Re: World's First Fuel Cell-Powered Train Locomotive Slated for 2008

From: Stephen Sprunk (stephen_at_sprunk.org)
Date: 08/24/04 

Date: Tue, 24 Aug 2004 17:43:42 -0500

"Scott A Crosby" <scrosby@cs.rice.edu> wrote in message
news:oydwtzu28c2.fsf@bert.cs.rice.edu...
> In Europe, the countries are small. Germany is only 360k km^2. France,
> 540k km^2. With 200km/h trains virtually anyplace you might want to
> reach within the country is under 5 hours away. That isn't true about
> the US.
>
> Europe also has a much higher population density. Germany and France
> combined have half of the population of the US, but only 8% of the
> land area, implying any nationwide HSR network is going to require
> several times the track milage --- and expense.

I don't think anyone's suggesting nationwide HSR; I've only seen it pushed
for distances of 800km or less, and it's most attractive for distances under
500km. As more routes are added and corridors are connected together, we
might end up with a nationwide network, but I doubt there'll be trains on
transcontinental routes.

> The distance between San Diego, CA and San Francisco, CA is
> 800km. Houston, TX to El Paso, TX is 1300km, and there's not much in
> between.

In between San Diego and San Francisco are Los Angeles (2nd largest US city)
and San Jose (larger population than SF). Hardly "nothing".

In between Houston and El Paso are San Antonio and Austin, the 3rd and 4th
largest cities in the state. Again, hardly "nothing". In fact, I've never
seen any HSR proposals for Texas that included El Paso at all; you'd get
more riders by connecting to cities in OK, AR, and LA.

> How far apart is Nice, France and Brest, France? Or Kiel, Germany and
> the Austrian border?

1045km and 912km, respectively. So, both pairs are further apart than the
population centers of California.

> Europe and the US have very different
> population distributions, both at the large scale --- across the
> continent --- and at the small scale --- within a city.

More important is the difference in travel patterns; while I have no data to
support this, I'd expect Americans to travel, on average, much further
distances than Europeans because of the homogenous culture and more unified
economy.

S 

-- 
Stephen Sprunk      "Those people who think they know everything
CCIE #3723         are a great annoyance to those of us who do."
K5SSS                                             --Isaac Asimov

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