4 ms·

Of course there are going to be wide swaths of the United States where passenger rail and bus service isn't going to make much of a dent for local transportatio

by zrail 8y ago

Of course there are going to be wide swaths of the United States where passenger rail and bus service isn't going to make much of a dent for local transportation. Regional transportation is an entirely different question. Is there a rail line running through the small town in Texas where you grew up? I bet there is, and I bet there is the remnants of a passenger station too. What would it mean to your small town if people could easily commute by rail to the bigger city 45 minutes away? I bet people would be more interested in living in that small town.

dwighttk 8y ago
There is a rail line, but no passenger station. Realistically there would be 1 train per day max to the big city and you'd have to spend the night instead of making a day or half day trip. (I currently live in Durham and I can catch a morning train to Charlotte and back in the evening according to the schedule, as long as I can fit my business in between the arrival time of the morning train and the departure time of the evening train, and that is servicing two much larger populations.) And that is just going to the nearest larger city... What if you want to go to a different city? Or a smaller town? Or a random place that doesn't have a bus station? I predict very few people would participate.
- mikepurvis 8y ago
  For a data point on this, I'm in the Waterloo region, about an hour's drive into Toronto when traffic is good, or 2-2.5 hours when it's not. The government regional rail (GO Transit) operates four commuter trains into the city on weekday mornings, and four back again in the evening. Despite being slow and expensive, those trains are packed, day after day, with commuters who would rather live out of the city, and not spend 15-20 hours of their week sitting in traffic on the 401. They recently extended two of the trains with additional carriages to handle the capacity. We've been clamouring for hourly bidirectional service for over a decade and it's only in recent years that the relevant authorities have finally gotten their act together to build out the necessary infrastructure to make it possible (twinning a bunch of track sections, building a bypass for US-bound freight, and electrification).

by zrail 8y ago

dwighttk 8y ago

There is a rail line, but no passenger station. Realistically there would be 1 train per day max to the big city and you'd have to spend the night instead of making a day or half day trip. (I currently live in Durham and I can catch a morning train to Charlotte and back in the evening according to the schedule, as long as I can fit my business in between the arrival time of the morning train and the departure time of the evening train, and that is servicing two much larger populations.) And that is just going to the nearest larger city... What if you want to go to a different city? Or a smaller town? Or a random place that doesn't have a bus station? I predict very few people would participate.

mikepurvis 8y ago
For a data point on this, I'm in the Waterloo region, about an hour's drive into Toronto when traffic is good, or 2-2.5 hours when it's not. The government regional rail (GO Transit) operates four commuter trains into the city on weekday mornings, and four back again in the evening. Despite being slow and expensive, those trains are packed, day after day, with commuters who would rather live out of the city, and not spend 15-20 hours of their week sitting in traffic on the 401. They recently extended two of the trains with additional carriages to handle the capacity. We've been clamouring for hourly bidirectional service for over a decade and it's only in recent years that the relevant authorities have finally gotten their act together to build out the necessary infrastructure to make it possible (twinning a bunch of track sections, building a bypass for US-bound freight, and electrification).