Planes, Trains, and Automobiles
Well, trains at least.
Anyway, I saw a Modern Marvels episode today about trains. They talked about how wonderful and fast trains were in France and Japan, and how horrible and slow trains are in the US. Let me put it this way. We now have a fast train, that goes 110 miles per hour, for a few miles! Of course, there are over 300 bullet trains in Japan, and even more in France, which go upwards of 250 miles per hour. Granted, this was in 2000 or 2001, but still. Michigan is being praised for efforts on the Detroit-Chicago run that gets the train up to 70 mph for a stretch of 65 miles in western Michigan. The goal is to get the trip down to three and a half hours. In contrast, it takes 1 hour and 8 minutes to fly from DTW to Chicago O’Hare. It also only costs $75 round trip to fly. And, according to Mapquest, it takes 3 hours and 56 minutes to drive from Ann Arbor to Chicago. So, that train ride isn’t looking so good, considering it leaves from downtown Detroit, which adds another 45 minutes to drive from Ann Arbor to the departure point. Now, if they were to get the train ride down to under 2 hours, and charged, say, $35, rather than the $57 they’re charging, it might be worth it. And, if they could get it down to 1 hour (which is a damn fast train. Average of 325 mph) then I might consider going to Chicago for an evening. As it is, there’s no chance I’d even consider riding the train, when the plane only costs half again as much and takes a third the time.
On the plus side, there’s a commercial maglev train in China. A new form of transportation has gone public for the first time since the airplain. Maybe there’s hope for the vacuum tube train maglev trains doing ~1000 mph under the ocean afterall…
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