4 ms·

Because Europe is older, smaller and more population dense.

by amalag 11y ago

cylinder 11y ago
New York metro is very dense and all the commuter rail systems are pretty bad, or worse. Bumpy rides, delays, uncomfortable interiors, etc. I can't really work on anything on the LIRR or NJT because it's so wobbly. I got on a commuter rain in Geneva and it was so incredibly smooth and the whole experience comfortable.
- virmundi 11y ago
  To harp on the American rail system: I could literally not type on portions of the ride from Palatka to D.C. The tracks were so wobbly and bouncy that my hands would jump all over the keyboard.
  - JoeAltmaier 11y ago
    All because we're reduced to freight lines, as the lines built expressly for commuters (with their welded rails and better maintenance) are long gone.
Mithaldu 11y ago
As a german: This. Europe can afford to have better trains and public transit systems across the board because it's easier for us to have a consistent level of quality, since we simply have much less area to service and trains are a viable alternative for a massive portion of the populace.
- HarryHirsch 11y ago
  Not true, not true at all. The Boston-Washington Megalopolis is about the size and population of West Germany. But West Germany had proper rail service, and in the US it was always awful.
  - rhino369 11y ago
    A big problem with the DC to Boston Amtrak run is that it subsidizes the entire rest of the Amtrak network, which loses money hand over fist. The DC/Boston line is profitable. But it's neglected and starved. If instead that money could used to revitalize that stretch, it could be much more useful. America rail went through each small town as it already existed and the track is too twisty to go very fast over a lot of the stretch. And it's all so we can have trains that go from DC to Chicago in like 12 hours + 0-3 hours of delays. That route is unnecessary. A DC to Chicago flight is 1:45 hours and is cheap as fuck. Plus we have buses that use the highways. Our rail sucks because we propping up useless routes.
    - superuser2 11y ago
      To be clear, these trains aren't empty. The Lake Shore Limited (Chicago <-> New York) goes sold out for days when winter storms take a shit on the Northeast air corridor and everyone's trying to get home from Christmas break. It's also $100 regardless of season.
    - ghaff 11y ago
      Maybe I should take the Empire Builder and/or the California Zephyr while there's still time. To be sure, there are a lot of subsidies built into a lot of transportation options and, if you eliminate Amtrak outside of the Northeast, a lot of those passengers need to get from A to B somehow (which may well be sub-segments of the long haul routes). But, yeah, from a utilitarian perspective I've never found inter-city Amtrak travel to make a lot of sense in the US outside of the Northeast (nor, in many cases, Europe for that matter).
      - ams6110 11y ago
        If you ever take one of the long Amtrak routes, be sure you have an extra 48 hour buffer in your schedule to allow for delays. I'm not kidding at all.
  - Mithaldu 11y ago
    Boston has hilarious amounts of single-family-building suburbia: https://www.google.de/maps/place/Boston,+MA,+USA/@42.2970681,-71.0723829,7556m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m2!3m1!1s0x89e3652d0d3d311b:0x787cbf240162e8a0 https://www.google.de/maps/place/Boston,+MA,+USA/@42.2970681... Germany simply doesn't have that. The infrastructural implications are massive.
- legulere 11y ago
  That's not true. France has a lower population density and is more centralized to fewer cities. This is an advantage for their high speed train network because they have fewer stops.
  - Mithaldu 11y ago
    As far as i know France doesn't have any 3000 mile train lines, so it's not even comparable.
cozzyd 11y ago
* older: the railroad was invented in the 19th century, and I think the US railroad network circa 1900 was superior to Europe... * smaller: not really... depends where you count. * more population dense: nobody is expecting good rail transit in Wyoming or Montana (although, Scandinavia seems to do okay with low density). The Northeast, Midwest, and California are all very dense and still have much worse rail transit.
- ghaff 11y ago
  The Northeast really isn't that bad for trains but it does suffer from the fact that there was a multi-decade exodus from many cities by both residents and companies for a variety of reasons. That didn't exactly encourage investment in rail infrastructure.
ghaff 11y ago
To pick just one example from the article, there's the argument that successful high-speed rail has to go from dense city core to dense city core while simply passing through ex-urban locations. The ex-urban stops are one of the whole appeals of Acela in the Northeast Corridor in the US as they allow travel to New York City without going to downtown Boston. The article sort of went off the, um, rails when it basically suggested that if only US cities were bulldozed and re-engineered to the priorities of less land-rich continent then rail would make a lot more sense. I even like taking the train in general but it's hard to make the numbers work in much of the US.
arethuza 11y ago
The continent of Europe (10.18 million km²) is slightly larger than the area of the United States (9.857 million km²). Yes, the EU is quite a bit smaller than the US - but there is an awful lot of Europe that isn't in the EU. Personally, I think it's about the distribution of population in Europe - where most population centers are reasonably close together and with the peripheries less populous whereas the US has populations towards the peripheries and a relatively sparsely populated center (roughly).
- duaneb 11y ago
  Europe is more than twice the size of the US in population, so even as a whole it is much more densely packed.
  - revelation 11y ago
    Population density of whole countries tells us nothing. China: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/cd/Population_density_of_China_by_first-level_administrative_regionsEnglish.png https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/cd/Populati... USA: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_by_population_density#/media/File:Map_of_states_showing_population_density_in_2013.svg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_by_populat... People concentrate regardless of land size. Feel free to quote population density when you are a russian farmer in Siberia brewing vodka, but chances are the argument falls utterly flat.
    - duaneb 11y ago
      I'm not sure what you're even arguing. It seems pretty clear that population density has a strong correlation to efficiency of public transit. If nobody lives there, don't run rail to it.
      - anonymoushn 11y ago
        You could take a bunch of regions where it would be reasonable to build trains, and then you add a bunch of regions where it would not be reasonable to build trains, and count them together. The population density of that combined area tells you very little about whether it is reasonable to build trains somewhere in that area.
sliverstorm 11y ago
A nice map http://static.persquaremile.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/us-europe-high-speed-rail-and-density.png http://static.persquaremile.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/u... Wyoming, in particular, has a lower population density than Siberia!
- arethuza 11y ago
  But that just shows how difficult these comparison are - Siberia has an extremely uneven distribution of population. If you chose one part of Siberia - Krasnoyarsk Krai, it is nearly ten times the area of Wyoming and has a much lower population density 1.21/km2 rather than 2.26/km2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Krasnoyarsk_Krai https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Krasnoyarsk_Krai [NB And there appears to be an even bigger and emptier bit of Siberia next door but I haven't worked out what it is yet!]
  - sliverstorm 11y ago
    Precise comparisons are aside the point, which is simply that the middle of the United States is incredibly population-sparse, in the same ballpark as Siberia. Which, coincidentally, is not exactly known for its convenient commuter rail network.
- dagw 11y ago
  I'd take that map with a huge grain of salt. Saying that Norway has High Speed Rail for example is a bit of a stretch considering that the only high speed rail line in all of Norway is a short stretch between Oslo and the main airport. Saying Norway has high speed rail is like saying that the US has a monorail system.
melling 11y ago
I'm just going to copy and paste my notes here. This is sort of an FAQ that is incorrectly brought up. I need to add population for the U.S. cities but it's obvious that you're wrong? Los Angeles to San Francisco 400 miles Los Angeles to San Diego 150 miles NYC to Philadelphia 92 miles NYC to Boston 220 miles NYC to Washington DC 226 miles Chicago to St Louis 260 miles Dallas to Houston 240 miles Dallas to Austin 200 miles Austin to Houston 170 miles Tampa to Orlando 85 miles Miami to Orlando 235 miles --- Population of Rome: 2.7m Population of Milan: 1.3m Rome to Milan: 355 miles
- amalag 11y ago
  Cherry-picking a few cities is not helpful

Because Europe is older, smaller and more population dense.

by amalag 11y ago

Because Europe is older, smaller and more population dense.

New York metro is very dense and all the commuter rail systems are pretty bad, or worse. Bumpy rides, delays, uncomfortable interiors, etc. I can't really work on anything on the LIRR or NJT because it's so wobbly. I got on a commuter rain in Geneva and it was so incredibly smooth and the whole experience comfortable.

virmundi 11y ago
To harp on the American rail system: I could literally not type on portions of the ride from Palatka to D.C. The tracks were so wobbly and bouncy that my hands would jump all over the keyboard.
- JoeAltmaier 11y ago
  All because we're reduced to freight lines, as the lines built expressly for commuters (with their welded rails and better maintenance) are long gone.

Mithaldu 11y ago

As a german: This. Europe can afford to have better trains and public transit systems across the board because it's easier for us to have a consistent level of quality, since we simply have much less area to service and trains are a viable alternative for a massive portion of the populace.

HarryHirsch 11y ago
Not true, not true at all. The Boston-Washington Megalopolis is about the size and population of West Germany. But West Germany had proper rail service, and in the US it was always awful.
- rhino369 11y ago
  A big problem with the DC to Boston Amtrak run is that it subsidizes the entire rest of the Amtrak network, which loses money hand over fist. The DC/Boston line is profitable. But it's neglected and starved. If instead that money could used to revitalize that stretch, it could be much more useful. America rail went through each small town as it already existed and the track is too twisty to go very fast over a lot of the stretch. And it's all so we can have trains that go from DC to Chicago in like 12 hours + 0-3 hours of delays. That route is unnecessary. A DC to Chicago flight is 1:45 hours and is cheap as fuck. Plus we have buses that use the highways. Our rail sucks because we propping up useless routes.
  - superuser2 11y ago
    To be clear, these trains aren't empty. The Lake Shore Limited (Chicago <-> New York) goes sold out for days when winter storms take a shit on the Northeast air corridor and everyone's trying to get home from Christmas break. It's also $100 regardless of season.
  - ghaff 11y ago
    Maybe I should take the Empire Builder and/or the California Zephyr while there's still time. To be sure, there are a lot of subsidies built into a lot of transportation options and, if you eliminate Amtrak outside of the Northeast, a lot of those passengers need to get from A to B somehow (which may well be sub-segments of the long haul routes). But, yeah, from a utilitarian perspective I've never found inter-city Amtrak travel to make a lot of sense in the US outside of the Northeast (nor, in many cases, Europe for that matter).
    - ams6110 11y ago
      If you ever take one of the long Amtrak routes, be sure you have an extra 48 hour buffer in your schedule to allow for delays. I'm not kidding at all.
- Mithaldu 11y ago
  Boston has hilarious amounts of single-family-building suburbia: https://www.google.de/maps/place/Boston,+MA,+USA/@42.2970681,-71.0723829,7556m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m2!3m1!1s0x89e3652d0d3d311b:0x787cbf240162e8a0 https://www.google.de/maps/place/Boston,+MA,+USA/@42.2970681... Germany simply doesn't have that. The infrastructural implications are massive.
legulere 11y ago
That's not true. France has a lower population density and is more centralized to fewer cities. This is an advantage for their high speed train network because they have fewer stops.
- Mithaldu 11y ago
  As far as i know France doesn't have any 3000 mile train lines, so it's not even comparable.

cozzyd 11y ago

* older: the railroad was invented in the 19th century, and I think the US railroad network circa 1900 was superior to Europe... * smaller: not really... depends where you count. * more population dense: nobody is expecting good rail transit in Wyoming or Montana (although, Scandinavia seems to do okay with low density). The Northeast, Midwest, and California are all very dense and still have much worse rail transit.

ghaff 11y ago
The Northeast really isn't that bad for trains but it does suffer from the fact that there was a multi-decade exodus from many cities by both residents and companies for a variety of reasons. That didn't exactly encourage investment in rail infrastructure.

ghaff 11y ago

To pick just one example from the article, there's the argument that successful high-speed rail has to go from dense city core to dense city core while simply passing through ex-urban locations. The ex-urban stops are one of the whole appeals of Acela in the Northeast Corridor in the US as they allow travel to New York City without going to downtown Boston. The article sort of went off the, um, rails when it basically suggested that if only US cities were bulldozed and re-engineered to the priorities of less land-rich continent then rail would make a lot more sense. I even like taking the train in general but it's hard to make the numbers work in much of the US.

arethuza 11y ago

The continent of Europe (10.18 million km²) is slightly larger than the area of the United States (9.857 million km²). Yes, the EU is quite a bit smaller than the US - but there is an awful lot of Europe that isn't in the EU. Personally, I think it's about the distribution of population in Europe - where most population centers are reasonably close together and with the peripheries less populous whereas the US has populations towards the peripheries and a relatively sparsely populated center (roughly).

duaneb 11y ago
Europe is more than twice the size of the US in population, so even as a whole it is much more densely packed.
- revelation 11y ago
  Population density of whole countries tells us nothing. China: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/cd/Population_density_of_China_by_first-level_administrative_regionsEnglish.png https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/cd/Populati... USA: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_by_population_density#/media/File:Map_of_states_showing_population_density_in_2013.svg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_by_populat... People concentrate regardless of land size. Feel free to quote population density when you are a russian farmer in Siberia brewing vodka, but chances are the argument falls utterly flat.
  - duaneb 11y ago
    I'm not sure what you're even arguing. It seems pretty clear that population density has a strong correlation to efficiency of public transit. If nobody lives there, don't run rail to it.
    - anonymoushn 11y ago
      You could take a bunch of regions where it would be reasonable to build trains, and then you add a bunch of regions where it would not be reasonable to build trains, and count them together. The population density of that combined area tells you very little about whether it is reasonable to build trains somewhere in that area.

sliverstorm 11y ago

A nice map http://static.persquaremile.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/us-europe-high-speed-rail-and-density.png http://static.persquaremile.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/u... Wyoming, in particular, has a lower population density than Siberia!

arethuza 11y ago
But that just shows how difficult these comparison are - Siberia has an extremely uneven distribution of population. If you chose one part of Siberia - Krasnoyarsk Krai, it is nearly ten times the area of Wyoming and has a much lower population density 1.21/km2 rather than 2.26/km2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Krasnoyarsk_Krai https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Krasnoyarsk_Krai [NB And there appears to be an even bigger and emptier bit of Siberia next door but I haven't worked out what it is yet!]
- sliverstorm 11y ago
  Precise comparisons are aside the point, which is simply that the middle of the United States is incredibly population-sparse, in the same ballpark as Siberia. Which, coincidentally, is not exactly known for its convenient commuter rail network.
dagw 11y ago
I'd take that map with a huge grain of salt. Saying that Norway has High Speed Rail for example is a bit of a stretch considering that the only high speed rail line in all of Norway is a short stretch between Oslo and the main airport. Saying Norway has high speed rail is like saying that the US has a monorail system.

melling 11y ago

I'm just going to copy and paste my notes here. This is sort of an FAQ that is incorrectly brought up. I need to add population for the U.S. cities but it's obvious that you're wrong? Los Angeles to San Francisco 400 miles Los Angeles to San Diego 150 miles NYC to Philadelphia 92 miles NYC to Boston 220 miles NYC to Washington DC 226 miles Chicago to St Louis 260 miles Dallas to Houston 240 miles Dallas to Austin 200 miles Austin to Houston 170 miles Tampa to Orlando 85 miles Miami to Orlando 235 miles --- Population of Rome: 2.7m Population of Milan: 1.3m Rome to Milan: 355 miles

amalag 11y ago
Cherry-picking a few cities is not helpful