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> If Amtrak went that direction and made its transportation close to free, I wonder if we'd see more people try it out My understanding is that in north Americ

> If Amtrak went that direction and made its transportation close to free, I wonder if we'd see more people try it out My understanding is that in north America the big problem with passenger rail is less cost and more the fact that there's a bias towards freight in track right of ways. Even if you're willing and happy to pay a lot to travel by train, scheduling is still likely to be screwed up somewhere by a big ass freight train in the way and there's nothing you can do about it. Edit to add after a double check: I guess in the US it's technically the law that passengers be given priority but it's poorly (or just not) enforced[1]. [1] https://www.amtrak.com/content/dam/projects/dotcom/english/public/documents/corporate/HostRailroadReports/mythbusters-enforcing-amtraks-legal-right-to-preference.pdf https://www.amtrak.com/content/dam/projects/dotcom/english/p...

notatoad 4y ago
this is a chicken-and-egg problem. our railways prioritize freight because that's the customer that actually uses the system. as long as passengers are rare, there's no reason to prioritize them. if passenger trains were actually a critical part of the transportation network, i'm sure we'd stop letting freight pre-empt them.
- ericd 4y ago
  Aren’t the tracks owned by the companies that run the freight trains, rather than Amtrak?
  - notatoad 4y ago
    yes. and one of the ways to stop letting freight trains preempt passenger trains would be for amtrak to build their own tracks. but as long as amtrack has to rely on operating revenue for that sort of project, it's never going to happen because they can't attract enough customers.
    - closeparen 4y ago
      Build their own tracks where? Through and adjacent to both natural environments and people's homes. The America where you could do that kind of thing is long gone.
- andbberger 4y ago
- feet 4y ago
  Passengers are rare? Most times when I've taken Amtrak, its packed
  - stephenhuey 4y ago
    I've only seen that in the northeast. Don't think you'll see much of that riding from Houston to Chicago or heading out west! Edit: While I haven't ridden trains in every corner of the USA, the best I saw were in the northeast, and I did have a nice ride from Seattle to Portland once, but in middle America you almost never hear of someone riding a train (my grandmother rode them in Texas in the 1930s and a buddy of mine took the 24-hour trip from Texas to Illinois one time, but those are the only stories I have personally heard around here).
    - feet 4y ago
      The Midwest is what I am directly referencing
    - pessimizer 4y ago
      I've started and ended 100 Amtrak trips in Chicago. The train is one of the reasons Chicago (and Memphis) exists.
  - ben_w 4y ago
    That tells you the ratio of train seats to train passengers, not the ratio of train passengers to other transport users, nor the ratio of spending on train conveyances for human passengers versus cargo.
  - tablespoon 4y ago
    > Passengers are rare? Most times when I've taken Amtrak, its packed Certainly compared to other modes in most circumstances. If, on a particular route, there's one train a week and 100 planes a day, the train can still be packed while "train passengers" are still rare. IIRC, Amtrak was created because the railroads were losing money on passenger traffic and wanted to get rid of the service. I imagine that's because the service had a lot more competitors than it did in rail's heyday.
Stevvo 4y ago
That sounds like the perfect situation for high speed rail; take the passengers off the slow rails completely freeing them up for freight. The high speed lines themselves would be massive loss leaders financed by the freight. Possible and done in other countries, but less feasible in the US because many existing lines are privately owned.
- novok 4y ago
  You can make a targeted tax to get something financially equivalent. Politically popular although? Probably not. Americans really really love their cars & suburbs and would also get angry at everything getting more expensive due to higher freight costs.
- SoftTalker 4y ago
  New-terrain high speed rail lines would be a tremendous expense.
bogomipz 4y ago
That bias is correct, at least outside of the North East corridor. Amtrak owns most of the track in the North East Corridor which incidentally is the only place it is profitable. Outside of this corridor the tracks are mostly owned by 5 railroads [1]. Passenger rail is supposed to have priority as Amtrak was the entity created in order to relieve railroads from being required to provide passenger service. This however is an area of a lot of friction. For a recent example of this mess see" https://www.washingtonpost.com/transportation/2022/07/06/amtrak-expansion-freight-rails/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/transportation/2022/07/06/amt... [1] https://soundingmaps.com/the-largest-railroads-in-us/ https://soundingmaps.com/the-largest-railroads-in-us/
itronitron 4y ago
I've ridden Amtrak a few times on different routes, TX to CA as a child, midwest to DC as a student, and northeast to southeast (NE corridor +) with a pregnant wife. The main issue with train travel in the US is that many passengers are going to need a car when they reach their destination. If I could pick one major rail investment for the US it would be to follow I-95 from Florida to New England. There is a lot of commute and vacation traffic along that interstate (I-95) that can be stressful and people would probably happily move over to Amtrak if the service guarantees are good.
- alar44 4y ago
  I'd say the biggest issue is that trains are slow as fuck. If I take a plane I can get to either coast in a few hours from the Midwest. A train will take 1-2 days.
  - mschuster91 4y ago
    There's no way to make a coast-to-coast trip in the US as fast as a plane ever. It's like, what, 4500km? Even with the fastest regular passenger train in the world which runs at 350 km/h, this will be a 12 hour trip and that's not including the time the train will spend below that speed e.g. for stops. Compared to that, your average Airbus A380 hits 900 km/h as regular cruise speed, rendering that into a much better 5 hour trip. Not to say high-speed rail doesn't have its uses - by far not, the chief one being replacing flights < 2 hours - but anything above the 2 hour flight time is better kept served by plane. [1] https://edition.cnn.com/travel/article/worlds-fastest-trains-cmd/index.html https://edition.cnn.com/travel/article/worlds-fastest-trains...
    - Macha 4y ago
      I'd say the cut off time is more like four hours, with the delays incurred by airport security and the fact that airports are huge and therefore more likely to be located further out from city centres.
      - 4y ago
konschubert 4y ago
And I think that's the right choice, if a choice is needed. Much more impactful to get the trucks off the roads than the cars.
- Macha 4y ago
  Per road vehicle. But 1 train car fits what, 1.5 trucks worth of cargo? Versus 20-30 passengers. Is it better to eliminate 2 truck trips or 10+ personal car trips?
  - konschubert 4y ago
    If you look at the wear and tear on the roads, then 30 passenger cars are much better than two trucks. If you look at emissions, I guess this is a pretty close one, too. And since so much freight is already on the rail in the US, this is the much easier fruit to pick.
  - SoftTalker 4y ago
    An intermodal train car with double-stacked containers will replace 4 trucks. Even a traditional box car or grain hopper is much larger volume than a standard semi trailer.
aaomidi 4y ago
Amtrak is more expensive than flights majority of the time.
- smegger001 4y ago
  And Amtrak is often more expensive than car travel. I posted this last time it came up a few days ago but it bares repeating here; >I wish the train was more economical then I could take the train more but it is not economical (on the west coast of the US). I live approx half way between Seattle WA and Portland OR and there is a train station within walking distance of my home. Every time I have checked the price of a Amtrak ticket to either city it was significantly cheaper to drive and pay for parking then to buy a single train ticket.
  - remram 4y ago
    Forget driving your car, on some routes Amtrak is slower and more expensive than Uber (for two people, not even considering the fact that you pick your time and get dropped at your door)
- tbran 4y ago
  For others reading this, this not entirely accurate. Amtrak seems to sell seats in price bundles. Practically, if you're looking for a trip at a particular time and day, you'll find that seat prices will vary as bundles are sold through. To find a cheaper seat I: - Buy either a several weeks OR a few days before my trip. - Tend to travel Tues-Thursday. - Check repeatedly for a few days if I don't see the price I want. I travel a lot on the Northeast corridor and found that I can usually get a ticket for $25-30 that can be as high as $60-$120. Amtrak is 1000x better than driving for me because: - Free wifi and power at every seat. - Roomy seats and tons of legroom. - Zero security. - Quiet car. - Huge free baggage allowances. - No traffic. I love Amtrak. Definitely better than flying for these trips.
  - aaomidi 4y ago
    Find me a comparable Amtrak to a plane going to Florida from Pennsylvania. The one tiny route you have is effectively the only place Amtrak works well in. For the vast majority of other cases it’s awful.

notatoad 4y ago

this is a chicken-and-egg problem. our railways prioritize freight because that's the customer that actually uses the system. as long as passengers are rare, there's no reason to prioritize them. if passenger trains were actually a critical part of the transportation network, i'm sure we'd stop letting freight pre-empt them.

ericd 4y ago
Aren’t the tracks owned by the companies that run the freight trains, rather than Amtrak?
- notatoad 4y ago
  yes. and one of the ways to stop letting freight trains preempt passenger trains would be for amtrak to build their own tracks. but as long as amtrack has to rely on operating revenue for that sort of project, it's never going to happen because they can't attract enough customers.
  - closeparen 4y ago
    Build their own tracks where? Through and adjacent to both natural environments and people's homes. The America where you could do that kind of thing is long gone.
andbberger 4y ago
feet 4y ago
Passengers are rare? Most times when I've taken Amtrak, its packed
- stephenhuey 4y ago
  I've only seen that in the northeast. Don't think you'll see much of that riding from Houston to Chicago or heading out west! Edit: While I haven't ridden trains in every corner of the USA, the best I saw were in the northeast, and I did have a nice ride from Seattle to Portland once, but in middle America you almost never hear of someone riding a train (my grandmother rode them in Texas in the 1930s and a buddy of mine took the 24-hour trip from Texas to Illinois one time, but those are the only stories I have personally heard around here).
  - feet 4y ago
    The Midwest is what I am directly referencing
  - pessimizer 4y ago
    I've started and ended 100 Amtrak trips in Chicago. The train is one of the reasons Chicago (and Memphis) exists.
- ben_w 4y ago
  That tells you the ratio of train seats to train passengers, not the ratio of train passengers to other transport users, nor the ratio of spending on train conveyances for human passengers versus cargo.
- tablespoon 4y ago
  > Passengers are rare? Most times when I've taken Amtrak, its packed Certainly compared to other modes in most circumstances. If, on a particular route, there's one train a week and 100 planes a day, the train can still be packed while "train passengers" are still rare. IIRC, Amtrak was created because the railroads were losing money on passenger traffic and wanted to get rid of the service. I imagine that's because the service had a lot more competitors than it did in rail's heyday.

Stevvo 4y ago

That sounds like the perfect situation for high speed rail; take the passengers off the slow rails completely freeing them up for freight. The high speed lines themselves would be massive loss leaders financed by the freight. Possible and done in other countries, but less feasible in the US because many existing lines are privately owned.

novok 4y ago
You can make a targeted tax to get something financially equivalent. Politically popular although? Probably not. Americans really really love their cars & suburbs and would also get angry at everything getting more expensive due to higher freight costs.
SoftTalker 4y ago
New-terrain high speed rail lines would be a tremendous expense.

bogomipz 4y ago

That bias is correct, at least outside of the North East corridor. Amtrak owns most of the track in the North East Corridor which incidentally is the only place it is profitable. Outside of this corridor the tracks are mostly owned by 5 railroads [1]. Passenger rail is supposed to have priority as Amtrak was the entity created in order to relieve railroads from being required to provide passenger service. This however is an area of a lot of friction. For a recent example of this mess see" https://www.washingtonpost.com/transportation/2022/07/06/amtrak-expansion-freight-rails/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/transportation/2022/07/06/amt... [1] https://soundingmaps.com/the-largest-railroads-in-us/ https://soundingmaps.com/the-largest-railroads-in-us/

itronitron 4y ago

I've ridden Amtrak a few times on different routes, TX to CA as a child, midwest to DC as a student, and northeast to southeast (NE corridor +) with a pregnant wife. The main issue with train travel in the US is that many passengers are going to need a car when they reach their destination. If I could pick one major rail investment for the US it would be to follow I-95 from Florida to New England. There is a lot of commute and vacation traffic along that interstate (I-95) that can be stressful and people would probably happily move over to Amtrak if the service guarantees are good.

alar44 4y ago
I'd say the biggest issue is that trains are slow as fuck. If I take a plane I can get to either coast in a few hours from the Midwest. A train will take 1-2 days.
- mschuster91 4y ago
  There's no way to make a coast-to-coast trip in the US as fast as a plane ever. It's like, what, 4500km? Even with the fastest regular passenger train in the world which runs at 350 km/h, this will be a 12 hour trip and that's not including the time the train will spend below that speed e.g. for stops. Compared to that, your average Airbus A380 hits 900 km/h as regular cruise speed, rendering that into a much better 5 hour trip. Not to say high-speed rail doesn't have its uses - by far not, the chief one being replacing flights < 2 hours - but anything above the 2 hour flight time is better kept served by plane. [1] https://edition.cnn.com/travel/article/worlds-fastest-trains-cmd/index.html https://edition.cnn.com/travel/article/worlds-fastest-trains...
  - Macha 4y ago
    I'd say the cut off time is more like four hours, with the delays incurred by airport security and the fact that airports are huge and therefore more likely to be located further out from city centres.
    - 4y ago

konschubert 4y ago

And I think that's the right choice, if a choice is needed. Much more impactful to get the trucks off the roads than the cars.

Macha 4y ago
Per road vehicle. But 1 train car fits what, 1.5 trucks worth of cargo? Versus 20-30 passengers. Is it better to eliminate 2 truck trips or 10+ personal car trips?
- konschubert 4y ago
  If you look at the wear and tear on the roads, then 30 passenger cars are much better than two trucks. If you look at emissions, I guess this is a pretty close one, too. And since so much freight is already on the rail in the US, this is the much easier fruit to pick.
- SoftTalker 4y ago
  An intermodal train car with double-stacked containers will replace 4 trucks. Even a traditional box car or grain hopper is much larger volume than a standard semi trailer.

aaomidi 4y ago

Amtrak is more expensive than flights majority of the time.

smegger001 4y ago
And Amtrak is often more expensive than car travel. I posted this last time it came up a few days ago but it bares repeating here; >I wish the train was more economical then I could take the train more but it is not economical (on the west coast of the US). I live approx half way between Seattle WA and Portland OR and there is a train station within walking distance of my home. Every time I have checked the price of a Amtrak ticket to either city it was significantly cheaper to drive and pay for parking then to buy a single train ticket.
- remram 4y ago
  Forget driving your car, on some routes Amtrak is slower and more expensive than Uber (for two people, not even considering the fact that you pick your time and get dropped at your door)
tbran 4y ago
For others reading this, this not entirely accurate. Amtrak seems to sell seats in price bundles. Practically, if you're looking for a trip at a particular time and day, you'll find that seat prices will vary as bundles are sold through. To find a cheaper seat I: - Buy either a several weeks OR a few days before my trip. - Tend to travel Tues-Thursday. - Check repeatedly for a few days if I don't see the price I want. I travel a lot on the Northeast corridor and found that I can usually get a ticket for $25-30 that can be as high as $60-$120. Amtrak is 1000x better than driving for me because: - Free wifi and power at every seat. - Roomy seats and tons of legroom. - Zero security. - Quiet car. - Huge free baggage allowances. - No traffic. I love Amtrak. Definitely better than flying for these trips.
- aaomidi 4y ago
  Find me a comparable Amtrak to a plane going to Florida from Pennsylvania. The one tiny route you have is effectively the only place Amtrak works well in. For the vast majority of other cases it’s awful.