All these leftists need to think through the unintended consequences of their proposals.

[geekysteven@beige.party]

All these leftists need to think through the unintended consequences of their proposals. Oh, you want more trains? Still want that when it's a screaming penis train? You should think about it is all I'm saying

[beecycling@wandering.shop]

@geekysteven Was watching a video the other day about 200kph trains and how they're kind of pointless. It's better to have a 120kph train that is frequent and reliable, and has capacity to accelerate to 150kph if there's been a delay, to get back on schedule. Absolute speed isn't everything.

[jesstheunstill@infosec.exchange]

@beecycling @geekysteven Why not both?

[beecycling@wandering.shop]

@JessTheUnstill @geekysteven I honestly wonder about how useful really fast trains are in the UK. By the time they've got up to top speed the next stop is coming up so they've got to brake anyway. And our track network is old and doesn't have a lot of long straight stretches. You can't go round the Morpeth curve at 200kph. But I can see them as being useful in huge countries between cities hundreds of miles apart and few stops in-between.

[jesstheunstill@infosec.exchange]

I see high speed rail as some combination of:

It sounds cool so some people will choose to ride it simply because of the cool factor

By having the infrastructure to support high speed says something about the passenger rail network itself, and is going to imply the high speed trains have right of way on the tracks

It expands the distance that it becomes as fast or faster to take the train over taking a plane. Trains are city center--> city center and no security, they are oftentimes faster than a plane for medium distance trips. By having high speed trains, it means there's even more distance before it becomes faster to take a plane.

@beecycling @geekysteven

[beecycling@wandering.shop]

@JessTheUnstill @geekysteven It's also easier to work on the train than on a plane.

One reason high speed rail was initiated in the UK was because back then it was hard to do work on trains, so getting there fast was what business travellers needed. (And we don't do a lot of in-country business travel by air in the UK.) But now with laptops, mobile phones and WiFi on the train, business people can get work done pretty easily. So speed is less of a factor, but reliability still is.

[oblomov@sociale.network]

@beecycling @JessTheUnstill @geekysteven even if one can work on the train, high-speed still makes sense for very long distances (several hundreds of km). But of course if possible (and needed) it would be ideal to have both fast *and* frequent trains (IIRC the Shinkansen at peak hours has something like one train every 3 minutes or so?)

[oblomov@sociale.network]

@beecycling @JessTheUnstill @geekysteven for traditional lines, the advantage of more frequent rather than faster trains is similar to the Paternoster vs standard elevator: it actually ends up moving more people overall, with lower latency.