# Africa's first high speed train : The Al-Boraq across Morocco at 320 km/h



## coventry801 (Oct 10, 2021)

Interesting that Africa got true HSR before North America does.


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## 20th Century Rider (Oct 10, 2021)

HS is popping up everywhere... including India, the Middle East, and SE Asia. The Americas... North and South... lag behind the rest of the world with rail technology. Lots of info available on HS development...









The World's Fastest Trains







hsrail.org


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## cirdan (Oct 10, 2021)

I understand Egypt is building a high speed line as well .


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## jis (Oct 11, 2021)

True High Speed Rail in India, while currently under construction, is currently projected to be ready for inauguration in 2028.

Meanwhile there will be progressively more "higher speed" 100mph service, and maybe a few 125mph service too. All new rolling stock being deployed in India (we are talking over 8,000 passenger cars per year) is capable of 100mph operation as delivered and easy to upgrade to 125mph, but there is no routes available to run them at that speed yet. There are a route or two which allow operation of specific trains at 100mph. Those routes are all equipped with ETCS Level 2, and Indian Railways Safety Directorate has decreed that nothing shall operate above 80 mph without ETCS Level 2.

BTW, that Moroccan train looks suspiciously like an Avelia of some sort, or at least a TGV derivative. Upon further inspection, they are indeed TGV Euroduplexes. They have only 16 trainsets for the current operations.


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## VentureForth (Oct 11, 2021)

Is this line also funded and built by the Chinese Communist Construction Company? I hear many of the African nations that have relied on China's investment owe them heavily.


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## cirdan (Oct 11, 2021)

jis said:


> BTW, that Moroccan train looks suspiciously like an Avelia of some sort, or at least a TGV derivative. Upon further inspection, they are indeed TGV Euroduplexes. They have only 16 trainsets for the current operations.



Moroccan railways have traditionally followed French practice, with Alstom being the main supplier, and several locomotive classes presently in use being near-identical clones of French types.


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## cirdan (Oct 11, 2021)

VentureForth said:


> Is this line also funded and built by the Chinese Communist Construction Company? I hear many of the African nations that have relied on China's investment owe them heavily.



I doubt it. They would be using Chinese trains if this was the case, not French.

But that's not to say there isn't some level of corruption in play. The French are very good at securing orders from their ex colonies in Africa.


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## cirdan (Oct 11, 2021)

There is a long term project to build a rail tunnel under the Straits of Gibraltar. This would permit a linking up of the Spanish and Moroccan high speed rail systems. The project is going to be very expensive though, not least because it will need to cross geological fault lines and need to go down very deep as the sea is very deep in this location. This would require very long approach ramps on either side, longer probably than the sea crossing proper.


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## jis (Oct 11, 2021)

VentureForth said:


> Is this line also funded and built by the Chinese Communist Construction Company? I hear many of the African nations that have relied on China's investment owe them heavily.


No Chinese money in this AFAICT....



Global Mass Transit: Tangier - Casablanca HSR: Rail at high-speed in Morocco



As far as the _Belt and Road Initiative_ goes China is now working overtime to try to figure out how to collect on those loans and how to find some quality lipstick to put on the pig short of writing off a whole bunch of loans. Most of the funded projects do not produce anywhere near the returns to pay back the loans at even the favorable terms they were given under. They are trying though to put up a good front and not backing away from it, never mind their annual loan levels have reduced from $75 billion to $3.5 billion.


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## George Harris (Oct 11, 2021)

20th Century Rider said:


> HS is popping up everywhere... including India, the Middle East, and SE Asia. The Americas... North and South... lag behind the rest of the world with rail technology. Lots of info available on HS development...


The problem is political not technological. The technology is well understood by many in the railway engineering field in this country. There is the general feeling by many in the field that the first step toward getting anything built needs to be to shoot all the politicians. (If you don't get this is a joke, I feel sorry for you. I don't want someone making a call so that I have to explain this to the FBI.) If California had moved at something close to the same rate as the HSR in Taiwan, we would be riding trains by now, and the only reasons this has not happened have been financial and obstructionism on many level. Quite a few of the people involved in the HSR in Taiwan were in California at the time the designs were being developed trying their best to apply "lessons learned" to CAHSR. There was also the factor of some people involved in positions of authority "knowing just enough to be dangerous" mudding the waters.


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## MARC Rider (Oct 11, 2021)

George Harris said:


> The problem is political not technological. The technology is well understood by many in the railway engineering field in this country. There is the general feeling by many in the field that the first step toward getting anything built needs to be to shoot all the politicians. (If you don't get this is a joke, I feel sorry for you. I don't want someone making a call so that I have to explain this to the FBI.) If California had moved at something close to the same rate as the HSR in Taiwan, we would be riding trains by now, and the only reasons this has not happened have been financial and obstructionism on many level. Quite a few of the people involved in the HSR in Taiwan were in California at the time the designs were being developed trying their best to apply "lessons learned" to CAHSR. There was also the factor of some people involved in positions of authority "knowing just enough to be dangerous" mudding the waters.


It's not just the politicians who are obstructionist. Haven't there been problems with NIMBYs and landowners along the way who have made acquiring the land needed difficult? There may also be issues the the excessive complexity of managing public contracts, but I guess that can be partly blamed on politicians, too, as they wrote the procurement laws, yet don't fund the agencies sufficiently to allow the hiring of enough experienced staff to manage the contracts.


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## George Harris (Oct 11, 2021)

MARC Rider said:


> It's not just the politicians who are obstructionist. Haven't there been problems with NIMBYs and landowners along the way who have made acquiring the land needed difficult? There may also be issues the the excessive complexity of managing public contracts, but I guess that can be partly blamed on politicians, too, as they wrote the procurement laws, yet don't fund the agencies sufficiently to allow the hiring of enough experienced staff to manage the contracts.


NIMBYism, even rational NIMBYism, if there is such a thing, gets a lot if its mileage out of posturing politicians. Landowners are sometimes irrational, but again without being enables by politicians much of this is also curable. The, "it will panic my cattle" is a classic. If you ride the trains in the central valley, the cattle may not even look up even though you on a diesel train blowing its horn for road crossings. Invite the concerned landowners out to watch. There was also in California the truly irrational decision to not be elevated throughout the valley. Elevating the railroad throughout the farming and urban areas was done in Taiwan and it makes a major landowner concern disappear, that is accessibility across the railroad. It also is very useful in reducing incursions and trespassing. It eliminates problems with grades in road crossings and conflicts with underground facilities.


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## Willbridge (Oct 12, 2021)

My favorite NIMBY wanted to stop the RTD West Line which was a former interurban route. Houses were "too close" to the tracks -- because they were built that way before WWII to make it a short walk to the stations.

During WWII the line carried ammunition trains for the Remington Arms Company plant past those houses. Eventually things for the modern LRT line were worked out with neighbors who had concerns or specific issues. No one asked if we were going to handle ammunition again.


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## cirdan (Oct 12, 2021)

NIMBYs don't seem to be preventing highway construction to the same degree that they stop rail projects. Maybe rail developers need to hire more highway project managers.


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## VentureForth (Oct 12, 2021)

cirdan said:


> NIMBYs don't seem to be preventing highway construction to the same degree that they stop rail projects. Maybe rail developers need to hire more highway project managers.


I think the biggest difference is that most who would be disrupted by rail construction can't utilize the service they are being disrupted for. Highways, on the other hand, benefit way more people way more readily.


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## neroden (Oct 12, 2021)

VentureForth said:


> I think the biggest difference is that most who would be disrupted by rail construction can't utilize the service they are being disrupted for. Highways, on the other hand, benefit way more people way more readily.


Quite the opposite, really, but that's not how the car-centric *think* about it.


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## George Harris (Oct 12, 2021)

cirdan said:


> I doubt it. They would be using Chinese trains if this was the case, not French.


Chinese trains are actually knock offs of Japanese trains. It's called stolen technology. The Chinese are masters of it.


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## George Harris (Oct 12, 2021)

If people truly understood the difference in cost of a lane-mile of road in the northeast and other heavily urbanized areas versus more spread out and rural areas, people all over the country would be pushing for rail projects to be built in urbanized areas. On the other hand, many of these urban area rail projects cost far more than they ought to, even given the effects of urbanization.


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## caravanman (Oct 12, 2021)

George Harris said:


> Chinese trains are actually knock offs of Japanese trains. It's called stolen technology. The Chinese are masters of it.


I guess the US space programme could be based on copying the German rocket programme in WW2?


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## cirdan (Oct 12, 2021)

jis said:


> As far as the _Belt and Road Initiative_ goes China is now working overtime to try to figure out how to collect on those loans and how to find some quality lipstick to put on the pig short of writing off a whole bunch of loans. Most of the funded projects do not produce anywhere near the returns to pay back the loans at even the favorable terms they were given under. They are trying though to put up a good front and not backing away from it, never mind their annual loan levels have reduced from $75 billion to $3.5 billion.



I understand many people in Africa are disillusioned at Chinese cooperation and feel it has not delivered the improvements that were promised. For example on the Kenyan railroad project the Chinese brought most of their own salaried staff from China rather than employing or training local people how to operate the railroad. The railroad is not delivering the economic upturn that was promised either, and many feel it is just a vanity project by the ruling class to spend a lot of money on something that isn't making all that much of a difference.

As word gets around, this makes it likely others won't be rushing to get similar projects.


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## MARC Rider (Oct 12, 2021)

caravanman said:


> I guess the US space programme could be based on copying the German rocket programme in WW2?


"Copying" the German rocket program? They _recruited_ as much of the staff as they could, after the war. Think Werner von Braun, "It's not my department where they come down." And many more, not so well known. Search "Operation Paperclip" for more information.


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## jis (Oct 12, 2021)

George Harris said:


> Chinese trains are actually knock offs of Japanese trains. It's called stolen technology. The Chinese are masters of it.


Actually it is both Japanese and German. There are quite a lot of almost exact copies of Velaros running around in China.



MARC Rider said:


> "Copying" the German rocket program? They _recruited_ as much of the staff as they could, after the war. Think Werner von Braun, "It's not my department where they come down." And many more, not so well known. Search "Operation Paperclip" for more information.


Yup. Same can be said of the Jet Aircraft program in the US too. The likes of Boeing, General Dynamics and Douglas swept up any and every stray engineer involved in the jet program in Germany. The outcome was vast advances in swept wing aircraft design and development of sophisticated aeroelastic wings. Led to the likes of the 707.

Actually it is fortunate that the US did not "copy" the German rocket program but created their own very different programs hiring the brains behind the technology used in the German Rocket program. The one big problem with the German Rocket program was that it was spectacularly mismanaged.


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## George Harris (Oct 12, 2021)

jis said:


> Actually it is fortunate that the US did not "copy" the German rocket program but created their own very different programs hiring the brains behind the technology used in the German Rocket program. The one big problem with the German Rocket program was that it was spectacularly mismanaged.


And that was not the only thing. The German enthrallment with mechanical complexity hurt them in many ways during the war, thankfully. Read up on Rommel's operations in North Africa. The German tank's issues with the desert climate and the maintenance effort necessary to keep them functional was a major factor in his ultimate defeat. In contrast, the US tanks were mechanically simple using multiple automobile engines that most GI's know how to play with. Read up on the German invasion of the Soviet Union. It is stated in one source that one of the main deterrents to the speed of the invasion other than Stalin's edict of a "scorched earth" retreat, meaning leaving nothing behind that was useful to the invaders, was the rate of progress in the German regauging the railroad line to Moscow from 1520mm to 1435mm so that German equipment could be operated on it. Years back when I was working for the L&N there was a letter circulating in the office that had been written at the time it was done describing how they regauged the Nashville to Birmingham main line from 5'-0" to 4'-8 1/2" in one day. That is 210 miles of main track in one day done in something like1880.


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## caravanman (Oct 12, 2021)

Ah, _recruiting_ the German rocket brains at gunpoint is a lot different to stealing their ideas...
I don't think Americans "get" irony?


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## Scott Orlando (Oct 12, 2021)

I dont think its accurate to compare Redstone, Atlas, or Saturn to a V-2. Yes, people were brought in from Germany for the experience they possessed - but the ultimate product was vastly superior. Granted we blew up a lot of stuff at the Cape on the way (ala SpaceX)


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## MARC Rider (Oct 12, 2021)

caravanman said:


> Ah, _recruiting_ the German rocket brains at gunpoint is a lot different to stealing their ideas...
> I don't think Americans "get" irony?


I don't think they needed gunpoint to recruit the German rocket scientists. At the time their choice was either working for the Soviets or being a defendant in a war crimes trial. I recall reading the Werner von Braun made considerable effort to make sure he was captured by the Americans rather than by the Russians. (Although I think there were some German rocket experts who did end up working for the Russians.)


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## cirdan (Oct 13, 2021)

MARC Rider said:


> "Copying" the German rocket program? They _recruited_ as much of the staff as they could, after the war. Think Werner von Braun, "It's not my department where they come down." And many more, not so well known. Search "Operation Paperclip" for more information.



For a certain value of "recruiting".

As in, do you want to go on trial for war crimes or do you want to work for us?

When Werner von Braun claimed to have known nothing about the slave labor that was used in the Dora Mittelbau factory, they just believed him and didn't ask any further questions. I wonder if they would have been as lenient if he had refused to work for them.


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## cirdan (Oct 13, 2021)

Scott Orlando said:


> I dont think its accurate to compare Redstone, Atlas, or Saturn to a V-2. Yes, people were brought in from Germany for the experience they possessed - but the ultimate product was vastly superior.



Given that they had 20 years or so to develop the technology and billions of dollars to do so, it would have been a scandal if the end result had not been vastly superior.


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## VentureForth (Oct 13, 2021)

neroden said:


> Quite the opposite, really, but that's not how the car-centric *think* about it.


I mean, real data vs wishful thinking... The biggest being freedom. In a car I can go where I want, when I want. I can't do that with ANY other form of transportation. Next would be private flying.


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## MARC Rider (Oct 13, 2021)

VentureForth said:


> I mean, real data vs wishful thinking... The biggest being freedom. In a car I can go where I want, when I want. I can't do that with ANY other form of transportation. Next would be private flying.


Yeah, you can go where you want when you want .... and get stuck in a traffic jam!

For a lot of reasons, the ability to travel on one's own schedule is unsustainable, at least for the vast majority of the population. (Excepting, of course, trips than can be done on foot or by bicycle.) Unfortunately, we have no leadership willing to tell the American public that if they are serious about avoiding the worst that global warming will bring and if they still want to have some mobility and be able to travel, they're going to have to mostly give up the ability to travel on their own schedule. I'm not holding my breath that this will happen.


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## neroden (Oct 13, 2021)

George Harris said:


> And that was not the only thing. The German enthrallment with mechanical complexity hurt them in many ways during the war, thankfully. Read up on Rommel's operations in North Africa. The German tank's issues with the desert climate and the maintenance effort necessary to keep them functional was a major factor in his ultimate defeat. In contrast, the US tanks were mechanically simple using multiple automobile engines that most GI's know how to play with. Read up on the German invasion of the Soviet Union.


Don't get me started on how the US military now has the problem which the German military had then. Already by Vietnam, the US was using overly complicated technology prone to jamming, and Ho Chi Minh was using ultrareliable technology. The US military has learned nothing from this.


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## neroden (Oct 13, 2021)

VentureForth said:


> I mean, real data vs wishful thinking... The biggest being freedom. In a car I can go where I want, when I want.



False. If you're tired, ill, suffering from blurred vision, or have had an alcoholic drink ... driving your personal car is illegal and dangerous. You can, however, take a train, where paid professionals will drive it.

I suppose "employer of private limo with agency full of drivers" might have actual freedom. Do you have one of those? Didn't think so.


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## George Harris (Oct 13, 2021)

caravanman said:


> Ah, _recruiting_ the German rocket brains at gunpoint is a lot different to stealing their ideas...
> I don't think Americans "get" irony?


The US didn't have to compel anything. The German rocket scientists came to the US with enthusiasm. Now, for the Soviet Union, that was a different story. They did scarf up all the German scientists of all flavors they could get their hands on and gave them no choice of destination.


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## George Harris (Oct 13, 2021)

neroden said:


> Don't get me started on how the US military now has the problem which the German military had then. Already by Vietnam, the US was using overly complicated technology prone to jamming, and Ho Chi Minh was using ultrareliable technology. The US military has learned nothing from this.


I agree totally with this one. In the construction unit I was in, if we could get much over half our equipment out on the job we were doing good, although there was some suspicion that the leader of our company's maintenance platoon was trying to increase the perception of his value. I was running around in a barely reliable jeep that had a plate on the dash that stated the contract price as being something like $3,126, while at the same time I could walk onto a car lot in the US and buy an AMC Jeep for $2,600 or thereabouts that would be a lot more reliable. Finding that when you signed for it you were responsible for any damages led to the joke of, now we know why the captain goes down with his ship. The NVA was also very good at improvision.


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## Devil's Advocate (Oct 13, 2021)

VentureForth said:


> Is this line also funded and built by the Chinese Communist Construction Company? I hear many of the African nations that have relied on China's investment owe them heavily.


Selling and leveraging an unpayable debt burden sounds more like crony capitalism to me.



VentureForth said:


> I mean, real data vs wishful thinking... The biggest being freedom. In a car I can go where I want, when I want. I can't do that with ANY other form of transportation. Next would be private flying.


So back when you lived in Japan you ignored trains and simply drove everywhere?


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## jis (Oct 13, 2021)

VentureForth said:


> I mean, real data vs wishful thinking... The biggest being freedom. In a car I can go where I want, when I want. I can't do that with ANY other form of transportation. Next would be private flying.


Only if there are no obstacles that the vaunted car cannot cross in the way  like say - the Pacific Ocean


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## caravanman (Oct 13, 2021)

Gosh, talk about "mission creep" !
I just used the US using German know how as an example of one state using another's technology in reply to someone saying the Chinese had copied Japanese train design. No train from the "Rocket" design onwards failed to build on a previous design?


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## cirdan (Oct 14, 2021)

George Harris said:


> Years back when I was working for the L&N there was a letter circulating in the office that had been written at the time it was done describing how they regauged the Nashville to Birmingham main line from 5'-0" to 4'-8 1/2" in one day. That is 210 miles of main track in one day done in something like1880.



I assume infinite oodles of preparatory work went in before that though, so you can't really compare.


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## cirdan (Oct 14, 2021)

neroden said:


> False. If you're tired, ill, suffering from blurred vision, or have had an alcoholic drink ... driving your personal car is illegal and dangerous. You can, however, take a train, where paid professionals will drive it.
> 
> I suppose "employer of private limo with agency full of drivers" might have actual freedom. Do you have one of those? Didn't think so.



Anecdote here.

Reminds me of a conversation I once had when visiting a relative who has bought a farm in Hungary. One of the guys who helps on the farm was sitting with us. This was a guy in his mid 60ies from a nearby village. A very poor guy who never had much formal education or ever had any proper job but got through life with a mix of various side activities. Not all of them entirely above board and he had done quite a few years in prison. But in his maturer years he had become law abiding and respected and everybody trusted him 100%. He was telling us he was unable to drive because the police had taken away his driver's license for drunken driving. And they wouldn't let him use his motorbike either. But he said he rode his horse everywhere as apparently they can't stop you being drunk on horseback.


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## VentureForth (Oct 14, 2021)

neroden said:


> False. If you're tired, ill, suffering from blurred vision, or have had an alcoholic drink ... driving your personal car is illegal and dangerous. You can, however, take a train, where paid professionals will drive it.
> 
> I suppose "employer of private limo with agency full of drivers" might have actual freedom. Do you have one of those? Didn't think so.


You could replace every paved road with rail and you still wouldn't come close to the freedom of travel as you have now because YOU don't have control - you delegate that control to that "professional driver". You can't straw man your argument with minority excuses. Almost every municipality in this country of any significant size has some sort of public transit, yet almost every time I see a city bus, it's practically empty. And when they are crowded (before COVID), the driver would call over crowding preventing new passengers when you could still literally spin in place.

And I say all this with empathy to the cause of rail. I driver Uber. I avoid Orlando like the plague because I-4 is Disney's largest slow-ride. And we haven't even fully opened up to foreign visitors yet. Orlando NEEDS a light rail system. Even with SunRail, public transit is woefully inadequate. I'm so freakin' excited about Brightline, even though they aren't designed to service me. I suffer through temporary inconveniences because I'm excited for the future. But riding it would be pointless on any grand scale. I can't ride it to the grocery store or to work. I may get to use it once a year to get to the airport after driving half way there just to get to the train station.

Finally, all things considered, I'd rather spend an hour in traffic in my private [hybrid] car listening to MY music than spending that hour in a crowded train that gets me 3/4 of the way home smelling that guy that had that alcoholic drink and maybe even his puke. Been there, done that. Spent many rides on the Japanese rail circuit after 10 PM with drunks who hate white people - after which I got to walk the last 10-15 minutes home.

There's a place for everything, but to say that rail benefits more individuals than highways and therefore shouldn't get the NIMBY reaction is does is just flat wrong. And see those massive concrete walls on the edge of the highways in neighborhoods? That's unreported NIMBY action realized by those opposed to highways. They are there, too.


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## VentureForth (Oct 14, 2021)

jis said:


> Only if there are no obstacles that the vaunted car cannot cross in the way  like say - the Pacific Ocean


OK. In the context of rail travel, was that necessary? Rails don't cross the Pacific either.  For a smart guy, that was a pretty lame comment.


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## VentureForth (Oct 14, 2021)

Devil's Advocate said:


> Selling and leveraging an unpayable debt burden sounds more like crony capitalism to me.


China fully embraces capitalism for the Party, just not for the individual.



> So back when you lived in Japan you ignored trains and simply drove everywhere?


Of course not. And most of time it was great. But not so great was being squished and packed like a sardine, or subject to the vomit and smell of whiskey and beer marinated office workers. On an average day, of my 1.5 hour commute each way, 1/3 of that time was walking. And guess what? If we missed a train, my dad would have to drive us to school (on highways) to get us there on time.

In my nearly 15+ years of being a part of this forum community, I have never shown any dislike to rail. However, I have and will most likely continue to believe that in the USA the population density outside the NEC doesn't support a rail-over-highway priority to serve its citizens.


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## AmtrakMaineiac (Oct 14, 2021)

Getting back to the original subject of the thread 
I just happened to have watched Simply Railway's video of the Al Boraq last night. It is pretty impressive, I realize it is basically the TGV transplanted to North Africa and the vaunted 300+ kph is only achieved for a portion of the run. Also I imagine the political structure is much different in Morocco and thereby easier for them to build something like this unlike in the US where you have layers of political jurisdiction (federal, state. county, city) and a litigation happy population of NIMBY's. Still you have to give them credit for achieving this.


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## Ziv (Oct 14, 2021)

To take the thread jack one bit further off topic, I haven't seen any discussion about how the US stole... Err... Recruited some of the top Canadian aerospace engineers when the Avro Arrow was cancelled in 1959. Sometimes it seemed like the Apollo program was a who's who of Canada's top engineers.
Actually the Avro Arrow is a sad tale. I would have loved to see the Avro Arrow in production. It would have been an F-106 on steroids if the Iroquois engine had worked as planned...


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## jis (Oct 14, 2021)

Here is a nice article on the current state of play on the Egyptian HSR construction project:









Ramping up railway: a look into Egypt’s megaprojects


Egypt has invested in renewing its centuries-old infrastructure, in particular railways, striking up deals with international organisations.




www.railway-technology.com


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## Devil's Advocate (Oct 14, 2021)

VentureForth said:


> You can't straw man your argument with minority excuses. Almost every municipality in this country of any significant size has some sort of public transit, yet almost every time I see a city bus, it's practically empty.


What you either miss or choose to ignore is that auto-centric zoning kills the usefulness of many public transit systems. A bus offers little benefit if it gets stuck in the same clumsy traffic jam as private vehicles. In a rational system public traffic is given priority in order to maintain a reliable and efficient schedule.



VentureForth said:


> In my nearly 15+ years of being a part of this forum community, I have never shown any dislike to rail. However, I have and will most likely continue to believe that in the USA the population density outside the NEC doesn't support a rail-over-highway priority to serve its citizens.


How do you explain the time before highways? The US was far less dense with many more trains going every which way at all times of day and night. If we had zoned our cities for a network of high speed rail and metro systems instead of highways and freeways most of us would be using those today.



VentureForth said:


> I'd rather spend an hour in traffic in my private [hybrid] car listening to MY music than spending that hour in a crowded train that gets me 3/4 of the way home smelling that guy that had that alcoholic drink and maybe even his puke. [...] But not so great was being squished and packed like a sardine, or subject to the vomit and smell of whiskey and beer marinated office workers.


I just find it curious that someone so traumatized from obnoxious foul smelling passengers has no problem becoming an Uber driver.


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## George Harris (Oct 14, 2021)

cirdan said:


> I assume infinite oodles of preparatory work went in before that though, so you can't really compare.


(Above in reference to my statement that, "Years back when I was working for the L&N there was a letter circulating in the office that had been written at the time it was done describing how they regauged the Nashville to Birmingham main line from 5'-0" to 4'-8 1/2" in one day. That is 210 miles of main track in one day done in something like1880."

To the contrary, the letter went into considerable detail concerning preparation and follow up. Yes, "oodles of preparatory work was involved, however, after reading that letter, actually several page memorandum, it made the inability of the German Army to make faster progress across Russia even less comprehensible. Remember, they had the entire invasion force to do the work..


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## neroden (Oct 17, 2021)

VentureForth said:


> In my nearly 15+ years of being a part of this forum community, I have never shown any dislike to rail. However, I have and will most likely continue to believe that in the USA the population density outside the NEC doesn't support a rail-over-highway priority to serve its citizens.



I'll just repeat the fact that Ohio has a higher population density than France. France supports a rail-over-highway priority; Ohio should too.

I certainly believe that there is a population density below which rail does not really work, and this applies to depopulated states such as most of Wyoming and most of Idaho.

But most of the US population lives in places where the population density DOES support a rail-over-highway priority. Like Ohio. But Ohio continues to support highways over rail. Same with Florida, which is also plenty dense enough to prioritize rail over highways.

To get back on topic, Morocco is an interesting example, because where the people live, it again has the same high population density. (Like Ohio. Or Florida.) They aren't building the trains out into the nomad-occupied desert, they're building them between the dense mostly-coastal cities.


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