Trans-Atlantic railway tunnel

[Irascible]

I don't know the details of international freight shipping, but presumably a container has a "ticket" for the entire journey already.

Taking a look at transatlantic daily air passenger numbers now & consider exactly how many ships that would need to replace all the aircraft, and then all the facilities ships need, I think there'd be a pretty good chance that numbers would collapse & any further integration effort would be a little pointless. On the US side they'd have to build high-speed rail everywhere to replace all their internal air travel, and at the rate they're proceeding right now I think a network would spring into life roughly when the tunnel does.

 

[Bald Rick]

If I added an extra 0 to my initial timeframe or even half that...I don't think we can safely assume something like this may not have been built or at least attempted come the turn of the next millennium. In the 16th century if you told someone that travel between London and Manchester in 2 hours would one day be possible, they'd have found it hard to believe.

but the scientific knowledge base of the collective human race in the 16th century was, compared today, essentially zero.

In the intervening 500 years ‘we’ have found out an awful lot about the world around us and we have a much better idea of what is / is not possible.

And because of that, we can safely assume that something like this will not be built or attempted come the turn of the next millennium. The only issue is that none of us will be around to confirm it.


Air travel is not going to go away. For much less than the cost of building such a tunnel it would be possible to construct and operate the plants capable of producing synthetic aviation fuel using renewable electricity. We know this science exists, but it’s rather expensive. Albeit rather less expensive than 2000 miles of the trans oceanic tunnel.

 

[RobShipway]

I doubt it, there's no technical reason to limit the speed so slow. Also Good luck finding a 110mph ship that can deal with Atlantic swell. Hydrodynamics are still part of the laws of physics.

If it went from the West Coast of Ireland to Newfoundland at 110 Mph continuously, around 17 hours 30 mins, Assuming 186 Mph on solid ground, 1:30 across Newfoundland, 40 Mins in 110 Mph tunnels to Nova Scotia, just under 2 hours across Nova Scotia at 186, 1:25 to near Boston, 45 mins to Boston South via the Airport then 4 hours on Acela Tracks to NYC, an additional 3 hours to Washington for a grand total of around 1 day 5 hours to NYC, 1 day 8 hours to Washington assuming 2 hours for London - The West Coast of Ireland

If you went with 110mph (170km/h) you would have no business case for building the tunnel. The only solution to make it competitive with airlines is to use hyperloop technologies or Maglev trains inside a vacuum tunnel so you could remove air resistance and friction and allow the train to reach competitive speeds. But then that brings another issue regarding spacing between the tunnel vehicles in case of an emergency stop. At 600mph/1000kmh you would need to space them very far apart. If you went with something such as 5000mph/8000kmh you would likely only have one service per hour in each direction to account for the 18 minutes of acceleration, 18 minutes at speed, and 18 minutes of deceleration. For an international journey 1tph isn't too bad, but it's not very flexible either in that you can't simply add more services per hour if need be without potentially slowing travel times.

Well, the Eurostar trains through either the tunnels on HS1 or the Channel Tunnel are not doing the 186mph that everybody expects, certainly was not when I travelled from London Waterloo International to Brussels in the early 2000's. It was doing no more than 120 - 130mph if that speed. So on that basis, the journey to the USA, would take longer than the flight to the US.

This means that as well as building the tunnel to the US, you would have to build a complete new infrastructure for trains both in the US and here in the UK. The only trains that could compete with the planes, would be something like the Japanese fast monorail service which can do over 300mph.

Thing is though, would people feel happy enough being in a tunnel for several hours? Many people that I have travelled through the channel tunnel are glad when they come out of it and that is just 30 minutes, which is why i think it is a non starter.

With regards to 110mph ship, there is many fast ferries, that can do up to 50mph. Yes, many depend on the weather to be able to do that sort of speed across the channel to France and you also have the issue of propulsion where using diesel engines gives off fumes. However, many of the newer fast ferries are hybrid with being battery/diesel powered. The likes of Incat and Austal who build fast ferries, are working on ships that are not only fast, but friendly to the environment. An example is the Austal Volta Auto Express electric powered passenger ferry:

 

[Trainguy34]

LHR-JFK flights are around 7h30 today, with check=in and baggage reclaim to be added on to that. The current LHR-JFK Passenger market is c.3m pa, or just under 58,000 a week, or just over 8,000 a day. A 400m Eurostar can take 900 passengers, so an hourly e1000 Velaro would happily cover that flow (obvs many others EUR-USA flows to factor in) .

Where did you find this data

 

[zwk500]

Where did you find this data

By Googling 'lhr-jfk flights', 'lhr-jfk passenger numbers', and then the wikipage for an e320.
For the purposes of this, the first result google returns is accurate enough.

Well, the Eurostar trains through either the tunnels on HS1 or the Channel Tunnel are not doing the 186mph that everybody expects, certainly was not when I travelled from London Waterloo International to Brussels in the early 2000's. It was doing no more than 120 - 130mph if that speed. So on that basis, the journey to the USA, would take longer than the flight to the US.

eurostar is 220kph (137mph) from St P to Ebbsfleet, then 300kph (186mph) to the tunnel, 160kph (100mph) through the tunnel, then 300kph to the edge of Paris except for a 200kph section through Lille.

But Paris is less than 10% of the distance away. The current speed gives a journey time of c.2h30.

The only trains that could compete with the planes, would be something like the Japanese fast monorail service which can do over 300mph.

Maglevs, not monorails.

 

[Gaelan]

No. Why would there need to be an integrated ticket system for the UK and US when there is no fixed link? What is the gain in having one?

If we want to cut down on short-haul flights, we desperately need better links from airports to intercity rail, and integrated ticketing is certainly a part of that.

Although I suspect in practice this will look more like integrating rail fares into the airline booking system than the other way around - I believe DB/Lufthansa are already doing that.

 

[Bald Rick]

Where did you find this data

all U.K. aviation passenger statistics are publicly available on the CAA website.

The route by route analysis by airport for 2022 is..

https://www.caa.co.uk/Documents/Download/9116/47a460b2-0592-4ef7-b24b-aa5e27ccfce4/5647

Heathrow to/from JFK for example was 2,373,529, with another 810,084 to/from Newark. There’s about another 750k to New York from Gatwick, Manchester and Edinburgh combined.

So the current combined U.K. to New York traffic is around. 4m pa. But that’s only a quarter of U.K. to /from USA passengers (15.4m). Then there’s another 2.7m to Canada.

Altogether it’s less than twice the traffic Eurostar carry.

 

[43096]

American railroad locos being shipped to the UK to haul more freights etc?

Have you heard of Class 59, Class 66 and Class 70? They're built to the UK loading gauge, not to the much bigger US one. So generic US locos coming over here isn't going to happen.

 

[RobShipway]

If a tunnel between the US and UK/EU was built, the only thing that would probably pay to have it built would be using it to ship freight across from USA/Canada and vice versa. But I think it would be more one way traffic, as I think that there is more that we ship over to USA/Canada, than is shipped from those countries to the UK. I was going to cars/vans/trucks, but other than perhaps the Jaguar Land Rover vehicles, I think many other vehicles that are made here in the UK such as the vans and trucks, are also made in factories within the USA/Canada as well.

However, I believe that there is more items that come to the UK/Europe from China and South Korea nowadays than from USA/Canada

 

[zwk500]

If a tunnel between the US and UK/EU was built, the only thing that would probably pay to have it built would be using it to ship freight across from USA/Canada and vice versa. But I think it would be more one way traffic, as I think that there is more that we ship over to USA/Canada, than is shipped from those countries to the UK. I was going to cars/vans/trucks, but other than perhaps the Jaguar Land Rover vehicles, I think many other vehicles that are made here in the UK such as the vans and trucks, are also made in factories within the USA/Canada as well.

However, I believe that there is more items that come to the UK/Europe from China and South Korea nowadays than from USA/Canada

The US has a trade surplus with the UK (i.e. it sells more to the UK than the UK sells to the US, although a large amount of that will be financial services. https://ustr.gov/countries-regions/europe-middle-east/europe/united-kingdom
(US Source, so Import is UK > US, Export is US > UK).

United Kingdom is currently our 7th largest goods trading partner with $132.3 billion in total (two way) goods trade during 2019. Goods exports totaled $69.1 billion; goods imports totaled $63.2 billion. The U.S. goods trade surplus with United Kingdom was $5.9 billion in 2019.

U.S. goods exports to United Kingdom in 2019 were $69.1 billion

• The top export categories in 2019 were: precious metal and stone (gold) ($14 billion), aircraft ($10 billion), mineral fuels ($7.4 billion), machinery ($6.2 billion), and electrical machinery ($4.6 billion).
• U.S. total exports of agricultural products to United Kingdom totaled $1.7 billion in 2019, our 16th largest agricultural export market. Leading domestic export categories include: wine & beer ($263 million), tree nuts ($211 million), prepared food ($151 million), soybeans ($100 million), and fresh vegetables ($77 million).

U.S. goods imports from United Kingdom totaled $63.2 billion in 2019

• The top import categories (2-digit HS) in 2019 were: vehicles ($11 billion), machinery ($10 billion), special other (returns) ($6.7 billion), pharmaceuticals ($5.1 billion), and mineral fuels ($4 billion)

• U.S. total imports of agricultural products from United Kingdom totaled $806 million in 2019. Leading categories include: snack foods ($126 million), cheese ($60 million), wine & beer ($52 million), red meats, fresh, chilled, or frozen ($46 million), and live animals ($39 million).

 

[Trainguy34]

The US has a trade surplus with the UK (i.e. it sells more to the UK than the UK sells to the US, although a large amount of that will be financial services. https://ustr.gov/countries-regions/europe-middle-east/europe/united-kingdom
(US Source, so Import is UK > US, Export is US > UK).

Though if it was connected to HS1, it could also be used for freight to Europe

 

[Fawkes Cat]

Though if it was connected to HS1, it could also be used for freight to Europe

And of course distance, deep seas, continental drift and volcanic magma are but minor difficulties when compared to connecting to HS1.

 

[zwk500]

Though if it was connected to HS1, it could also be used for freight to Europe

But that applies regardless of the UK's trading relationship with the USA.