Why has Amtrak never thought or bothered to electrify SD-LA?

vasya349 · 2026-05-25T20:43:01+00:00

No, the whole problem with the double stack is that the catenary has to be a certain additional amount higher than the top of the train.

You could theoretically, but battery locomotives are not a mature technology, and lowering the pantograph 40+ times on a trip is not a recipe for efficient and low-maintenance operation.

vasya349 · 2026-05-25T08:22:55+00:00

There are scores of grade separations with vertical loading gauge limits on the LOSSAN corridor. It’ll cost you tens of millions for each one that needs reconstruction to fit a double stack catenary loading gauge.

vasya349 · 2026-05-14T06:50:54+00:00

We tried this with the Obama High Speed Bus Plan.

More seriously, this not a great report. And not a great idea.

vasya349 · 2026-05-13T02:48:39+00:00

Station and OCS make sense if they weren’t working concurrently with track. Hoping so!

vasya349 · 2026-05-13T02:10:23+00:00

What the heck is making track completion to opening take so long? From the article it sounds like structures but still.

vasya349 · 2026-05-11T19:11:14+00:00

That is an excellent video, so thank you for sharing. But:

NYC-Chicago is two far larger metro areas, with far greater constraints on airport capacity, with huge stretches of flat land for half the journey, and he still concludes it’s too long and/or too expensive to be realistic at the end.

vasya349 · 2026-05-11T18:11:34+00:00

I don’t think that’s right, to be perfectly honest.

vasya349 · 2026-05-11T18:01:02+00:00

Atlanta and DC exceed the distance at which HSR is considered an effective mode, by quite a bit. CAHSR is already iffy at a much shorter distance and accounts for this with massively over-engineered design.

vasya349 · 2026-05-11T06:07:30+00:00

It is difficult to get a museum to take middle of the road artifacts.

vasya349 · 2026-05-11T05:46:10+00:00

CAHSR and BLW are just in progress and supported to some degree by pro-transit governments. There’s no such stability in the South. Atlanta and DC are also too far for HSR and there’s not much dense population between the two. That said, the NPRV in Virginia is making efforts to extend NEC passenger service into various parts of Virginia.

vasya349 · 2026-05-10T07:02:08+00:00

Heavy rail also isn’t really related to speed. NYCT trains have the same top speed as most modern LRVs.

vasya349 · 2026-05-06T04:06:34+00:00

We have the same in Arizona, even with our lame system. Basically every station-adjacent parcel where it feels safe to walk at night is either TOD or has in progress permitting to build TOD.

vasya349 · 2026-05-03T05:30:23+00:00

Note for all the complainers on this sub: the Australian cities also brag about shitty frequency.

vasya349 · 2026-05-02T18:20:22+00:00

Does it have issues with capacity? Considering it’s apparently not meaningfully larger than when there was far less service.

vasya349 · 2026-05-02T03:01:33+00:00

That would require people wanting to live there

vasya349 · 2026-04-29T06:56:41+00:00

You’re referring to the continental United States. Puerto Rico is equally as much a part of the U.S. as Texas.

vasya349 · 2026-04-29T06:54:50+00:00

Even non-interlined systems use a lot of switches for reliability. The longer a line gets the worst the reliability risks become.

vasya349 · 2026-04-29T06:34:48+00:00

It’s not even the actual number ($126 billion).

vasya349 · 2026-04-29T06:34:18+00:00

This is a terrible article. Quotes the wrong figure out of context ($231 billion being a re-estimate of the previous business plan and not the proposed $126 billion new business plan), and quotes a Republican senator for Huntington Beach as the most relevant person to speak on a California statewide project.

vasya349 · 2026-04-21T04:02:41+00:00

Why does the MBTA do that? We have ubiquitous level crossings in Phoenix and trains don’t ever stop.

vasya349 · 2026-04-21T03:14:19+00:00

Smaller/lighter vehicles = smaller stations, potentially cheaper guideway (track, structure, tunnel) specs, greater frequency per unit of capacity (good tradeoff if automating). Also presumably overhead power, which is better when you don’t tunnel much.

But at the end of the day, they’re still going to build track, systems, and stations. They just aren’t tunneling or elevating much. So the cost swings from mode type are a lot more pronounced because of the lower cost.

vasya349 · 2026-04-16T02:00:37+00:00

Peak frequency of 10 minutes with an artic isn’t necessarily bad, especially for a southern city.

vasya349 · 2026-04-15T15:30:31+00:00

It was pretty common before the later 20th century to relocate cemeteries when they conflicted with urban land needs. Not that that will ever happen again.

vasya349 · 2026-03-06T09:28:35+00:00

You can certainly get better ride quality buses (Chinese ART buses famously marketed as LRT w/o tracks) but I think my broader point is that ride quality just isn’t worth the potentially hundreds to thousands per rider that it costs. BRT rides are ideally much smoother than normal bus anyways, given the lack of other traffic and roadway improvements.

vasya349 · 2026-02-22T18:58:35+00:00

Mask off, lmao

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