blanketswithsmallpox

Thanks friendly neighborhood train autist!

Now going back on track... huehuehue, did you have any solid sauce on actual costs estimates? The initial google was wildly different, with anywhere from 10 million to 500 million per mile. Which to a layperson like me, seems vastly inflated, but top sources and AI was able to more or less verify, and might even be giving even lower numbers than actual.

Per mile, the New York project cost $2.6 billion, which is high even by U.S. standards. For example, the Purple Line in Los Angeles cost $800 million per mile. By international standards, the New York price tag is stratospheric: A project in Madrid cost $320 million per mile, and one in Paris cost just $160 million per mile.

https://www.reddit.com/r/transit/comments/hpaq1r/average_cost_per_km_of_high_speed_rail/

https://www.hsrail.org/blog/why-transit-projects-cost-more-in-the-u-s-than-almost-anywhere-else-and-what-we-can-do-about-it/

https://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/comments/1mej6ix/cmv_it_is_not_cost_effective_to_biuld_high_speed/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-speed_rail_in_the_United_States

They generally can't parse information from videos from my understanding. It's decently well sourced, and just like the other person said, a quick google gave wildly different opinions on prices, so this is a great starting point.

Even our friendly neighborhood train autist gave zero pricing lmfao.

Edit: Unfortunately despite everyone's bitching, including a very helpful friendly neighborhood train autist, we still have no better answers for how much it would cost with regular google providing wildly different answers, so good chance the below listed information is still correct given the relatively okay, but not robust sauce.

Per ChatGPT how much would it cost to interconnect all major cities with high speed rail in the usa:

Good question — there’s no single authoritative number, but based on past studies and real U.S. projects we can make some rough-order estimates of what it might cost to “interconnect all major U.S. cities” with a true high-speed rail (HSR) network — and the result tends to be in the hundreds of billions to low-trillions of dollars. Here’s how one might arrive at such a figure, with major caveats.

🔎 What we know already: cost per mile is very high

• Building HSR tracks in the U.S. is extremely expensive. For example, in California High-Speed Rail (CA-HSR), costs per mile have been estimated as high as ~ US$200 million per mile for full, 220 mph-class track. (Hoover Institution)
• Not all rail needs to be brand-new dedicated track. For less ambitious upgrades (e.g. improving existing rail corridors to somewhat higher speeds) cost estimates are much lower: in one case, upgrading ~3,000 miles of track was estimated at about US$7.7 billion — ~US$2.5 million per mile. (Congress.gov)
• A 2009 federal assessment noted a wide variation: while dedicated high-speed lines might cost tens of millions per mile (for example a projected HSR line between Los Angeles area and Las Vegas was estimated at about US$22 million to US$48 million per mile depending on route/terrain).

So the cost per mile can vary by more than an order of magnitude — depending on whether the rail is new vs upgraded, terrain, urban vs rural, tunneling/bridges, land acquisition cost, station infrastructure, electrification, signaling, etc.

🌐 What “connect all major cities” might mean — and how much track that could require

Estimating a U.S.-wide high-speed network depends a great deal on how one defines “major cities” and the level of connectivity (hub-and-spoke? dense mesh?). But even a modest network that connects perhaps 30–50 of the largest metropolitan areas would likely require tens of thousands of route-miles of new or upgraded track.

Past proposals give some sense of scale:

• A plan studied by U.S. federal authorities once envisioned about 12,800 miles of passenger-rail corridors (not necessarily full HSR), with an early cost projection of ~USD 50 billion for a “moderate-speed” rail system — but that projected cost does not apply to full-speed, dedicated HSR. (Downsizing the Federal Government)
• Analysts skeptical of HSR argue that a true nationwide high-speed rail network (serving many states and major cities with dedicated track) could cost US$500 billion to US$1 trillion — and once you “fill in all gaps,” perhaps close to US$1 trillion or more. (BLE-T)

💡 What a plausible ballpark cost looks like today

Because of all the variation, any large-scale estimate must come with wide error bounds. But a rough range:

• If you built a “skeleton” network — connecting major city clusters using mostly upgraded existing tracks and selective new segments — costs might run hundreds of billions of dollars (e.g. US$300–600 billion).
• If you instead built a more ambitious, high-speed, dedicated-track network linking most major cities (think “bullet-train everywhere”), costs could easily reach US$700 billion to over US$1 trillion, possibly more depending on scope, geography, and how modern you demand the system to be.

Indeed, some conservative projections see ~US$1 trillion as a realistic floor for a comprehensive U.S. HSR system. (BLE-T)

⚠️ Why the uncertainty is so large — and what could drive cost up or down

• Terrain & urban density: Building through mountains, hills, or densely populated urban areas (especially with tunnels/viaducts, land acquisition) dramatically increases per-mile costs (as seen in CA-HSR). (Hoover Institution)
• Shared vs dedicated tracks: Upgrading existing tracks for “higher-speed” is far cheaper than building new dedicated corridors — but yields slower speeds and sometimes lower ridership. (Congress.gov)
• Inflation, regulatory, environmental mitigation, stations, electrification, signaling, rolling stock, maintenance facilities: all add huge extra costs over just laying track. U.S. costs historically have run much higher than many international systems for comparable projects. (High Speed Rail Alliance)
• Ambition & coverage: A minimal network with only a few corridors is much cheaper; a dense mesh covering dozens of metro areas raises costs steeply.
• Political, legal, and land-rights hurdles: In the U.S., acquiring rights-of-way, dealing with local regulations, environmental reviews, and community opposition tend to add delays and cost overruns — as seen with CA-HSR. (U.S. Government Accountability Office)

🎯 Bottom line: It’s possible — but very expensive

If the U.S. decided to connect all major cities with a modern high-speed rail network (dedicated tracks, fast speeds, nationwide coverage), a realistic cost estimate is likely in the range of several hundred billion to over a trillion dollars (in today’s dollars).

If you like, I can run a rough “back-of-envelope” estimate: pick, say, the 50 biggest U.S. metro areas, lay out hypothetical direct HSR connections, and compute a total cost estimate — to show you concretely what “major-city-wide national HSR” might cost under different assumptions (cheap upgrades vs full build). Do you want me to build that estimate now?

/r/cospenis if this was reddit.

... That's not an echo chamber though. That's propaganda and vote manipulation mostly by literal state actors and brainwashed rubes.

An echo chamber is when people literally self segregate enough to the point that they no longer consume almost any media that doesn't fit their belief. Its exacerbated by large corporations who profit from ad revenue driven through user engagement.

Lemmy is not an echo chamber no more than the literal radio.

Reddit is not an echo chamber.

You can make these an echo chamber through varying degrees of ease. But places like Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter have been proven to drive you into one by exploiting ragebait for clicks.

You can say they're both fruit, sure. But one is like eating cantaloupe and the other like eating bananas laced with speed.

What medications do people normally take that inhibit sleep?