Canada is great at high-speed rail studies — but not at actually building high-speed rail. So why is it the only country in the developed world considering a new conventional-speed passenger network?

Created by Paige Saunders with special guest Reece Martin

  • asterfield@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    I agree with you mostly.

    But I’ll point out that 200km/h is still ~50% higher than highway speeds, with no traffic, and you can still focus on other things. So even low end rail is still better than driving.

    • Dearche@lemmy.ca
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      1 year ago

      I just don’t feel like 50% faster is enough. People are just so attached to their cars that they’ll just rent one if they can’t afford to own one. People in Canada compare things against planes if they talk about riding, so I think 200km/h is still a bit low unless if it’s a short trip, which I doubt it would be. Most likely it’ll be something like between Toronto and Ottawa, or Ottawa and Montreal.

      200km/h isn’t quite enough to make the trip feel short. I think you’d have to be closing in on 300km/h before people take high speed rail seriously, as then you’d be doing less than 2 hours including boarding for a trip like that, where boarding on a plane alone would take much of those 2 hours, though the flight itself would be quite a bit faster.

    • Ilovethebomb@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      100% increase, if you’re talking about 100kmh roads. You’d need to be doing 130 for it to be a 50% increase.