throwawaynay says >"It's easier to travel through Europe than through the US and we're like 40 different countries...." Certainly public transportation in USA

throwawaynay says >"It's easier to travel through Europe than through the US and we're like 40 different countries...." Certainly public transportation in USA lags Europe but there's no need to overstate the case. <sarcasm>It only took two world wars and innumerable smaller wars before that to get "Europe" to the point where it has "300km/h" trains.</sarcasm> BTW I question the "300km/h" number: Only a few trains in Europe travel at that speed. Most trains in Europe are 10X slower. Many I could outrun on foot and many more on a bike. As for "environmentally friendly" I remember when many European trains' toilets dumped fecal matter directly onto the space between the tracks (or do they still?). I'm still careful walking around railroad yards in Europe: one stumble and I could scratch my leg and catch God-knows-what from a 1970s-era Algerian turd dropped on the rails. "Railroad system as waste processing facility" comes to mind as a topic.