Trouble flying

[Fake Messiah]

There's a new viral video of people on plane having trouble with seats and being overall uncomfortable





And indeed, flying on commercial jets is generally butt of many jokes, from jets being uncomfortable, bad food, small bathrooms, fear of flying and turbulence, airports, TSA, and overall misery.

So do you think if it would be a better option if really fast trains were built, like monorail that can go almost as fast as airplanes and are more comfortable, safer, cleaner (less polluting), no TSA... or do people must fly?

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

There's a new viral video of people on plane having trouble with seats and being overall uncomfortable





And indeed, flying on commercial jets is generally butt of many jokes, from jets being uncomfortable, bad food, small bathrooms, fear of flying and turbulence, airports, TSA, and overall misery.

So do you think if it would be a better option if really fast trains were built, like monorail that can go almost as fast as airplanes and are more comfortable, safer, cleaner (less polluting), no TSA... or do people must fly?

Until we can afford to build high speed rails across or under the oceans, air travel will always be with us.

But even if we could replace all air travel with train travel, most of those issues you listed would still be with us. The lack of air travel would necessarily shunt those passengers onto trains and economies of scale would make the trains less comfortable.

Boru

[Fake Messiah]

Until we can afford to build high speed rails across or under the oceans, air travel will always be with us.

Well yeah, I didn't mean across oceans, but for instance across the US like there are fast monorails in Japan.

The lack of air travel would necessarily shunt those passengers onto trains and economies of scale would make the trains less comfortable.

Boru

But couldn't they just add more wagons?

[Gawdzilla Sama]

"But couldn't they just add more wagons?" That would slow it down.

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

Let's say a high speed train has a capacity of 1000 people per trip (I have no idea what the actual figure might be).  Eventually, whoever is operating the railroad is going to need to move twice as many people. They can either build another train and the associated infrastructure or they can cram as many people as possible into the trains they already have. Which option is a corporation of government most likely to do?

This is what Japan is already dealing with.  Imagine if everyone who was flying had to take a train instead:





Don't get me wrong - would much prefer to see a massive investment in rail travel to the detriment of air travel.  I just don't think it's going to be feasible without a MASSIVE investment, which I don't see happening.

Boru

[Mr Greene]

I'm hoping HS2 will accommodate double decker carriages. These seem fairly common on the continent but our network wasn't demolished 75 years ago.
High speed rail is good across most of Europe, (well as far as Budapest at any rate) and something that Britain needs to catch up on badly.
Ocean air-travel is obviously required but it shouldn't be overland.

[Fake Messiah]

This is what Japan is already dealing with.  Imagine if everyone who was flying had to take a train instead:

Come on, that is daily city transport of people going to work and not passengers on longer routes.

But I do admit problem seems to be more complicated than I anticipated.

Nevertheless, monorail magnetic trains shouldn't be so problematic in carrying many wagons since they levitate and therefore don't lose on friction, so SCMaglev can carry 16 wagons (but how much passengers is that, I don't know)

And here's an uplifting video




But it does seem like it is still on experimental level and it is probably very expensive to have that kind of magnetic rail.

I just don't think it's going to be feasible without a MASSIVE investment, which I don't see happening.

Boru

But this is Trump's era where "economy is doing better than ever" so there certainly has to be money in the best economy ever for something that important.

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

This is what Japan is already dealing with.  Imagine if everyone who was flying had to take a train instead:

Come on, that is daily city transport of people going to work and not passengers on longer routes.

But I do admit problem seems to be more complicated than I anticipated.

Nevertheless, monorail magnetic trains shouldn't be so problematic in carrying many wagons since they levitate and therefore don't lose on friction, so SCMaglev can carry 16 wagons (but how much passengers is that, I don't know)

And here's an uplifting video




But it does seem like it is still on experimental level and it is probably very expensive to have that kind of magnetic rail.

I just don't think it's going to be feasible without a MASSIVE investment, which I don't see happening.

Boru

But this is Trump's era where "economy is doing better than ever" so there certainly has to be money in the best economy ever for something that important.

Some 15 years ago, the Shanghai MagLev Project was built at a cost of US$1,2 billion (5 cars, track, 2 stations). The track is just under 20 miles long. The train you mention with 16 cars is projected to carry 1000 passengers.

While extrapolations of this sort are clearly a mug’s game, I’m going to do one anyway.

Let’s assume that, due to refinement in technology and possible breakthroughs in material and theory, the cost of building these trains drops by 50%. This means a train three times as long as the Shanghai would cost $1.8 billion.  

At any given moment, there about 6 million people in the air. This means - not counting overseas flights - that the cost of building enough maglev trains to take up the load would be on the close order of 11 TRILLION US dollars, not including upkeep and operation. This is almost half the US GDP and about 70 times the cost of the entire Apollo programme.

But being so prohibitively expensive does’t alter the fact that, in most respects, it’s a cracking good idea. Your grandchildren might live to see it, we never will.

Boru

[LastPoet]

I have no trouble flying.




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