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I think Density may play a huge role here. India has an amazing rail network, but literally not a seat goes empty. Here in the US, I often book long distance
by screye 8y ago
I think Density may play a huge role here.
India has an amazing rail network, but literally not a seat goes empty.
Here in the US, I often book long distance peter pan / grey hound buses and them being empty is par for the course. This is in the NE corridor too. Doesn't get more dense than that.
The culture problem is another factor. People love cars a bit too much. I hope taxation on oil goes up in the US. But, that would be political suicide here.
- empath75 8y agoAmtrak is more expensive than flying and takes many times longer, and is way more unreliable. The only people that use it outside of the eastern corridor are people afraid of flying and train enthusiasts.
- drilldrive 8y agoFor short distances, Amtrak is better than flying. A ticket from LA to San Diego costed me $35 compared to $80 flying one-way.
- MarkSweep 8y agoMy experience has been that the ontime performance of airlines are significantly better than Amtrak. When the Pacific Surfliner trains run only every 1.5 hours, that’s a lot of potential waiting.
- ghaff 8y agoThere are a few other city pairs outside of the Northeast Corridor. But not a lot. Even in the Northeast Corridor Amtrak (and the Acela in particular ) aren’t consistently cheaper than flying. In part, I expect this is because really price sensitive people will take Megabus or whatever anyway.
- drilldrive 8y agoI suspect that the high price may be in part due to Amtrak renting the private railroad tracks for its use, though I definitely do not know the exact cause.
- ghaff 8y agoThat’s probably one reason. Amtrak just also isn’t utilized heavily on most routes. Basically the Northeast Corridor profits subsidize Amtrak’s losses in the rest of the country. My understanding is that Amtrak does own its tracks in the Northeast but they can price Acela high enough to just be competitive enough with planes for business travelers.
- Fuejxienx 8y agoThey should cut everything outside the NEC and dump that money into improving the NEC. It's one part of the country well-suited to trains. If some hicks in Cali lose train service, I'm comfortable with that.
- ghaff 8y agoAmtrak already has fairly significant modernization and expansion plans for the Northeast Corridor which is (uniquely) a rather profitable region for them.
- mschuetz 8y ago> Here in the US, I often book long distance peter pan / grey hound buses and them being empty is par for the course. I believe that's in large part because the current offerings aren't good to begin with so people won't use it. Coming from europe, I've found the train network in California very sub-par. There is amtrak, but timetables and connections are so bad, I decided not to use it in the end. Caltrain was okay, I was pleasently surprised by the huge bicycle wagons, but the wagons still felt seriously outdated and slow.
- pytester 8y agoThe lobby power of the automotive industry and real estate is underrated in the United States. In China the CCP can and will steamroll over objections from both.