Infrastucture
Sunday, May 10, 2015 at 12:33AM One thing I have recently cherished is trips on the Maglev (Magnetic Levitation) trains in Asia. On a given day they do 300 km/hr speeds on the steady stretch and on a good day 420 km/hr. Was told that this is not the top speed and it goes higher on other days.
The recent record in Japan is 600 km/hr!
This was going to be a long post on "why can't we do this in the US of A?" The country that built the Hoover dam cannot build a single high speed rail line? at least for a "we can also do this" reason?
Then realized that the answer was simple. Our politicians are inept. Hoover dam came about because of some clever interstate deal making by visionary politicians. Today the country is so polarized that bullet trains have something or other to do with abortions, gay marriage and desert salamanders.
We live in a funny world. I am glad that at least I got to ride in a train like that in this lifetime. Going to take my kids on one of these trips and show them that the outside world is not necessarily what the local news media portrays it to be!
The best education we can give our kids is to take them around the world and let them experience firsthand what is going on in other parts of the world, where it is safe to take them.
Like I said on FB before, have train envy now!
asia, bullet trains, high speed trains, maglev, travel, videoblog in all part of life, travel, videoblog
Reader Comments (1)
You need two things for high speed rail:
1. High enough population density to provide a rider base.
2. Ability to get right of way since those tracks have higher requirements on gradient and straightness.
In the us, places where you can build long straight tracks have no population and places with high population have terrain or old cities where right of way would be expensive.
So not all politicians fault.