China's new high-speed train just set a new record as the world’s fastest — and it could travel faster than an airplane
China's new high-speed train just set a new record as the world’s fastest — and it could travel faster than an airplane
When completed, the maglev train will reach 621 miles per hour, much faster than commercial flights.
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It's probably faster than an airplane if you also factor in the time lost at airports going through meaningless queues.
n China, the trains are awesome and pretty much everything else sucks hard.
Chinese train stations are a fucking nightmare compared to the rest of the world. First, they have a funneled entrance from the subway that goes through multiple choke points. For example, at Shanghai Hongqiao, you're in a mob of hundreds, forced to go up two long escalators.
Next, people there don't have freedom of travel, so there is a security check to actually enter the station, where they look at your papers and make sure you're approved for your destination. The queues are super long and people constantly cut in line. It's rage-inducing.
Then they subject you to a baggage check, metal detector, and frisking.
Now you're inside the station, but you can't just go to the platform. Instead, you wait at a secure gate until maybe ten minutes before scheduled departure. Again, it's a giant mob of people, trying to form a line in a station that's also just overcrowded. They finally open the gate and everyone rushes through and down to the platform.
You have to arrive an hour ahead of your train's departure else you're going to have a very stressful time.
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This guy Chinas
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people there don't have freedom of travel
What?
Domestic/internal migration control.
What's confusing about that?
Sounds just like taking a flight at an airport.
Also hellish
Oh wow, another person on Lemmy who has actually been to China.
That's the huge advantage of trains in my opinion. Instead of having to drive out to the airport, and deal with check in, boarding, and so on, you just go to the train station downtown and get off downtown of the city you want to go to. That alone saves a ton of time and hassle.
Than and Bar Car!
pretty countryside with an ice cold beer in hand is amazing
Trains are awesome in general. This train in particular looks freaking great!
Some airports are located closer to cities downtowns for this reason.
That's not very common for a good reason given that airports create a lot of noise pollution.
Are airports louder than train stations? Near freight trains and air port and the freight trains are much worse for me personally. Though I would hope passenger train systems are designed for less noise.
Passenger trains are a lot less loud than planes taking off https://www.chem.purdue.edu/chemsafety/Training/PPETrain/dblevels.htm
Thanks for the data, and yep that seems to be the case that passenger trains are quieter for the people living near a station vs planes taking off and circling a runway.
Honestly neither bother me too much, but I thinkings a matter of good spacing. No one's lives 1 mile from the run way or 25 meters next to the tracks from here, which is good thing for both.
Another to add passenger trains can make simple intercity travel easier, when for planes it's just not economical.
I worry that the more useful and prevalent high speed trains become, the more the population will use them… and the more likely the long useless queues will also move to trains.
Trains can have more stations to spread out the load, but then they won’t be as high speed.
Still, I’ll happily take advantage of the currently short queues.
In airports it's usually the security theater that causes the long queues.
I feel that could be resolved by adjusting ticket prices and providing alternative options, like regional buses/coaches. Another possibility is adding more doors to each carriage, spreading out queues across the platform, but at the cost of less seating
Where I am, the regional/inter-city train costs are very competitive with the alternatives, and sometimes enable more flexibility with travel. It's still nowhere near the affordability of some parts of Asia though, and is overpriced IMO. My biggest gripe though has got to be only 2 doors on each carriage side, one at either end. And they're narrow AF, good luck carrying a bike on board. What sadist designed these trains 😭
I think this is unlikely to happen. Going through security is one of the big sources of useless queues at airports, which trains don't have. Trains also tend to have more doors to get, which should reduce the length of queues to get on the train.
Canada is pathetic.
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