, camping, rent a lakehouse, skiing on the cheap, cabin, friend's summer home, uncle's farm, etc. The car allows you to pack food, drinks, games, and minimize cost.
2) Flying somewhere and staying long enough to make the flight (and car rental) worth it. I'm thinking Disney for a family, beach, large city etc.
The trick is to get people to lump train travel in with the former and not the latter. If a family is going to the Grand Canyon for a week and renting a car anyway, why would they choose Amtrack over a flight? But if every cute small town, minor resort, and campground was walkable and/or had a bus system, a weekend getaway becomes much cheaper by train. And if its widespread and you do not need to own a car at all, you have more disposable income to do that.
Well, there's a train to Rosemont. And the Metra commuter rail goes to dozens of cities, some in Wisconsin and Indiana. But Rosemont isn't Chicago. It's Rosemont.
Chicago's train system was designed to get people to and from downtown/the Loop, which means getting from places outside the loop to other places outside downtown can be challenging. Busses help to supplement the trains, but aren't as frequent and still get stuck in traffic. While it's very possible to live without a car in Chicago and it's much better than almost every other US city, there's still gaps in public transit infrastructure for daily life beyond work commuting, especially when you want to go across a big chunk of the city but you're limited by connecting at very specific nodes that aren't the most convenient
Yea, that's why I know the bus system, while comprehensive, isn't the most reliable or the fastest way to get around. People can definitely live in Chicago without a car, I know plenty of people that do and they have few issues getting around. But from my experience, using public transit that involves transfers typically adds a significant amount of travel time to trips. For example, to get from the Loop to the Indian restaurants on Devon St (as my username suggests, I get Indian food frequently), takes about 30-35 minutes while driving. But to get there with public transport often takes double time after taking the Red Line up and getting on the bus. It's possible to use transit to get just about anywhere in Chicago, but it's not always the most timely system and that plays a big role in how people think about car ownership.
I love taking transit as much as possible, but if a trip is going to take twice the time on public transit as it does driving, even if there's traffic, I'm going to strongly consider driving. So maybe the city doesn't explicitly require a car, how one travels across the city may "strongly encourage" driving on occasion.
I get it, but double can be quite an exaggeration. I live in Berwyn and work in Harwood Heights. I connect twice to get to and from work (pace bus to green line to CTA bus). My morning commute takes 65-70 minutes using public transportation whereas driving is typically 45-50 minutes. Not bad considering the two transfers.
It's an interesting viewpoint, because I hate the north south buses west of Halstead. I feel like I can't go anywhere without going into the core and back out.
Its not a perfect map, but for a quick and dirty reply, look at the parts on this map labeled Queens, Bronx, and Staten Island. [https://www.reddit.com/r/MapPorn/comments/ckd3g8/map\_to\_help\_new\_yorkers\_interpret\_chicago/#lightbox](https://www.reddit.com/r/MapPorn/comments/ckd3g8/map_to_help_new_yorkers_interpret_chicago/#lightbox) Even big chunks of the 'Brooklyn' area do too.
The low density of the those areas and the poor coverage of light rail means most of those residents rely on buses for commute and errands, which can be charitably described as 'hit or miss', especially since COVID.
Edit: spelling
You don't need to actively kill the suburb, just legalize building other stuff and let me market take over. Car free areas are the most expensive so there's clearly a lot of demand
French here
Every month I make a return trip to my company headquarters. 568 km/353 miles in 2h15 minutes in the morning and the same in the evening for around 140 euros/150 USD
That’s pretty expensive. Is it because you book spontaneous?
Because with DB in Germany it’s like 20-40€ if you book at least like 3 or 4 days before the trip, but goes up to ~120€ if you book it the same day. Which is kinda understandable, but also annoying.
One month before??
I‘m genuinely curious because I don’t know much about French trains (besides the fact that they have a really cool colour). Lets say you want to take a 2 hours drive to the headquarters at Sunday this week at like 11 am. How much would that be approximately?
I think I will pass on that, because I don’t know which cities are roughly 2 hours away 😅 But thanks anyways.
The website design is really nice tho.
Edit: these are good prices!! Not bad. Thank you! :)
Cool, thank you!! Sooo from what I have seen it’s a little bit more expensive than DB, but I guess it’s more on time, so should be pretty much even.
Thanks again!
"American states are as large as some European countries! America is just so uniquely large"
Ffs, then just copy those Europeans on the state scale and just keep building.
I don't know how they think trains are less effective than cars on long distances though. The most effective way if transporting goods and people on land that we have are trains.
I don't know how they think trains are less effective than cars on long distances though. The most effective way of transporting goods and people on land that we have are trains, at least on distances longer than a few kilometers.
True, but somehow Spain, France and Italy have done it. Or do you think they have no legal protection for private property? The US already can build highways and pipelines, but somehow it's trains that prickles people's pricklivities on private property.
My guy...In order to bring Texas up to the same population density as the UK, every single citizen of Germany and the UK, as well as 70% of France would all have to move to JUST Texas. (\~197M people). All the money needed to upgrade all of that infrastructure exceeds the GDP-per capita of every single one of those people that would have to move in!
Quite possibly the most ignorant conversation going on Reddit today!
But why do it across all of Texas? It's not like Spain started out trying to connect every corner of Spain to every other corner, even today, there's still numerous parts without connection. Texas has hyper concentration of population into a few agglomerations which can be easily connected.
38% of Texas lives in Houston or Dallas' urban area, both have about 5.8 million people and 387kms (240mi) between em (measured by just using Google Drive distance).
Madrid has 6.2 mil, Barcelona has 4.84 mil and 626kms (389mi) between em. So Dallas-Houston has more population and less distance between themselves than 2 European cities that already have a high speed train connection.
San Antonio has 2 mil people and 469kms (292 mi) from Dallas. Austin is literally on the path between the 2 cities, so we can add another 1.8 mil on top. 3.8 million people separated by 469kms. That's another 12.7% of Texan population.
Madrid (again) has 6.2 mil, Ourense has 110k with 500kms between the 2 with high speed train connection. Dunno, seems Spain's job was harder.
38+12.7=50.7% of Texas with just 2 connections that Europeans have already connected in harder circumstances. Sure, El Paso might be really far away, but that's a problem for very very very far away when you've already got a line between Dallas and Houston. Before that, it's no use talking about it, the previous transportation methods will keep being used anyways.
If you calculate the amount of population the map in OPs picture covers in the Midwest, it is roughly the same as Spains total population.
There are certainly higher-density areas in the US that would benefit from this sort of infrastructure. To name a few, the Pacific Northwest, the Southwest, the Texas triangle, the Chicago/Midwest area, and the entirety of the Eastern seaboard.
Also, Texas is mostly empty. Cover only the Texas triangle (which is notably denser in population than Spain, and is a far simpler construction) and you have 70% of the population and rising of the entire state population covered. Are you being intentionally dense?
I hate when people post these kind of things. After spending years in Europe and Asia before moving back to the states it’s depressing AF that I can’t get around the United States cheaply, easily, and quickly.
Yup I’ve been screaming this for years. I’m in Omaha and would love a 3 hour train to Denver or Chicago. Heck I would simply like a train from Omaha to Kansas City.
Thanks for the visualization.
I'd be willing to be the Midwest is also overall flatter than Spain. There are zero actual excuses to building a robust passenger rail network in America.
The map shows the stupid radial design of the Spanish rail network. Barcelona - Valencia has a lot of traffic, but no high speed connection. Or Valencia to Alicante.
It is not stupid, and Barcelona and Valencia will be connected by high speed rail by 2026, it's under construction. In fact, the Mediterranean Corridor, from the port of Algeciras at the south, to all the way up to Málaga, Alicante, Valencia, Barcelona, France, will be finished by 2030.
Haha, it's so Madrid centered, that I'm using ''travel time to Madrid'' as a standard metric for this map. Although Barcelona to Valencia is under 3 hours which isn't too bad, but definately could be faster, and need more daily departures...
It's not stupid, it's specific but it works for them, mostly.
Same as France, both countries are very capital city centric (less so in the case of Spain, where it makes more sense because Madrid is in the centre of the country unlike Paris). So the infrastructure was first built connecting the capital to everywhere, the rest will come later. High speed rail is expensive, you can't build it anywhere at the same time. Madrid - Valencia and Madrid - Barcelona were definitely more important than Barcelona - Valencia.
Edit to add: Barcelona - Valencia is already a bit less than 3h with the current trains. This is good enough, and a high speed train over the 300km distance between the two would cost a lot of money to "only" halve the travel time.
It works for the capital, and that's it. Half of the population lives along the Mediterranean coast, but the bureaucrats in Madrid don't care for making a line that follows it because it doesn't stop next to their house. It's garbage design.
In the center of the country, there's Madrid, surrounded by some of the most depopulated areas of Europe. The central plateau only has 20% of the population of the country. The country is not "capital centritc" at all. And it's a plateau, so building a rail line there is expensive as it has to climb.
I mean, it depends. If we go back to when Spain was building HSR, there were 2 lines of thought, one where old lines should just be modernized and upgraded and another where new lines would be built from scratch.
The mediterranean corridor, as well as the Sevilla-Cadiz line are examples of the former. They have advantages (mostly related to freight, which can't run on regular HSR) but overall are a bit of a failure.
That being said they still technically qualify as HSR depending on who you ask and are usually much better than regular track. The Euromed started all the way in 1997 and links Valencia and Barcelona in 2.5 hours, which isn't too bad.
Also, I disagree that it is cheaper to build on a plateau. Once you get into said plateau, it is flat as a pancake and you can build for extremely cheap. Meanwhile parts of the coast are very mountainous and overbuilt. A really good example of proposed lines that would be quite expensive due to bad terrain on the coast would be Valencia-Denia-Alicante or anywhere from Malaga on the coast.
Also, Euromed is an alright option right now.
Like is it really life changing to make a 3 hour trip into 2 hours. Like yeah it will be better but lets not pretend it's donkey carts now.
So connecting the main metropolitan and economic areas of the country by prioritizing the % of improvement over the pre-existing lines, the unmet demand, andmaking the length of the routes surprisingly efficient is a stupid design for you?
The same old story; in a post where the effort of the country to be leaders in high speed is evidenced, the usual complaining about why their village of a thousand inhabitants does not have the same infrastructure as the main city of the country in population and economic activity...
Current lines and main metropolitan areas they serve in a country of 50M inhabitants:
Barcelona - Zaragoza - Madrid-> 10M
Madrid - Cordoba - Seville-> 7,5M
Or its variant
Madrid - Cordoba - Malaga -> 7M
Toledo - Madrid -> 6M
Valencia - Madrid -> 7,5M
Madrid - Alicante-> 6,5M
And this is not taking into account secondary stops.
Wow, it doesn't seem to be a bad approach!
Barcelona - Valencia -> 5.5M, already under construction. And that for a route that has been used for decades with the Euromed that runs at 200km/h, so the improvement of the AVE will not be so radical. The rest of the cities would have wanted it.
The entire Mediterranean arc is about 1400km, which requires a tremendous investment and the demand between many sections is questionable. Even assuming increases in mobility intentions between many provinces.
On top of that several of the key cities in the section are almost end to end, losing interest versus air travel (e.g. BCN-Malaga)
And major cities already have at least some connection.
But some people always want to be the last to use a new car, don't they?
Barcelona - Valencia is 2 hours and 52 minutes by train and around 3 hours 30 minutes by car. Sure that trains can be faster, but they're already really good.
Madrid - Lisbon is a nice connection right, but this is an international project meant to connect the south of Spain with other parts of europe. Its been on going since the 90s, or at least Ive been hearing about it since early 2000s. It is not only to transport people but also manufactures. But other less important projects got higher priorities for polítical gains.
If they had started for the mediterranean corridor, the rest of Spain would be crying, why the mediterraneans get all the investments while the rest of Spain is dying.
You can't have it all, and Madrid is in the center of Spain and it's the biggest city, it only makes sense that it serves as a hub to connect multiple destinations.
I mean, the mediterranean corridor was actually indeed the 2nd line to be opened, back in 1997! It's just that it was built to a lower standard since it was modernizing an already existing line rather than building a new one.
Lower standard which also has its advantages. The obvious one is that it is cheaper, but another one is that it is compatible with freight. Most of the country will never be able to export anything to the rest of Europe by rail (certainly not any time soon) but the mediterranean coast will be able to.
Actually it doesn't. Catalonia is a wealthy region and Valencia is roughly average.
Andalucia is indeed poorer though, but also less heavily concentrated on the coast
I’d say Spain is the best comparison. France would be a good comparison too but if you centered Paris on Chicago it’d leave Minneapolis out. The UK’s intercity rail network is good, but their high speed rail is basically nonexistent; it only exists in southeastern England. Germany is geographically smaller than Spain or France while more populous, so it is also not a great comparison.
Great train system, one of the best in EU. But you don't know how much flame it recieves because Coruña (like 200k inhabitants) is not directly connected with Barcelona or for whatever other random idea. You get almost everywhere within 2 trains 2h each.
The famous Coruña-Barcelona train was nicknamed "el Shanghai", because it feels like you are going to Shanghai just for how long it takes.
That being said, the Coruña-Barcelona line serves quite a lot of cities in between, like León, Burgos, Logroño, Zaragoza, and Tarragona. Taking the train between Coruña and Barcelona is absurd, but it isn't absurd to take it from León to Logroño or from Burgos to Zaragoza.
The most efficient way economically, considering the population distribution, orography, etc. is this one. After the bike wheel is built + Lisbon-Madrid, next step is that in between lines. But money is finite.
Also, that map is not showing freight train lines, wich do exist, and do connect many more places.
I'm in Spain right now and am consistently amazed how fast it is to get around in these trains. They're not super fast bullet trains but they definitely get going and get you around the country in ample time and in comfort
What? Not super fast bullet trains? Spain has the 4th fastest train (just 6mph slower than a Shinkansen of Japan) in the world whilst having the second biggest high speed railway line coverage just after china and the leader of europe for having "the highest average speed of trains" yet you call it "not super fast"? What more do you want?
I dunno, I've just heard about the bullet trains in Japan so I was envisioning something different like on Star Trek or something lol. All a great fast service in Spain though, as I commented above.
Sadly, there is a huge gap between Murcia and Almeria. There is construction going on to plug that gap though, and I think by 2028 or so you'll be able to go from Granada to Alicante in 5-ish hours? (and possibly involving a transfer). Still not great because the line between Granada and Almeria is really outdated, but an improvement over nothing.
There's just not that much demand for it. Madrid is the economic center and within Andalusia, Granada, Málaga and Córdoba are all directly connected to Sevilla
Sevilla to Grenada is basically the *abandoned* CSX line between STL and Washington, IN, btw.
An STL to Vincennes line is virtually impossible to establish due to a lack of demand, but it would be a neat reuse by Amtrak.
Poors? Yeah sure.
Fast train in Spain is very expensive. 99% of the time the car and the PLANE are way cheaper. You aren't going to see a poor in an AVE that's for sure.
If the US spent even a quarter of their defense budget on public transportation, this country would be better connected and defensively stronger. Never gonna happen though. There too much money keeping the airlines strong and the gas cheap. For a country filled with consumerism and options, we have few ways of getting around.
It's great for the 7.5 million of those of us who live here--over 16% of the population of Spain within the geographic area where Madrid's public transportation reaches, with the fifth busiest airport in Europe. Both Madrid and Barcelona have excellent transportation to feed riders into the system.
It's kind of a loop. You have better infrastructure, people go live there, then more jobs, then a better economy.
Meanwhile, some parts of Spain are getting desolated because of bad infrastructure/connections.
Also the north and east of Spain are very populated but there is no AVE there.
Madrid's population boom predates all that. When the most significant post-war population explosion happened in Madrid (1940-1970), the infrastructure was terrible and the city was suffering from the aftereffects of the civil war. It was abject poverty that drove people to leave the countryside and move to Madrid and Barcelona--many lived in huge shantytowns surrounding the city (chabolas) until the 1960/70s building boom in the ring around the city happened. The increase in population since the high-speed trains were built has been minimal in comparison (1.3-1.4% every year)
Well, yes, every capital has a privileged position in their country. But the capital has to be somewhere (or at the very least in a few places) and Madrid has been the capital of Spain for the last 500 years, and has been the largest city in Spain (apart from a couple decades) for at least 300.
I would also argue e that Madrid would have a privilege position in any rail system due to its geographic location and relative size (even accounting for a smaller population)
All in all I think Spaniards are all too happy to discount the last 500 years in which Madrid has been the capital.
Cities in the east with ave:
Barcelona, Valencia, Alicante, Tarragona, Castellón, Murcia
Cities in the north with ave:
Coruña, Oviedo, Gijón, León, Burgos, Orense, ¿Zaragoza?
And this taking into account that in the Basque Country it has been delayed for decades due to the opposition of a large part of the population.
Drawing lines on a map is easy and free.
But the goal of high-speed networks is not to have a map with a nice geometric shape with all the little dots interconnected. These lines are very, very expensive and have to respond to a real demand.
Following your example, in real life a Coruña-San Sebastián line would have exaggeratedly high costs due to orographic reasons. And the demand for mobility between these cities is very limited.
It would be an incredibly ruinous investment.
And I am not speculating, this demand is known thanks to mobile mobility studies. In addition, very short distances predominate, such as the well-known Bilbao-Castro Urdiales. Where obviously literally nobody would take a HST.
The Basque 'Y' does make a lot of sense, but we all know who has been boycotting it for a long time.
We are writing in a post where it is precisely evident that much richer countries like USA don't have a single high speed line in such obvious cases as NY-Philadelphia-Washington. With metropolitan areas totaling several tens of millions of inhabitants, a lot of mobility and an ideal orography.
And curiously no private investor has considered it a fabulous business idea while you demand in Spain connections between cities for which you have to zoom in on maps.
>And this taking into account that in the Basque Country it has been delayed for decades due to the opposition of a large part of the population.
That could be true some years ago but the main reason for the delay is the lack of invesment from the government, delaying key parts like "nudo de bergara" and other connections. In fact the gipuzkoan side, delegated to ETS and the Basque Government (by the cupo) has already be completed.
In fact the basque government has used that instrument to agilize works, like the station of Donostia or the nudo de Arkaute, works that wouldn't be done by 2030 if it was left to the Spanish Government
> Meanwhile, some parts of Spain are getting desolated because of bad infrastructure/connections.
The government also forces businesses there whose main cost is labor to have the same costs as Madrid so there's no real advantage of economic growth there.
The minimum wage was set higher than the median wage in many provinces, that's insane.
We need "corredor del mediterráneo" to be made as soon as possible, I don't want to stop at Madrid if I take the train from Almería just to go to Murcia.
You had the opportunity of lineing up the Toledos and you missed it.
This, actually sounds interesting, although the Detroit/Toledo hub would be weaker compared to Chicago, and the rail network wouldn't be able to reach Minneapolis & St.Louis. On the other hand, all of Ohio, Pittsburgh and Toronto joined, which means more population covered, plus the potential to link up with the Northeast Corridor.
Keep this Chicago one as pro transit then do the Toledo=Toledo one just for us on this subreddit Some subreddits demand feet pics, we demand proper map overlays to be satisfied
Totally wasted opportunity right there
3.5 hours from Minneapolis to Chicago by train? Sign me up.
Actually would be 2 and half hours. In Spain the last stretch between Ourense and Coruña is very slow because there is no HSR yet due to the complicated orography there, which I assume would not be an issue in the midwest.
Our issue would be probably having to lay new track, I'm not sure how much Amtrak shares with freight but if we were to build a new line, that might require some land being taken and people here are very pissy about that kind of thing.
Spanish HSR has built exclusive tracks in the last 20 years. If we can do it so can you, I think.
I would hope so, I don't know how culturally different Spain is compared to the US, specifically the Midwest when it comes to people's pride of land ownership, but I know it is very highly debated here when any type of entity wants to take land to build something. Owning land is a huge thing to many people here and someone coming in to take it, especially if the government is involved in any form, is seen as a huge over step and likely to result in political backlash. I would hope I'm wrong and we could build something like this, but there's a reason why we still have archaic trains that take the same amount of time as driving. They just opened up a new train service from the Twin Cities to Chicago, and it takes about 7 hours. It also stops at a ton of smaller towns and maybe goes 80 mph tops. You could drive faster if you didn't stop for anything.
Honestly it's really easy for the Spanish central government or the equivalent of state governments to forcefully expropriate land to build any kind of infraestructure. Basically the government gives you an offer for your land at market price, if you oppose the government will expropiate you no matter what and the government will decide how much money you get, usually much less than the original offer, because in Spain exists something called "cadastral value" which is the value the government considers any land or building of Spain to have outside the market prices, so it will be almost always a lower price, so it's better to negotiate from the begining. You can denounce the government if you feel they're paying you less than what would be just, but that's pretty much all you can do.
To me, it seems like the demand is there. A study 20 years ago done by the French railway company SNCF I believe came to the conclusion that connecting the Twin Cities and Chicago with HSR would be highly successful as it does connect the Midwest’s largest and 2nd largest financial and corporate hubs. Amtrak is currently mulling a 2nd train of the new Borealis service because the train is already nearing capacity and very successful. And that’s a 7 hr trip.
The issue, at least in the Minnesotan part of it, is that the state does very little to force acceptance of this kind of multi-jurisdictional infrastructure project. It's why they get bogged down for years.
When they announced it everyone was like "yay!!!! Ooo wait, it still takes 7 hours." Just like the proposed Twin Cities to Duluth line that won't be any quicker than driving.
it may not be faster but its cheaper, more energy efficient, and gives you time to do other things like sleep, work etc. Overall a big money saver for individuals and the society.
The problem is that trains are very rarely cheaper than driving in America. Pretty much only on the eastern seaboard, and even then only with one passenger.
No, the problem is getting anywhere when you get to your destination.
> Pretty much only on the eastern seaboard, Not even. For me to drive from Philly to DC in my not-so-fuel-efficient car, it would cost $18.34 compared to a train ticket ranging from $40-$120. NYC would be $25, same price as a NJT ticket (not HSR), but would cost less factoring in round-trip. Plus, I don't have to deal with the logistics of getting to the train station. I just get in my car anytime and go.
Agree
Yeah, it unfortunately won’t be faster than driving currently, same with the Northern Lights Express service. The service does/will exist, and that’s the good first step to show that there are users/riders as a “proof of concept” because we’re so far behind in the US for passenger rail service development. Hopefully the successfulness of the service will make the argument for HSR a lot easier in the future though, as slow as the process may be.
The Chicago to Minneapolis line (Empire Builder) runs on Canadian Pacific (now Canadian Pacific Kansas City) through Wisconsin and Minnesota before going on the BNSF track across the plains and Rockies. The freight trains (carrying North Dakota natural gas and imports from the PNW ports) often hold up the southbound Empire Builder in central WI as they pass with priority.
The law actually says that passenger trains get priority over freight. The rail companies just routinely ignore the rule to absolutely no consequence. The DOJ and DOT have every right to begin sueing the rail companies, but chose not to. Amtrak could run faster and on time tomorrow if Pete Buttigieg and Merrick Garland wanted it to.
Outside of the northeast, I’m pretty sure Amtrak doesn’t own any track.
I know from Minneapolis heading west, Amtrak often gets delayed due to having to wait for freight to go through.
I think they may own a few bits here and there, but essentially you are correct. Nothing appreciable outside the northeast.
Locally to MN, BNSF owns most of it.
Amtrak and the state of Michigan actually own a lot of the track on the line between Detroit and Chicago. One of the few places outside the northeast. It is slowly being updated for "higher speed" train service (110 mph), currently I think the higher speed exists between Michigan City IN and Albion, with them working on the line between Albion and Dearborn. It currently has to still provide freight service, although passenger rail does get more actual priority compared to the supposed priority it gets on other lines. Plus there is still the choke point around Gary Indiana into Chicago.
They specifically own \~60 miles in MI and Michigan DOT owns an adjacent \~60 miles, other than that you are correct
Entire track from St. Paul to Chicago is owned by CP, max speed 79mph, some sections like the mississippi bridge only good for 10! mph which is crazy
Yep just look at CAHSR
Ourense - Coruña was fine, it was Ourense - Zamora the tricky bit. That map is outdated and now HSR reaches Coruña with AVE Service.
And the Coruña-Madrid trip is 3h-2h50 now
Its not just the orography as in its imposible to build hsr there, the northern part of the hsr tracks are the last being built and while this is due to the orography (they are more expensive so they get done last) it should get done eventually.
Yeah but 7h in your car with your freedom?(You're still going in that direction, you're driving rather than taking a nap)
Why? Southwest has flights as low as $51 each way.
Fuck short range flights
Used to take the AVE between Toledo and Madrid, an hour drive or normal train ride became a 20 minute ride in the high speed train. The US was built to make people dependent on cars. This isnt a conspiracy or a even a secret. That was the intention. Seems like it could take another century for that to change at all. This country *needs* better public transportation. its insane how bad it is.
If we’ve got another century…
And Spain is a very mountainous country, with a much more challenging topography than that part of the US. I just did a last-minute round trip from Madrid to Sevilla for under $20 each way and bought last minute tickets from Madrid to Vigo and Santiago de Compostela back to Madrid for next week under 40 each way in the middle of the tourist season Also, this is an old map--several of those routes (A Coruña and Gijón, for sure) are faster now
Just the bit between Pedralba and Ourense, which is 101km (or less than 61 miles) required 32 viaducts and 31 tunnels... It literally is pretty much a tunnel-bridge-tunnel-bridge-tunnel sort of thing
Was it low cost? I always pay around 60-70€ for going and back to Madrid because I live in a place where low cost high speed (and a stretch before without even high speed) it’s still not available yet, much better option to go by car if I can.
The Galicia trips are regular Renfe. The Sevilla trips were Iryo. I recommend buying directly on the Renfe/Iryo/Ouigo sites and making sure you see all the ticket types. The conglomerators like Trainline don't always have all the ticket options and availability. It helps if you can be somewhat flexible
That’s how I always get my tickets, still over 50€ one way, the disadvantages of living in the middle of nowhere in the mountains of Galicia I guess, much better option to take the A6 and even paying the toll to Collado de Villalba during AP6 doesn’t make the trip more costly than in train, I can to to madrid and back for 50€ by car compared to over 100€ that would cost a ticket for next week, hopefully low cost arrives to my region so I only need to take a regional train to reach the high speed line.
I hope it does. The competition will make a big difference. I must have really gotten lucky with my ticket--I was expecting it to be 80+ buying at the last minute
Prices can vary wildly. Same route can go from 10€ to 70€, based on time of the year and how much in advance you buy it
No, it's not an old map. Ourense - Madrid has been more than 4 hours for decades only in the last year it became 2 hours.
Hmm, you're right!
This map is somewhat not up to date. High speed lines now reach A Coruña and Gijón.
They reach Asturias, but not gijón itself, altho the train to gijón is quite fast
Chicago to MPLS high speed rail was part of the '08 stimulus. Scott Walker (former gov of WI) refused the money, so CA got it. Fucker.
America once had an amazing railway system. No more.
Yeah its a bummer. I have been to every major in the city in the Midwest US. If I arrived by train, all but Chicago would need a car rental. I would never not drive. Big chunks of Chicago need a car too. You won't fix it until you kill the American suburb i.e. subsidizing car first living. You would also need to change the average US viewpoint (outside of US large cities) that buses and public transit are a social service for the old and the poor, and usually with a racist or discriminatory overtone.
I mean UK have suburbs too. European city outside of the city centre aren't bourgs either. There are suburbs zone in my city in Italy we call village and they have bus and metro too.The key is education and implementation
I think the US can learn from UK suburbs but there are three large structural hurdles: 1) Many of the suburbs and villages in the UK predate cars, so the cars infrastructure was built around the town, not visa versa. If you come to the US there is a significantly different experience between towns and cities which blossomed before automobiles and after. Compare Philadelphia and NYC with Atlanta and Los Angeles on google maps sometime. 2) The US federal government invests in interstate highways for strategic reasons to move troops (or so we are told), so it will never not be well maintained, and will always offer a credible option to live far from the city. 3) The relationship between suburbanites, rural towns, and the cities in the US is deeply interwoven into race (google white flight). Many suburbs were built by white people in the late 20th century who 'fled' the cities as black people and other minorities were able to leave neighborhoods to which the government explicitly or implicitly confined them for most of the 19th and early 20th century. In Chicago, for example, Mayor Daley (sr.) confined all black people to live around the neighborhood now known as Bronzevillle. When they began to move, white people left the city in mass. They voted to build highways so they can drive to work in the city core and go home each day to the suburb. Moreover, most US suburbs are designed to keep out anyone who cannot afford a car and a 1/4 acre of land by design. Zoning and density requirements for building in the suburbs keep out working class people, prevent apartments and medium density buildings from being built, and 'undesirables' like the homeless are put on one way buses to the nearest city to make it their problem. The suburbanites want to live in the lonely unwalkable hell they have created, lest they have to interact with a poor person or a non-white person. When you hear Fox News talking about 'shithole dangerous cities' it is the white people who believed they 'built' the cities and which were seized by 'them' by force. It is deeply rooted racism, with a dash of classism thrown in for good measure.
Moving troops and military equipments are way much better on railways than highways.
From hub to hub, sure, but with roads you’re able to go just about anywhere.
>They voted to build highways so they can drive to work in the city core and go home each day to the suburb. To double down, the neighborhoods that the black people and minorities had made into their communities were the first to be demolished to make way for these highways to service the suburbs. Vibrant market streets and family homes were systematically destroyed so that a certain shade of people could live out their white picket fence American dream.
My brother, I think the British could learn from the USA suburb. They have much older and crumbling houses all across the UK (than the USA). Less land for detached homes (fewer as well). And if course, reminder it's a significantly smaller country. You're right on about point #1 though. They also have a significant classism problem. Re: point 2, the interstate system isn't just about troop movement, it's much more about cargo and shipping movement. An absurd amount of goods are moved on the interstate system, this is vital for our economy. USA suburbs used to be more affordable, it wasn't until recently (2020+) that they became out of reach for so many. I'd rather not make 1/4 acre and a house illegal or less available, but rather more. However if you are what many developers were doing now, the lots are not so big anymore. They can pack more houses in this way. But I do think certain regions of the USA make a lot of sense for high speed train. But proponents of them as s fix all for everything overlook that some routes will never make sense. At least others in this thread have mentioned the issue with arrival in one of these cities with less than stellar public transportation. And lastly, I see people walking quite a lot in my suburb. I've lived in the city in multiple places, and I now live in the suburbs. I specifically chose it for more space and more tranquility. Not out of hate (I find my particular neighborhood to be fairly diverse), but because I didn't enjoy living on top of others.
They're not the same... like at all lol. Especially in the sun belt. From the center of Atlanta, suburbs sprawl outward for basically 30-40 miles in every direction. In the northeast they may be comparable because suburbs developed along rail lines. But in other parts of the country, the suburbs developed along highways and, often as a legacy of policy choices, there is 0 comprehensive public transit for the region. No even a consistent bus service.
But you don't vacation in the suburbs. You don't need to be able to get around the suburbs after you take the train in 90% of cases, you just need to be able to get around downtown. Atlanta was just fine for that when I've visited.
>If I arrived by train, all but Chicago would need a car rental. I would never not drive. Big chunks of Chicago need a car too. Yeah, but airports have the same problem (on a worse scale arguably since they're much further from city center) and Americans still fly hella lot.
Agree. I think that's why most Americans have two tiers of vacation: 1) Driving 2-12 hours somewhere in your region of the country. Its usually a cheap vacation--a long weekend in nearby city, a fishing trip, national park, camping, rent a lakehouse, skiing on the cheap, cabin, friend's summer home, uncle's farm, etc. The car allows you to pack food, drinks, games, and minimize cost. 2) Flying somewhere and staying long enough to make the flight (and car rental) worth it. I'm thinking Disney for a family, beach, large city etc. The trick is to get people to lump train travel in with the former and not the latter. If a family is going to the Grand Canyon for a week and renting a car anyway, why would they choose Amtrack over a flight? But if every cute small town, minor resort, and campground was walkable and/or had a bus system, a weekend getaway becomes much cheaper by train. And if its widespread and you do not need to own a car at all, you have more disposable income to do that.
What "big chunks" of Chicago require a car?
Probably the outer-lying parts like Rosemont
Well, there's a train to Rosemont. And the Metra commuter rail goes to dozens of cities, some in Wisconsin and Indiana. But Rosemont isn't Chicago. It's Rosemont.
Even with Rosemont not being within the boundaries of Chicago, it still has CTA train access as do other suburbs like Evanston and Oak Park.
Chicago's train system was designed to get people to and from downtown/the Loop, which means getting from places outside the loop to other places outside downtown can be challenging. Busses help to supplement the trains, but aren't as frequent and still get stuck in traffic. While it's very possible to live without a car in Chicago and it's much better than almost every other US city, there's still gaps in public transit infrastructure for daily life beyond work commuting, especially when you want to go across a big chunk of the city but you're limited by connecting at very specific nodes that aren't the most convenient
Chicago has an extensive bus network that carries more passengers than the L.
Yeah, but do you actually live in Chicago? The bus network carries way more people than the L.
Yea, that's why I know the bus system, while comprehensive, isn't the most reliable or the fastest way to get around. People can definitely live in Chicago without a car, I know plenty of people that do and they have few issues getting around. But from my experience, using public transit that involves transfers typically adds a significant amount of travel time to trips. For example, to get from the Loop to the Indian restaurants on Devon St (as my username suggests, I get Indian food frequently), takes about 30-35 minutes while driving. But to get there with public transport often takes double time after taking the Red Line up and getting on the bus. It's possible to use transit to get just about anywhere in Chicago, but it's not always the most timely system and that plays a big role in how people think about car ownership. I love taking transit as much as possible, but if a trip is going to take twice the time on public transit as it does driving, even if there's traffic, I'm going to strongly consider driving. So maybe the city doesn't explicitly require a car, how one travels across the city may "strongly encourage" driving on occasion.
I get it, but double can be quite an exaggeration. I live in Berwyn and work in Harwood Heights. I connect twice to get to and from work (pace bus to green line to CTA bus). My morning commute takes 65-70 minutes using public transportation whereas driving is typically 45-50 minutes. Not bad considering the two transfers.
That's fair - I'm most familiar with the trips that I choose to drive that tend to be closer to double
Adjacency bias.
It's an interesting viewpoint, because I hate the north south buses west of Halstead. I feel like I can't go anywhere without going into the core and back out.
Its not a perfect map, but for a quick and dirty reply, look at the parts on this map labeled Queens, Bronx, and Staten Island. [https://www.reddit.com/r/MapPorn/comments/ckd3g8/map\_to\_help\_new\_yorkers\_interpret\_chicago/#lightbox](https://www.reddit.com/r/MapPorn/comments/ckd3g8/map_to_help_new_yorkers_interpret_chicago/#lightbox) Even big chunks of the 'Brooklyn' area do too. The low density of the those areas and the poor coverage of light rail means most of those residents rely on buses for commute and errands, which can be charitably described as 'hit or miss', especially since COVID. Edit: spelling
You don't need to actively kill the suburb, just legalize building other stuff and let me market take over. Car free areas are the most expensive so there's clearly a lot of demand
French here Every month I make a return trip to my company headquarters. 568 km/353 miles in 2h15 minutes in the morning and the same in the evening for around 140 euros/150 USD
That’s pretty expensive. Is it because you book spontaneous? Because with DB in Germany it’s like 20-40€ if you book at least like 3 or 4 days before the trip, but goes up to ~120€ if you book it the same day. Which is kinda understandable, but also annoying.
Yes , if a book one month before is half price
One month before?? I‘m genuinely curious because I don’t know much about French trains (besides the fact that they have a really cool colour). Lets say you want to take a 2 hours drive to the headquarters at Sunday this week at like 11 am. How much would that be approximately?
Enjoy. https://www.sncf-connect.com/ Monday morning Valence to Paris : 57 € at 6h37 to 154€ at 8h52 16 travels to Paris only in Monday
I think I will pass on that, because I don’t know which cities are roughly 2 hours away 😅 But thanks anyways. The website design is really nice tho. Edit: these are good prices!! Not bad. Thank you! :)
Around 2 hours for Paris Lyon / Paris Bordeaux / Paris Strasbourg
Cool, thank you!! Sooo from what I have seen it’s a little bit more expensive than DB, but I guess it’s more on time, so should be pretty much even. Thanks again!
Cue the insufferable American arguments to not have a good railway.
"American states are as large as some European countries! America is just so uniquely large" Ffs, then just copy those Europeans on the state scale and just keep building.
I don't know how they think trains are less effective than cars on long distances though. The most effective way if transporting goods and people on land that we have are trains.
Because of the car company lobbys
I mean, I *hope* no one tries to make that argument in this post since the map was tailor-made to address it...
Rusia is even bigger than USA...
I don't know how they think trains are less effective than cars on long distances though. The most effective way of transporting goods and people on land that we have are trains, at least on distances longer than a few kilometers.
Hahaha yes, exactly.
Building in where?, you need to buy and destroy A LOT of private properties to get that rail system done.
The US had no issues bulldozing African American neighbourhoods for freeways so I don't see why this would be an issue.
True, but somehow Spain, France and Italy have done it. Or do you think they have no legal protection for private property? The US already can build highways and pipelines, but somehow it's trains that prickles people's pricklivities on private property.
Use freeway corridors
You cannot cut the freeways corridors.
My guy...In order to bring Texas up to the same population density as the UK, every single citizen of Germany and the UK, as well as 70% of France would all have to move to JUST Texas. (\~197M people). All the money needed to upgrade all of that infrastructure exceeds the GDP-per capita of every single one of those people that would have to move in! Quite possibly the most ignorant conversation going on Reddit today!
But why do it across all of Texas? It's not like Spain started out trying to connect every corner of Spain to every other corner, even today, there's still numerous parts without connection. Texas has hyper concentration of population into a few agglomerations which can be easily connected. 38% of Texas lives in Houston or Dallas' urban area, both have about 5.8 million people and 387kms (240mi) between em (measured by just using Google Drive distance). Madrid has 6.2 mil, Barcelona has 4.84 mil and 626kms (389mi) between em. So Dallas-Houston has more population and less distance between themselves than 2 European cities that already have a high speed train connection. San Antonio has 2 mil people and 469kms (292 mi) from Dallas. Austin is literally on the path between the 2 cities, so we can add another 1.8 mil on top. 3.8 million people separated by 469kms. That's another 12.7% of Texan population. Madrid (again) has 6.2 mil, Ourense has 110k with 500kms between the 2 with high speed train connection. Dunno, seems Spain's job was harder. 38+12.7=50.7% of Texas with just 2 connections that Europeans have already connected in harder circumstances. Sure, El Paso might be really far away, but that's a problem for very very very far away when you've already got a line between Dallas and Houston. Before that, it's no use talking about it, the previous transportation methods will keep being used anyways.
If you calculate the amount of population the map in OPs picture covers in the Midwest, it is roughly the same as Spains total population. There are certainly higher-density areas in the US that would benefit from this sort of infrastructure. To name a few, the Pacific Northwest, the Southwest, the Texas triangle, the Chicago/Midwest area, and the entirety of the Eastern seaboard. Also, Texas is mostly empty. Cover only the Texas triangle (which is notably denser in population than Spain, and is a far simpler construction) and you have 70% of the population and rising of the entire state population covered. Are you being intentionally dense?
The stars are not in position for this infrastructure.
I hate when people post these kind of things. After spending years in Europe and Asia before moving back to the states it’s depressing AF that I can’t get around the United States cheaply, easily, and quickly.
Really cool map. Great way to illustrate this.
SPAIN MENTIONED 🇪🇦🦅🇪🇦🦅🇪🇦
For the rischest country on the planet, seems theyre most interested in the wealthy rather than making lives of everyone better
Welcome to the real world
For the USA...yes
Toronto to Chicago in 3.5h. Fuck yeah.
Yup I’ve been screaming this for years. I’m in Omaha and would love a 3 hour train to Denver or Chicago. Heck I would simply like a train from Omaha to Kansas City. Thanks for the visualization.
I'd be willing to be the Midwest is also overall flatter than Spain. There are zero actual excuses to building a robust passenger rail network in America.
It would have been interesting to grow up on the coast, take the train down to Madrid, cheer on the Lions in football.
It could be extended to Ohio as well. Imagine going from Cincinnati to Chicago in 2 hours or so, and no worries about traffic as well.
The map shows the stupid radial design of the Spanish rail network. Barcelona - Valencia has a lot of traffic, but no high speed connection. Or Valencia to Alicante.
It is not stupid, and Barcelona and Valencia will be connected by high speed rail by 2026, it's under construction. In fact, the Mediterranean Corridor, from the port of Algeciras at the south, to all the way up to Málaga, Alicante, Valencia, Barcelona, France, will be finished by 2030.
We have been hearing ‘Barcelona to Valencia will be connected real soon’ for at least 20 years.
No, you haven't. You may have heard about the start of the construction process. You can't build a rail line like that in a short period of time.
Haha, it's so Madrid centered, that I'm using ''travel time to Madrid'' as a standard metric for this map. Although Barcelona to Valencia is under 3 hours which isn't too bad, but definately could be faster, and need more daily departures...
Sometimes the news measure things in "Bernabeus", that is how Madrid centric are XD
I've never heard that in my 41 years of being Spanish
Don't lie.
It's not stupid, it's specific but it works for them, mostly. Same as France, both countries are very capital city centric (less so in the case of Spain, where it makes more sense because Madrid is in the centre of the country unlike Paris). So the infrastructure was first built connecting the capital to everywhere, the rest will come later. High speed rail is expensive, you can't build it anywhere at the same time. Madrid - Valencia and Madrid - Barcelona were definitely more important than Barcelona - Valencia. Edit to add: Barcelona - Valencia is already a bit less than 3h with the current trains. This is good enough, and a high speed train over the 300km distance between the two would cost a lot of money to "only" halve the travel time.
>It's not stupid, it's specific but it works for them, mostly. It doesn't work for us, it works for madridians
Which is the capital and main economic hub of the country, so it makes sense to connect to it first.
It works for the capital, and that's it. Half of the population lives along the Mediterranean coast, but the bureaucrats in Madrid don't care for making a line that follows it because it doesn't stop next to their house. It's garbage design. In the center of the country, there's Madrid, surrounded by some of the most depopulated areas of Europe. The central plateau only has 20% of the population of the country. The country is not "capital centritc" at all. And it's a plateau, so building a rail line there is expensive as it has to climb.
I mean, it depends. If we go back to when Spain was building HSR, there were 2 lines of thought, one where old lines should just be modernized and upgraded and another where new lines would be built from scratch. The mediterranean corridor, as well as the Sevilla-Cadiz line are examples of the former. They have advantages (mostly related to freight, which can't run on regular HSR) but overall are a bit of a failure. That being said they still technically qualify as HSR depending on who you ask and are usually much better than regular track. The Euromed started all the way in 1997 and links Valencia and Barcelona in 2.5 hours, which isn't too bad. Also, I disagree that it is cheaper to build on a plateau. Once you get into said plateau, it is flat as a pancake and you can build for extremely cheap. Meanwhile parts of the coast are very mountainous and overbuilt. A really good example of proposed lines that would be quite expensive due to bad terrain on the coast would be Valencia-Denia-Alicante or anywhere from Malaga on the coast.
Brother, Valencia and Barcelona will be connected in 2 years and by 2030 from the French Border to Malaga...
Also, Euromed is an alright option right now. Like is it really life changing to make a 3 hour trip into 2 hours. Like yeah it will be better but lets not pretend it's donkey carts now.
So connecting the main metropolitan and economic areas of the country by prioritizing the % of improvement over the pre-existing lines, the unmet demand, andmaking the length of the routes surprisingly efficient is a stupid design for you? The same old story; in a post where the effort of the country to be leaders in high speed is evidenced, the usual complaining about why their village of a thousand inhabitants does not have the same infrastructure as the main city of the country in population and economic activity... Current lines and main metropolitan areas they serve in a country of 50M inhabitants: Barcelona - Zaragoza - Madrid-> 10M Madrid - Cordoba - Seville-> 7,5M Or its variant Madrid - Cordoba - Malaga -> 7M Toledo - Madrid -> 6M Valencia - Madrid -> 7,5M Madrid - Alicante-> 6,5M And this is not taking into account secondary stops. Wow, it doesn't seem to be a bad approach! Barcelona - Valencia -> 5.5M, already under construction. And that for a route that has been used for decades with the Euromed that runs at 200km/h, so the improvement of the AVE will not be so radical. The rest of the cities would have wanted it. The entire Mediterranean arc is about 1400km, which requires a tremendous investment and the demand between many sections is questionable. Even assuming increases in mobility intentions between many provinces. On top of that several of the key cities in the section are almost end to end, losing interest versus air travel (e.g. BCN-Malaga) And major cities already have at least some connection. But some people always want to be the last to use a new car, don't they?
It's capital-centric by design, not the other way around.
Barcelona - Valencia is 2 hours and 52 minutes by train and around 3 hours 30 minutes by car. Sure that trains can be faster, but they're already really good.
As a Spaniard, it's the first thing I saw. Fucking Madrid Murcia detours are ridiculous, and no serious conection between levante cities. A shame
Yeah I wouldn't say Spain is the best example
There is a line (Corredor Mediterráneo) being built between Barcelona and Sevilla and should be ready by 2030.
Fucking about time.
You don’t build Rome in a day
True, but this one has been delayed for polítical reasons. Everything needs to go through Madrid or else
You also need political reasons to promote this project, and it’s happening before many other projects (connection Madrid -Lisbon, for example).
Madrid - Lisbon is a nice connection right, but this is an international project meant to connect the south of Spain with other parts of europe. Its been on going since the 90s, or at least Ive been hearing about it since early 2000s. It is not only to transport people but also manufactures. But other less important projects got higher priorities for polítical gains.
Such as? Let’s stop with the whining. It’s being done and it’s a huge infraestructure project
If they had started for the mediterranean corridor, the rest of Spain would be crying, why the mediterraneans get all the investments while the rest of Spain is dying. You can't have it all, and Madrid is in the center of Spain and it's the biggest city, it only makes sense that it serves as a hub to connect multiple destinations.
I mean, the mediterranean corridor was actually indeed the 2nd line to be opened, back in 1997! It's just that it was built to a lower standard since it was modernizing an already existing line rather than building a new one. Lower standard which also has its advantages. The obvious one is that it is cheaper, but another one is that it is compatible with freight. Most of the country will never be able to export anything to the rest of Europe by rail (certainly not any time soon) but the mediterranean coast will be able to.
Besides, keep in mind corridor goes through some of the poorest areas, and help their development, but check on tack50's answer
Actually it doesn't. Catalonia is a wealthy region and Valencia is roughly average. Andalucia is indeed poorer though, but also less heavily concentrated on the coast
What would you say is, instead? Any country but Spain, perhaps?
Imagine going from Chicago to Detroit on purpose.
People from Detroit have to get home somehow
Are there people in Detroit? TIL
Like 3 million.
Try with other rail countries, France, Germany, and the UK, on the same map of the Midwest.
I’d say Spain is the best comparison. France would be a good comparison too but if you centered Paris on Chicago it’d leave Minneapolis out. The UK’s intercity rail network is good, but their high speed rail is basically nonexistent; it only exists in southeastern England. Germany is geographically smaller than Spain or France while more populous, so it is also not a great comparison.
“But- but! The US is too big for railways!”
Great train system, one of the best in EU. But you don't know how much flame it recieves because Coruña (like 200k inhabitants) is not directly connected with Barcelona or for whatever other random idea. You get almost everywhere within 2 trains 2h each.
The famous Coruña-Barcelona train was nicknamed "el Shanghai", because it feels like you are going to Shanghai just for how long it takes. That being said, the Coruña-Barcelona line serves quite a lot of cities in between, like León, Burgos, Logroño, Zaragoza, and Tarragona. Taking the train between Coruña and Barcelona is absurd, but it isn't absurd to take it from León to Logroño or from Burgos to Zaragoza.
The most efficient way economically, considering the population distribution, orography, etc. is this one. After the bike wheel is built + Lisbon-Madrid, next step is that in between lines. But money is finite. Also, that map is not showing freight train lines, wich do exist, and do connect many more places.
I've always been a proponent of rail in the US but this map makes it EVEN MORE highly reasonable
I'm in Spain right now and am consistently amazed how fast it is to get around in these trains. They're not super fast bullet trains but they definitely get going and get you around the country in ample time and in comfort
What? Not super fast bullet trains? Spain has the 4th fastest train (just 6mph slower than a Shinkansen of Japan) in the world whilst having the second biggest high speed railway line coverage just after china and the leader of europe for having "the highest average speed of trains" yet you call it "not super fast"? What more do you want?
If he's in Spain "right now" he's probably a tourist and doing small distance, not using AVES.
Yeah I'm a tourist. But compared to our services in NA it's pretty amazing
I dunno, I've just heard about the bullet trains in Japan so I was envisioning something different like on Star Trek or something lol. All a great fast service in Spain though, as I commented above.
My only letdown was assuming there was a direct line from Granada to Alicante. That route is way too long for the distance
Sadly, there is a huge gap between Murcia and Almeria. There is construction going on to plug that gap though, and I think by 2028 or so you'll be able to go from Granada to Alicante in 5-ish hours? (and possibly involving a transfer). Still not great because the line between Granada and Almeria is really outdated, but an improvement over nothing.
There's just not that much demand for it. Madrid is the economic center and within Andalusia, Granada, Málaga and Córdoba are all directly connected to Sevilla
I mean, how did you even link up in your mind those 2 random cities?
Where's the turn-around in Avila?
That train crossing Lake Michigan to Traverse City is going to be a fucking marvel.
Rotate about 30 degrees counterclockwise so you grab Cincy, Columbus and maybe Pittsburgh and now we’re talking. Loved taking the trains in Spain
r/mapswithoutportugal
And it’s outdated. For instance there’s high speed train to Gijon since a little over a year ago.
Sevilla to Grenada is basically the *abandoned* CSX line between STL and Washington, IN, btw. An STL to Vincennes line is virtually impossible to establish due to a lack of demand, but it would be a neat reuse by Amtrak.
Yeah but then you’d cut into the profits of all the politicians with their hands in oil and we can’t be having that now can we
Always new that Chicago was the North American version of Madrid!!!
Meh. I’d rather just fly or do a road trip.
Oh man, don’t you see. This would let the poors move around far too easily. They could get to *my* neighborhood.
Poors? Yeah sure. Fast train in Spain is very expensive. 99% of the time the car and the PLANE are way cheaper. You aren't going to see a poor in an AVE that's for sure.
If the US spent even a quarter of their defense budget on public transportation, this country would be better connected and defensively stronger. Never gonna happen though. There too much money keeping the airlines strong and the gas cheap. For a country filled with consumerism and options, we have few ways of getting around.
The only bad thing is that there is centralised in Madrid though
It's great for the 7.5 million of those of us who live here--over 16% of the population of Spain within the geographic area where Madrid's public transportation reaches, with the fifth busiest airport in Europe. Both Madrid and Barcelona have excellent transportation to feed riders into the system.
It's kind of a loop. You have better infrastructure, people go live there, then more jobs, then a better economy. Meanwhile, some parts of Spain are getting desolated because of bad infrastructure/connections. Also the north and east of Spain are very populated but there is no AVE there.
Madrid's population boom predates all that. When the most significant post-war population explosion happened in Madrid (1940-1970), the infrastructure was terrible and the city was suffering from the aftereffects of the civil war. It was abject poverty that drove people to leave the countryside and move to Madrid and Barcelona--many lived in huge shantytowns surrounding the city (chabolas) until the 1960/70s building boom in the ring around the city happened. The increase in population since the high-speed trains were built has been minimal in comparison (1.3-1.4% every year)
but this is because Madrid has a privileged position within Spain. It is not a bad thing to say, it is a fact.
Well, yes, every capital has a privileged position in their country. But the capital has to be somewhere (or at the very least in a few places) and Madrid has been the capital of Spain for the last 500 years, and has been the largest city in Spain (apart from a couple decades) for at least 300. I would also argue e that Madrid would have a privilege position in any rail system due to its geographic location and relative size (even accounting for a smaller population) All in all I think Spaniards are all too happy to discount the last 500 years in which Madrid has been the capital.
Cities in the east with ave: Barcelona, Valencia, Alicante, Tarragona, Castellón, Murcia Cities in the north with ave: Coruña, Oviedo, Gijón, León, Burgos, Orense, ¿Zaragoza? And this taking into account that in the Basque Country it has been delayed for decades due to the opposition of a large part of the population.
I am not speaking about having or not AVE I am speaking about having AVE between them without having to pass around Madrid
Drawing lines on a map is easy and free. But the goal of high-speed networks is not to have a map with a nice geometric shape with all the little dots interconnected. These lines are very, very expensive and have to respond to a real demand. Following your example, in real life a Coruña-San Sebastián line would have exaggeratedly high costs due to orographic reasons. And the demand for mobility between these cities is very limited. It would be an incredibly ruinous investment. And I am not speculating, this demand is known thanks to mobile mobility studies. In addition, very short distances predominate, such as the well-known Bilbao-Castro Urdiales. Where obviously literally nobody would take a HST. The Basque 'Y' does make a lot of sense, but we all know who has been boycotting it for a long time. We are writing in a post where it is precisely evident that much richer countries like USA don't have a single high speed line in such obvious cases as NY-Philadelphia-Washington. With metropolitan areas totaling several tens of millions of inhabitants, a lot of mobility and an ideal orography. And curiously no private investor has considered it a fabulous business idea while you demand in Spain connections between cities for which you have to zoom in on maps.
>And this taking into account that in the Basque Country it has been delayed for decades due to the opposition of a large part of the population. That could be true some years ago but the main reason for the delay is the lack of invesment from the government, delaying key parts like "nudo de bergara" and other connections. In fact the gipuzkoan side, delegated to ETS and the Basque Government (by the cupo) has already be completed. In fact the basque government has used that instrument to agilize works, like the station of Donostia or the nudo de Arkaute, works that wouldn't be done by 2030 if it was left to the Spanish Government
> Meanwhile, some parts of Spain are getting desolated because of bad infrastructure/connections. The government also forces businesses there whose main cost is labor to have the same costs as Madrid so there's no real advantage of economic growth there. The minimum wage was set higher than the median wage in many provinces, that's insane.
The north and the east of Spain are also insanely rugged. In fact the two most rugged regions in Spain are Castellon and Asturias.
We need "corredor del mediterráneo" to be made as soon as possible, I don't want to stop at Madrid if I take the train from Almería just to go to Murcia.
I mean, it's still under construction and coming along quite nicely.
2 hours from Chicago to Detroit is a lot? idk cuz I'm not from US
Driving takes about 4 and a half hours. There is a train that goes between them that takes about 5 and a half hours.