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I would honestly pay significantly higher taxes if we could get Swiss-quality train service in parts of the US (and especially if they have good internet). Whe

I would honestly pay significantly higher taxes if we could get Swiss-quality train service in parts of the US (and especially if they have good internet). When I traveled Boston to NY in the past, compare my flight experience vs Amtrak. Flight: - Take $25 Uber to airport and get there 1 hour early to go through security and wait. - Fly to JFK (1h 20m) - land, wait to get off, go through terminal again, then take $50 Uber to Manhattan (or $20 via public transit but god forbid you are even slightly confused about transfers). Train: - Take the Red Line to South Station, getting there 15 minutes early - Take a 4 hour train to Penn Station, with essentially a full desk, no real baggage limitation, freedom to walk around, and good wifi. - Walk outside into Manhattan Admittedly, I took the Acela, which is business class, but almost all comparisons hold true for the NE Regional except you'd have to tether your own connection and it's a bit more crowded. The main thing is that this 4 hour chunk of time is uninterrupted by checkpoints and transfers and whatever else. It's relaxing rather than stressful. People tell me the reasons that everything is more expensive than in Switzerland is because (a) the US is bigger, so infrastructure cost more [and flights scale easier], (b) the US is bigger, so city-to-city distances eat more of day up, or (c) labor unions make costs higher. But is (b) a real problem if you can work on the train? And I don't really get (c).

jeffbee 6y ago
You wouldn't even need to pay higher taxes. The American system of private cars on public roads is dramatically more expensive than the Swiss train system.
- jdminhbg 6y ago
  The American train system is also drastically more expensive than the Swiss train system.
  - toomuchtodo 6y ago
    Cheaper to just move to Switzerland.
    - vhiremath4 6y ago
      ^ Ok I LOL'd at this entire thread
  - ubanholzer 6y ago
    You must be jokin‘. Switzerland paid 11.2 billion in 2016. that would be 600 billions compared in US. But US invested 25.9 in 2016. Switzerland moved all trucks to the rails to get more capacity on the streets (successfully). So this investments paid out. Fewer traffic = fewer stressed people = more productivity = fewer lost hours
    - jdminhbg 6y ago
      They invested more, which is not the same as it costing more.
  - PTOB 6y ago
    This is true. The USA has over 10x the population and 238x the land area. A national train system = dollar amounts that the human mind can't really grasp.
    - jeffbee 6y ago
      That is not the reason because if it were, there would be Switzerland-sized bits of the US with Swiss-esque rail service, and there are not. For example, LA County is more populous and five times as dense as Switzerland, but has essentially no rail service of which to boast. It's just a land use choice we are making: we can either have compact urban forms easily served by rail, or distributed forms that are impossible to serve.
      - _-___________-_ 6y ago
        I’m not sure that it’s the sprawl either. Many European cities with large suburban areas around them and nearby smaller towns that have effectively become part of them (e.g. Milano) have frequent local/regional rail service out to all the suburbs and associated towns.
        ajmurmann 6y ago
        I wonder if US sprawl is still structurally different from European sprawl. In Europe even suburban areas seem more likely to have a small mixed-user core on which residents can easily walk to a train stop. The US seems to frequently deter that with zoning dividing residential and commercial areas
        jeffbee 6y ago
        You either arrange your town so everyone can walk to the rail station, or you end up with Los Angeles. My favorite example is the Swiss city Chur. This negligibly-populated, irrelevant little town, which is 4% the size of San Francisco, has a 12-track rail station that is much better than the one that San Francisco plans to have by 2050. And, of course, the trains come constantly. In the next hour Bahnhof Chur will enjoy the arrival of 13 trains, and that's their pre-dawn service!
- deleted 6y ago
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whimsicalism 6y ago
For anywhere further than Boston -> NY, the flight is considerably cheaper though.
- pansinghkoder 6y ago
  SF-LA SF-Sacramento SF-Tahoe SF-Napa SEA-PDX Austin-Dallas-Houston LA-Las Vegas-Phoenix-Tucson And I am not talking snail Amtrak 70 mph train. I am suggesting 150 mph that runs in most Europe. What is holding US back in public transport?
  - macspoofing 6y ago
    >What is holding US back in public transport? Rail freight transport. What is holding Europe in rail freight transport? Passenger rail. You choose one or the other. Personally I think America made (or fell into) the correct decision.
    - pansinghkoder 6y ago
      Can you share some article to back up your facts? All I could find here is, american freight trains are longer and run over a longer distance. : https://www.freightwaves.com/news/railroad/us-and-european-freight-railroads-are-on-different-tracks#:~:text=In%20the%20U.S.%2C%20freight%20trains,than%20one%2Dhalf%20mile).&text=For%20these%20reasons%2C%20the%20cost,the%20U.S.%20than%20in%20Europe https://www.freightwaves.com/news/railroad/us-and-european-f.... After living next to train tracks in SF (for 7 yrs) and in PDX for (over 2 yrs) I can tell you that train tracks traffic is not even 10% of Euro cities like Stuttgart, Rotterdam let alone Berlin or Paris. If traffic(freight+passenger)US is roughly equal to traffic(freight+passenger)EU then, the tracks should be equally busy no?
      - likpok 6y ago
        Here's something written for non-industry people: https://www.economist.com/briefing/2010/07/22/high-speed-railroading https://www.economist.com/briefing/2010/07/22/high-speed-rai... Your article notes that rail freight costs are much lower in the US (for shippers), while profitability is high. That suggests that the US rail network is... good for freight? I don't know about Portland, but SF has almost no freight traffic. The caltrain tracks don't go anywhere (what are you going to do with a thousand containers at 4th and King?)
maccard 6y ago
I'm in Edinburgh and have travelled to London fairly frequently. It's a £30 uber to the airport, arrive 2 hours early, £20 for a flight, and £25 for the Heathrow express. The other option is the train, it's 4.5 hours, comfortable, but costs £250. It's a much nicer journey, but regularly much more expensive.
- jagger27 6y ago
  £20 for a flight is so, so foreign as a Canadian. Domestic flights here are easily 10x that on a good day. In the before times, it was pretty much the same price to get a last minute VIA train ticket or a Porter flight between Ottawa and Toronto. If you’re lucky, early, or a student, you can get a train ticket quite a bit cheaper.
  - Symbiote 6y ago
    For an overview of these super-cheap flights, see the Ryanair website: https://www.ryanair.com/ie/en/plan-trip/explore/getaways https://www.ryanair.com/ie/en/plan-trip/explore/getaways Even some quite long -- for Europe -- flights, like 4½ hours for Dublin to Athens, are just €20. Some shorter ones are €10. (This only includes a fairly small cabin bag, put under the seat in front. The service level is roughly equivalent to a cheap intercity bus.)
    - rsynnott 6y ago
      > are just €20 Well, they are for some tickets. Ryanair (like any airline, and indeed train line) is heavily dependent on people booking late and paying much, much more.
  - cmdshiftf4 6y ago
    >so, so foreign as a Canadian Canada, as a whole, is an absolute rip-off. There is virtually nothing you can point to in the country and remark that it's a good deal when compared to the prices offered in America or most areas of Europe. High food costs, high booze costs, high communications costs, high transport costs, high taxes etc., combined with low salaries, is incredibly bleak.
nhf 6y ago
One interesting thing about the Swiss system is they've prioritized reliable connectivity and frequent service over high-speed service. They do have some higher speed rail, but nothing even as fast as their neighbors in France or Germany. I feel like we have a thing for high speed rail here in the US as an aspirational goal, but maybe we should be aiming for reliable regional connectivity as a first step. Austin to San Antonio, Dallas to OKC, an electrified/more frequent SF to Sacramento - all of that could make a huge dent in local travel patterns.
- est31 6y ago
  TBH considering their mountainous terrain, already the lower speeds they achieve are quite a feat of engineering. Meanwhile a small storm upends most of Germany's rail network for a long time because they let trees grow close to the rails...
  - bserge 6y ago
    Leaves on the tracks is no joke, I found those Network Rail posters pretty amusing :) https://www.networkrailmediacentre.co.uk/news/leaves-on-the-line-its-no-joke https://www.networkrailmediacentre.co.uk/news/leaves-on-the-...
    - Multicomp 6y ago
      I am now imagining some description of brush extensions on the front of cow catchers that just take a wire brush and scrub the fire out of the track in front of the train to get leaves off the track and scrub of some of the crushed wet leaves off of it as the train goes along.
      - Symbiote 6y ago
        I think the brushes would wear out pretty quickly. They use high pressure (1500 Bar!) water jets instead, and apply sand to the rails: https://www.networkrail.co.uk/stories/leaf-busting-trains-prepare-for-autumn/ https://www.networkrail.co.uk/stories/leaf-busting-trains-pr...
akerro 6y ago
Not only you need to have slightly higher taxes but also much less corrupt government at all levels!
jsu32 6y ago
I love trains and I'm a EU-born US resident, so I get it. It's a density problem though. US is super sparsely populated. Outside of the northeast corridor (DC <> NYC <> Boston) the rest is too spread out with few exceptions to support train service. The US highway system is like spaghetti for good reason.
- macspoofing 6y ago
  >It's a density problem though. If you want to take a train to Idaho from Boston, sure, but nobody would do that. And for NY->Boston, it's plenty dense. Freight traffic is miles ahead in American than in Europe, and is always prioritized over passenger trains - that's the reason.
  - teclordphrack2 6y ago
    As far as Amtrak is concerned the laws say that they are to take precedent over freight BUT that is not what happens on a regular basis. The rail owners never get in trouble for it.
  - DiogenesKynikos 6y ago
    The NY - Boston corridor is denser than most of Western Europe.
- rsynnott 6y ago
  I don't buy this at all. California is only slightly less dense than France (and contains significant basically-empty bits that wouldn't need to be considered; if you're just looking at habitable area it's probably MORE dense than France). Compare their railway systems.
julienb_sea 6y ago
If you regularly fly, security isn't much of an issue with precheck or clear. You can also fly into newark and take path, much faster to get to downtown, or fly into laguardia and uber (ok laguardia sucks I'm not really an advocate for this). The problem with train investment is it starts to look really uninteresting for most people once the train travel time is 5+ hours. The investment in improving airport connectivity and flexibility has dramatically wider use cases and ROI versus train investment, which is notoriously expensive and realistically only going to serve a very limited set of use cases. In Europe there are more cases for trains. Density and centralization is much higher. When you build a train line in central Switzerland you are going to reach a much higher percentage of the population, justifying the investment of national resources. That is simply not the case in the United States.
- jfim 6y ago
  Even with precheck, one still has to show up at the airport earlier than a train, since boarding stops 10-15 minutes prior to departure, TSA adds at least five to ten minutes, and the terminal topology of large airports requires a long walk from the curb to the gate. For trains, even large stations don't have that long a walk, since the tracks run parallel to one another. As long as one shows up before the train pulls into the station, it's all good. As you point out, trains definitely don't replace all flights, but for some dense corridors in the US (eg. Washington-Philadelphia-NYC-Boston, Dallas-Houston, San Francisco-San Jose-Los Angeles-San Diego) high speed rail would offer a better experience (larger seats, more comfortable ride, more uninterrupted time for working) and a comparable door to door time.
macspoofing 6y ago
>People tell me the reasons that everything is more expensive than in Switzerland US is cheaper than Switzerland for pretty much any product. If you are talking about train service, then the reason for that is because US (and Canada) prioritize freight traffic. Freight traffic is much more efficient in North America than in Europe [1] and unfortunately (or fortunately) is prioritized over passenger traffic. Honestly, I think America made the better decision. [1]https://www.freightwaves.com/news/why-is-europe-so-absurdly-backward-compared-to-the-u-s-in-rail-freight-transport https://www.freightwaves.com/news/why-is-europe-so-absurdly-... "European railways had no incentive to take risks to re-engineer and spend billions of euros to increase clearances and rework tunnel heights for double-stacked railcars, because the European railway business model was about moving passengers and not freight – the opposite of how North America dealt with its railroad system. "
- ubanholzer 6y ago
  Switzerland moved 40% of all freight traffic kilometerd to the rails too, which is really a lot. (https://www.bfs.admin.ch/bfsstatic/dam/assets/10547450/master https://www.bfs.admin.ch/bfsstatic/dam/assets/10547450/maste...)
  - macspoofing 6y ago
    You're going to have to provide some context. I don't know what you're trying to argue.
    - Symbiote 6y ago
      A 40% share of tonne-km by rail in Switzerland is similar to the figure for the USA. It's other European countries that have too much road freight. Note that ships are much more used in Europe. https://transportgeography.org/?page_id=1828 https://transportgeography.org/?page_id=1828
    - ubanholzer 6y ago
      Just wanted to clarify that this is not valid for the whole continent and it would work for western europe to move the traffic on rails.
wpdev_63 6y ago
The main problem with the US interstate train system is that it's run on freight train lines. Amtrak and Acela do not actually own the railway they use and they can only go a certain speed due to the grade of the track. I don't think you would be willing to pay the amount of taxes you would need to, to completely redo the railways haha. Anyways Amtrak are barely turning a profit as it is and while it would be great to have Euro quality train lines, the economics aren't there. Even in Europe they're having a hard time competing with flixbus.
- foota 6y ago
  Roads don't break even, why should we expect trains to?
  - atoombs 6y ago
    I never understand this line of thought. We invest in infrastructure to enable people to move between places, commune with one another, and trade goods. We've invested a tremendous amount in roads. Why do we expect other things like the USPS, Amtrak, etc. to generate profits when they're an expenditure in infrastructure?
    - tryptophan 6y ago
      The argument goes that if nobody is willing to pay the price for something(passenger rail), and chooses another alternative(driving), then it means that the service is not worth having and subsiding it would just be a waste of taxpayer money. Of course its not that simple, because driving is subsidized(I would prefer every road to be a toll road and get rid of the general taxes that used to go to roads)...but you get the point.
      - foota 6y ago
        I mean, the issue is I can't choose to pay for quality rail service because it doesn't exist here. I can't take HSR from e.g., Boston to NYC, SF to LA, or Seattle to Portland/Vancouver. These are all trips I would have gladly made at 100-400 dollar ticket prices in the last year.
quicklyfrozen 6y ago
I don't mind using Amtrak for business travel between Boston-NYC. Parts of the trip are pretty scenic. You can get delayed quite a bit by other rail traffic, but as you point out, you still have a table and can move around. Acela isn't much faster, but it is a lot smoother then the regional trains. But for family travel, we end up driving, as the cost for 4 people is just too high (even considering expensive NYC parking).
harry8 6y ago
Sadly I think this is a harder problem to solve than it first appears. Given all the technical obstacles and solutions the defining factor for good rail services in a country seems to be: "Does this country have a tradition of good rail services and take pride in them." Establishing that is hard. It seems really hard to make the technical solutions work without it. Japan, France, Germany, Switzerland, Spain and others, trains are great. USA, UK, Australia, Canada - not always terrible but not in the same class. It's not talent. It's not wealth, I doubt the English Language is a hinderance here...
SnowProblem 6y ago
I think if you want a high-quality train service, you should pay for it through higher fares. Saying you would pay higher taxes is sly language for saying you want to others to subsidize you.
- ckocagil 6y ago
  How are you going to privatize infrastructure? There can be no competition in big infrastructure projects. What's a competitor to do, lay a new railroad next to the existing one? This is also why fiber lines should be owned by cities and leased to ISPs.
  - _-___________-_ 6y ago
    > This is also why fiber lines should be owned by cities and leased to ISPs. In Vietnam, even in smaller cities, there are at least three different ISPs with citywide GPON FTTH. The fact that they weren’t forced to share a government lowest-common-denominator physical layer means that we are now seeing some competition around improvements to that physical layer, with one ISP offering much faster speeds made possible by incrementally improving their physical network. The others will be encouraged by competitive pressure to do the same, or maybe even do better.
- ClumsyPilot 6y ago
  We tried this "subsidise nothing" approach in britain in the 1800, people had to pay for being in jail, and for being judged. There was no public police, investigation or fire service. It was miserable, corruption was massive, streets were dangerous, and whole towns burned to the ground. Penatly for the smallest crime was death, and it didn't help. Either you accept that civilisation needs infrastructure to function, or you live like a medieval peasant.
  - GoOnThenDoTell 6y ago
    Do you happen to know where I can read more about how that came to be the situation, or is it more that it’s the default and anything else is gravy?
vmception 6y ago
Except Swiss quality train in Switzerland are used primarily as commuter and are very expensive for that
Aeolun 6y ago
> But is (b) a real problem if you can work on the train? Japan has the Shinkansen that gets you between the two major cities at 300kmph in slightly less than two hours. Nonetheless, they’re still trying to build a maglev that will do the same thing at 500kmph in 1.1 hours. I guess if you already have the convenience of working on the train, you want to do less of it. I kind of forgot what my point was.
- discordance 6y ago
  A one way ticket for Tokyo to Osaka (2.5 hrs, 515km) costs around $160 USD. Not that cheap, but you can turn up a few mins before the train, and if you miss it there's another one 10 minutes later.
Melting_Harps 6y ago
> I would honestly pay significantly higher taxes if we could get Swiss-quality train service in parts of the US (and especially if they have good internet). The thing is its not just the taxes you'll be paying for, its the fare on top of that. It gets really costly if its your only form of transportation, and even with a Halb-tax card it can be pretty expensive. I did it for a year while living and working in Switzerland, and the CHF was pegged to the EUR, so in certain places I just risked it and jumped the tram fare into the city, which I'm told by my friend who worked at the SBB is a bad idea as they have cameras everywhere and could 'in theory' compare it against your halbtax card ID. The SBB is super convenient and punctual, though; going to Zurich airport from just about anywhere in Switzerland is possible with nothing more than just a tram or bus ride to the nearest Bahnhof. But Switzerland is a tiny country compared to the large sprawling US. And just look at the absurdity with the train that was supposed to connect LA and and SF at $77 Billion. But having dealt with plenty of phantom last trains and having to sleep at the bahnhofs makes me paranoid, I slept at Basel bahnhof like 5 times and at Bern I must have stayed 2 times overnight in the freezing cold with several layers on. Its funny how all the youth had to have driver licensees, and no cars, and how most just got a halb-tax card from their employer or the Government to get to school or work. The costs to own and fuel a car are obscene by US standards in Switzerland too.
- vosper 6y ago
  > And just look at the absurdity with the train that was supposed to connect LA and and SF at $77 Billion The California High Speed Rail line is supposed to be 1,300km long. That's more like Paris to Budapest in distance, or another way of thinking, it's 1/3rd of the total railway length in Switzerland - imagine building that from scratch, today. But with earthquakes (and presumably, now, fires). I'm not defending it, but it's a very big project, it was never going to be cheap.
dkdk8283 6y ago
Lock stock and barrel against tax hikes. Having previously profited from a public project this kind of thinking will just legally mandate you get less money in your paycheck. There is an incredible amount of waste. Call me naive but I think it’s better to keep those dollars and save for a flight.
zelly 6y ago
With a car you can go anywhere. Who needs a train?
nemanja 6y ago
Switzerland in fact has significantly lower taxes in most cantons than most (all?) states in the U.S. I am afraid higher taxes would simply yield more mediocre Amtrak.
- jbjohns 6y ago
  Some states have 0 income tax AFAIK but it's irrelevant. Contrary to Switzerland, in the US the big tax bill (by a huge amount too) is federal.
ycombonator 6y ago
Amtrak was Biden’s baby for 40 years and Hunter was a board member. You get what you vote for.
ews 6y ago
You forgot the financial black hole that is the military. We could just stop spending trillions on endless wars and have decent infrastructure, healthcare and education as the rest of the Planet.
twblalock 6y ago
This is why I'm against increasing taxes in the USA. Europeans get more per tax dollar than we do. In the USA, we just waste the money. Europeans pay a bit more than we do, but they get a lot more back in terms of transit, health care, social safety net, etc. If our government can't use the money more efficiently, it shouldn't get even more. Last time I rode on Amtrak it was absolutely depressing. Same with Caltrain and BART. The problem is not money -- other countries do more with less money. The problem is governance.
- sneak 6y ago
  The big reason is because the US spends an amount of money equivalent to Jeff Bezos’ entire net worth (~200B USD) every 80 days on its military. Amtrak’s annual revenue is less than 4B USD. On that basis, I agree with you wholeheartedly. It would be nice to use some of that massive amount of money for infrastructure, versus funneling it to a dozen companies who exist solely to consume as much of it as possible.
  - onepointsixC 6y ago
    DOD spending is ~15% of the total budget. Blaming defense expenditure when 85% of the US total budget is not defense expenditure is an unconvincing argument.
- martinald 6y ago
  This isn't as true as you think it is. Social security is often a lot, lot better in the US than Europe. Take the UK: UK unemployment 'benefits' are around $100/week regardless of previous salary (so low compared to housing costs in many areas that it is almost pointless). US state unemployment benefits tend to be a lot higher than that. UK pensions are low - around $10,000/yr, again regardless of salary. US Social Security pensions are vastly higher.
  - twblalock 6y ago
    However, the UK government will give pensioners somewhere to live, for free. In the US they can become homeless if they do not have family to rely on.
spicyramen 6y ago
My understanding is that in the US there's a combination of issues which make high speed train impossible. 1. Very high cost to build. 2. Major airlines make most of the profits from short flights and they lobby against the construction or expansion of trains. 3. Regulations, in a state like Ca is close to imposible ti build something without state government pulling a law of _ (you fill it) protected species. Imagine if Bay Area/NYC had a European/Japanese quality trains, the house prices wouldn't be that bad
ashtonkem 6y ago
The US is bigger, which explains why we don’t have good cross-country high speed rail, but there’s no excuse for the population centers on the coasts. No matter what you want to focus on, size, density, or geography, there’s another country out there with a worse situation and a better functioning high speed rail system.
dcolkitt 6y ago
None of the disadvantages you cite are intrinsically related to flying. We don't have to build huge railways, just remove the arbitrary barriers that make air travel suck. The biggest one being the ridiculous security theatre that is the TSA. Commercial flight, even with the risk of terrorism, is far safer than land travel. If it's acceptable to let people board the Acela without going through body scanners, then there's no reason we can't do the same with JetBlue.
flexie 6y ago
As for a): That might be true for a coast to coast flight vs. a coast to coast train ride. But most travelling is not that distant. The population density in America as a hole is far smaller than in Switzerland, but the population density in NY State is almost double that in Switzerland. In fact, the population density on the US coasts, where most of the infrastructure is, is in the same range as in Europe. The cost of laying and maintaining a few train tracks over the sparsely populated US interior is not the reason it's more expensive in the US. Railroads in Switzerland are built in extremely mountainous terrain with lots of expensive tunnels etc. and in expensive urban areas.
asdfasgasdgasdg 6y ago
Slightly confused by your complaints r.e. jfk > manhattan via mass transit. You get on the LIRR and you end up in penn station. It's not the same as grand central but from a connectivity perspective it's similar. I've taken the train from Zurich airport to Zurich HB and while I recall it being fancier it's not like it's materially different (both go from point A to point B in a reasonable period of time at a reasonable cost).
ornornor 6y ago
The SBB is indeed amazing. Trains are in pristine condition, second class is first class or business class by most other countries standards, the toilets are clean and functional aboard any train I’ve ever taken with stocked water soap and paper (hello sncf, no water or soap or light even during the epidemics), the trains are ON TIME (like to the minute on time), they’re incredibly quiet, all long distance trains have internet, you get service to your seat (in first, and before the virus), the fare system is integrated between all trains and any city’s bus/streetcar (meaning you can buy one ticket for them all no matter which city you’re going from and to), and their phone application is also great. Not to mention the 165.- Halbtax card which gives you 50% off all trains and lower fares on every municipal transit system (and most mountain trains). Oh and I almost forgot the supersaver tickets which cost between 15 and 30% of a full fare if you buy up to a few days in advance for trains that are low occupancy (first class of often cheaper than second for that reason) I don’t think the « US is bigger do costs more » holds. Switzerland is incredibly mountainous and train go through countless tunnels that require significant engineering and time to build (look up the Gothard tunnel, one of the longest tunnels in the world through a mountain to connect Italian Switzerland with German Switzerland). Oh and Swiss trains go 120–200+ km/h on most of the network vs 90 tops (I think?) for US trains. Not to mention additional perks like the FAIRTIQ app where you basically get on any form of public transport in Switzerland or Lichtenstein, slide a button on your phone when you get on the first transport of your journey, and again when you get off the last, and it will automatically charge you the most advantageous and cheapest fare it can find at the end of the day (and convert to a daily ticket if that’s better because you made several trips ins city you know nothing about the bus tickets) SBB also offers services like picking up your luggage for you at home, putting them in your train for you, and delivering them to your destination. All you have to do is get on and off the train and not think about it. Or the plan where you get unlimited train for a year (1st or 2nd class) and a Tesla in every city. As in drive a Tesla from home to the train station, leave the Tesla there, get on a train, pickup another Tesla at your destination, drive it around, and return it to the station when you’re done to go back home and pick the other one back up. It’s not cheap but it’s amazing when you think about it. But any country that refuses to let the government coordinate the building and operating of the infrastructure (I.e. the network) won’t ever be able to get there. These projects are long term and cost a lot of money so it’s very hard for private companies with short term profitability horizons to make it happen.
ttul 6y ago
I'm quite sure Swiss taxes are lower than US taxes. A married person earning CHF 100,000 in Zurich with three kids will receive CHF 92,000 after tax and including the "family allowances", or thereabouts. In Washington State, a married person making $100,000/yr will take home only $83,666.
- madkat 6y ago
  And we even get a cheap health insurance :D
- TuringNYC 6y ago
  Your numbers on Washington State seem off. I dont think you are including Social Security Taxes (7.65%) https://smartasset.com/taxes/income-taxes#nyI48IDDLI https://smartasset.com/taxes/income-taxes#nyI48IDDLI Also, Washington State is atypical for the US since they dont have a state income tax. In most other states, there is an added state income tax.
  - murrayhenson 6y ago
    You could throw VAT/sales tax in there, too. In Switzerland it's absurdly low (for Europe) at 7.7%.
- red_admiral 6y ago
  Does that include mandatory health insurance though? That's effectively an extra ring-fenced tax. They're probably still lower than US taxes, but in Switzerland the difference between income after tax and actual take-home income can be significant.
- rho4 6y ago
  I'm Swiss, programming tax declaration and calculation software. Your example seems to take into account only the social security deduction. The ~92000 will indeed appear in your bank account, but at the end of the year you will have to pay income and wealth tax on that. Switzerland is one of a few countries where taxes are not automatically deducted from your salary (except for expats and some cornercases). You are responsible yourself to set aside a part of your salary because you will get a pretty hefty tax invoice after your tax declaration next year (big problem for some, as you can imagine). The 'tax return' concept doesn't exist here (again, with some exceptions).
harha 6y ago
Higher taxes won’t get stable and fast internet (or anything else being efficient) - neighboring Germany has high taxes, expensive services and very slow internet even within cities. Also the trains are notoriously unpunctual, and expensive compared to other EU countries. The cause of the internet seems to be a mix of the mobile frequency auctions that didn’t leave any money for a good network combined with low competition. The trains also have pretty bad incentives for infrastructure, eg they can have the state pay for rebuilding a line and not for maintaining it, so they wait till it breaks. The Swiss model seems to be to think of the consequences of policies before putting them in place, the lower taxes seem to be more of a result of that. (I’ve lived in all three countries, this is my impression)
- adev_ 6y ago
  > The Swiss model seems to be to think of the consequences of policies before putting them in place, the lower taxes seem to be more of a result of that. Outside of taxes, it is also a matter of political choices The Swiss took the decision to develop the train as a first transport choice nationally... Even trucks transiting through Switzerland are loaded on trains. And the result is there: They have a good network with a good service that unify the country. That a strategy totally at the opposite of what USA and many European countries chose to do in the 90's: Close as many small train lines as possible and develop road transport.
  - harha 6y ago
    I suspect the Swiss calculated that individual transportation doesn’t scale well. The US build ever bigger highways (I recall a summit at Stanford on clean energy in 2014 where some guy from McKinsey claimed that the solution to all problems is to increase highway throughout by having self driving cars closer to each other - never would it have occurred to him or anyone on the panel to replace cars with a train or bus) and Germany somehow tries to deal with their bad infrastructure choices after deciding to be car centric in favor of their car industry for many years. Edit: fun little note: I actually wanted to ask the McKinsey guy what his take on public transportation was, but wasn’t chosen for the q&a since I was sitting in the very back after I arrived late due to some issue on the Caltrain.
meerita 6y ago
The problem is that only benefits you. Most of the people would pay higher taxes so a small portion of the people appreciate the speed.
MrBuddyCasino 6y ago
> I would honestly pay significantly higher taxes if we could get Swiss-quality train service in parts of the US (and especially if they have good internet). The US lacks the required density. Trains are by far the most expensive mode of mass transport per mile, both because of infrastructure and labor cost. Labor costs are higher than eg a plane because trains go much slower! In a personal car, there are no other labor costs. The natural monopoly on the network and the ensuing lack of competition doesn't help either. Planes and electric autonomous cars are the better alternative for the US.
apexalpha 6y ago
One of the biggest improvements is absolutely free to do (by Congress). Give passenger rail priority. No where in the Western world does a passenger train have to give way to a freight train. It' s always the other way around. Except in the US. In the US when freight companies are late they make passenger trains wait. They can do this because they own the track. But with a presidential stroke of a pen many delays in Amtrak can be resolved in one go.
- mamon 6y ago
  Since freight companies own the tracks the only way to do it would be if government bought them, which I assume would cost hundreds billions of dollars. Just passing a bill giving passenger trains priority would be unconstitutional because it would interfere with property rights of the owner.
ThePhysicist 6y ago
It's hard to understand for me why there even isn't any high-speed train service between large metropolitan areas in the US. As an example, in 2016 I took the train from New York to Montreal. The distance is only about 600 km, but the train ride took almost 12 hours! Part of that was due to the border checks of course, but even during the part in the States the train tucked along really slowly and had to stop multiple times to let cargo trains pass (which have priority over passenger trains it seems). In Europe, I also regularly took the train from Saarbrücken to Paris, which is not that different in terms of distance (around 500-550 km depending how you count) and takes just 1 hour 45 minutes. The great thing about Switzerland is their 30 minute schedule btw: Trains are scheduled so they arrive around 5 minutes before half in all major train stations, and depart around 5 minutes after half again, so that you can hop from one train to another with less than 10 minutes delay (and trains are on time in Switzerland). They're already planning to change those intervals to 15 minutes, which would basically turn Switzerland into one giant metropolitan area, with train schedules that feel more like subway connections.
- mschuster91 6y ago
  > which have priority over passenger trains it seems Historical reason: the rails were built by freight companies and not by the government like in most of Europe. For them, passenger trains are, at best, an afterthought that doesn't matter.
  - fergbrain 6y ago
    Specifically the freight companies own the lines and prioritize their own freight trains above passenger service.
    - thu2111 6y ago
      And even more specifically, this means the US moves a lot more stuff by rail freight than in Europe, where the rail freight industry is sickly and dying.
      - 6y ago
DrBazza 6y ago
> (a) the US is bigger, so infrastructure cost more [and flights scale easier], In Europe at least, it's quite densely populated (relative to the US), so the land costs for building new railways is incredibly expensive. In the UK, more and more miles of track are being buried in tunnels (the High Speed 1 line has 3 of the top ten longest tunnels in the UK), and HS2 add to that. In the US, you have thousands of square miles of empty land where you can just run a straight line 200mph train through it. I don't think US politicians realise how transformational it would be to the economy to join up East coast cities and West coast cities with high speed rail. I suppose the airline lobby groups are keeping a lid on it. European example: the Eurostar train from London to the French Alps, door-to-door, is practically the same, if not quicker, than driving to the airport, going through customs, getting the 90 minute flight, then the transfer to the ski resort. At the same time, the train is carrying over 1000 people, vs. a plane with only 200.

jeffbee 6y ago

You wouldn't even need to pay higher taxes. The American system of private cars on public roads is dramatically more expensive than the Swiss train system.

jdminhbg 6y ago
The American train system is also drastically more expensive than the Swiss train system.
- toomuchtodo 6y ago
  Cheaper to just move to Switzerland.
  - vhiremath4 6y ago
    ^ Ok I LOL'd at this entire thread
- ubanholzer 6y ago
  You must be jokin‘. Switzerland paid 11.2 billion in 2016. that would be 600 billions compared in US. But US invested 25.9 in 2016. Switzerland moved all trucks to the rails to get more capacity on the streets (successfully). So this investments paid out. Fewer traffic = fewer stressed people = more productivity = fewer lost hours
  - jdminhbg 6y ago
    They invested more, which is not the same as it costing more.
- PTOB 6y ago
  This is true. The USA has over 10x the population and 238x the land area. A national train system = dollar amounts that the human mind can't really grasp.
  - jeffbee 6y ago
    That is not the reason because if it were, there would be Switzerland-sized bits of the US with Swiss-esque rail service, and there are not. For example, LA County is more populous and five times as dense as Switzerland, but has essentially no rail service of which to boast. It's just a land use choice we are making: we can either have compact urban forms easily served by rail, or distributed forms that are impossible to serve.
    - _-___________-_ 6y ago
      I’m not sure that it’s the sprawl either. Many European cities with large suburban areas around them and nearby smaller towns that have effectively become part of them (e.g. Milano) have frequent local/regional rail service out to all the suburbs and associated towns.
      - ajmurmann 6y ago
        I wonder if US sprawl is still structurally different from European sprawl. In Europe even suburban areas seem more likely to have a small mixed-user core on which residents can easily walk to a train stop. The US seems to frequently deter that with zoning dividing residential and commercial areas
        jeffbee 6y ago
        You either arrange your town so everyone can walk to the rail station, or you end up with Los Angeles. My favorite example is the Swiss city Chur. This negligibly-populated, irrelevant little town, which is 4% the size of San Francisco, has a 12-track rail station that is much better than the one that San Francisco plans to have by 2050. And, of course, the trains come constantly. In the next hour Bahnhof Chur will enjoy the arrival of 13 trains, and that's their pre-dawn service!
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

whimsicalism 6y ago

For anywhere further than Boston -> NY, the flight is considerably cheaper though.

pansinghkoder 6y ago
SF-LA SF-Sacramento SF-Tahoe SF-Napa SEA-PDX Austin-Dallas-Houston LA-Las Vegas-Phoenix-Tucson And I am not talking snail Amtrak 70 mph train. I am suggesting 150 mph that runs in most Europe. What is holding US back in public transport?
- macspoofing 6y ago
  >What is holding US back in public transport? Rail freight transport. What is holding Europe in rail freight transport? Passenger rail. You choose one or the other. Personally I think America made (or fell into) the correct decision.
  - pansinghkoder 6y ago
    Can you share some article to back up your facts? All I could find here is, american freight trains are longer and run over a longer distance. : https://www.freightwaves.com/news/railroad/us-and-european-freight-railroads-are-on-different-tracks#:~:text=In%20the%20U.S.%2C%20freight%20trains,than%20one%2Dhalf%20mile).&text=For%20these%20reasons%2C%20the%20cost,the%20U.S.%20than%20in%20Europe https://www.freightwaves.com/news/railroad/us-and-european-f.... After living next to train tracks in SF (for 7 yrs) and in PDX for (over 2 yrs) I can tell you that train tracks traffic is not even 10% of Euro cities like Stuttgart, Rotterdam let alone Berlin or Paris. If traffic(freight+passenger)US is roughly equal to traffic(freight+passenger)EU then, the tracks should be equally busy no?
    - likpok 6y ago
      Here's something written for non-industry people: https://www.economist.com/briefing/2010/07/22/high-speed-railroading https://www.economist.com/briefing/2010/07/22/high-speed-rai... Your article notes that rail freight costs are much lower in the US (for shippers), while profitability is high. That suggests that the US rail network is... good for freight? I don't know about Portland, but SF has almost no freight traffic. The caltrain tracks don't go anywhere (what are you going to do with a thousand containers at 4th and King?)

maccard 6y ago

I'm in Edinburgh and have travelled to London fairly frequently. It's a £30 uber to the airport, arrive 2 hours early, £20 for a flight, and £25 for the Heathrow express. The other option is the train, it's 4.5 hours, comfortable, but costs £250. It's a much nicer journey, but regularly much more expensive.

jagger27 6y ago
£20 for a flight is so, so foreign as a Canadian. Domestic flights here are easily 10x that on a good day. In the before times, it was pretty much the same price to get a last minute VIA train ticket or a Porter flight between Ottawa and Toronto. If you’re lucky, early, or a student, you can get a train ticket quite a bit cheaper.
- Symbiote 6y ago
  For an overview of these super-cheap flights, see the Ryanair website: https://www.ryanair.com/ie/en/plan-trip/explore/getaways https://www.ryanair.com/ie/en/plan-trip/explore/getaways Even some quite long -- for Europe -- flights, like 4½ hours for Dublin to Athens, are just €20. Some shorter ones are €10. (This only includes a fairly small cabin bag, put under the seat in front. The service level is roughly equivalent to a cheap intercity bus.)
  - rsynnott 6y ago
    > are just €20 Well, they are for some tickets. Ryanair (like any airline, and indeed train line) is heavily dependent on people booking late and paying much, much more.
- cmdshiftf4 6y ago
  >so, so foreign as a Canadian Canada, as a whole, is an absolute rip-off. There is virtually nothing you can point to in the country and remark that it's a good deal when compared to the prices offered in America or most areas of Europe. High food costs, high booze costs, high communications costs, high transport costs, high taxes etc., combined with low salaries, is incredibly bleak.

nhf 6y ago

One interesting thing about the Swiss system is they've prioritized reliable connectivity and frequent service over high-speed service. They do have some higher speed rail, but nothing even as fast as their neighbors in France or Germany. I feel like we have a thing for high speed rail here in the US as an aspirational goal, but maybe we should be aiming for reliable regional connectivity as a first step. Austin to San Antonio, Dallas to OKC, an electrified/more frequent SF to Sacramento - all of that could make a huge dent in local travel patterns.

est31 6y ago
TBH considering their mountainous terrain, already the lower speeds they achieve are quite a feat of engineering. Meanwhile a small storm upends most of Germany's rail network for a long time because they let trees grow close to the rails...
- bserge 6y ago
  Leaves on the tracks is no joke, I found those Network Rail posters pretty amusing :) https://www.networkrailmediacentre.co.uk/news/leaves-on-the-line-its-no-joke https://www.networkrailmediacentre.co.uk/news/leaves-on-the-...
  - Multicomp 6y ago
    I am now imagining some description of brush extensions on the front of cow catchers that just take a wire brush and scrub the fire out of the track in front of the train to get leaves off the track and scrub of some of the crushed wet leaves off of it as the train goes along.
    - Symbiote 6y ago
      I think the brushes would wear out pretty quickly. They use high pressure (1500 Bar!) water jets instead, and apply sand to the rails: https://www.networkrail.co.uk/stories/leaf-busting-trains-prepare-for-autumn/ https://www.networkrail.co.uk/stories/leaf-busting-trains-pr...

akerro 6y ago

Not only you need to have slightly higher taxes but also much less corrupt government at all levels!

jsu32 6y ago

I love trains and I'm a EU-born US resident, so I get it. It's a density problem though. US is super sparsely populated. Outside of the northeast corridor (DC <> NYC <> Boston) the rest is too spread out with few exceptions to support train service. The US highway system is like spaghetti for good reason.

macspoofing 6y ago
>It's a density problem though. If you want to take a train to Idaho from Boston, sure, but nobody would do that. And for NY->Boston, it's plenty dense. Freight traffic is miles ahead in American than in Europe, and is always prioritized over passenger trains - that's the reason.
- teclordphrack2 6y ago
  As far as Amtrak is concerned the laws say that they are to take precedent over freight BUT that is not what happens on a regular basis. The rail owners never get in trouble for it.
- DiogenesKynikos 6y ago
  The NY - Boston corridor is denser than most of Western Europe.
rsynnott 6y ago
I don't buy this at all. California is only slightly less dense than France (and contains significant basically-empty bits that wouldn't need to be considered; if you're just looking at habitable area it's probably MORE dense than France). Compare their railway systems.

julienb_sea 6y ago

If you regularly fly, security isn't much of an issue with precheck or clear. You can also fly into newark and take path, much faster to get to downtown, or fly into laguardia and uber (ok laguardia sucks I'm not really an advocate for this). The problem with train investment is it starts to look really uninteresting for most people once the train travel time is 5+ hours. The investment in improving airport connectivity and flexibility has dramatically wider use cases and ROI versus train investment, which is notoriously expensive and realistically only going to serve a very limited set of use cases. In Europe there are more cases for trains. Density and centralization is much higher. When you build a train line in central Switzerland you are going to reach a much higher percentage of the population, justifying the investment of national resources. That is simply not the case in the United States.

jfim 6y ago
Even with precheck, one still has to show up at the airport earlier than a train, since boarding stops 10-15 minutes prior to departure, TSA adds at least five to ten minutes, and the terminal topology of large airports requires a long walk from the curb to the gate. For trains, even large stations don't have that long a walk, since the tracks run parallel to one another. As long as one shows up before the train pulls into the station, it's all good. As you point out, trains definitely don't replace all flights, but for some dense corridors in the US (eg. Washington-Philadelphia-NYC-Boston, Dallas-Houston, San Francisco-San Jose-Los Angeles-San Diego) high speed rail would offer a better experience (larger seats, more comfortable ride, more uninterrupted time for working) and a comparable door to door time.

macspoofing 6y ago

>People tell me the reasons that everything is more expensive than in Switzerland US is cheaper than Switzerland for pretty much any product. If you are talking about train service, then the reason for that is because US (and Canada) prioritize freight traffic. Freight traffic is much more efficient in North America than in Europe [1] and unfortunately (or fortunately) is prioritized over passenger traffic. Honestly, I think America made the better decision. [1]https://www.freightwaves.com/news/why-is-europe-so-absurdly-backward-compared-to-the-u-s-in-rail-freight-transport https://www.freightwaves.com/news/why-is-europe-so-absurdly-... "European railways had no incentive to take risks to re-engineer and spend billions of euros to increase clearances and rework tunnel heights for double-stacked railcars, because the European railway business model was about moving passengers and not freight – the opposite of how North America dealt with its railroad system. "

ubanholzer 6y ago
Switzerland moved 40% of all freight traffic kilometerd to the rails too, which is really a lot. (https://www.bfs.admin.ch/bfsstatic/dam/assets/10547450/master https://www.bfs.admin.ch/bfsstatic/dam/assets/10547450/maste...)
- macspoofing 6y ago
  You're going to have to provide some context. I don't know what you're trying to argue.
  - Symbiote 6y ago
    A 40% share of tonne-km by rail in Switzerland is similar to the figure for the USA. It's other European countries that have too much road freight. Note that ships are much more used in Europe. https://transportgeography.org/?page_id=1828 https://transportgeography.org/?page_id=1828
  - ubanholzer 6y ago
    Just wanted to clarify that this is not valid for the whole continent and it would work for western europe to move the traffic on rails.

wpdev_63 6y ago

The main problem with the US interstate train system is that it's run on freight train lines. Amtrak and Acela do not actually own the railway they use and they can only go a certain speed due to the grade of the track. I don't think you would be willing to pay the amount of taxes you would need to, to completely redo the railways haha. Anyways Amtrak are barely turning a profit as it is and while it would be great to have Euro quality train lines, the economics aren't there. Even in Europe they're having a hard time competing with flixbus.

foota 6y ago
Roads don't break even, why should we expect trains to?
- atoombs 6y ago
  I never understand this line of thought. We invest in infrastructure to enable people to move between places, commune with one another, and trade goods. We've invested a tremendous amount in roads. Why do we expect other things like the USPS, Amtrak, etc. to generate profits when they're an expenditure in infrastructure?
  - tryptophan 6y ago
    The argument goes that if nobody is willing to pay the price for something(passenger rail), and chooses another alternative(driving), then it means that the service is not worth having and subsiding it would just be a waste of taxpayer money. Of course its not that simple, because driving is subsidized(I would prefer every road to be a toll road and get rid of the general taxes that used to go to roads)...but you get the point.
    - foota 6y ago
      I mean, the issue is I can't choose to pay for quality rail service because it doesn't exist here. I can't take HSR from e.g., Boston to NYC, SF to LA, or Seattle to Portland/Vancouver. These are all trips I would have gladly made at 100-400 dollar ticket prices in the last year.

quicklyfrozen 6y ago

I don't mind using Amtrak for business travel between Boston-NYC. Parts of the trip are pretty scenic. You can get delayed quite a bit by other rail traffic, but as you point out, you still have a table and can move around. Acela isn't much faster, but it is a lot smoother then the regional trains. But for family travel, we end up driving, as the cost for 4 people is just too high (even considering expensive NYC parking).

harry8 6y ago

Sadly I think this is a harder problem to solve than it first appears. Given all the technical obstacles and solutions the defining factor for good rail services in a country seems to be: "Does this country have a tradition of good rail services and take pride in them." Establishing that is hard. It seems really hard to make the technical solutions work without it. Japan, France, Germany, Switzerland, Spain and others, trains are great. USA, UK, Australia, Canada - not always terrible but not in the same class. It's not talent. It's not wealth, I doubt the English Language is a hinderance here...

SnowProblem 6y ago

I think if you want a high-quality train service, you should pay for it through higher fares. Saying you would pay higher taxes is sly language for saying you want to others to subsidize you.

ckocagil 6y ago
How are you going to privatize infrastructure? There can be no competition in big infrastructure projects. What's a competitor to do, lay a new railroad next to the existing one? This is also why fiber lines should be owned by cities and leased to ISPs.
- _-___________-_ 6y ago
  > This is also why fiber lines should be owned by cities and leased to ISPs. In Vietnam, even in smaller cities, there are at least three different ISPs with citywide GPON FTTH. The fact that they weren’t forced to share a government lowest-common-denominator physical layer means that we are now seeing some competition around improvements to that physical layer, with one ISP offering much faster speeds made possible by incrementally improving their physical network. The others will be encouraged by competitive pressure to do the same, or maybe even do better.
ClumsyPilot 6y ago
We tried this "subsidise nothing" approach in britain in the 1800, people had to pay for being in jail, and for being judged. There was no public police, investigation or fire service. It was miserable, corruption was massive, streets were dangerous, and whole towns burned to the ground. Penatly for the smallest crime was death, and it didn't help. Either you accept that civilisation needs infrastructure to function, or you live like a medieval peasant.
- GoOnThenDoTell 6y ago
  Do you happen to know where I can read more about how that came to be the situation, or is it more that it’s the default and anything else is gravy?

vmception 6y ago

Except Swiss quality train in Switzerland are used primarily as commuter and are very expensive for that

Aeolun 6y ago

> But is (b) a real problem if you can work on the train? Japan has the Shinkansen that gets you between the two major cities at 300kmph in slightly less than two hours. Nonetheless, they’re still trying to build a maglev that will do the same thing at 500kmph in 1.1 hours. I guess if you already have the convenience of working on the train, you want to do less of it. I kind of forgot what my point was.

discordance 6y ago
A one way ticket for Tokyo to Osaka (2.5 hrs, 515km) costs around $160 USD. Not that cheap, but you can turn up a few mins before the train, and if you miss it there's another one 10 minutes later.

Melting_Harps 6y ago

> I would honestly pay significantly higher taxes if we could get Swiss-quality train service in parts of the US (and especially if they have good internet). The thing is its not just the taxes you'll be paying for, its the fare on top of that. It gets really costly if its your only form of transportation, and even with a Halb-tax card it can be pretty expensive. I did it for a year while living and working in Switzerland, and the CHF was pegged to the EUR, so in certain places I just risked it and jumped the tram fare into the city, which I'm told by my friend who worked at the SBB is a bad idea as they have cameras everywhere and could 'in theory' compare it against your halbtax card ID. The SBB is super convenient and punctual, though; going to Zurich airport from just about anywhere in Switzerland is possible with nothing more than just a tram or bus ride to the nearest Bahnhof. But Switzerland is a tiny country compared to the large sprawling US. And just look at the absurdity with the train that was supposed to connect LA and and SF at $77 Billion. But having dealt with plenty of phantom last trains and having to sleep at the bahnhofs makes me paranoid, I slept at Basel bahnhof like 5 times and at Bern I must have stayed 2 times overnight in the freezing cold with several layers on. Its funny how all the youth had to have driver licensees, and no cars, and how most just got a halb-tax card from their employer or the Government to get to school or work. The costs to own and fuel a car are obscene by US standards in Switzerland too.

vosper 6y ago
> And just look at the absurdity with the train that was supposed to connect LA and and SF at $77 Billion The California High Speed Rail line is supposed to be 1,300km long. That's more like Paris to Budapest in distance, or another way of thinking, it's 1/3rd of the total railway length in Switzerland - imagine building that from scratch, today. But with earthquakes (and presumably, now, fires). I'm not defending it, but it's a very big project, it was never going to be cheap.

dkdk8283 6y ago

Lock stock and barrel against tax hikes. Having previously profited from a public project this kind of thinking will just legally mandate you get less money in your paycheck. There is an incredible amount of waste. Call me naive but I think it’s better to keep those dollars and save for a flight.

zelly 6y ago

With a car you can go anywhere. Who needs a train?

nemanja 6y ago

Switzerland in fact has significantly lower taxes in most cantons than most (all?) states in the U.S. I am afraid higher taxes would simply yield more mediocre Amtrak.

jbjohns 6y ago
Some states have 0 income tax AFAIK but it's irrelevant. Contrary to Switzerland, in the US the big tax bill (by a huge amount too) is federal.

ycombonator 6y ago

Amtrak was Biden’s baby for 40 years and Hunter was a board member. You get what you vote for.

ews 6y ago

You forgot the financial black hole that is the military. We could just stop spending trillions on endless wars and have decent infrastructure, healthcare and education as the rest of the Planet.

twblalock 6y ago

This is why I'm against increasing taxes in the USA. Europeans get more per tax dollar than we do. In the USA, we just waste the money. Europeans pay a bit more than we do, but they get a lot more back in terms of transit, health care, social safety net, etc. If our government can't use the money more efficiently, it shouldn't get even more. Last time I rode on Amtrak it was absolutely depressing. Same with Caltrain and BART. The problem is not money -- other countries do more with less money. The problem is governance.

sneak 6y ago
The big reason is because the US spends an amount of money equivalent to Jeff Bezos’ entire net worth (~200B USD) every 80 days on its military. Amtrak’s annual revenue is less than 4B USD. On that basis, I agree with you wholeheartedly. It would be nice to use some of that massive amount of money for infrastructure, versus funneling it to a dozen companies who exist solely to consume as much of it as possible.
- onepointsixC 6y ago
  DOD spending is ~15% of the total budget. Blaming defense expenditure when 85% of the US total budget is not defense expenditure is an unconvincing argument.
martinald 6y ago
This isn't as true as you think it is. Social security is often a lot, lot better in the US than Europe. Take the UK: UK unemployment 'benefits' are around $100/week regardless of previous salary (so low compared to housing costs in many areas that it is almost pointless). US state unemployment benefits tend to be a lot higher than that. UK pensions are low - around $10,000/yr, again regardless of salary. US Social Security pensions are vastly higher.
- twblalock 6y ago
  However, the UK government will give pensioners somewhere to live, for free. In the US they can become homeless if they do not have family to rely on.

spicyramen 6y ago

My understanding is that in the US there's a combination of issues which make high speed train impossible. 1. Very high cost to build. 2. Major airlines make most of the profits from short flights and they lobby against the construction or expansion of trains. 3. Regulations, in a state like Ca is close to imposible ti build something without state government pulling a law of _ (you fill it) protected species. Imagine if Bay Area/NYC had a European/Japanese quality trains, the house prices wouldn't be that bad

ashtonkem 6y ago

The US is bigger, which explains why we don’t have good cross-country high speed rail, but there’s no excuse for the population centers on the coasts. No matter what you want to focus on, size, density, or geography, there’s another country out there with a worse situation and a better functioning high speed rail system.

dcolkitt 6y ago

None of the disadvantages you cite are intrinsically related to flying. We don't have to build huge railways, just remove the arbitrary barriers that make air travel suck. The biggest one being the ridiculous security theatre that is the TSA. Commercial flight, even with the risk of terrorism, is far safer than land travel. If it's acceptable to let people board the Acela without going through body scanners, then there's no reason we can't do the same with JetBlue.

flexie 6y ago

As for a): That might be true for a coast to coast flight vs. a coast to coast train ride. But most travelling is not that distant. The population density in America as a hole is far smaller than in Switzerland, but the population density in NY State is almost double that in Switzerland. In fact, the population density on the US coasts, where most of the infrastructure is, is in the same range as in Europe. The cost of laying and maintaining a few train tracks over the sparsely populated US interior is not the reason it's more expensive in the US. Railroads in Switzerland are built in extremely mountainous terrain with lots of expensive tunnels etc. and in expensive urban areas.

asdfasgasdgasdg 6y ago

Slightly confused by your complaints r.e. jfk > manhattan via mass transit. You get on the LIRR and you end up in penn station. It's not the same as grand central but from a connectivity perspective it's similar. I've taken the train from Zurich airport to Zurich HB and while I recall it being fancier it's not like it's materially different (both go from point A to point B in a reasonable period of time at a reasonable cost).

ornornor 6y ago

The SBB is indeed amazing. Trains are in pristine condition, second class is first class or business class by most other countries standards, the toilets are clean and functional aboard any train I’ve ever taken with stocked water soap and paper (hello sncf, no water or soap or light even during the epidemics), the trains are ON TIME (like to the minute on time), they’re incredibly quiet, all long distance trains have internet, you get service to your seat (in first, and before the virus), the fare system is integrated between all trains and any city’s bus/streetcar (meaning you can buy one ticket for them all no matter which city you’re going from and to), and their phone application is also great. Not to mention the 165.- Halbtax card which gives you 50% off all trains and lower fares on every municipal transit system (and most mountain trains). Oh and I almost forgot the supersaver tickets which cost between 15 and 30% of a full fare if you buy up to a few days in advance for trains that are low occupancy (first class of often cheaper than second for that reason) I don’t think the « US is bigger do costs more » holds. Switzerland is incredibly mountainous and train go through countless tunnels that require significant engineering and time to build (look up the Gothard tunnel, one of the longest tunnels in the world through a mountain to connect Italian Switzerland with German Switzerland). Oh and Swiss trains go 120–200+ km/h on most of the network vs 90 tops (I think?) for US trains. Not to mention additional perks like the FAIRTIQ app where you basically get on any form of public transport in Switzerland or Lichtenstein, slide a button on your phone when you get on the first transport of your journey, and again when you get off the last, and it will automatically charge you the most advantageous and cheapest fare it can find at the end of the day (and convert to a daily ticket if that’s better because you made several trips ins city you know nothing about the bus tickets) SBB also offers services like picking up your luggage for you at home, putting them in your train for you, and delivering them to your destination. All you have to do is get on and off the train and not think about it. Or the plan where you get unlimited train for a year (1st or 2nd class) and a Tesla in every city. As in drive a Tesla from home to the train station, leave the Tesla there, get on a train, pickup another Tesla at your destination, drive it around, and return it to the station when you’re done to go back home and pick the other one back up. It’s not cheap but it’s amazing when you think about it. But any country that refuses to let the government coordinate the building and operating of the infrastructure (I.e. the network) won’t ever be able to get there. These projects are long term and cost a lot of money so it’s very hard for private companies with short term profitability horizons to make it happen.

ttul 6y ago

I'm quite sure Swiss taxes are lower than US taxes. A married person earning CHF 100,000 in Zurich with three kids will receive CHF 92,000 after tax and including the "family allowances", or thereabouts. In Washington State, a married person making $100,000/yr will take home only $83,666.

madkat 6y ago
And we even get a cheap health insurance :D
TuringNYC 6y ago
Your numbers on Washington State seem off. I dont think you are including Social Security Taxes (7.65%) https://smartasset.com/taxes/income-taxes#nyI48IDDLI https://smartasset.com/taxes/income-taxes#nyI48IDDLI Also, Washington State is atypical for the US since they dont have a state income tax. In most other states, there is an added state income tax.
- murrayhenson 6y ago
  You could throw VAT/sales tax in there, too. In Switzerland it's absurdly low (for Europe) at 7.7%.
red_admiral 6y ago
Does that include mandatory health insurance though? That's effectively an extra ring-fenced tax. They're probably still lower than US taxes, but in Switzerland the difference between income after tax and actual take-home income can be significant.
rho4 6y ago
I'm Swiss, programming tax declaration and calculation software. Your example seems to take into account only the social security deduction. The ~92000 will indeed appear in your bank account, but at the end of the year you will have to pay income and wealth tax on that. Switzerland is one of a few countries where taxes are not automatically deducted from your salary (except for expats and some cornercases). You are responsible yourself to set aside a part of your salary because you will get a pretty hefty tax invoice after your tax declaration next year (big problem for some, as you can imagine). The 'tax return' concept doesn't exist here (again, with some exceptions).

harha 6y ago

Higher taxes won’t get stable and fast internet (or anything else being efficient) - neighboring Germany has high taxes, expensive services and very slow internet even within cities. Also the trains are notoriously unpunctual, and expensive compared to other EU countries. The cause of the internet seems to be a mix of the mobile frequency auctions that didn’t leave any money for a good network combined with low competition. The trains also have pretty bad incentives for infrastructure, eg they can have the state pay for rebuilding a line and not for maintaining it, so they wait till it breaks. The Swiss model seems to be to think of the consequences of policies before putting them in place, the lower taxes seem to be more of a result of that. (I’ve lived in all three countries, this is my impression)

adev_ 6y ago
> The Swiss model seems to be to think of the consequences of policies before putting them in place, the lower taxes seem to be more of a result of that. Outside of taxes, it is also a matter of political choices The Swiss took the decision to develop the train as a first transport choice nationally... Even trucks transiting through Switzerland are loaded on trains. And the result is there: They have a good network with a good service that unify the country. That a strategy totally at the opposite of what USA and many European countries chose to do in the 90's: Close as many small train lines as possible and develop road transport.
- harha 6y ago
  I suspect the Swiss calculated that individual transportation doesn’t scale well. The US build ever bigger highways (I recall a summit at Stanford on clean energy in 2014 where some guy from McKinsey claimed that the solution to all problems is to increase highway throughout by having self driving cars closer to each other - never would it have occurred to him or anyone on the panel to replace cars with a train or bus) and Germany somehow tries to deal with their bad infrastructure choices after deciding to be car centric in favor of their car industry for many years. Edit: fun little note: I actually wanted to ask the McKinsey guy what his take on public transportation was, but wasn’t chosen for the q&a since I was sitting in the very back after I arrived late due to some issue on the Caltrain.

meerita 6y ago

The problem is that only benefits you. Most of the people would pay higher taxes so a small portion of the people appreciate the speed.

MrBuddyCasino 6y ago

> I would honestly pay significantly higher taxes if we could get Swiss-quality train service in parts of the US (and especially if they have good internet). The US lacks the required density. Trains are by far the most expensive mode of mass transport per mile, both because of infrastructure and labor cost. Labor costs are higher than eg a plane because trains go much slower! In a personal car, there are no other labor costs. The natural monopoly on the network and the ensuing lack of competition doesn't help either. Planes and electric autonomous cars are the better alternative for the US.

apexalpha 6y ago

One of the biggest improvements is absolutely free to do (by Congress). Give passenger rail priority. No where in the Western world does a passenger train have to give way to a freight train. It' s always the other way around. Except in the US. In the US when freight companies are late they make passenger trains wait. They can do this because they own the track. But with a presidential stroke of a pen many delays in Amtrak can be resolved in one go.

mamon 6y ago
Since freight companies own the tracks the only way to do it would be if government bought them, which I assume would cost hundreds billions of dollars. Just passing a bill giving passenger trains priority would be unconstitutional because it would interfere with property rights of the owner.

ThePhysicist 6y ago

It's hard to understand for me why there even isn't any high-speed train service between large metropolitan areas in the US. As an example, in 2016 I took the train from New York to Montreal. The distance is only about 600 km, but the train ride took almost 12 hours! Part of that was due to the border checks of course, but even during the part in the States the train tucked along really slowly and had to stop multiple times to let cargo trains pass (which have priority over passenger trains it seems). In Europe, I also regularly took the train from Saarbrücken to Paris, which is not that different in terms of distance (around 500-550 km depending how you count) and takes just 1 hour 45 minutes. The great thing about Switzerland is their 30 minute schedule btw: Trains are scheduled so they arrive around 5 minutes before half in all major train stations, and depart around 5 minutes after half again, so that you can hop from one train to another with less than 10 minutes delay (and trains are on time in Switzerland). They're already planning to change those intervals to 15 minutes, which would basically turn Switzerland into one giant metropolitan area, with train schedules that feel more like subway connections.

mschuster91 6y ago
> which have priority over passenger trains it seems Historical reason: the rails were built by freight companies and not by the government like in most of Europe. For them, passenger trains are, at best, an afterthought that doesn't matter.
- fergbrain 6y ago
  Specifically the freight companies own the lines and prioritize their own freight trains above passenger service.
  - thu2111 6y ago
    And even more specifically, this means the US moves a lot more stuff by rail freight than in Europe, where the rail freight industry is sickly and dying.
    - 6y ago

DrBazza 6y ago

> (a) the US is bigger, so infrastructure cost more [and flights scale easier], In Europe at least, it's quite densely populated (relative to the US), so the land costs for building new railways is incredibly expensive. In the UK, more and more miles of track are being buried in tunnels (the High Speed 1 line has 3 of the top ten longest tunnels in the UK), and HS2 add to that. In the US, you have thousands of square miles of empty land where you can just run a straight line 200mph train through it. I don't think US politicians realise how transformational it would be to the economy to join up East coast cities and West coast cities with high speed rail. I suppose the airline lobby groups are keeping a lid on it. European example: the Eurostar train from London to the French Alps, door-to-door, is practically the same, if not quicker, than driving to the airport, going through customs, getting the 90 minute flight, then the transfer to the ski resort. At the same time, the train is carrying over 1000 people, vs. a plane with only 200.