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Just how much Tylenol is consumed in Japan?
New conspiracy theory: Tylenol actually does cause autism. But China figured out that autism is the key to a better society and they are pushing RFK to ban it so that we remain self-destructive neurotypicals.
Wait a minute, Korea got united between 2008 and 2024?
/joke
No, just everyone who is not China stopped mattering.
Why is there no connection between Niigata and Yonezawa?
Mountains, I assume.
So if you must travel between these two towns you’d need to go via Fukushima.
Edit: And a national park
I expect better of the rail network in America. This is a tiny network for the size country we are.
it takes me 24 hours to go by train the same distance it takes me to fly 1.5 hours. and the cost is the same. there are some problems.
This has more to do with how commuter trains are forced to give priority to freight trains, causing delays, than actual travel times
no it has to do with stopping at every damn town and there being mountains that slow the trains the fuck down from whatever speed y’all imagine them being able to go to like, 40mph. but please go off.
It’s not that extreme, but even if we assume a 200 mph HSR train:
- It would still take 12 hours to drive the 2500 miles from Los Angeles (California) to Jacksonville (Florida)
- It would still take 6 hours to drive the 1200 miles from Jacksonville (Florida) to Boston (Massachusetts)
Admittedly, there’s a point to be made that hardly anyone would drive from Florida straight to Massachusetts or the other way around, but the distance is still impressive.
Airplanes who fly at 600 mph reduce that travel time to 1/3rd (excluding boarding, which can be time-consuming). I did not calculate how much a train ticket would cost, compared to a flight ticket.
Admittedly, i travel 400 miles by train in Europe all the time. (a couple times every year). It takes about 6 hours in total.
The REAL US Tylenol Map
I was gonna say what about the inner west coast
They know what they did
I assume the gray gaps are due to red states refusing to get on the Tylenol/Autism Train, but I can’t believe, if the Autist Party were in power, they wouldn’t insist on connecting ALL the dots.
Yeah this is clearly the work of Big Acetylsalicylic Acid
You-know-who oughta be grateful he only had to stumble through pronouncing acetaminophen.
It’s kind of weird too because logistically the northern border is the easiest place to expand rails: big flat great planes region, with both of the two largest rivers for ferrying in supplies, followed by a bypass around the bulk of the rocky mountains into Oregon or Washington State.
It’s about need. Like yeah, Chicago through the Dakotas is easy as pie, but the demand would be to seattle and that crosses two mountain ranges and the only stops between Minnesota and Seattle with much demand there would be at national parks.
Like yeah it would be awesome as hell and the American version of the CCP would absofuckinglutely have a high speed rail to Yellowstone and the badlands since they’re on the way. But Yellowstone is past the start of the mountains and you need to connect all the way to seattle for it to be more than a vanity project.
The important lines are the NY-Chicago (land is dirt cheap for lots of it, mountains are small, and population is dense with several makor cities you can hit) and the west coast line (basically actually do California high speed rail, then extend it from San Diego to just outside British Columbia. From there the east coast line, something involving texas, or stretching the ny-chicago line is good.
There is already a rail south into California.
I would think that Kansas City would be a bigger hub since it already has a lot of rail through there and is more central in the country.
for freight, not passenger rail, which is what high-speed rail is primarily designed for
But dood. Put a USPS fishbowl-connected car on the end with a sorter working inside and prepping for each stop, and watch FedEx sweat.
As would I. There is an existing line from Kansas City to Tulsa to OKC that has been talked about being opened for passengers for a couple decades.
My dumb ass thought this was a ticket to ride map for a minute.
Tryna get that LA to NY route
I don’t get it
Trains are a common special interest of people with autism.
Then I must be autistic then, because I love trains and dream of having high speed rail.
It’s okay to find out new things about yourself. 🙂
I know two neurodivergent people that love trains, one is into models and the other trainspotting. They are correct too, trains are awesome.
Yes, but how does that pertain to this picture, I would need like a before and after photo to know any context for this image, thank you for sharing, though I appreciate the response response
In two parts.
- The before map would be of the only high speed train the US currently has, and it’s the Acela Express. So, something like this.
- If lots of people are consuming Tylenol in day to day life, and it causes autism, and some autistic people love trains, then the US should have a system like the map posted.
I always forget the Acela is technically a high speed rail. It would only actually be a tiny fraction of that line. Less than 10% of the line is HSR
In short, the US has absolutely zero high-speed rail infrastructure - and barely any rail infrastructure at all compared to what it used to have and the size of the country.
This was one of many proposed high-speed rail networks from (I think) the late 2000s/early 2010s, but the fledgling train companies were largely strangled or bought up and closed by freight rail, car, and fossil fuel companies, so nothing ever happened.
OK, so it was like a real life who framed Roger rabbit situation, thank you for taking the time to explain
Weird aside, but Who Framed Roger Rabbit? Is actually kind of base on a true story. Oil, tire, and car companies did actually conspire to dismantle Los Angeles’ then extensive street car network, and then pretty much every other major American city too.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Motors_streetcar_conspiracy
Yeah. I kind of figured as much, there is so much truth hidden fiction. It’s Astounding
We have rail infrastructure…it just happens all be mostly owned by freight rail companies
We do, but it’s really scaled back compared to what we used to have. There are so many scars of abandoned rail lines all over major cities where they were torn out and replaced with road infrastructure. So many central train stations that are shadows of their former selves.
If Tylenol caused autism, there would be a lot more support for trains in the U.S.
It’s something that happened in the meme-o-sphere and I too am left out
The most efficient would be 3 major east/west lines, Boston to Seattle, DC to San Francisco, and Atlanta to LA, connected by a series of north/south lines to form a grid. On the east coast, just extend the Acela down to Atlanta.
You need to hit major centres and you need to consider common trips to be efficient. You’re talking about the most efficient per station but most efficient per passenger is going to look different. This image doesn’t see too bad and can still have branching lines.
Yeah just get a slime mold to design it for us.
The biggest concern with that setup is how inefficient it is to reach the Pacific Northwest region, LA is a serious bottleneck on top of being a common endpoint in and of itself. A line that goes straight to either Seattle or Portland from the Northeast simplifies things a lot.
The problem is that population distribution means that almost nobody is going to be getting on or off the train between Minneapolis and Seattle. The population of North Dakota is 800k, South Dakota is 925k, Nebraska is 2 million, Montana is 1.1 million, Wyoming is 590k, Idaho is 2 million. That’s nearly a whole quadrant of the country with less population than the Houston metro area. If we’re building trains, let’s build trains in Houston and serve the same number of people with like a tiny percentage of track that it would take to serve the upper plains states.
exactly. even under communism/socialism, a business must still operate at least somewhat meaningfully. it can’t just be “trains for the sake of trains”. there has to be a meaningful number of people served per km of rail. that’s why it makes sense near the coastlines.
also, short reminder that even if a rail goes at 200 mph, it would still take around 15 hours to travel the 3000 miles from east to west coast. almost nobody is willing to sit in a train for 15 hours straight. at that distance, most people prefer an airplane. it’s significantly faster.
i did some quick maths and calculated that at least in europe, for distances greater than ~800 km (~600 miles), an airplane is mostly faster than a train, at least in western europe.
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If you build infrastructure people will come
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A 15-hour journey sounds perfect for an overnight service.
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Why do I feel like inefficient access to the Pacific Northwest suits all involved?
From Japan rail networking, I’ve heard that you need a popular stop about every four hours for an HSR to be successful
LA is a bottleneck if you assume every single line and dot is perfectly equal. If we’re already imaging a well built system then that green line would have a higher frequency of train to accommodate what you’re talking about and it’s station(s) would be large enough to handle the fact that it would absolutely be a major hub.
Efficiency is not always about perfection for every single trip. Cars(in a car-centric hellhole, at least) will take you from your driveway to your destination parking lot but they are vastly inferior to the overall efficiency of a metro that you walk five minutes to and is then five minutes from your destination. This is highspeed rail, there’s not much extra time being taken if you don’t go direct direct, it’ll be fine.
What a beautiful sight.
It’s too bad Daniel Day Lewis in There Will Be Blood is such a flimsy underrepresentation of the average American oil tycoon
The trains are not always trains.
And once again Phoenix to Las Vegas is ignored.
I’m no expert on US geography, but isn’t it like really dumb to put 3 train lines through desert? (the red, yellow and grey lines).
i can understand the coastlines (east and west) and maybe one in the south (the yellow line). what i basically don’t get is the rest.
Those are hitting main populations between new York and LA plus the cities in Texas etc.
It roughly follows existing rail links
https://www.arcgis.com/home/webmap/viewer.html?webmap=96ec03e4fc8546bd8a864e39a2c3fc41
The red route makes sense, because you’re connecting two of the most populous coastal areas of the US to each other.
If you compare this fictional map to an existing map of freight rail there are a lot of similarities
While we’re dreaming, can we connect SLC to Boise and Portland?
WIll the prices not be as bad? Amtrack costs like $270 from Clevland to Colorodo which I know is a travaling half of the country but thats not cheap for me
If you buy a ticket last minute for a high speed train it will stay expensive. Train people want you to be predictable, so book ahead and pay around half price.
Slower trains will obviously be free at point of use.
At least we’d have a much cooler president.
