If high speed rail becomes popular, all that stands between the current freedom and ID-required tickets and fingering by agents is one terrorist attack, staged or not.
Anon likes trains
Submitted 5 weeks ago by Early_To_Risa@sh.itjust.works to greentext@sh.itjust.works
https://sh.itjust.works/pictrs/image/a9d04fb7-f156-41c6-8452-037139e64a2a.png
Comments
RheumatoidArthritis@mander.xyz 5 weeks ago
mholiv@lemmy.world 5 weeks ago
What are you going to do with a hijacked train? The moment you hijack it they’ll just shutdown power. Hostages? Good luck there are like 30 carts on the train all of which have window break tools and emergency door open tools.
Look at Germany or France. High speed trains are everywhere and there is no ID requirement beyond maybe a ticket check if you’re unlucky.
remon@ani.social 5 weeks ago
What are you going to do with a hijacked train? The moment you hijack it they’ll just shutdown power. Hostages? Good luck there are like 30 carts on the train all of which have window break tools and emergency door open tools.
Obi@sopuli.xyz 5 weeks ago
Only for Eurostar and some other international trains you get some checks when boarding, especially since Brexit.
TheBat@lemmy.world 5 weeks ago
Who said anything about hijacking? Think explosives etc.
fibojoly@sh.itjust.works 5 weeks ago
Somebody didn’t watch Christophe Lambert’s The Hunted…
echodot@feddit.uk 5 weeks ago
What do you mean there’s already been terrorist attacks on trains but nobody really cares because it’s a train.
Valmond@lemmy.world 5 weeks ago
Shhh! It’s an american, he can’t comprehend high speed trains.
They are already wildly popular in diverse regions in europe btw.
leftzero@lemmynsfw.com 5 weeks ago
one terrorist attack
Had one in 2004, didn’t result in security theater (though its mishandling did almost certainly result in the ruling party losing the election).
remon@ani.social 5 weeks ago
We don’t even have that stuff on flights here (at least within Schengen). On my last 4 flights I had to show my ID once and all you have to do is stand in the scanner thing for a second.
RheumatoidArthritis@mander.xyz 5 weeks ago
I never had actual cavity search but it varies within Shengen. Germany is the least pleasant, always some problem. Last time they insisted on searching a preschooler.
sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 5 weeks ago
I’m sure they’d finger you if you asked nicely, and have showered recently.
baguettefish@discuss.tchncs.de 5 weeks ago
in china there are similar security checks for high speed rail
j4k3@lemmy.world 5 weeks ago
Has to harm billionaire asset to matter. Killing the rest of us is a game billionaires already enjoy and would applaud the Panem twist of a visiting team
TheSlad@sh.itjust.works 5 weeks ago
Americans can’t do trains because it requires public infrastructure (rails), which apparently we are allergic to.
kieron115@startrek.website 5 weeks ago
I’ve read articles in the past about high speed trains and/or just new train lines in general would get held up by little towns who didn’t want to lose the commuter traffic since it was the only thing keeping them afloat. There are too many towns that exist literally just to serve motorists and now nobody wants to get rid of them.
RememberTheApollo_@lemmy.world 5 weeks ago
Anybody who is making money off existing transportation is going to be against public transportation. Cab companies lobby against rail everywhere, from city to burbs or airport to downtown. Trucking, for obvious reasons. Passenger rail can carry cargo at night. And of course anybody selling fuel to the mass of cars, the petro industry.
piccolo@sh.itjust.works 5 weeks ago
They are just very short sighted. Just lobby to have a station and a have commuter stops and people will flock to those “cheaper” areas to live bringing in tons of tax revenue and boosting the local economy.
dmention7@lemm.ee 5 weeks ago
That is so odd… I’ve only ridden Amtrak a few times, but I was amazed at how many stops were just some small town that happened to lie on the rail line.
Most small towns that lie on a major highway and are supported by commuter traffic are only going to support a truck stop and a few fast food restaurants at best. Sure, a true high speed rail line would likely only stop in larger metropolitan areas, so those meager income sources may dwindle. But on the other hand if I were a rail commuter in one of those rural/suburban areas, I’d be much more likely to spend some time doing a bit of shopping or lingering in a restaurant during that transition from the train to my car after work, than if I were just passing through in my car.
outhouseperilous@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 weeks ago
But they could be fucking train stop bucolic paradise exurbs from (bigcity)!
PapaStevesy@lemmy.world 5 weeks ago
Tough luck, that’s the free market at work
AnUnusualRelic@lemmy.world 5 weeks ago
It’s literally socialism!
nutsack@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 weeks ago
it requires cooperation across all of these counties that the railway runs through. and they’re all corrupt or subject to democracy or whatever
mondoman712@lemmy.ml 5 weeks ago
Can’t do public infrastructure, unless it’s roads.
ch00f@lemmy.world 5 weeks ago
As someone who boycotted the TSA for like 5 years and only took Amtrak, the tickets are not always cheaper. I mean sure, you can get across the country for like $100.
Even when I was doing Boston-Baltimore on the Acela, it was routinely slightly cheaper to fly.
entropicdrift@lemmy.sdf.org 5 weeks ago
Amtrak is not cheaper, but trains in other countries are. Because Amtrak, specifically, sucks.
halcyoncmdr@lemmy.world 5 weeks ago
AmTrak is designed to suck. Freight lines own most of the rails, and while they are required to give priority to passenger trains, they avoid this in several ways. Like having the freight trains too long to fit on side rails so the passenger trains are required to stop instead to make way.
ryedaft@sh.itjust.works 5 weeks ago
Flying is way cheaper in Europe. Partially because trains are taxed much higher than flying.
iknowitwheniseeit@lemmynsfw.com 5 weeks ago
Not always. Flying from Amsterdam to London is cheaper and faster than taking the train. The train is usually sold out because people still prefer it, but…
sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 5 weeks ago
Amtrak on the east coast is decent, it’s offensively bad on the west coast and most places in the middle of the country.
Soapbox@lemmy.zip 5 weeks ago
Americans can’t do high speed rail because we have aircraft, automobile, and petroleum industries who don’t want us to.
callyral@pawb.social 5 weeks ago
ah, the free market
outhouseperilous@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 weeks ago
Exactly!
In the words of someone who decided to not stop 9/11:
You dont fuck with billion dollar corporations.
Nomad@infosec.pub 5 weeks ago
Not to shit on your perfectly reasonable parade, but in Germany there is high speed rail through the whole . takes about 6 hours from top to bottom.
Now look at the scale of the US versus Germany and then the density of people living there. High speed rail makes alot of sense where it’s difficult to build (bosnywash) and does not scale well in terms of time spent traveling.
Its better than car, but won’t replace air travel anytime soon. Sadly.
drosophila@lemmy.blahaj.zone 5 weeks ago
France has nearly the same population density as Ohio, and it has the TGV, which covers more than 5 times the land area of Ohio. So where’s the Ohio high speed rail network?
This is the scale of Japan compared to the US east coast: Image
So why aren’t there high speed lines that cover that same distance in the US?
Americans complain about US politicians and US policy on a near constant basis, and yet when comparing the US to other nations its apparently impossible for anyone to have made a stupid or self-serving decision. The US apparently is always operating at the absolute limit of what’s physically possible, and if there’s any deficiency its always because “the US is too big” or “we’re too diverse” (what does that even mean? You can’t have nice things because black people exist?).
To be clear there are actual answers to the questions I posed above, but its not either of those moronic excuses.
jawa22@lemmy.blahaj.zone 5 weeks ago
Those lines do exist in the US. They are privatized, shitty, and expensive.
Wanderer@lemm.ee 5 weeks ago
what does that even mean? You can’t have nice things because black people exist?
It kind of is though.
Can’t have nice downtown because blacks live their so all the whites go out to the suburbs. End up with shitty inefficient suburb hell and under funded downtown.
No one wants to use public transport because of a sense of crime so only the lowest income people use it meaning further funding loss.
Nothing in America is for “the people” paid by the state except highways, oil and pouring water into the desert everything else needs to run a direct profit ignoring externalities.
ComfortableRaspberry@feddit.org 5 weeks ago
That statement is a bit too broad for me. You can not only use highspeed rail within Germany but also to reach the countries around it. E.g. Belgium, Netherlands, Austria, (ICE trains) or use the TGV to reach Paris in a reasonable time.
But with the (illegal) border controls currently it’s insufferable. Will travel through France by train in September and I fear that the border controls will totally derail (haha) our time and travel plans.
We decided to use the train because the air connections took us longer since we didn’t want to vacate in a city with an airport and don’t live in one either.
PlexSheep@infosec.pub 5 weeks ago
How are the illegal border controls from outside into Germany on train currently? By car, they didn’t even look us in the eyes when we passed, a complete waste of time.
The Bundespolizei could do actual work instead of just sort of chilling on the borders and checking people that don’t look German enough (presumingly).
gandalf_der_12te@discuss.tchncs.de 5 weeks ago
I think parts of the problems of train in the US is that they have a lot of desert in the western part of the country (rocky mountains and such) where public transport just wouldn’t make sense. You don’t have that in Europe.
parody@lemmings.world 5 weeks ago
When you add up all the miles of rail in Europe, how far could you stretch it out over the US?
fibojoly@sh.itjust.works 5 weeks ago
China is disagreeing, right now. Not disagreeing with your arguments, but they are definitely pushing a lot more than us because the amount of people you can move is ridonkulous compared to planes and cars, their geography seems to be helping and the technology is getting ridiculous (450kph trains, right now).
GissaMittJobb@lemmy.ml 5 weeks ago
Not to shit on your perfectly reasonable parade, but in Germany there is high speed rail through the whole . takes about 6 hours from top to bottom.
Maybe not a great example there, with that running something like 100 km/h average speed.
If you bump those numbers up to be competitive with actually high-performing HSR operators, that trip would take 2-3 hours, immediately killing any competitive edge that air travel would have on those segments - 2-3 hours will basically get you to the airport and through security, you’ll have arrived already if you were on a well-performing train by then.
HSR is the best alternative for any trip up to approximately 800 km, at which point air travel starts beating it out. This is for daytime travel only - trains could be competitive for far longer distances with overnight sleeper service. I’d not be against taking night HSRs going between any points in Europe basically.
Alas, this would require non-shit politicians, which definitely does not exist
peregrin5@lemm.ee 5 weeks ago
The monkey paw grants your wish but all the trains are built by Boeing.
j4k3@lemmy.world 5 weeks ago
Those are called trolleys because they don’t have doors
elvith@feddit.org 5 weeks ago
*pipes, as those do have a few holes
happydoors@lemmy.world 5 weeks ago
To be honest, I haven’t seen anyone else mention the real reason: America allowed private companies to buy and own the lands under the rails in the 1800s in order to deal with the massive distances across the US to connect the West and East. 150 years later and just a few companies own almost all the track and rail across America. Almost all private, not public land. Public citizens and communities have very little control over the railways going through their communities. These companies lobby against and make it difficult to introduce new, public rail lines for a multitude of reasons. This is one of very many examples of how corporations abuse law, monopolistic practices, and media to lessen the power of American citizens.
tempest@lemmy.ca 5 weeks ago
That doesn’t even take into account that a lot of rails in the US are owned by Canadian companies.
Yerbouti@sh.itjust.works 5 weeks ago
Meanwhile, right wing parties in Quebec are fighting against a traway project in Quebec city, that the entire country agreed to pay for, for which we have already invested half s billion, build stations, etc. They call it “War on cars”.
conditional_soup@lemm.ee 5 weeks ago
Where do I enlist?
Wanderer@lemm.ee 5 weeks ago
Honest fuck this.
So you love driving and more people on the road will get off the road and take the train. It means you can drive even more! Why wouldn’t you want that.
rumba@lemmy.zip 5 weeks ago
The US has been fighting for years to put a high speed rail in between DC and New York. Every right-wing neighborhood in between is throwing signs out stop the maglev.
JackbyDev@programming.dev 5 weeks ago
Honestly I think it’s just sticker shock. I would say that as soon as we get some people would be more willing to get more, but no, because people are hesitant to expand existing rail. MARTA please expand, I beg you. Oh great spirits of public transit, I pray that you soften the NIMBYs’ hearts.
It’s so upsetting that every small town in my state has an old historic train stop but none of them are actually passenger train stops anymore. Once you see it you can’t unsee it. I am 15 minutes from my town’s historic train stop which is a steak house now. My parents are about the same distance from theirs, probably even closer, but it’s a museum or something. Can I just take a walk to the train, ride down, and see them? Nope. Gotta deal with the hellscape that is metro Atlanta traffic.
outhouseperilous@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 weeks ago
soften nimby hearts
They can soften the nimbys’ hearts, but ill take them cooked to charcoal if that’s what it takes.
ArbitraryValue@sh.itjust.works 5 weeks ago
I fly because it’s fast, not because I like airplanes. Even the fastest train is way too slow to replace a plane for a flight across the USA. Then for shorter distances cars win out because of how convenient they are. There’s no niche for trains except commuting into urban areas with no parking.
porous_grey_matter@lemmy.ml 5 weeks ago
Depends what you are thinking of as long distance. NY to LA? Sure. NY to Chicago would be 4-4.5 hours, downtown to downtown, with a proper train (typical French TGV speeds of 330 kmh / 205 mph). Faster than flying when you count the time and cost of getting to the airport etc.
NutWrench@lemmy.world 5 weeks ago
The only national passenger train service I know of is Amtrak, which shares its tracks with freight carriers. So the current infrastructure isn’t designed for high-speed rail and freight carriers usually get priority.
Also, The US is really big, so everything isn’t a short train ride away from everything else. If I wanted to visit the Grand Canyon from where I live, it’s over 2,000 miles away. That’s 30 hours of driving just by car.
Mouselemming@sh.itjust.works 5 weeks ago
I’m not sure about other countries but one thing Amtrak has over planes is that they’re more disability accessible. Still making improvements on legacy equipment but they’re under the ADA, whereas airlines lobbied themselves out of it, which is why they never bothered to create wheelchair spaces or accessible bathrooms or even seats a normal human can occupy comfortably.
Daft_ish@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 weeks ago
This again? The answer is no one knows. We heard legends about it but the prophecy says line go up!
ZILtoid1991@lemmy.world 5 weeks ago
Is there any parody porn about TSA? I want to masturbate to it. As long as it’s not too noncon (like TSA in real life), I don’t really care about the details (I’m ok with any gender, large insertions/fisting, etc.).
frenchfryenjoyer@lemmings.world 5 weeks ago
Cheaper? come to the UK, where flying can be less expensive than rail
Schmoo@slrpnk.net 5 weeks ago
Why would Americans care about trains when they’re gonna be a billionaire any day now and have their own private jet?
/s
Kaboom@reddthat.com 5 weeks ago
Cuz of all the issues that come with laying rail lines. Eminent Domain has somehow become even more unpopular as of late. And guess what building rail lines requires?
InfiniteHench@lemmy.world 5 weeks ago
I’m a huge train and transit advocate and I try to take Amtrak every chance I get. But “tickets are cheaper” does not feel like a blanket statement we can make. Maybe on very specific, usually short legs, like Chicago to Milwaukee. Someone correct me if I’m wrong or there’s more nuance but once a trip goes past 3 or 5+ hour mark, the price seems to skyrocket past airfare.
Cattail@lemmy.world 5 weeks ago
Yeah i got used to TSA sexually assulting me just to get to the to my plane
stebo02@sopuli.xyz 5 weeks ago
tickets are cheaper? if you want to travel the same distance it is far from cheap to travel by train, in Europe at least
slingstone@lemmy.world 5 weeks ago
Doesn’t Europe have an extensive passenger train network?
Also, I recently rode on Amtrak for a long trip from Columbia, SC to Baltimore, MD. This was my first time on any kind of train other than a subway or metro line. It had its drawbacks (incredibly long travel time and delays), but I always felt safe, and I had a lot more room than I would have had on any flight. The major drawbacks where the seats were somewhat uncomfortable and things like that are largely due to the fact that the cars were pretty old, and not inherent to train travel if it was properly maintained. The cost was much less, and the free parking was such a great bonus.
carddamom@lemmy.myserv.one 5 weeks ago
Because they like TSA fingering their assholes?
Draegur@lemmy.zip 5 weeks ago
Are they stupid?
(Yes)QueenHawlSera@sh.itjust.works 5 weeks ago
I really really wish I wasn’t American
Evil_Shrubbery@lemm.ee 5 weeks ago
Train infrastructure is so underfunded (thx oil) that you can still get the fingering at most train stations for a really reasonable fee.
epicstove@lemmy.ca 5 weeks ago
I was in Switzerland and the trains there are incredible. Even the tiniest village in buttfucksburg, nowhere has a train connecting it to the rest of the country.
halvar@lemy.lol 5 weeks ago
Something something Hungarian National Railway fucking useless once you go further than a 100 kms from the capital city.
napkin2020@sh.itjust.works 5 weeks ago
I live in South Korea and HSRs are pretty much the only mode of (intercity) transportation that is relevant. Buses take too long, planes are expensive, while HSR(KTX)s are marginally cheaper than buses.
Of course, our country’s much much smaller than US/Canada so even the farthest lane takes only about 2.5 hours. It’s pretty cool.
Alexstarfire@lemmy.world 5 weeks ago
Planes are safer. Plus, TSA is the only way I get any sexual contact. I’m not giving that up.
echodot@feddit.uk 5 weeks ago
Yeah why doesn’t Europe have trains?
Europe definitely doesn’t have trains already.
whyNotSquirrel@sh.itjust.works 5 weeks ago
Still too much plane for local journeys
And is France train are not cheaper than planes or buses… Which is stupid, they should start to properly taxe Airlines
Tenkard@lemmy.ml 5 weeks ago
They’re building high speed rails connecting major European cities as we speak, we’ll be good
Opisek@lemmy.world 5 weeks ago
Do you happen to use Dvorak?
Sorry for the random question out of this air, but the in/is typo is something that happens a lot to me while being nearly impossible on “standard” keyboard layouts.
fibojoly@sh.itjust.works 5 weeks ago
We do. Not as much as we used to because privatisation is a plague upon mankind, also we have very diverse geography which makes developing new lines prohibitively expensive, even more so when you’re a private company. Add to that a lack of political backing and yeah, it’s all rather turgid, even if there are some extremely recent talks concerning transeuropean night trains and such.
Those are going to be for our nice flat and speedy routes no doubt, but hey, it’s an effort in the right direction.
But yeah, things are not gonna get better fast as long as we are cursed with privatisation. What a shit show to see our glorious TGV reduced to a shell of its former self.
Meanwhile I just got an article yesterday that Wuhan is now connected to the super high speed network and the first 450kph train now connects it to Shanghai. Last time I was there the train was already TGV levels of speed and much more modern, and only a year later they are leaving us on the fucking dust…
UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 5 weeks ago
China sees investment in mass transit as a loss leader. It costs more to put in than it generates in fairs, but the boost to connected economic zones pays back the cost several times over.
The US sees investment in mass transit as a detriment to the airline, automotive, and fossil fuel industries. It would shrink the economy in three places where the nation has tried to goose growth for the last 60 years.
Diplomjodler3@lemmy.world 5 weeks ago
I’m from Europe. What’s a train?
UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 5 weeks ago
If you’re on a long tube that travels quickly on the ground from one city to another, and everyone is talking in Spanish, you’re in a train.
If you’re in a long tube that travels quickly on the air from one city to another, and everyone is talking English, you’re on a plane
PlexSheep@infosec.pub 5 weeks ago
My total journey from Berlin home this week was about 50 minutes late, and the connection after the ICE was not pretty.
Enkrod@feddit.org 5 weeks ago
Yeah, but that’s not a rail problem, that’s a Deutsche Bahn problem.
echodot@feddit.uk 5 weeks ago
Apparently Germany’s problem is that they run all the high-speed trains on the normal lines which means all of the normal trains have to work around them. Obviously you can’t have a normal train in front of a high-speed train so if the high-speed train is delayed by even a small amount it has a knock-on effect where a bunch of local service trains have to sit around waiting for the line to clear.
Everyone else runs high-speed rail on their own tracks. So everyone gets to do what they want and not affect anybody else.
The French do it better than the Germans, which is just not an acceptable state of affairs.
ptu@sopuli.xyz 5 weeks ago
I’ve heard flights are sometimes also late or even cancelled
arrow74@lemm.ee 5 weeks ago
50 minutes isn’t that bad tbh. I dont remember the last time I flew that there wasn’t a delay. Hell even the whole arriving 2 hours before ,finding parking, going through security is all so much more of a hassle.
I’d much rather walk 5 minutes to the local subway head to the hauptbahnhof and wait 50 extra minutes for my train. I can at least go get a reasonably priced coffee while I wait.
BlastboomStrice@mander.xyz 5 weeks ago
Yeah, we have trains at home… (greece)
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tempi_train_crash