_________________
“When I walked in this morning, and saw the flag was at half mast, I thought 'alright another bureaucrat ate it.'" - Ron Swanson

Green Raw Deal!

_________________
You do not talk to me like that! I work too hard to deal with this stuff! I work too hard! I'm an important member of the CSFMB! I drive a Dodge Stratus!

“Don’t you worry my Hindu friend”

_________________
Hawaii (fuck) You

And then there is this...

http://www.chicagomag.com/city-life/January-2019/Elon-Musks-OHare-Train-Would-Not-Take-12-Minutes/

Elons tunnel train will work... But it will be over budget and likely 1/3 of the speed he really wants. We simply don't have the technology for this shit yet. All he is doing is digging tunnels... That's the easy part and that's not even easy.

_________________
the world will always the world. your entire existence is defined by your response.

How would you prefer for people to get from Los Angeles to San Francisco?

_________________

Airplane, round trip tickets start at $99 from OAK to LAX or $149 from SFO to LAX. That's as of 1 minute ago on Google Flights.

By comparison, the projected cost (which was unrealistically low) for a one way ticket on the SF-LA HSR was going to be $86 so already the airplane is cheaper without wasting hundreds of billions of dollars on constructing this boondoggle. Oh, and the HSR would still be *losing* money at that fare.

_________________
“When I walked in this morning, and saw the flag was at half mast, I thought 'alright another bureaucrat ate it.'" - Ron Swanson

Heathrow express makes a 16.5 mile trip from Heathrow to Paddington in 15 minutes (or less)...and that's been around for 2 decades. Ohare is 18 miles from downtown.

Do I have a $100 billion budget for the answer?

_________________
You do not talk to me like that! I work too hard to deal with this stuff! I work too hard! I'm an important member of the CSFMB! I drive a Dodge Stratus!

$100 billion probably doesn't even get you a finished railway given the fact they underestimated the land acquisition costs, oh and the environmentalists who love to talk about HSR tend to tie up the project in court when it comes time to actually build it.

_________________
“When I walked in this morning, and saw the flag was at half mast, I thought 'alright another bureaucrat ate it.'" - Ron Swanson

High speed rail connecting Milwaukee-Chicago would be useful. Live in Milwaukee, work in Chicago.

I would think the Blue Line could cut the 45-minute trip down to 15-20 minutes if it could run express (though I think there are only two tracks, so that's kind of a problem).

_________________

Yeah, trying to run an express on the existing El infrastructure prolly isn't an optimal solution, except maybe at off-peak times for the Blue line.
I think they retrofitted some unused freight line for the Heathrow express; possibly some rail lines between downtown and the airport that could be similarly upgraded and reused.

The same way they currently are.

_________________
Fare you well, fare you well
I love you more than words can tell
Listen to the river sing sweet songs
To rock my soul

I am not sure people realize how far Lax-SFO is. Also how earthquakes and High Speed Rail might be a problem to look at.

_________________
Elections have consequences.

The high speed rail didn’t even go from SF to LA. Total boondoggle lie. Went from nowhere in Northern California to outside of Bakersfield.

Fuck em. Move.

_________________
Fare you well, fare you well
I love you more than words can tell
Listen to the river sing sweet songs
To rock my soul

Japan has already developed technology to deal with earthquakes for their HSR system...and it worked.

_________________
“Mr. Trump is unfit for our nation’s highest office.”- JD Vance
“My god, what an !diot.”- JD Vance tweet on Trump
“I’m a ‘Never Trump’ guy”- JD Vance

Call me when it's a high rail of speed.

_________________

We could do that with the Metra line that runs alongside O'Hare, but I guess the situation is complicated with the freight companies. I have to think it's still less complicated than burrowing for 20 miles.

_________________

Great.

_________________
Elections have consequences.

That's the thing I don't understand. Why not just have a dedicated express train that runs from Union to O'Hare, then have one of those Community buses transfer everyone and link them so that there isn't any waiting between the departures.

_________________

Move to good ol Kenosha and take a Metra.

_________________

The line between Ogilvie and O'Hare Transfer, which will be on the monorail by the end of the year, is owned by a freight railroad. It was really difficult for Metra to even get the limited service they have now, similar to the Heritage line out to Willow Springs, Lemont, and Lockport.

You are not going to convince a railroad to give up their access to Chicago and connections to points each just so people don't have to use the Blue Line alongside poor people.

_________________
"When people want their version of the truth, they go find it, no matter how baseless their beliefs." -- Ken Rosenthal

Japan has a population density that is over 10x greater than the US.

It's amazing how a solution for a place with an unusually high density can work for them, but wouldn't work for a country like ours.

_________________
“When I walked in this morning, and saw the flag was at half mast, I thought 'alright another bureaucrat ate it.'" - Ron Swanson

Is that a fact or are you guessing?

boston --->DC obviously would be the ideal, maybe only, place in the US where high speed rail would make sense.

_________________
Reality is your friend, not your enemy. -- Seacrest

it's not even economically viable there because true high speed rail would require a complete rebuilding of tracks in order to provide the banked curves and long straight sections that are necessary to achieve high speed rail. The land acquisition costs for such a project through the built up NE corridor would make the failed LA-SF project look cheap. You also have to eliminate every grade crossing.

You can take the existing trains there or use the air shuttle (American and Delta operate it)

_________________
“When I walked in this morning, and saw the flag was at half mast, I thought 'alright another bureaucrat ate it.'" - Ron Swanson

There's a fairly fast Amtrak line from Chicago to Milwaukee but it's west of Kenosha.

I believe the Chicago-Detroit Amtrak is higher-speed rail, which I guess is less than high, but better than normal. From about Hammond to Kalamazoo, it goes really fast, then normal speed out to Ann Arbor and Dearborn, and then down to a crawl the rest of the way in. All in all I think it took about five hours, but I found it preferable to dealing with O'Hare, going through TSA, sitting around, waiting, being human cargo, the pure unfiltered hell of disembarking an airplane, shuttling back into downtown Detroit, and all the other little inconveniences that attend air travel. It could stand to be a little faster but it's a step in the right direction.

_________________

well then they should issue jetpacks to everyone.

_________________
Reality is your friend, not your enemy. -- Seacrest