Interesting Links for 21-01-2024

[andrewducker]

1. Covid Inquiry has my informal messages, says Sturgeon

(tags:Scotland communication pandemic )

2. Turns out that when you run the Hugo awards in a non-democratic country the voting results may look... questionable.

(tags:Hugo voting convention scifi )

3. The UK desperately needs to build massive amounts of housing

(tags:UK housing Scotland )

4. US to get first dedicated high-speed railway - helped by Network Rail

(tags:UK USA trains California )

Comments

[drplokta]

The numbers in the article on high-speed rail don’t add up.

“Brightline West, which the government claims will serve more than 11 million passengers annually, will comprise a 218-mile line connecting Las Vegas and the outskirts of Los Angeles, where passengers can transfer onto suburban services.

“Travelling at 186 mph, the route has an estimated journey time of two hours and 10 minutes – less than half the time of the five hours it takes to travel between the two metropolises by car.”

218 miles at 186mph takes one hour and 10 minutes, not two hours and 10 minutes (ignoring acceleration/deceleration times and any intermediate stops, of which there will apparently be two, but any rational design will have bypass tracks so that they can run fast services non-stop between the endpoints as well as slower stopping services).

[andrewducker]

Interesting. The figures match the projects own website. https://www.brightlinewest.com/

I wonder what the explanation is.

[drplokta]

My uninformed guess would be that they’re buying rolling stock that can technically go at 186mph so that they can call it high-speed rail for PR purposes, but they won’t be building much of the track to that standard and will actually be running at similar speeds to the main lines in the UK.

[andrewducker]

Could well be. The line doesn't look very straight, and I expect that they've not actually designed it so that they can run a non-stopping service.