Can they make the US less inviting? : comments [purplecthulhu]

Oh, I'm sure that La Migra can think of something else.

My impression is that all the security has discouraged USers from traveling by air. Unfortunately, the alternative is usually driving, which is a pain. So why doesn't the UK have high-speed rail?

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Pretty much, people don't have to travel to the US - there are plenty of alternatives. If

feorag is correct and the current surly attitude is already costing 10s of billions a year to US businesses, what's going to happen with this new lot? Might the US be writing its own economic suicide note in the fingerprints of absent business travelers and tourists?

As to high speed rail, the UK has that - its called the Eurostar :-)

Its absent in the rest of the country because successive governments have thought that the private sector can provide it (though it has to be said the not-as-fast-as-TGV fast services by Pendolino etc. aren't bad).

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Problem is that London has the high-speed rail that is Eurostar. The rest of us are stuck several hours away.

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The 225 GNER trains that run the east coast mainline are capable of 225 kph or more, only 75km slower than the TGVs. However, signaling keeps them down to 200 kph, at least according to this wikipedia article, so that's what needs the work.

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It still takes 4.5 hours to get to London, due to them not running the trains any faster than they used to run 125s. Then we have to cross London by tube, with all our luggage, to reach the Eurostar. It's no bloody wonder we fly - we'd have no weekend left if we tried to get to Amsterdam by train.

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I'm not sure of the distances, but I think it would still take quite a time from Edinburgh even if you did TGV-speeds all the way. Edinburgh is further away from Amsterdam than London after all...

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Edinburgh, right? 2-2.5 hours, actually, if there were a road. Not a bad trip time at all. But if you're going to build a new road between Edinburgh and London, why not leapfrog the Continent, and build a maglev road? That could do it in about an hour.

Sooner or later someone is going to build those systems, unless we eco-disaster ourselves back into the stone age. Really, I think, it's likely to be China, which needs them most. But no reason the UK couldn't. Just a SMoE.

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What, you let the French get ahead of you?

We have a Talgo train between Seattle and Portland; it's very nice, but unfortunately does not run often enough.

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I guess the lack of frequency is due to outdated signals, which seems to be keeping some of the UK trains slow as well.

Does Talgo go further north to Vancouver? If so it could come in handy at some point.

We once did Seatle to San Francisco in 1st class on the Coast Starlight. Now that is the way to travel.

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The Talgo trains connect with an Amtrak bus in Seattle, which makes the rest of the run. As I recall, it's a relatively comfortable bus, but it's a bus. The BC rails are too busy with freight; there's only one daily Seattle-Vancouver rail run, and I don't think it's a Talgo. There's talk of a second set of tracks in BC, but funding would have to come from Canada or the US federal government.

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April