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Thijs Niks

@thijs.niks.nu

450 followers 880 following 140 posts

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Thijs Niks @thijs.niks.nu · Sep 2

I built a web tool so anyone can design and evaluate ridership and costs of high speed rail networks anywhere in the world:

railmapper.net

Rail Mapper

Design and analyze high speed rail networks

railmapper.net

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Thijs Niks @thijs.niks.nu · 10d

I still need to do another attempt at validating the demand constant.

Arguably it should be closer to 100k than 200k, putting Indian ridership in the neighborhood of 5b

Thijs Niks @thijs.niks.nu · 11d

India is looking good (and indeed why I had to fix the performance issues): railmapper.net/project/indi...

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Thijs Niks @thijs.niks.nu · 11d

I fixed the performance problem btw. Should no longer freeze with larger networks.

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Thijs Niks @thijs.niks.nu · Sep 7

Yeah, fair enough. The default is Spanish levels ($25m). This route is probably $75m, if I had to guess.

Thijs Niks @thijs.niks.nu · Sep 7

Very nice! I do assume the construction costs per kilometer are set fairly low, given the loss margin is small?

Thijs Niks @thijs.niks.nu · Sep 4

I don't know yet why orphaned routes are created in the first place, but I have put in safeguards to delete them when they happen so it should no longer crash the project. Let me know if you still run into this issue

Thijs Niks @thijs.niks.nu · Sep 4

bsky.app/profile/jtd....

onigiri now @jtd.bsky.social · Sep 3

My SoCal Regional HSR (or "higher speed rail") map. Yes, I know. Still!
railmapper.net/project/cc53...

Thanks @thijs.niks.nu

Railmapper crayon for SoCal Regional, single line inland route from Oxnard to San Diego in mostly 50km steps, with a Palm Springs spur. Income of +0.8% at $50m/km construction cost. Hehehe.

Thijs Niks @thijs.niks.nu · Sep 3

You can adjust the calibration constant on the config page to be somewhere in between the 20k international and 200k domestic it is by default

railmapper.net/project/late...

Rail Mapper

Design and analyze high speed rail networks

railmapper.net

Thijs Niks @thijs.niks.nu · Sep 3

The EU border crossings perform very poorly, but Singapore/Malaysia may have more families living on both sides of the border?

Thijs Niks @thijs.niks.nu · Sep 2

You’re welcome!

You can build a lot of rail lines if your construction costs are low (just ask the French and Spanish).

California, though, builds at $125m per kilometer: www.latimes.com/california/s...

You can change your costs on the config page: railmapper.net/project/late...

Despite some progress, state's high-speed rail is $100 billion short and many years from reality

California's high-speed rail is a decade off-schedule and is expected to cost $100 billion more than initially planned.

www.latimes.com

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Thijs Niks @thijs.niks.nu · Sep 2

bsky.app/profile/beyo...

Dan Malouff @beyonddc.bsky.social · Sep 2

Neat! 30 million riders/year on my 5 minute DC-to-Chicago model.

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Thijs Niks @thijs.niks.nu · Sep 2

bsky.app/profile/jrur...

JRUrbaneNetwork @jrurbanenetwork.bsky.social · Sep 2

Continuing to have fun with this. This time it is Vietnam's proposed North–South Express Railway or Đường sắt cao tốc Bắc-Nam. Estimated to have 175-225 trains per day. Assumed 8 car CR400 trains running up to 350kph and Chinese fare rates.

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Thijs Niks @thijs.niks.nu · Sep 2

bsky.app/profile/dawe...

Brendan Dawe @dawe.bsky.social · Aug 13

I put together an Egypt HSR system and I got 1.75 billion riders

(obviously the Egyptian public cannot afford first world HSR fares but hot damn)

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Thijs Niks @thijs.niks.nu · Sep 2

It has been great to see what people are already using it for: bsky.app/profile/nilo...

Nilo @nilo.bsky.social · Aug 10

Fun tool southeast of Brazil network.

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Thijs Niks @thijs.niks.nu · Sep 2

Let me know if you have any questions or suggestions.

Either put it as a comment in the document, reply to me on Twitter, or email me

docs.google.com/document/d/1...

Rail Mapper — Modeling High Speed Rail Networks Anywhere in the World

Rail Mapper — Modeling High Speed Rail Networks Anywhere in the World Thijs Niks, August 2025. Email me at [email protected] or find me on Twitter and BlueSky. Introduction This is an overview of how Rail...

docs.google.com

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Thijs Niks @thijs.niks.nu · Sep 2

And thank you to @cloudflare.social / @eastdakota.com for the free hosting on their Pages service!

pages.cloudflare.com

Cloudflare Pages

Build your next application with Cloudflare Pages

pages.cloudflare.com

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Thijs Niks @thijs.niks.nu · Sep 2

I’m also grateful to @tomforth.co.uk for maintaining the free Population Around A Point tool and API, which makes using the Global Human Settlement Layer population data very easy.

tomforth.co.uk/circlepopula...
human-settlement.emergency.copernicus.eu/about.php

Population around a point

tomforth.co.uk

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Thijs Niks @thijs.niks.nu · Sep 2

Huge thank you to @alonlevy.bsky.social for publishing their work and patiently answering some of my questions.

You can read their take on Rail Mapper here: pedestrianobservations.com/2025/08/31/h...

bsky.app/profile/alon...

Alon (they/them) @alonlevy.bsky.social · Sep 1

Pedestrian Observations: High-Speed Rail Ridership Estimator Applet pedestrianobservations.com/2025/08/31/h... @thijsniks.bsky.social

High-Speed Rail Ridership Estimator Applet

Thijs Niks made a web applet for calculating high-speed rail network ridership estimates. This is based on the gravity model that I’ve used to construct estimates. The applet lets one add gra…

pedestrianobservations.com

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Thijs Niks @thijs.niks.nu · Sep 2

I wouldn’t have been able to make this without the new wave of AI coding tools, which make side projects like this much more doable.

The vibe coding future is awesome!

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Thijs Niks @thijs.niks.nu · Sep 2

The model is simplified and small changes in the parameters have a large impact on the results.

I’m still validating some variables. Especially the calibration constant is likely to be revised downwards, which will reduce the ridership estimates for all networks.

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Thijs Niks @thijs.niks.nu · Sep 2

You can read more about how Rail Mapper works in this document: docs.google.com/document/d/1...

Feel free to leave comments!

(I do recommend reading it in the mobile app or on the desktop, as images are embarrassingly low quality on mobile web)

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Thijs Niks @thijs.niks.nu · Sep 2

By default, the tool includes a dozen example networks to give an idea of how it works.

Take a look at for example:

France railmapper.net/project/fran...
US northeast railmapper.net/project/nort...
Indonesia railmapper.net/project/indo...
India railmapper.net/project/indi...

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Thijs Niks @thijs.niks.nu · Sep 2

The Rail Mapper tool I built makes it easy to create your own high speed rail network and configure things like construction costs & train capacity.

I hope more discussions will be grounded in reality by making these calculations more accessible.

railmapper.net

Rail Mapper

Design and analyze high speed rail networks

railmapper.net

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Thijs Niks @thijs.niks.nu · Sep 2

These calculations are simple enough that you can do them in a spreadsheet.

pedestrianobservations.com/2021/04/25/s...

Sanity-Checking My HSR Ridership Model

In previous posts about modeling high-speed rail ridership, I used a gravity model for the estimation. While poking around with spreadsheets, I figured out that a good way to sanity-check the model…

pedestrianobservations.com

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Thijs Niks @thijs.niks.nu · Sep 2

Levy basically applies the same approach governments and companies use to model infrastructure demand.

At its core, transport demand is based on how large each city is and how far apart they are.

pedestrianobservations.com/2020/02/13/m...

Metcalfe’s Law for High-Speed Rail

I wrote a Twitter thread about high-speed rail in the United States that I’d like to expand to a full post, because it illustrates a key network design principle. It comes from Metcalfe&#8217…

pedestrianobservations.com

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