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I tried to make it fairly realistic. Obviously I would like HSR absolutely everywhere, but a line through middle of nowhere Montana probably would not see much ridership and would come at extreme cost (especially in the mountains).
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this post was submitted on 09 Jul 2023
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“I guess crossing the Rocky Mountains is impossible”
-OP
For high-speed rail? Basically, yes. Unless you're into spending a couple million bucks per mile to rip out big chunks of the mountain. High speed rail can't reasonably navigate tight turns or steep grades.
I’m inclined to believe you, and have to say I love to see discussion like this here on lemmy’s version of fuckcars, but curious, does anyone know what switzerland does? Afaik, they have tons of rail and tons of mountains. Is it all/mostly low-speed? Sorry if it’s a dumb question or easy to answer.
Yes, it's low-speed. There are only a handful of HSR lines crossing the Alps, afaik, but they're generally huge, expensive projects that basically tunnel through many kilometers. For example, the Gotthard Base Tunnel is a 57-km tunnel through the Swiss Alps, but its feasible because it's connecting large population centers with large existing HSR networks on both sides.
I also love that this community is picking up some discussions so very much thanks to @Fried_out_Kombi!
As I live in Germany, directly at the swiss border I may be able to give some insight. The West of Switzerland is quite flat in comparison to the rest, so a lot of south/north traffic goes there. Also a lot of cargo trains. (Funfact, there is a project ongoing to make the north south cargo route more useable. Renew and expand the railways. Swiss has done its part years ago but Germany has not even started)
But as he said, there are also quite some HSR lines through the alps. The swiss people are pretty good in building them, but yeah its mostly possible due to the high population density in Europe. There are also quite some slow trains in switzerland but the view is always incredible so I don't mind to much.
So yeah I think its probably not feasible to do the same in the US. At least as long we don't invent magical new tunnel construction