A few months ago my friend saw an ad in his university newspaper for a hackathon that was scheduled to start the next day. I happened to not have anything scheduled that weekend, and he asked me if I could team up with him to participate.
The thing was, he lives in California, and I live in Washington. He found one last remaining seat on the last flight headed out that night and bought a ticket for me. By 9 PM, I was stepping off an airplane roughly 1600 miles from home. When I woke up that morning, I had no idea I'd sleep on a couch in a dorm room at SJSU.
It was raining in NYC in mid october (screw that) and I REALLY wanted a steak. Seeing as how a good, high quality grass fed steak can end up in the $100 range in NYC, I thought
"I wonder how much it would cost to go to Buenos Aires tonight?"
I pulled up aa.com and checked the Award Reservations---it was only 40,000 ffmiles + $42.40. For a same day reservation.
Since I run a site all about how to get unlimited free airline miles, I had several million--so the total real cost to me (to get to Buenos Aires) was $42.40. Four hours later I was boarding a plane, and 13 hours later I was eating the best steak known to mankind.
The really cool thing about going to Buenos Aires is that its often the same time zone as NYC and the flights are overnight. So you can go to sleep in NYC and wake up in Argentina with no jet lag (if you can sleep on planes).
it's called http://www.hackthesystem.com . The guide to getting free miles is the Travel Hacking Report. It also talks about how I get free offices in almost every country in the world.
Saw your previous comment and hunted this down. Just read the whole thing -- very, very cool. Regus Businessworld will definitely come in handy; $300/yr isn't bad at all, but 6 months free can't be beat! Nice job.
Yes, flying is quick, but the more people who fly the larger the airports you need, and large airports need to be situated outside of urban centers.
Getting the Eurostar from London to Paris would take you no more than three hours (2:15 for the journey, checking in 45 minutes before departure). Flying from London to Paris would take two hours (1:15 for the journey, again checking in 45 minutes before departure), but you've got to get to and from the airport, whereas the train is taking you directly into the city.
Across medium distances (SF to LA, Paris to London, etc) high speed rail typically provides better passenger comfort, lower CO2 emissions, and travel times as fast as flying once you factor in transit.
From London's business district, it is actually faster to get to London City Airport than St. Pancras station for the Eurostar.
This is made even more bizarre by the fact that St. Pancras where the Eurostar terminates is one of the only train stations in London which is located such that trains heading out need to "turn around" to get where they are going. You'd think the Eurostar would terminate south-east of London since that's where the train travels, but this one breaks the rules.
Oh, and EasyJet is probably cheaper than Eurostar to Paris if you don't have a lot of advance notice. I still love the trains, but you didn't pick the best example!
The Erostar terminates in North London so that the vast majority of its passengers who are from north of London don't have to get across the city. Despite heading in the wrong direction its quicker than the underground.
You have ebbsfleet and Ashford for passengers from south of the city.
Eurostar terminating in North London is because they wanted the high speed line to run to the East of London so it would be easier to connect it to the North of the UK for further possible direct links from Manchester/Liverpool/etc.
Also, it would have cost vastly more to put full high speed lines required in most of the way to London Waterloo.
"
The next plan for the Channel Tunnel Rail Link involved a tunnel reaching London from the south-east, and an underground terminus in the vicinity of Kings Cross station. However a late change in the plans, principally driven by the then Deputy Prime Minister Michael Heseltine's desire for urban regeneration in east London, led to a change of route, with the new line approaching London from the east. This opened the possibility of reusing the underused St Pancras station as the terminus, with access via the North London Line that crosses the throat of the station.[26]
"
I'm having a hard time understanding your justification. Ebbsfleet is 25 miles ESE of London (Ashford 50+ miles), with no local (TfL) connections. I'm also curious to know the basis for your claim that "the vast majority" of Eurostar customers are from north of London. I hear lots of people live in Surrey, not to mention London proper.
My point is that London is the south east, by bringing the erostar round to north London it is easer for the whole country to use. There is probably an argument that they should have a station in South London but the Erostar is there to cater to the whole country, not just london.
Regarding the article, I'd like to see them plot the rate-of-change: how long it took to go from a month to a week to a day and so on, and then continue it into the present day. I think we've hit something of a cap on speed.
Not necessarily. IIRC, outside of the East Coast corridor, the rails only allow the trains to go ~35mph. There are also high-speed / bullet trains as well, none of which are available in the US (for now).
And inside the East Coast corridor, regular bicycles are prohibited on all Amtrak trains at all times. I would literally pay an extra $50 per bicycle round trip if they offered it, but they do not. Oh, and the train from NYC to Montreal runs slowly, which gives it an ideal duration for a night service, but none is ever offered. You have to do the 12-hour trip during the day, which for working people is nonsensical.
Have you considered biking? If the terrain is somewhat flat I guess it would take about half the time, and you will get daily, light exercise as an added bonus.
Edit: Also, I would be interested to know how long it would take by bike if you happen to know :-)
On the way back from my honeymoon this past summer, I woke up one morning in Bangkok, spent that night in Abu Dhabi, and the following night in my own bed in Kansas City, having traveled more than halfway around the world. The future indeed!
The correctness of attributing of the improvement in speed of travel between 1800 and 1830 to railroads is dubious. This shows the extent of common carrier rail lines in 1835:
That's 1850. Between 1800 & 1830 much of the Southeast was still Native American nations, e.g. the portion of Alabama between Montgomery and the Georgia was the last part of the Creek Nation ceded in 1832.
The Federal and National Roads allowed stage travel, and that's what improved speed...for those who weren't walking. By 1850, other than the Seminoles, the Native American nations in the East had been conquered and rail road motive power had advanced.
The first railroad companies, with total individual rights of way typically of 10-30 miles, were just starting to get organized and begin operations in 1830. It wasn't for another 10-20 years that significant contiguous trackage existed. The world was very different in 1850 than it was in 1830.
For another interesting look at the subject of travel times, check out Stanford's ORBIS (http://orbis.stanford.edu/#map), which lets you estimate travel times from one point in the Roman Empire circa 200 AD to another, based on several common modes of travel.
What's fascinating is how little transportation changed between 200 and 1800. Sixteen hundred years pass and the basic means of getting around are still the same: foot, horse, cart, boat. Then in the hundred years after that there comes an explosion of new options: bicycle, rail, automobile, airplane. Gives some perspective on how relatively new the travel technologies we take for granted today actually are.
Most of our newfound forms of travel depend on engines, which haven't been around long. That's the reason travel was fairly stagnant for so long, IMO.
Bicycles on the other hand have been around for a while. Why didn't they see more prolific use in Europe between 200 and 1800? I speculate lack of good enough roads. An oxcart road would not be the most pleasant place to ride an old-fashioned bicycle.
> Most of our newfound forms of travel depend on engines, which haven't been around long. That's the reason travel was fairly stagnant for so long, IMO.
Indeed, the work source was a major factor: before the 18th century, there was no efficient and mobile source of work... outside of people and beasts.
> Bicycles on the other hand have been around for a while.
Nope. The first recorded and verifiable ancestor to the bicycle dates back to the early 19th century: Baron Karl von Drais's Laufmaschine in 1817. It had two wheels in-line and could be steered. But users ran on it, propelling it by pushing the ground with their feet (hence the name "running machine"). Oh, and it was solid wood (22kg)
The next elements we associate with an actual bicycle only appeared in 1863: cranks and pedals attached directly to the front wheel.
And in 1885, the "rover" with its chain drive to the back wheel and equally-sized wheels would be the first one you'd recognize as a modern bicycle.
There was a semi-famous effort in the 1960s to attribute a bicycle design to Leonardo da Vinci that was decided to be an elaborate hoax only a few years ago. Might be why.
Nah, I was thinking it was the Chinese that came up with it. Maybe I'm thinking of a component of bicycles. Considering they have relatively few novel components- sprockets?
I suspect bicycles are one of those things that really seem obvious in retrospect but for some reason were invented well after the time when they were first feasible.
If you gave someone a bunch of gold, the ability to speak fluent Latin, and kicked them back into ancient Rome, I am sure they could commission the creation of a bicycle. It wouldn't be very good (no rubber for the wheels for starters, maybe replace that with several layers of leather? You might be able to make a leather belt-drive too.), but the general idea should have worked.
Another example is the phonograph. You can make a rudimentary phonograph with some very very basic clockwork, some wax, a needle, and a sheet of something taught and thin (I bet parchment would work fine.) The biggest issue would probably be figuring out how to present it without being burnt as a witch. But nobody did it until the late 19th century.
A usable bicycle depends on lightweight and low friction power transmission. Probably you would therefore need to first invent ball bearings ( and to do this you need some metallurgy).
So I believe that a time traveler could probably bring enough technology stack with him, that he could build a working demonstration bike in ancient Rome. I am a lot less sure, that there is a consistent alternate history in which Cesar is riding a bicycle.
Penny Farthings and velocipedes operated with a direct drive, where pedals were attached directly to wheels. This was the reason for the large wheels of the penny farthing (without a geared chain-driven transmission there was no other way to step the drive ratio), and created the somewhat obvious limitations on braking and inability to freewheel also present on modern-day "fixies".
In what way is a bicycle an improvement over a horse as long as the infrastructure for maintaining a horse already exists? I am sure it could have been built but why bother? A phonograph provides a service that would have been unknown at the time and is a much better plan to send back with your time traveller.
Horses must be bred, raised, trained (as does the rider), fed, watered, stabled, mucked, cleaned, saddled, and shod. Streets traversed by horses must be cleaned (the first urban transport pollution crisis revolved around horse and other draft animal dung, a/k/a "soil"). They're only useful for traveling so far, so coach roads and mail services (such as the Pony Express) needed frequent changing stations where horses could be switched and rested (every 10 miles for the Pony Express). Horses were a major expense and even during times when they were principle land transport were the privilege of the rich, or farmers who relied on horses for productive capacity.
Once built, a bike requires minimal maintenance, is vastly cheaper than a horse, can be ridden with minimal skill (and only the rider, not the bike, requires training), and can be stored in a house or small shed. Bicycle manufacture is highly amenable to mass production techniques (horses, not so much). Other than reinflating tyres and oiling chains, little maintenance is required. On good roads, a bike can easily be ridden 20-40 miles by even a cyclist of moderate skill, and single-day rides of 200-300 miles are attainable. Even loaded with camping gear, a bike can be ridden 60-90 miles per day, continuously, reasonably. Cargo bikes can carry substantial loads locally. Bike jitneys compete with horse-drawn vehicles for human carriage.
Horses or oxen, particularly teamed, can carry much heavier loads. In parts of the world, oxcarts, fitted with modern truck wheels and axles, still compete with automobiles for drayage.
You're right that bicycles are amenable to mass production techniques, but those weren't invented until the early 19th century at the earliest (specifically the invention of interchangeable parts and the 'American System' in the American arms industry). Realistically, these techniques weren't widespread until the last few decades of the 19th century.
This latter period is sometimes called the Second Industrial Revolution and is characterised by the invention of interchangeability, assembly lines, automated jigs for machining, and the use of electricity and non-coal petroleum fuels.
While the first industrial revolution produced coal and water powered machines, these machines were still themselves made by craftsmen. The introduction of interchangeable parts meant that it was no longer neccesary for a craftsman to hand fit the various components* together - you could make thousands of bicycle wheels and thousands of bicycles and fit them all together with almost no difficult to learn custom fitting. Automated jigs made it possible to mass produce standard sized parts.
(*) It's not even clear that the idea of a 'component' is a very useful one before interchangeable parts were invented because turning a barrel (even if it had already been bored), a stock, and various parts of the action into a rifle isn't something that a non-gunsmith can do. These were 'components' only in the sense that a felled tree is a 'component' of a timber house.
There's a video on Youtube of a gunsmith making a rifle the way it would have been made in the era of the American revolution - in the very early years of the first industrial revolution - and you can see how difficult and finicky it is.
I was answering the question of advantages of bicycles over horses, not on the feasibility of their production in ancient times.
That said, history is interesting.
Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations describes mass-production techniques, including specialization, special tools adapted to single sub-tasks, and a style of production approaching an assembly-line (work produced at stations, with the pieces moving from station to station. In 1776.
Modern mass production dates to 1803 and production of sailing blocks (used to raise and lower rigging on ships) in England, from which it spread to the US for clock and armaments manufacture. Eli Whitney (of cotton gin fame) attempted mass armaments production in 1798 but failed to achieve quantity output for another 8 years. Refinements in metalurgy, scientific management, steam and electric power, etc., produced further advances -- as with most developments, the seeds were planted early and incrementally developed over time.
As I note in another post, the two specific advances that really made the bicycle possible were advanced metalurgy and vulcanized pneumatic tyres. Both of these weren't particularly feasible until they actually emerged. That said, high-quality Damascus steel dates to 300 BC. The Greeks and Romans had and used coal (used in the production of both steel and synthetic rubber). Rubber was known as far back as 1600 BC, but among the Mayans in South America (it wasn't introduced to Europe until 1736): http://www.essortment.com/history-rubber-21100.html
But the biggest trigger for widespread bicycle adoption was probably socioeconomic, not technological. By the late 19th Century, a middle class with both discretionary income and free time had emerged. And though bikes were used for utility (commuting, errends, light transport), the real driver was recreation. The presence of intense socioeconomic stratification, slavery, feudal systems, and the like, had a serious damping effect on both creation and adoption of new technolgies and products.
Speed would be one. A horse can't maintain a fast pace for very long. A human on a bike can go much further than a horse can run in one day. That said, presumably the lack of appropriate roads would nullify that advantage.
This does not show that a man can go "further". It's about who ends first.
And even at that, the race started at 1980, but the first time a man on foot won the race was in 2004.
One "man on foot" win in 24 races and that man being a marathon runner, does not bode well with the idea that man in general can outrun horses for long distances.
It is rare for humans to actually be physically capable of it these days, but chasing animals until they collapse from exhaustion is something hairless sweating bipedal are built for. The very best horses could still do it, but attempting persistence hunting on horseback with most horses would probably injure the horse.
Of course horses have been selectively bread for endurance for thousands of years so arguably their achievements are human achievements, but that's beside the point. ;)
Assuming you could teach furniture carpenters to build bicycles from wood, the advantage bicycles could provide over horses would be cost. You don't have to feed it, and it would be cheaper initially too I am sure, at least after it gets to the point that you don't have to specially commission them. Horses used to be very expensive.
Over cheaper modes of animal transportation (donkey and cow?), the bike would probably have a speed advantage.
The real downside in both cases is cargo capacity and manual effort, but I think it could have made sense as a poor-mans transport. Barring that though, it could just be a toy for the rich.
At ~5 MPH for most travel, bikes wouldn't have had significant handling problems, though shock absorption on cobblestones would have been a bigger issue.
If you ever get up close and personal with a stage coach, you'll likely find the suspension interesting, though most in my experience are spring-loaded but undamped. There are reasons long land journeys weren't generally looked forward to.
I was thinking in terms of comparing riding a horse to riding a bicycle. I'm sure stagecoaches were miserable rides, but I don't think any kind of bicycle based technology would really compete with one.
Are air filled rubber tires really a good invention? They regularly ruin a decent bike ride. A decent alternative that is readily available (some kind of solid tire?) would make a big difference.
Pneumatic tires have better cushioning properties, and have less rolling resistance than any alternative tire design that can come close in cushioning. Lots of people have tried to create good airless tires but they just don't make enough sense to be widely adopted.
Really the best way to go is just pack a spare tube. Only takes a couple of minutes to change it on the road once you've practised a few times in your living room. Whenever I get a flat I change it out with my spare, then patch my spare later that day.
I'm sure there were many contributing factors, but my own theory stems from a fun fact I learned in my History of Ancient and Medieval Science course: the idea of the crank, or continuously applying force in a circular direction to do work, in a way that didn't have a natural limit (such as reaching the end of a screw), actually wasn't developed until sometime in the vicinity of the late Dark Ages. Archaeologists have found devices for e.g., grinding grain that are astonishingly close to using a crank motion, but were in fact pivoted back and forth, a vastly inferior solution.
Without the development of the crank, the idea of spinning wheels with pedals or gears would not occur to anyone.
For bikes, I'm sure the metal manufacturing processes invented during the industrial revolution helped. It was probably really hard to produce a metal sprocket and chain before the 1800s.
Very interesting. But the focus on New York probably skews the analysis a lot, particularly in early years when rivers and canals would have been important routes. Notice the bend of the 1800 curves up the eastern NY border, and into southeastern Pennsylvania? I bet those reflect the use of the Hudson and Delaware rivers for travel, and possibly linkage to other rivers like the Ohio, Susquehanna and Potomac. Likewise I suspect that in 1830 Chicago was probably closer to New Orleans, on the Mississippi, than it was to New York.
Likewise the transport of goods, rather than passengers, was probably more important in forming perceptions of distance, as that's what would drive commerce and thus ongoing relationships.
Attention to goods and other point pairings probably matter a lot when you get to 1857. I expect internal communications, of goods, in the South reflected high proximity to the nearest port, and that NY was essentially on the other side of the moon. Whereas the North was probably much more homogenous in its travel times (proportionately more railroad, less river) -- but largely isolated from the South. Which would have done a lot to foster disunion among the two geographies.
That view would probably also say a lot about the border states, I bet that would show these were essentially islands unto themselves.
That's not really a skew so much as a reflection of the realities of the time, though. If you were lucky enough to want to go somewhere along a canal route, you traveled fast; otherwise you traveled slow. (Which meant most trips were slow.)
Attention to goods and other point pairings probably matter a lot when you get to 1857. I expect internal communications, of goods, in the South reflected high proximity to the nearest port, and that NY was essentially on the other side of the moon. Whereas the North was probably much more homogenous in its travel times (proportionately more railroad, less river) -- but largely isolated from the South.
You might be surprised. Antebellum New York actually had strong commercial ties to the South, primarily from acting as a distribution center for Southern cotton to the rest of the North. These ties were so strong that Fernando Wood, the mayor of New York City during the secession crisis, actually led a short-lived movement to take New York out of the Union and establish it as a neutral "free city" so that it could continue in the cotton trade. (See http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/01/06/first-south-... for a good account of this period.) There was actually a fair bit of support in the city for Wood's plan until the Confederates fired on Fort Sumter, setting off a wave of pro-Union support in the North that swamped it.
New York was the commercial and population center of the 13 Colonies and early US, a position it never really ceded, though New York State was surpassed in population by California and then Texas in the 1960s and 1980s. Point-to-point travel from other locations would have been largely similar to
Water travel was the first "highway" system in the US, first along the seacoast, then along rivers, then along canals (notably the Erie Canal, opened in 1825). The Saint Lawrence Seaway, offering deepwater access to Chicago and northern Minnesota, and the Mississippi-Missouri-Ohio river systems, offering access to roughly 1/3 of the present conterminious United States, was (and is) hugely important to commerce. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Mississippi_watershed_map_...
Rail, then highway, then air travel are faster than ships and barges, but if you want to maximize ton-miles per hour, you bulk-load or container-load a ship or barge. Coal, grain, and other bulk goods simply cannot be moved economically by other means, and issues such as the lack of water flow on the Mississippi River will have huge knock-on effects on commerce.
During the Civil War, the Union focused a great deal of effort on blockading and controlling southern ports, particularly Savannah and New Orleans, through which the bulk of Confederate exports (and revenues) flowed. Chocking off the South's access to finance had a great deal to do with eventual Union victory.
I've seen a couple of these kinds of visualizations over the years. I think they are really fascinating... here's one that shows how long it will take to travel to the nearest city of 50,000:
The thing that amazes me is that the map hasn't really changed if you are going by rail. My grandma lived in Colorado Springs and my mom and I used to drive there to see her for Thanksgiving because flights were too expensive. Leaving out of Chicago, it would take about 15 to 18 hours of driving to get to Colorado Springs. We would try to make the trip all at once and as a tall teen, it would be miserable being stuck in the passenger seat of a smaller two door convertible for so long. I asked my mom why don't we take the train and her response shocked me. Not only was the train from Chicago to Colorado Springs more expensive than flying, it was a 24 hour trip as well. If you look at the map from 1930, it it shows as about 1 day from Chicago to Denver/Colorado Springs area.
By itself that isn't so surprising. After all, the trip by horse-drawn coach hasn't improved much either.
Cars are point-to-point. Berlin to Paris by train is about 12 hours. By car it's about 10, because there's no need to stop and change. While Frankfurt->Paris is 4 hours by non-stop ICE, and 5 by car.
> Berlin to Paris by train is about 12 hours. By car it's about 10, because there's no need to stop and change.
Actually, Berlin to Paris by train is 12h if you take direct night trains. During the day, the best trips are ~8h15 with 1 train change (Paris Nord through Köln [Thalys + ICE] or Paris Est through Mannheim [TGV + ICE])
This is a great point, and one the maps sort of gloss over, which is you step from transportation system to transportation system you get faster, walking to horse drawn wagon, to train, to car, to plane. And as some have mentioned to the Internet which can eliminate the need to travel at all if you exploit it well.
My wife and I took the California Zephyr from Oakland to Chicago and then the Capitol Limited from Chicago to Washington DC. It took several days (we overnighted in Chicago as the chances of making the connection there on Amtrak are effectively zero). It was a lot of fun, and quite relaxing, but clearly cross country trains sort of peaked in the late 40's early 50's and haven't moved a whole lot since in this country.
I think it's worth it for anybody to take a long haul passenger rail trip at least once. I took one that lasted about 80 hours (about 40 each way) and it really was a struggle to keep yourself engaged the entire way.
On a side note, provisioning long haul rail in the age of steam must have been an incredible logistics exercise, on-top of that moving mail and other information around the country. Imagine not knowing that a new law was passed for 6 weeks!
I've done two 24 hour (one way) train journeys, they're fantastic. Paris to Lisbon (for honeymoon) changing trains to Iberian gauge at Irun/Hendaye. And Viedma to Bariloche with the desolation of the pampas and the stunning views as you approach the mountains. I've also done a 3 night 4 day ferry through the Chilean Fjords from Puerto Montt down to Puerto Natales (in order to go do the "W" in Torres del Paine). So much stunning scenery to look at (and a bar at night!).
Travelling in Argentina many people use coaches to go long distances between cities as air travel is so much more expensive. You can get a coach from Puerto Iguazu to Ushuaia if you've got a spare 60 odd hours. The coaches are surprisingly comfy with big reclining seats that are not far off being full beds. We mainly did 12-14h overnight trips between cities so we got some sleep and saved on a night's accommodation.
I did a 24 hour rail trip from Narvik, Norway to Gothenburg, Sweden. We changed trains in Boden, Sweden. It was ... long. The first few hours, over the mountains, was fantastic. Once we passed Kiruna it was forest. Lots and lots of forest. This was in summer, and there was overcast light almost the entire time. There was no feeling of progress during the journey.
Yeah, waking up at dawn on a coach in the middle of the Pampa is a great experience. The front seats on the upper floor have a stunning cockpit view. I've done it on the trip from Bariloche to Buenos Aires and from Buenos Aires to Tilcara, and it's well worth the sore legs you'll get for sitting all that time.
Try the Amritsar to New Dehli overnight. For the real experience, try second class, where my friend and I shared a small cubby with a family of five (all flights cancelled for weather, no first class left).
That'll make you appreciate the Shinkansen or ICE networks.
Last year I went from London to Shanghai by rail, taking two weeks. For the first stretch we were spending each day in a new capital; by the time we got to Moscow the best part of three days on a single train was just what we needed.
It was a lot of fun, although I actually found Japan (where we caught a ferry to from Shanghai) more interesting.
That sounds like an awesome trip. Definitely more interesting than the drab Amtrack trip from D.C. to Miami I took. No stops, lots of industrial and abandoned residential blocks (and sound walls) the entire trip.
This was of course before the internet was available and laptops were yet the expensive convenience of the industrious business man.
Key point: do it in Europe. Also, preferably not alone.
I made the mistake of taking Amtrak Seattle-SF and then a later trip SF-Denver. Outside of a few interesting vistas I wouldn't have seen from a car (Mountains in Colorado, more in the Sierra Nevada area, and a few bridges in WA and OR), it really wasn't worthwhile. This was back in the Sprint 1xRTT/EV-DO days, and I couldn't keep a connection (worse than on the roads), the trains were delayed by 4-8h, and the onboard service was pretty horrible. I wish they'd just let Amtrak die an honorable death, with metro transit services, some privatized services for Acela, and maybe some specialty trains run in cooperation with the freight carriers on other lines (if profitable), probably with less frequency.
In contrast I did the Eurail thing back in 1998-1999, and saw lots of France (literally picking random destinations a long distance away; I didn't have much money, so I had to sleep on the train, so long night trips were preferable), Austria, Hungary, Germany, and Scandinavia, and more.
Ha, I did the random-overnight-train-to-anywhere-so-I-can-sleep-for-free thing during my Eurail summer too. It's not a bad way to see things you wouldn't have picked otherwise.
The 1930s railroad map is about the same as what you'd experience doing a road or rail trip today. It's air travel that has improved since then. Concerning air travel, the situation there regarding travel time hasn't improved much in the last 40 years or so ever since commercial jet service first appeared.
Note, however, that it's rail travel in North America that has been static since 1930 -- if you applied the same exercise to Western Europe you'd see dramatic improvements in surface travel times since 1960, with the spread of electrification and in-cab signaling and then the expansion of the TGV, LGV and ICE networks.
Indeed. Although there would be little point for the distance involved (compared to air travel), a cross-US high-speed rail line using the best existing technology on a non-stop trip would go through in ~15h (the Wuhan–Guangzhou line non-stop service averaged 194mph station to station, although non-stop service has ended and the best average commercial train service has gone back to the french LGV Est with 174mph)
Don't forget, cross-country air travel generally requires at least an additional 3 hours of travelling outside the city to and from the airport, checkin, security, taxiing, unloading, etc.
A five hour cross country flight really takes 8 hours, so a 15 hour train between city centers doesn't sound so bad. At half the distance, a 7 hour train vs a 5.5 hour plane excursion, sounds delightful.
This is true, but also applies to high speed rail. There are tremendous space requirements applicable to HSR that don't apply to regular rail. Look at HSR developments in China, Taiwan, etc, most of which have stations located well outside densely populated areas (except at points of extreme political/economic importance). Getting to a HSR station will be non-trivial also, not unlike getting to an airport today. HSR directly into a place like Midtown Manhattan is unlikely.
> For traveling from coast to coast there would be little point, but for shorter distances within the US high-speed rail should beat air travel.
Absolutely, which is why I pointed out that for the distance it wouldn't be a good idea: cross-continental high-speed rail makes little sense, the sweet spot currently tops out around 1000 miles (and even then it depends, it works well in Europe because train stations can be in the city center — where things happen and mass transportation is developed — versus airport being much further out in the suburbs or countryside, I do not know if it'd work as well in the US where the most affluent segments of the population tends to live in the suburbs rather than the city and cities are more often designed around car travel).
I've tried both, for the Sweden<->Germany route. I've usually been disappointed that the train was more expensive than a flight. The train has much fewer luggage restrictions, but lugging lots of luggage around when changing trains is also a hassle, while with flights they do that for you. With 4 hours of travel, you don't need to worry about food. With 15, you do. Though you can bring a full meal, including drinks and a knife, on the train. Plus, there's AC power for the laptop.
My break-even point is at about 6-8 hours by train, vs. a plane. That gets me to Hamburg.
I think there would be tremendous value in a train service departing NYC after work, stopping in Philadelphia and DC, then offering a decent dinner and breakfast and reaching LA before lunchtime the next day. This is possible with speeds similar to the French TGV.
Hardly static, passenger rail has been in collapse in the U.S. The eastern US is dotted with shuttered train stations and the Amtrak monopoly can barely keep its lights on.
I just finished reading the book "Nothing Like It In the World: The Men Who Built the Transcontinental Railroad 1863-1869" (http://www.amazon.com/Nothing-Like-World-Transcontinental-18...). It talks about the building of the transcontinental railroad. The railroad greatly changed the shape of the country due to the fact that within a span of a few years, travel times across the country dropped from months to a week.
What is particularly interesting about this was how similar the methodology that they used was to the Lean Startup methodology. With the way that the Railroad Act was structured, there was significant award for moving fast. While they were in the wilderness, it was rather difficult/expensive getting supplies. They used lower quality cottonwood ties to build out fast knowing that once the railroads were built, higher quality replacements could be brought in for far cheaper.
Anyways, I'd highly recommend this book for those of you in the startup scene.
It's depressing how little travel time has changed in the past several decades. The Boeing 747 was introduced in 1970, and we're still traveling at around Mach 0.85. In the past four decades, we haven't made any significant improvements to travel time. How sad is that, when in the span of 3 decades in the 1830s, rail travel time doubled?
I think (hope) that we're on a path to change this in the near future. The main reason for our lack of advancement in travel time is the cost of gasoline. The Concorde demonstrated that supersonic transport was technically possible, but economically impossible. What will change the landscape is electric planes. This is not a fantasy - there are several companies with (somewhat) viable piston planes being engineered right now.
The first company is Beyond Aviation (www.beyond-aviation.com) which is producing an electric varient of the venerable Cessna 172 (most popular plane produced, the default trainer option for pilots). It's not a perfect plane -- only 2 people can ride in it, and it's designed for flight schools, not for cruising around, but it's a big step forward for aviation.
The second company is Pipistrel, which is developing the Panthera (http://www.pipistrel.si/plane/panthera/technical-data). The Panthera Electro is a huge step in the right direction. Although it only seats 2, and cruises at 118 knots, it can go for 215NM. This is just shy of NYC -> DC. Imagine if you could travel between these cities for essentially free (solar power).
On the more viable replace-business-jets route, Elon Musk has stated that he wants to build a VTVL electric jet. From what he's stated, it sounds like his main approach to overcoming the lack of energy density is flying higher. Current jets are limited to efficient operation at ~35k feet because the oxygen density any higher is too low for an ICE to operate. Current li-ion batteries, however, don't need oxygen to operate! So they can go to 50,60,70,80k feet for reduced drag and operate just as efficiently as if they were at 35k feet. Musk has stated that he thinks battery density needs to double before this jet can become a reality (and has shown that battery density doubles once every ~10 years historically).
I'm extremely optimistic about the future of aviation. As soon as we can hook up cheap (nuclear, coal, wind, solar) and efficiently generated (~2x efficiency gains at large plants) power to planes, the cost of flying will take a huge drop.
None of the electric aircraft you mention will have performance approaching that of any commercial jetliner. Not in speed, range, and definitely not on cost. It will be that way for a very long time due to the dismal energy density of batteries next to fossil fuels. You know how most powerplants generate power? Turbines, like these GE ones derived from their own jet engines: http://www.ge-energy.com/products_and_services/services/gas_... .
Higher altitude isn't everything for speed. You need to generate high-speed exhaust to produce thrust. A gas turbine compresses air and burns it so that explosively shoots out the back. How do you generate this electrically without combustion to raise the pressure? You can't just spin the turbine faster; the blade tips will go supersonic and efficiency will plummet, not to mention material stresses. Supersonic wind tunnels mechanically compress air into huge tanks, sometimes taking weeks to store enough pressure for minutes of runtime, but that obviously wouldn't work for aircraft.
Jets already produce power efficiently (constantly running at nearly the same RPM, never idling in traffic) so there's much less incentive to create electric aircraft. The cost of energy from an electric aircraft in $/joule could be higher than that of a fueled one because you're introducing an additional energy conversion. Gas/coal -> turbine -> battery -> turbine versus gas -> turbine. You're also not getting the range benefit from burning off fuel and lightening the aircraft.
You shift argument from "aircraft are too slow" to "aircraft are too inefficient," going electric won't fix either. There are applications for electric aircraft, mainly low-speed, long-endurance aircraft that can recharge from solar power without landing, and perhaps more maintainable private aircraft. These will not be challengers to the 0.85 mach 747 though.
A gas turbine compresses air and burns it so that explosively shoots out the back
The high-bypass turbofans used on jet airliners produce most of their thrust by using shaft power to drive a fan that directly accelerates the air. Thrust from the engine exhaust itself contributes a smaller fraction.
With electric ducted fans, presumably you would have a higher number of smaller-diameter fans.
(That's not to say that I think that large electric passenger aircraft are going to be feasible anytime soon - I don't).
You don't need high-speed exhaust, and in fact there are good reasons (mostly noise abatement, but also efficiency improvements) to reduce exhaust speeds, which is precisely what turbofans and exhaust bypass systems on modern day commercial jets do (military planes don't, but they operate without noise controls and in a high-performance envelope in which efficiency is a secondary concern).
What jets offer over propeller-driven aircraft isn't efficiency, but speed, and power-to-weight ratios. Propeller aircraft are limited by the tip speed of propellers (they have to be below the speed of sound), but are often much more efficient especially at lower flight speeds.
In terms of efficiency, jet aviation has largely just managed to catch up to where propeller-driven aircraft were in the 1950s, when general-aviation jet aircraft first came into general use (barring a few failed Comets).
I agree with you that electric aircraft are not particularly feasible, small drones excepted.
The Boeing 747 was introduced in 1970, and we're still traveling at around Mach 0.85. In the past four decades, we haven't made any significant improvements to travel time.
The market largely seems to have decided that supersonic flights aren't worth the cost or the hassle; the push has been toward slightly smaller, more fuel-efficient twin-engine craft on the long-haul routes. Which pays technological dividends of a different, but less flashy sort. Hence publicity stunts like flying a 747 on one 777 engine (it works, and think what a 1970s-era person seeing a 747 for the first time would think about hearing that).
I'm not depressed about it at all. I can now book a direct flight from Seattle to New York for ~$150. Try showing the people of 1970 that - that the middle class can, on a whim, travel all over their own country by air!
In the infancy of a technology it always benefits only the rich. IMO the democratization of amazing technology is a far more worthwhile accomplishment than simply advancing the state of the art exclusively for the rich.
While you are depressed, I am amazed by the quantum leap we made. Up to two centuries ago travel time had been essentially the same for millenia, provided that you could afford a horse.
Now I can go to any major city in the world within two days.
Travel infrastructure seems like a 'chicken or egg' problem. Why build a rail line to the middle of nowhere? Conversely how will towns develop if people can't reach them? Much of the development of the heartland US was bootstrapped by the transportation/rail needs between the east and west coasts.
I wonder how different the US would be today without the CA gold rush. Or if the gold rush had been somewhere closer to the eastern seaboard like the Appalachians.
Improvements between 1857 and 1930 is truly impressive (6 weeks to 3 days from NY to CA). The lack of progress since then (1930 to 2013, almost the same amount of time) is stark; it still takes 3 days to get to CA from NY by train. Almost no investment in railroads since US started building highways.
I wish there were a 1848 date in there -- before the gold rush. The difference in time between 1830 and 57 are dramatic, and I think most of that happened in the few years after the rush.
The thing was, he lives in California, and I live in Washington. He found one last remaining seat on the last flight headed out that night and bought a ticket for me. By 9 PM, I was stepping off an airplane roughly 1600 miles from home. When I woke up that morning, I had no idea I'd sleep on a couch in a dorm room at SJSU.
We seriously live in the future.