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As a European it boggles my mind seeing how trains are basically non-existent in the USA (just look at Houston station), given how dominant the whole "Wild West

As a European it boggles my mind seeing how trains are basically non-existent in the USA (just look at Houston station), given how dominant the whole "Wild West" railroad rush is in everybody's immagination. Railroads are super ubiquitous here, and we've to work with a pretty hostile terrain - Italy has lots of mountains, hills, rivers, and yet has one of the best networks in the world. Most of the USA are basically empty, it would be pretty easy to build high-speed rail.

Robotbeat 4y ago
The fact the US is basically empty means the cost to build a HSR route to go between population centers is super high because of the sheer distances involved. You’re talking like 1000 miles, not 200. The places which are closer together, like the East Coast, do have some passenger rail but they’re also much denser, like Europe, and so they have the same kind of constraints (or worse). The US has a lot of freight rail, and we use it. The Wild West mentality has gone away in the railroad industry which is now hyper-conservative and regulated. I do sometimes wish the US lived up to the Wild West stereotype the Europeans imagine. But no, we often have just as much stifling regulation (if not more), depending on where you’re talking about. But we do have gun violence, so there’s that.
- OJFord 4y ago
  I don't know why this is down-voted so, but to me also outside the US it seems correct? You bill for travel between stations, there'd be a lot more track & travel between stations in the US, on average, if it were as ubiquitous. Intranational flight is a lot more common there. I imagine the economics of it are better, lower ticket price, and in many cases probably quicker too, even including airport BS.
  - ejb999 4y ago
    >>Intranational flight is a lot more common there. I imagine the economics of it are better, lower ticket price, and in many cases probably quicker too, even including airport BS. That is the problem in my opinion - I prefer sitting on a train, to sitting on a plane, but for most routes I need to travel (within the US) it takes longer to get there and is more expensive than flying - why would anyone want to pay more and waste more time? You either need to be faster or cheaper if you want my business.
    - secretsatan 4y ago
      The more rail improves the more I'm tempted to take it, with flying you have the additional time cost of just dealing with the airports, turn up an hour early, then get put in the metal tube where they won't serve you drink till they're up in the air, and you can't bring your own. A train may take longer sometimes, but I find the whole thing much less stressful, you're not strapped to the seat, you have leg room, even a table, power sockets, bring your own food and drink, and the prices are competitive. It still takes longer than I'd like to get from Switzerland to the UK, and that's mostly due to a lengthy change in Paris. I think in France, and prob other countries too, their moving to ban domestic flights that can be done on rail instead
      - AlotOfReading 4y ago
        It's hard to overstate how different the European rail experience is from the American experience. SF<->LA is a 50m, $50 flight. It's approx. 9h and $400 by rail. In practice, the last time I attempted that route it took 15h because the train had issues halfway and none of the assigned seats had power or legroom.
        brewdad 4y ago
        Even the Seattle to Portland route, probably the best on the west coast, has issues. A flight takes about 50 mins and can be had for about $60. Alaska Airlines runs flights at least once an hour all day long. From 6am until midnight. The train takes 3.5 hours (often closer to 4 and I've had it take more than 5 just because of freight priority). The train makes 4 trips a day (one being a longer route that is usually delayed) and the timing means that any business trip will probably require an overnight stay. The train is only $27 though because both states (especially WA) heavily subsidize the route. In the end, it really comes down to where in the metro areas your trip begins and ends as to which works out best. For us, the train station saves about an hour of ground transport time compared to the airports and we can arrive much closer to departure, so the train works best. For plenty of others, the airport will be faster and probably easier logistically.
        mikotodomo 4y ago
  - hannasanarion 4y ago
    Nobody's asking for an express train between Jackson and Billings. When you exclude the Mountain States and Alaska, the US has about the same population density as Western Europe. There's no good reason for us to have zero public transit options between Atlanta and Savannah, Madison and Milwaukee, Columbus and Cincinatti, Denver and Colorado Springs, or Mobile and New Orleans.
    - throwaway0a5e 4y ago
      >There's no good reason for us to have zero public transit options between Atlanta and Savannah, Madison and Milwaukee, Columbus and Cincinatti, Denver and Colorado Springs, or Mobile and New Orleans. Does regular bus service not count? Sure they're not publicly owned but does that result in any meaningful differences to the users?
    - madcaptenor 4y ago
      Quick sanity check here, because I've seen this claim and never bothered to check. Let's say Western Europe = Germany, Austria, Italy, and everything west of them, i. e. Benelux, France, Switzerland, Spain, Portugal, Great Britain (= UK - Northern Ireland). (I'm including the UK and excluding Ireland because there are rail connecctions from Britain to the mainland but not from Ireland to Britain. I'm excluding Denmark because isn't that really Scandinavia?) Total population: Germany = 84m, France = 68m, Britain = 66m, Italy = 59m, Spain = 47m, Netherlands = 18m, Belgium = 12m, Portugal = 10m, Austria = 9m, Switzerland = 9m, Luxembourg = 1m. Total is 383m. Total area, in km^2: Germany = 358k, France = 551k, Britain = 228k, Italy = 301k, Spain = 499k, Netherlands = 41k, Belgium = 31k, Portugal = 88k, Austria = 84k, Switzerland = 41k, Luxembourg = 3k. Total is 2225k. So the population density of western Europe is about 172/km^2 or 445/mi^2. The only states this dense are DC, New Jersey, Rhode Island, Connecticut, Maryland, Delaware; New York and Florida are just under the cutoff. If I've done the math right, DC + NJ + RI + MA + CT + MD + DE + NY + PA + OH (74m people/429k km^2) is the largest contiguous bunch of states which is over 172 people/km^2. If we take the east to be everything east of the Mississippi, I get 190m people in 2.301m km^2, or 82 people/km^2. If we add in CA + OR + WA that actually drags down the density a bit. So the densely populated bits of the Northeast/mid-Atlantic are as densely populated as Western Europe. But the eastern US as a whole isn't. I agree that those pairs of cities you mentioned should have better connections between them though.
- melling 4y ago
  Yes, we agree we should only build where it makes sense. 1000 miles is quite far. That would be 5-6 hours! - NYC - Miami 1300 miles - NYC - Chicago 800 miles Then we have these: - NYC - Philly 92 miles - NYC - DC 225 miles - NYC - Boston 215 miles - NYC - Portland, ME 325 miles - NYC - Pittsburgh 380 miles - NYC - Cleveland 470 miles - Cleveland - Chicago 350 miles - St. Louis - Chicago 320 miles - Houston - Dallas 240 miles - Houston - Austin 170 miles - Dallas - Austin 200 miles - Seattle - Portland 175 miles - Las Vegas - Los Angeles 280 miles California too.
  - dahart 4y ago
    Sadly our 1000 mile trips currently take ~24 hours rather than the 5-6 that it could. Multiple factors for that: slow trains; long stops; cargo rail gets priority over passenger rail.
    - chrisfinazzo 4y ago
      Yep. Even the fastest trains Amtrak offers ("Acela") are zoned - or permitted, not sure what the right term is here - up to 150 MPH, and only on specific portions of the route. Makes no sense at all.
      - redtexture 4y ago
        The sense is that the Northeast corridor has too many curves and roadbed issues to be able to go faster. There would have to be constructed a new corridor, not in the same path as existing railroad rights of way, for not a small amount of money, and going through expensive real estate. The political will for that is not in existence, so far.
        ghaff 4y ago
        And the fact is that while taking a train the full length of the Northeast Corridor takes too long to be practical most of the time, NYC to points north and NYC to points south works pretty well (i.e. is competitive with flying) with existing trains.
- woodruffw 4y ago
  I agree that we should let density and demand drive construction of HSR. That being said, there are plenty of plausible HSR routes in the US. We're a very sparsely populated country in our middle, but there's effectively a "string" of large cities right through our middle: NYC - Pittsburgh - Columbus - {Cincinnati, Indianapolis} - {Louisville, St. Louis} - Kansas City - Oklahoma City - Albuquerque - {Phoenix, Tucson} - Los Angeles. All of the legs there should under 400 miles, and most should be under 200. There's also plenty of room for adjustment: Louisville - Nashville - Memphis - Dallas and then onward south, for example.
- aj7 4y ago
  I see no mention of 737’s and A320’s here or in most posts. Compare the price per mile with those of alternatives. The U.S. doesn’t even resemble Europe.
- wbsss4412 4y ago
  The center of population in the US is still just barely to the west of the Mississippi, whenever people point out how vast and largely empty the US is, the leave out that the population itself is actually generally fairly close together for a majority of the country. You could easily have HSR all over the south, Midwest and NE, and then between population centers on the west coast, just likely not in the desert and western Great Plains.
  - madcaptenor 4y ago
    See for example Alon Levy's map of proposed HSR for the Eastern United States: https://pedestrianobservations.com/2019/02/10/high-speed-rail-for-the-eastern-united-states/ https://pedestrianobservations.com/2019/02/10/high-speed-rai... They've actually done serious investigation of what's viable given typical costs and ridership of high-speed lines elsewhere in the world. The high-speed bits they propose are basically a Boston-Atlanta-Chicago triangle with some ornaments (Chicago - KC, Chicago - Minneapolis, Cleveland - Pittsburgh - Philadelphia, and connections to Toronto, Montreal, Quebec), and separate networks in Florida and Texas. Connecting the Florida and Texas networks to the main one is marginal. I'm not sure of their opinions on separate networks in the Pacific Northwest and in California, but I'm sure they have looked at it. I do recall them saying that it doesn't make sense to connect, say, Portland to San Francisco - there's just not much in between.
    - wbsss4412 4y ago
      It doesn’t make sense to connect Portland and SF, but there’s a lot of value to be gained in connecting Portland and Vancouver BC, and San Diego to SF/possibly Sacramento. We would definitely want to have a “constellation” of networks rather than one interconnected system given the geography of the US, and that’s fine. There’s never going to be a time when it makes more sense to travel from LA to NYC by rail instead of flying. The biggest takeaway is that there is a specific role that HSR can play, but it’s not going to take over all long distance trips. Given where we are starting in the US, however, there is a massive mine of untapped potential.
      - 4y ago
- scythe 4y ago
  > the cost to build a HSR route to go between population centers is super high The cost is high, but more painfully, the cost per-mile is higher than for the same distance of railroad in Europe or East Asia. That's not a result of pure geography. Also, while the cost is high, it's not actually that large in comparison to the overall DoT budget, which is projected at $142B for FY2023. You could build a lot of train for that. Political will is a much more important factor. We just dropped $40B on the Current War without blinking. Even so, this misses another key step: intercity rail in Europe usually connects seamlessly to metro rail, which is what makes it so easy and nice to use. But the cities themselves in the United States do not usually have rail systems to connect to. That's why the best near-term rail corridor IMHO is NY-Buffalo (subway) - Youngstown (possible Pittsburgh metro extension) - Cleveland (subway) - Toledo (possible Detroit metro extension) - Chicago, connecting to six subway systems.
  - ClumsyPilot 4y ago
    > the cost per-mile is higher than for the same distance of railroad in Europe how does this make any sence, we have to deal with tonneling under or demolishing existing densely populated real estate along the route, literal mountains in the way, etc. HS2 in UK caused an outrage, someone's farm was cut in half, houses had to be demolished, etc
  - Kon-Peki 4y ago
    Toledo directly to Chicago doesn't make a lot of sense. Most of the track would go through Indiana, which is at best indifferent to Amtrak. Consider instead putting Detroit in between the two. The Chicago-Detroit route already operates at 110 mph, Amtrak and the Michigan Dept of Transportation already own the majority of the track and give routing priority to passenger trains. Amtrak and VIA are already talking about a Chicago-Toronto train that doesn't require passengers to disembark for immigration/customs, and their systems are already connected via a rail tunnel under the Detroit River.
    - scythe 4y ago
      Oh, yeah, that sounds pretty good. My main point is that you want to connect the long train to short trains. In theory, if Raleigh and Richmond (both very "blue" cities and maybe open to it) built LRT systems, you could get another route in DC-Richmond-Raleigh-Charlotte-Atlanta, where the other three have existing intracity rail.
- darksaints 4y ago
  The Midwest cluster of cities which include Chicago, Cleveland, Indianapolis, Minneapolis, St Louis, Columbus, and Detroit, have an extremely similar density and distance distribution compared to France, where high speed rail is incredibly successful. We could have successful high speed rail nearly everywhere in the US with a possible exception of the rocky mountain regions. I wish this density trope would die. The real reason we don't have high speed rail is that right of way acquisition is ridiculously costly unless government is involved, and we don't trust our government to do it right. Probably justified, if urban rail costs are indicative.
- eloisant 4y ago
  We're not talking about doing NYC - SF by train, but there are a lot of places where it makes sense. As I used to live in the Bay Area, it really surprised me that there was no bullet train between San Francisco and Los Angeles. Yes, apparently it's planned but it boggles my mind that they waited so much before building it. Americans don't realize how much nicer train is compared to plane for medium distances (up to 500 miles). Station being in the middle of the city, get in the train 10 minutes before departure without check-in or security, no waiting 15 minutes on the tarmac before disembarking... I guarantee you the door-to-door time is going to be lower. Also train is more confortable, seats are wider, you can use phones/electronics for the full duration of the trip...
  - Bubble_Pop_22 4y ago
    > without check-in or security The biggest break for trains in the last 20 years hasn't been Maglevs or Japan's bullet. Matter of fact it has been OBL fixation on attacking America in a spectacular and televised fashion. The lack of security abord trains is shocking honestly. Trains are special, there is something about them which calms people even the most evil, because ill intentioned people like terrorists and mentally deranged domestic shooters just ignore them.
  - labcomputer 4y ago
    > Yes, apparently it's planned but it boggles my mind that they waited so much before building it. Basically because there are only 2-3 places you can practically cross the mountains surrounding LA (Tehachapi Tejon, and the coast), and 3-4 places you can do the same for the SFBA. All of them are already occupied by existing rail or roads. Those mountain crossings cost more that the rest of the system combined. > get in the train 10 minutes before departure without check-in or security, no waiting 15 minutes on the tarmac before disembarking... I guarantee you the door-to-door time is going to be lower. I wish, but you're wrong and it's not even close. (SFO, OAK or SJC) to (LAX, BUR, LGB or ONT) is about 45 minutes gate to gate. Add 5 minutes for security[], 25 minutes boarding, 15 minutes deplaning and you're at 1h30 curb to curb (vs. the almost 3 hours station to station that CAHSR claims* they will provide when finished). The plane is faster even accounting for travel time to and from the station or airport. The contrast is especially stark if your destination is not downtown LA. [*] TSA with PreCheck has gotten really fast in the past couple years. They no longer scan your boarding pass (just your ID + a database of the day's travelers). You don't need to unpack your bag, remove your shoes, nor remove your jacket. On a dozen trips in the past year, security has never taken me more than 5 minutes. It takes almost as long to walk through the maze of ropes forming the queue as the actual security procedure itself.
- not2b 4y ago
  You'd only want to build regional HSR systems that would connect cities that get a lot of traffic and flights between them and are under 300 miles / 500 km apart. So, the northeast corridor, connect California major cities, connect Portland to Seattle, connect Dallas/Austin/Houston/San Antonio. In Canada, half the population lives near a nearly straight line from Quebec City to Windsor; you could put a high speed rail line down the middle of that.
- teloli 4y ago
  Distance alone isn't enough of a reason though, Beijing–Shanghai is 1200 KM and yet you can cover that by train no problem in < 5 hours: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beijing%E2%80%93Shanghai_high-speed_railway https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beijing%E2%80%93Shanghai_high-...
rr888 4y ago
I used to think this too, now I live here the American system actually works pretty well. Railways are actually very busy with freight, which keeps it off the roads and freight doesn't mind pauses and running overnight. Lots of rural connections are much easier to drive. Even between cities its easier because for train connections you'd have to get to the station (usually central) where if you drive you can go directly where you want. As a result people are much more mobile and can live in a wider area in USA, where in Europe to commute to the office you really have to live near a train station.
- deleted 4y ago
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- dr_dshiv 4y ago
  But that means the modern USA misses out on the inherent benefits of density. This is a weird counter rational behavior— it is in everyone’s perceived best interest to live in big separate homes, but the collective social economic benefit of living together is evident. Also evident is how sprawl sucks vitality from culture.
  - geraldwhen 4y ago
    No thank you. I live near enough howling dogs. I will never forget the peace and quiet when I stepped into my first house. Why anyone lives in apartments by choice is beyond me. The noise is absurd.
    - deleted 4y ago
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    - PaulsWallet 4y ago
      You are assuming you only have 2 choices, single-family home or apartment. That's a very American perspective because most of America only allows those two but in a proper city you have townhomes, duplexes, casitas, bungalows and many more options that aren't just apartments. However, most of American is zoned exclusively for single-family homes and not mixed-use so like the parent comment said, you don't get benefits of proper density which includes many home types.
js2 4y ago
Italy compared to U.S.: https://www.thetruesize.com/#?borders=1~!MTY3OTMzNjA.NTkxNzEzNg*MjAyNDcxMDg(MzIyMzUzOTA~!IT*NzY3NzgzNQ.MTIyMzY3NzI)NQ~!US*NzE1Njc.MjI0NjIyNjk)Ng https://www.thetruesize.com/#?borders=1~!MTY3OTMzNjA.NTkxNzE... U.S compared to Europe: https://www.thetruesize.com/#?borders=1~!MTc4NDEwOTE.MjkxMDg5Mg*MzYwMDAwMDA(MA~!US*Nzc2MjE4Mg.MjE5Mzc1ODA)MA https://www.thetruesize.com/#?borders=1~!MTc4NDEwOTE.MjkxMDg... My daughter, visiting home from college this weekend, took Amtrak from Richmond, VA yesterday. She's taking the train back Monday. Without delay, the train takes about 4 hours. Driving takes about 3 hours. Add an extra 15 minutes on each side for getting to/from the station, so 4:30 hours vs 3 hours. Distance is 150 miles (241 km). Cost of the train is $42 (coach) each way. Cost of gasoline would be ~ $24 each way. Her train yesterday departed about 30 minutes late and arrived an hour late. Supposedly it may have been traveling slower due to the heat wave. Here's a live map of the Amtrak network: https://www.amtrak.com/track-your-train.html https://www.amtrak.com/track-your-train.html That's just our national train system. Many municipalities have their own patchwork of train networks. Some off the top of my head: BART, LIRR, MTA, MBTA T, Metro (D.C., Atlanta), L (Chicago), Metrorail (Miami).
- wbsss4412 4y ago
  > Cost of the train is $42 (coach) each way. Cost of gasoline would be ~ $24 each way. The cost of driving is more than just the cost of gasoline.
  - bluGill 4y ago
    Not if you already own the car. Then the cost of the car and insurance are sunk costs that do not count. Sure there is a little wear and tear, but that adds just a couple bucks. If you buy a car/rent for that trip alone, then the cost of driving is far higher. However for most Americans the cost of a car is a sunk cost that cannot be counted. If you live someplace where it is possible to live without a car, then you can make that argument, but most of us do not.
    - wbsss4412 4y ago
      The resale value of the car, insurance (even if you don’t do pay per mile, insurance quotes are generally going to have some basis in miles driven per year), and maintenance are all directly correlated with miles driven. So, while these are often treated as sunk costs, that is due to improper accounting. So, to reiterate, the cost of driving is much more than the cost of gas.
PeterHolzwarth 4y ago
America actually has a rather vast and impressive rail system. It's just used almost entirely for shipping.
- aj7 4y ago
  Exactly. People’s time is too valuable when per capita GDP is $60k.
  - asdajksah2123 4y ago
    And that's why they prefer a mode of transport that requires you to drive an hour outside the city in traffic, arrive at least an hour before your flight so you can go through the indignity of airport security, take an hour long flight, and then wait for bags and then drive an hour back into your destination city in traffic? Total time 4 hrs. Or they prefer driving through traffic from one city to the other for 4.5 hrs where they have to have complete concentration so they literally don't die and kill a bunch of other people? As opposed to a 4.5 hr train ride where they have lots of seating space, an extremely comfortable ride with great views where they can basically just sleep through the trip and/or work comfortably on their laptops with great wifi? These are not hypotheticals. These are literally your options if you were to travel from NYC to Boston. All the modes of transport take about 4-5 hrs. Train is significantly better in almost every way. The only problem is that Amtrak subsidizes the rest of its highly unprofitable network which means they price gouge the NorthEast corridor and under invest in it, making it more expensive, and not as good as it should be. Even with a sub par train service relative to European and Asian counterparts, train is easily the best option on this route.
    - ghaff 4y ago
      That does assume you live conveniently to the train station in Boston or the suburban station to the south. I do generally take the train to NYC but mostly because I hate driving into NYC so much. I have to drive an hour in the wrong direction to get to Route 128 so the time tradeoff actually isn't great.
CPLX 4y ago
I think any answer to this has to involve two staples of American culture, cars and racism. The prevalence of both has been a big detriment to rail initiatives. For whatever reason people have associated a nearby train station with crime and opening up the neighborhood to the "wrong people". And the incredibly cheap and ubiquitous car culture (especially in the post-war period) provided the alternative. That of course interacts with the dramatic lack of density for new post-war suburban neighborhoods as well, which is a function of both issues mentioned (cars and racism) as well as the fact that the US does indeed (or did) have a whole lot of extra space compared to Europe.
- geraldwhen 4y ago
  I used to walk past a bus station to lunch most weekdays. Nearly every single day I witnessed an assault at the bus station. Mass transit hubs do bring crime. Why minimize that?
  - solar-ice 4y ago
    They just… don’t, elsewhere. That’s not a normal state of affairs. Something is horribly wrong with how you’re doing something - either with the stations, or with society - if that’s the case.
    - foobiekr 4y ago
      At least in my personal experience in Spain, the stations in Madrid were, in direct observation, a gathering place for pickpockets and other scammers.
    - geraldwhen 4y ago
      What is elsewhere? Train and subway stations are hubs for crime in the places I’ve been in America.
      - solar-ice 4y ago
        Germany, the UK, Sweden, NL… India even. Pickpocketing, in the big central stations, same as anywhere lots of people are, sure - violence, no.
cbm-vic-20 4y ago
I live near Boston in the US. In five hours, you can get as far north as Portland Maine (there's no passenger rail service north of there), and as far south as Philadelphia, and as far west as Albany. In New York, you can probably do better, but if you leave the Northeast Corridor (the stretch between Boston and Washington, DC, along the coast) destinations to other major cities like Montreal will take around nine hours (if they ever restart that service post-pandemic), and even the fastest train to Chicago takes around 20 hours. NYC to Los Angeles? at least 70 hours. How far can you get to by train from Paris in 70 hours?
- melling 4y ago
  I can make it to Portland Maine from NJ in 6 hours. Portland is only 112 miles from Boston.
- rr888 4y ago
  > How far can you get to by train from Paris in 70 hours? NYC->LA is about the same as Paris->Moscow and that takes nearly 3 days as well. Paris Instanbul is similar distance which is a little quicker but still over 2 days.
PopAlongKid 4y ago
> a pretty hostile terrain - Italy has lots of mountains, hills, rivers So does U.S., a lot more in fact. The length of Italy north to south is 1,320km, the distance from San Francisco to Chicago is 3,220Km and that's only 2/3rds of the east-west distance of the continental U.S. And there are two major mountain ranges to cross on that trip, and huge stretches with almost no population. (How many deserts to cross does Italy have?) Trains need crews, the crews need to work in shifts, the crews need to be available along the way, even in Nowhere, Nevada. That causes delays and restricts schedules.
- ClumsyPilot 4y ago
  how are deserts a relevant problem?
  - robohoe 4y ago
    Getting to desert areas to maintain the rails takes time and resources. We're talking about large swaths of deserts and desolate land with absolutely no cities or towns for double-triple digits of miles.
ChrisMarshallNY 4y ago
As a frequent traveler to Tokyo, I became a fan of mass transit. A guaranteed way to become sad, is use the Tokyo trains, then come home to New York, and use the Metro/LIRR.
- decafninja 4y ago
  This. I have fond memories of using the subway/trains in Tokyo. Ditto for Seoul (which I'd rank even better than Tokyo's), Hong Kong, Singapore. I dread using the subway in NYC and nowadays try to avoid using it as much as possible (mostly via biking).
- aj7 4y ago
  Metro/LIRR works fine, if you can tune out the aesthetics.
  - ChrisMarshallNY 4y ago
    And the schedules. Tokyo train schedule slippage is measured in seconds.
    - decafninja 4y ago
      I've found many Newyorkers will respond to any negative comparison of the NYC subways to other cities with a retort of "but we have 24/7 service and they don't". I kind of feel that 24/7 service is actually one factor in why the NYC subways have so many problems - both in terms of logistics and aesthetics.
PaulHoule 4y ago
It’s almost forgotten how much resentment Americans had to the private railroads. They would buy land along the tracks, refuse to make a stop in your town, and start a new town. There was a phrase, ‘railroaded’ to describe being a victim of this power imbalance. As such, people saw the roads as belonging to everyone but railroads being to the benefit of a few.
- vidanay 4y ago
  A significant portion of the land wasn't bought, it was acquired through eminent domain. And an even more significant portion of the land was simply stolen from natives (both by settlers and by the railroads.)
  - throwaway0a5e 4y ago
    I see both those cases as "stolen but with a kangaroo court veneer of due process"
- panick21_ 4y ago
  Yeah partly because the roads were literally paid for by the state, specially the highways, and truck and bus companies don't have to pay for maintenance.
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DrBazza 4y ago
I'm not convinced high speed rail would ever work in the US due to how entrenched the car culture is, regardless of the terrain. In Europe with we have spoke-and-hub railways - want to get into London? There's almost certainly a local station near you in the suburbs. Then jump on the Eurostar to Paris. Get to Paris, and then get a local line back out to wherever you want to go. Right now, it would have to be airport like terminals, and a multi-decade (if not century long) plan to connect the city centres. In the US, drive to the new high speed mainline station outside the city, where there would have to be as much parking as an airport, and then get the high speed line to the destination, and then... hire a car? Building a mainline station in many US city centres for high speed lines isn't going to work right now. There are too few local lines going in, and nowhere to build super-sized car parks.
- melling 4y ago
  Would never work because of our car culture? I’m going to use my imagination on this one since “never” is a long time. The year 2040. Two technologies combine make never a reality. 1. Maglev trains that travel at 350 miles per hour (600kph) 2. Self-driving taxis Exhibit 1: https://www.cnn.com/travel/amp/china-fastest-maglev-train-intl-hnk/index.html https://www.cnn.com/travel/amp/china-fastest-maglev-train-in... NY to LA in 10 hours by maglev sometime in this century. The 4 hour maglev between Miami and NYC will be popular.
  - DrBazza 4y ago
    I did sort of contradict myself there and say never and multi-decade plan. Problems the US has: * Lack of spoke and hub railways. * Cars. * Cost-per-mile, which if I understand correctly is a political and a union-thing. * And just politics by itself. It's not dissimilar in the UK, but somehow we muddle through it. I don't believe that "cheap" maglev will ever help the US, it's been around for decades, and the longest highspeed line built by the Chinese is 19 miles at a cost of "only" $1.3 bn (I'll leave it up to the reader about how realistic that construction cost would be in the West). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maglev#China,_2000-present https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maglev#China,_2000-present The US will still have the same problem huge construction costs, political lobbying from the airlines, no hub and spoke railways, a vast airport style set of car parking around any terminals that are built. The West now suffers from pointless adversarial politics where the opposition votes the opposite to the government simply "because", and for no rational reason other than "it's the other party". Even once you get past that hurdle, it's how "cheap" is the cheapest bidder. Labour/labor laws and so on. I would genuinely love to see the US lead the world with high speed rail, but I just can't see it.
decafninja 4y ago
I'm visiting Italy in a month and have multiple tickets booked on Italo's Club Executive class. The seats look sweet and the price was surprisingly affordable. Looking forward to see how good it is.
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Manuel_D 4y ago
Trains in the US are widely prevalent! It's just that they're used for freight rather than passenger travel. The main driver behind this is the population density of the USA, cities are spaced too far apart to make passenger travel by train viable. Not coincidentally, the only area that does have significant passenger rail networks, the DC - Boston corridor, has population density similar to Western Europe. An interesting video on this topic: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mbEfzuCLoAQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mbEfzuCLoAQ
dfee 4y ago
Italy is much smaller than the US. It’s about the equivalent size of New Mexico - which has 1/30th the population (2M). Public transit isn’t bad - I told on an Amtrak from LA to SD yesterday which was quite nice. But, I also rode on the LA metro which was filed with mobs of mentally ill marauders. My experience to Rome (albeit a bit over a decade ago) was similar. That’s an off putting response that likely plays a big role in sinking demand for public transit - esp. as compared to a car. Of course, America was also designed for the auto - we’re newer, and gas was cheap during the highway construction heyday.
- davidw 4y ago
  There are plenty of higher density areas within the US though, where trains would be a good option. Maybe Cyanide Springs, Oklahoma to Blandsville, North Dakota doesn't make sense for trains, but you could do bits of the PNW, California and the east coast with higher quality rail pretty successfully.
mastercheif 4y ago
To go against the grain somewhat, I think distance is an overrated factor in regard to its impact in preventing US passenger rail adoption. I think the most overlooked factor is poor intra-city transit and lack of mixed use density in our city cores. I recently traveled to Germany on business, a few nights in Berlin then took the ICE inter-city train to Munich. The ICE train dropped me off at the main station in Munich—my hotel was 7.3 miles driving from the main station. I was able to jump on the u-bahn and with a quick transfer at Odeonsplatz get to my hotel in half-an-hour including a 10 minute walk from the train station. Door to door from Berlin to the hotel in Munich was 05:00 hours. If one were to drive, maps says 361mi/580km traveled if driving direct with a drive time of 05:30. For comparisons sake, let's take a hypothetical trip from Dallas Union Station to Apple's engineering headquarters in Austin, TX 14.7mi/24.6km from the Austin train station. According to Apple Maps, taking public transit would take 09:00 hours. Driving direct from Dallas Union Station to Apple HQ in Austin is 187mi/300km in total with a drive time of 03:00.
reddog 4y ago
Actually the US has the worlds most efficient train system: https://www.masterresource.org/railroads/us-most-advanced-rail-world/ https://www.masterresource.org/railroads/us-most-advanced-ra... For long hauls, we use our RRs to move freight and airlines to move people. By traveling at 600mph instead of 60mph (the speed of most European train travel - intercity high speed rail is rare and expensive) I can get to anyplace in the continental US in under 5 hours from my home in Austin.
- Milner08 4y ago
  Intercity trains often go much faster than 60mph. More like an average of 90mph with a speed limit 125mph on the main lines in UK. Thats not even the HS1 (and eventually HS2), that's on our old AF Victorian rail roads. The argument for trains is often more about taking out the need to drive everywhere than the need to fly from coast to coast though, as a train is never going to beat that.
andjd 4y ago
The USA has a world-class _Freight_ rail network, and almost all existing track in the country is owned by the freight operators, who manage the track to optimize it for freight operations. In many cases, they are openly hostile to passenger service on their tracks. On top of this, most cities in the USA were built (or destroyed and rebuilt) for private cars being the primary mode of transportation. In Europe, one of the benefits of taking the train over an airplane is that the train stations will often be in a walkable city center with a good connection to public transit. In the USA, outside of a handful of older cities (New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, Boston . . .), the train station drops you off in the middle of nowhere, usually with far less connections and services than the airport has. When compared to air travel, intercity rail travel is often slower, less convenient, less frequent, and more expensive. Even with the Acela/northwest corridor, flights are often cheaper than rail, so it is the convenience of the downtown stations and connections to public transit that drive people to take the train over airplanes. It's no coincidence that the major cities on the route (DC, Philiadelphia, NYC, Boston) are also cities with some of the best metro networks in the country.
- nickbauman 4y ago
  No it doesn't have a world class freight rail network. The North American rail infra is incredibly primitive. Most of it is "dark territory" (no track sensors), unlike Europe. I used to write rail automation software for a German firm. They were appalled at the state of affairs here. One of the most lucrative rail systems in the US had an average speed of their trains in the single digits MPH!
  - skellera 4y ago
    I think it’s easy to call something out as primitive but what changes could be made and how much impact would it have? It doesn’t seem like our freight trains are the bottleneck when moving goods around the country.
    - ant6n 4y ago
      They kind of are if you consider how many goods are still shipped by trucks. The US is perfect for rail - lots of long trips, with lots of goods. It could probably have more market share if goods could move more quickly and flexibly.
rockostrich 4y ago
As an American, it doesn't really boggle my mind at all. We have a very car-centric culture. Just look at how we treat cyclists/cycling infrastructure, especially in cities. It's night and day compared to most European cities. To be fair though, the continental US is almost double the size of Europe and Amtrak is actually alright in the areas that it serves (although my experience with trains in Switzerland/Italy was definitely much better).
- simongray 4y ago
  > the continental US is almost double the size of Europe Europe (the continent) is slightly bigger than the entirety of the USA... I guess you are talking about continental Western Europe where much of the high speed rail is?
  - rootusrootus 4y ago
    > Europe (the continent) is slightly bigger than the entirety of the USA... And a good bit more than double the number of people.
gwbas1c 4y ago
Trains "work" in Europe because many European cities are easily walkable. The trains (and other public transportation) comes every 10-15 minutes, so you can leave and arrive when you want to. Now, consider the convenience of traveling by car: You can leave and arrive when you want to. For a longer journey, you don't need to deal with transferring between trains/busses/whatever, which means that you can keep your luggage in your car until your destination. Chances are, you can park your car at your destination or very close. As far as sprawl: In some places, building codes require more land. Other times, banks won't lend to build unless the land is worth a certain percentage of the building. For example, when I built my house, the bank wanted the land to be worth about 25% of the value of the house; and the town required that it was so many feet away from the road. That forced my neighborhood to have large, open lawns. (And as much as I love my lawn, I'd be just as happy with a postage stamp yard too.) There's also the rumor that the US was deliberately built to sprawl after WWII as a way to survive a nuclear attack. I don't know if that's true or a rumor, though.
- panick21_ 4y ago
  The solution should be to make US cities walkable, as they were in the past.
glonq 4y ago
Canada is even worse. We are proud of our cross-country rail's history, but today it is slow and expensive compared to other systems.

Robotbeat 4y ago

The fact the US is basically empty means the cost to build a HSR route to go between population centers is super high because of the sheer distances involved. You’re talking like 1000 miles, not 200. The places which are closer together, like the East Coast, do have some passenger rail but they’re also much denser, like Europe, and so they have the same kind of constraints (or worse). The US has a lot of freight rail, and we use it. The Wild West mentality has gone away in the railroad industry which is now hyper-conservative and regulated. I do sometimes wish the US lived up to the Wild West stereotype the Europeans imagine. But no, we often have just as much stifling regulation (if not more), depending on where you’re talking about. But we do have gun violence, so there’s that.

OJFord 4y ago
I don't know why this is down-voted so, but to me also outside the US it seems correct? You bill for travel between stations, there'd be a lot more track & travel between stations in the US, on average, if it were as ubiquitous. Intranational flight is a lot more common there. I imagine the economics of it are better, lower ticket price, and in many cases probably quicker too, even including airport BS.
- ejb999 4y ago
  >>Intranational flight is a lot more common there. I imagine the economics of it are better, lower ticket price, and in many cases probably quicker too, even including airport BS. That is the problem in my opinion - I prefer sitting on a train, to sitting on a plane, but for most routes I need to travel (within the US) it takes longer to get there and is more expensive than flying - why would anyone want to pay more and waste more time? You either need to be faster or cheaper if you want my business.
  - secretsatan 4y ago
    The more rail improves the more I'm tempted to take it, with flying you have the additional time cost of just dealing with the airports, turn up an hour early, then get put in the metal tube where they won't serve you drink till they're up in the air, and you can't bring your own. A train may take longer sometimes, but I find the whole thing much less stressful, you're not strapped to the seat, you have leg room, even a table, power sockets, bring your own food and drink, and the prices are competitive. It still takes longer than I'd like to get from Switzerland to the UK, and that's mostly due to a lengthy change in Paris. I think in France, and prob other countries too, their moving to ban domestic flights that can be done on rail instead
    - AlotOfReading 4y ago
      It's hard to overstate how different the European rail experience is from the American experience. SF<->LA is a 50m, $50 flight. It's approx. 9h and $400 by rail. In practice, the last time I attempted that route it took 15h because the train had issues halfway and none of the assigned seats had power or legroom.
      - brewdad 4y ago
        Even the Seattle to Portland route, probably the best on the west coast, has issues. A flight takes about 50 mins and can be had for about $60. Alaska Airlines runs flights at least once an hour all day long. From 6am until midnight. The train takes 3.5 hours (often closer to 4 and I've had it take more than 5 just because of freight priority). The train makes 4 trips a day (one being a longer route that is usually delayed) and the timing means that any business trip will probably require an overnight stay. The train is only $27 though because both states (especially WA) heavily subsidize the route. In the end, it really comes down to where in the metro areas your trip begins and ends as to which works out best. For us, the train station saves about an hour of ground transport time compared to the airports and we can arrive much closer to departure, so the train works best. For plenty of others, the airport will be faster and probably easier logistically.
      - mikotodomo 4y ago
- hannasanarion 4y ago
  Nobody's asking for an express train between Jackson and Billings. When you exclude the Mountain States and Alaska, the US has about the same population density as Western Europe. There's no good reason for us to have zero public transit options between Atlanta and Savannah, Madison and Milwaukee, Columbus and Cincinatti, Denver and Colorado Springs, or Mobile and New Orleans.
  - throwaway0a5e 4y ago
    >There's no good reason for us to have zero public transit options between Atlanta and Savannah, Madison and Milwaukee, Columbus and Cincinatti, Denver and Colorado Springs, or Mobile and New Orleans. Does regular bus service not count? Sure they're not publicly owned but does that result in any meaningful differences to the users?
  - madcaptenor 4y ago
    Quick sanity check here, because I've seen this claim and never bothered to check. Let's say Western Europe = Germany, Austria, Italy, and everything west of them, i. e. Benelux, France, Switzerland, Spain, Portugal, Great Britain (= UK - Northern Ireland). (I'm including the UK and excluding Ireland because there are rail connecctions from Britain to the mainland but not from Ireland to Britain. I'm excluding Denmark because isn't that really Scandinavia?) Total population: Germany = 84m, France = 68m, Britain = 66m, Italy = 59m, Spain = 47m, Netherlands = 18m, Belgium = 12m, Portugal = 10m, Austria = 9m, Switzerland = 9m, Luxembourg = 1m. Total is 383m. Total area, in km^2: Germany = 358k, France = 551k, Britain = 228k, Italy = 301k, Spain = 499k, Netherlands = 41k, Belgium = 31k, Portugal = 88k, Austria = 84k, Switzerland = 41k, Luxembourg = 3k. Total is 2225k. So the population density of western Europe is about 172/km^2 or 445/mi^2. The only states this dense are DC, New Jersey, Rhode Island, Connecticut, Maryland, Delaware; New York and Florida are just under the cutoff. If I've done the math right, DC + NJ + RI + MA + CT + MD + DE + NY + PA + OH (74m people/429k km^2) is the largest contiguous bunch of states which is over 172 people/km^2. If we take the east to be everything east of the Mississippi, I get 190m people in 2.301m km^2, or 82 people/km^2. If we add in CA + OR + WA that actually drags down the density a bit. So the densely populated bits of the Northeast/mid-Atlantic are as densely populated as Western Europe. But the eastern US as a whole isn't. I agree that those pairs of cities you mentioned should have better connections between them though.
melling 4y ago
Yes, we agree we should only build where it makes sense. 1000 miles is quite far. That would be 5-6 hours! - NYC - Miami 1300 miles - NYC - Chicago 800 miles Then we have these: - NYC - Philly 92 miles - NYC - DC 225 miles - NYC - Boston 215 miles - NYC - Portland, ME 325 miles - NYC - Pittsburgh 380 miles - NYC - Cleveland 470 miles - Cleveland - Chicago 350 miles - St. Louis - Chicago 320 miles - Houston - Dallas 240 miles - Houston - Austin 170 miles - Dallas - Austin 200 miles - Seattle - Portland 175 miles - Las Vegas - Los Angeles 280 miles California too.
- dahart 4y ago
  Sadly our 1000 mile trips currently take ~24 hours rather than the 5-6 that it could. Multiple factors for that: slow trains; long stops; cargo rail gets priority over passenger rail.
  - chrisfinazzo 4y ago
    Yep. Even the fastest trains Amtrak offers ("Acela") are zoned - or permitted, not sure what the right term is here - up to 150 MPH, and only on specific portions of the route. Makes no sense at all.
    - redtexture 4y ago
      The sense is that the Northeast corridor has too many curves and roadbed issues to be able to go faster. There would have to be constructed a new corridor, not in the same path as existing railroad rights of way, for not a small amount of money, and going through expensive real estate. The political will for that is not in existence, so far.
      - ghaff 4y ago
        And the fact is that while taking a train the full length of the Northeast Corridor takes too long to be practical most of the time, NYC to points north and NYC to points south works pretty well (i.e. is competitive with flying) with existing trains.
woodruffw 4y ago
I agree that we should let density and demand drive construction of HSR. That being said, there are plenty of plausible HSR routes in the US. We're a very sparsely populated country in our middle, but there's effectively a "string" of large cities right through our middle: NYC - Pittsburgh - Columbus - {Cincinnati, Indianapolis} - {Louisville, St. Louis} - Kansas City - Oklahoma City - Albuquerque - {Phoenix, Tucson} - Los Angeles. All of the legs there should under 400 miles, and most should be under 200. There's also plenty of room for adjustment: Louisville - Nashville - Memphis - Dallas and then onward south, for example.
aj7 4y ago
I see no mention of 737’s and A320’s here or in most posts. Compare the price per mile with those of alternatives. The U.S. doesn’t even resemble Europe.
wbsss4412 4y ago
The center of population in the US is still just barely to the west of the Mississippi, whenever people point out how vast and largely empty the US is, the leave out that the population itself is actually generally fairly close together for a majority of the country. You could easily have HSR all over the south, Midwest and NE, and then between population centers on the west coast, just likely not in the desert and western Great Plains.
- madcaptenor 4y ago
  See for example Alon Levy's map of proposed HSR for the Eastern United States: https://pedestrianobservations.com/2019/02/10/high-speed-rail-for-the-eastern-united-states/ https://pedestrianobservations.com/2019/02/10/high-speed-rai... They've actually done serious investigation of what's viable given typical costs and ridership of high-speed lines elsewhere in the world. The high-speed bits they propose are basically a Boston-Atlanta-Chicago triangle with some ornaments (Chicago - KC, Chicago - Minneapolis, Cleveland - Pittsburgh - Philadelphia, and connections to Toronto, Montreal, Quebec), and separate networks in Florida and Texas. Connecting the Florida and Texas networks to the main one is marginal. I'm not sure of their opinions on separate networks in the Pacific Northwest and in California, but I'm sure they have looked at it. I do recall them saying that it doesn't make sense to connect, say, Portland to San Francisco - there's just not much in between.
  - wbsss4412 4y ago
    It doesn’t make sense to connect Portland and SF, but there’s a lot of value to be gained in connecting Portland and Vancouver BC, and San Diego to SF/possibly Sacramento. We would definitely want to have a “constellation” of networks rather than one interconnected system given the geography of the US, and that’s fine. There’s never going to be a time when it makes more sense to travel from LA to NYC by rail instead of flying. The biggest takeaway is that there is a specific role that HSR can play, but it’s not going to take over all long distance trips. Given where we are starting in the US, however, there is a massive mine of untapped potential.
    - 4y ago
scythe 4y ago
> the cost to build a HSR route to go between population centers is super high The cost is high, but more painfully, the cost per-mile is higher than for the same distance of railroad in Europe or East Asia. That's not a result of pure geography. Also, while the cost is high, it's not actually that large in comparison to the overall DoT budget, which is projected at $142B for FY2023. You could build a lot of train for that. Political will is a much more important factor. We just dropped $40B on the Current War without blinking. Even so, this misses another key step: intercity rail in Europe usually connects seamlessly to metro rail, which is what makes it so easy and nice to use. But the cities themselves in the United States do not usually have rail systems to connect to. That's why the best near-term rail corridor IMHO is NY-Buffalo (subway) - Youngstown (possible Pittsburgh metro extension) - Cleveland (subway) - Toledo (possible Detroit metro extension) - Chicago, connecting to six subway systems.
- ClumsyPilot 4y ago
  > the cost per-mile is higher than for the same distance of railroad in Europe how does this make any sence, we have to deal with tonneling under or demolishing existing densely populated real estate along the route, literal mountains in the way, etc. HS2 in UK caused an outrage, someone's farm was cut in half, houses had to be demolished, etc
- Kon-Peki 4y ago
  Toledo directly to Chicago doesn't make a lot of sense. Most of the track would go through Indiana, which is at best indifferent to Amtrak. Consider instead putting Detroit in between the two. The Chicago-Detroit route already operates at 110 mph, Amtrak and the Michigan Dept of Transportation already own the majority of the track and give routing priority to passenger trains. Amtrak and VIA are already talking about a Chicago-Toronto train that doesn't require passengers to disembark for immigration/customs, and their systems are already connected via a rail tunnel under the Detroit River.
  - scythe 4y ago
    Oh, yeah, that sounds pretty good. My main point is that you want to connect the long train to short trains. In theory, if Raleigh and Richmond (both very "blue" cities and maybe open to it) built LRT systems, you could get another route in DC-Richmond-Raleigh-Charlotte-Atlanta, where the other three have existing intracity rail.
darksaints 4y ago
The Midwest cluster of cities which include Chicago, Cleveland, Indianapolis, Minneapolis, St Louis, Columbus, and Detroit, have an extremely similar density and distance distribution compared to France, where high speed rail is incredibly successful. We could have successful high speed rail nearly everywhere in the US with a possible exception of the rocky mountain regions. I wish this density trope would die. The real reason we don't have high speed rail is that right of way acquisition is ridiculously costly unless government is involved, and we don't trust our government to do it right. Probably justified, if urban rail costs are indicative.
eloisant 4y ago
We're not talking about doing NYC - SF by train, but there are a lot of places where it makes sense. As I used to live in the Bay Area, it really surprised me that there was no bullet train between San Francisco and Los Angeles. Yes, apparently it's planned but it boggles my mind that they waited so much before building it. Americans don't realize how much nicer train is compared to plane for medium distances (up to 500 miles). Station being in the middle of the city, get in the train 10 minutes before departure without check-in or security, no waiting 15 minutes on the tarmac before disembarking... I guarantee you the door-to-door time is going to be lower. Also train is more confortable, seats are wider, you can use phones/electronics for the full duration of the trip...
- Bubble_Pop_22 4y ago
  > without check-in or security The biggest break for trains in the last 20 years hasn't been Maglevs or Japan's bullet. Matter of fact it has been OBL fixation on attacking America in a spectacular and televised fashion. The lack of security abord trains is shocking honestly. Trains are special, there is something about them which calms people even the most evil, because ill intentioned people like terrorists and mentally deranged domestic shooters just ignore them.
- labcomputer 4y ago
  > Yes, apparently it's planned but it boggles my mind that they waited so much before building it. Basically because there are only 2-3 places you can practically cross the mountains surrounding LA (Tehachapi Tejon, and the coast), and 3-4 places you can do the same for the SFBA. All of them are already occupied by existing rail or roads. Those mountain crossings cost more that the rest of the system combined. > get in the train 10 minutes before departure without check-in or security, no waiting 15 minutes on the tarmac before disembarking... I guarantee you the door-to-door time is going to be lower. I wish, but you're wrong and it's not even close. (SFO, OAK or SJC) to (LAX, BUR, LGB or ONT) is about 45 minutes gate to gate. Add 5 minutes for security[], 25 minutes boarding, 15 minutes deplaning and you're at 1h30 curb to curb (vs. the almost 3 hours station to station that CAHSR claims* they will provide when finished). The plane is faster even accounting for travel time to and from the station or airport. The contrast is especially stark if your destination is not downtown LA. [*] TSA with PreCheck has gotten really fast in the past couple years. They no longer scan your boarding pass (just your ID + a database of the day's travelers). You don't need to unpack your bag, remove your shoes, nor remove your jacket. On a dozen trips in the past year, security has never taken me more than 5 minutes. It takes almost as long to walk through the maze of ropes forming the queue as the actual security procedure itself.
not2b 4y ago
You'd only want to build regional HSR systems that would connect cities that get a lot of traffic and flights between them and are under 300 miles / 500 km apart. So, the northeast corridor, connect California major cities, connect Portland to Seattle, connect Dallas/Austin/Houston/San Antonio. In Canada, half the population lives near a nearly straight line from Quebec City to Windsor; you could put a high speed rail line down the middle of that.
teloli 4y ago
Distance alone isn't enough of a reason though, Beijing–Shanghai is 1200 KM and yet you can cover that by train no problem in < 5 hours: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beijing%E2%80%93Shanghai_high-speed_railway https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beijing%E2%80%93Shanghai_high-...

rr888 4y ago

I used to think this too, now I live here the American system actually works pretty well. Railways are actually very busy with freight, which keeps it off the roads and freight doesn't mind pauses and running overnight. Lots of rural connections are much easier to drive. Even between cities its easier because for train connections you'd have to get to the station (usually central) where if you drive you can go directly where you want. As a result people are much more mobile and can live in a wider area in USA, where in Europe to commute to the office you really have to live near a train station.

deleted 4y ago
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dr_dshiv 4y ago
But that means the modern USA misses out on the inherent benefits of density. This is a weird counter rational behavior— it is in everyone’s perceived best interest to live in big separate homes, but the collective social economic benefit of living together is evident. Also evident is how sprawl sucks vitality from culture.
- geraldwhen 4y ago
  No thank you. I live near enough howling dogs. I will never forget the peace and quiet when I stepped into my first house. Why anyone lives in apartments by choice is beyond me. The noise is absurd.
  - deleted 4y ago
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  - PaulsWallet 4y ago
    You are assuming you only have 2 choices, single-family home or apartment. That's a very American perspective because most of America only allows those two but in a proper city you have townhomes, duplexes, casitas, bungalows and many more options that aren't just apartments. However, most of American is zoned exclusively for single-family homes and not mixed-use so like the parent comment said, you don't get benefits of proper density which includes many home types.

js2 4y ago

Italy compared to U.S.: https://www.thetruesize.com/#?borders=1~!MTY3OTMzNjA.NTkxNzEzNg*MjAyNDcxMDg(MzIyMzUzOTA~!IT*NzY3NzgzNQ.MTIyMzY3NzI)NQ~!US*NzE1Njc.MjI0NjIyNjk)Ng https://www.thetruesize.com/#?borders=1~!MTY3OTMzNjA.NTkxNzE... U.S compared to Europe: https://www.thetruesize.com/#?borders=1~!MTc4NDEwOTE.MjkxMDg5Mg*MzYwMDAwMDA(MA~!US*Nzc2MjE4Mg.MjE5Mzc1ODA)MA https://www.thetruesize.com/#?borders=1~!MTc4NDEwOTE.MjkxMDg... My daughter, visiting home from college this weekend, took Amtrak from Richmond, VA yesterday. She's taking the train back Monday. Without delay, the train takes about 4 hours. Driving takes about 3 hours. Add an extra 15 minutes on each side for getting to/from the station, so 4:30 hours vs 3 hours. Distance is 150 miles (241 km). Cost of the train is $42 (coach) each way. Cost of gasoline would be ~ $24 each way. Her train yesterday departed about 30 minutes late and arrived an hour late. Supposedly it may have been traveling slower due to the heat wave. Here's a live map of the Amtrak network: https://www.amtrak.com/track-your-train.html https://www.amtrak.com/track-your-train.html That's just our national train system. Many municipalities have their own patchwork of train networks. Some off the top of my head: BART, LIRR, MTA, MBTA T, Metro (D.C., Atlanta), L (Chicago), Metrorail (Miami).

wbsss4412 4y ago
> Cost of the train is $42 (coach) each way. Cost of gasoline would be ~ $24 each way. The cost of driving is more than just the cost of gasoline.
- bluGill 4y ago
  Not if you already own the car. Then the cost of the car and insurance are sunk costs that do not count. Sure there is a little wear and tear, but that adds just a couple bucks. If you buy a car/rent for that trip alone, then the cost of driving is far higher. However for most Americans the cost of a car is a sunk cost that cannot be counted. If you live someplace where it is possible to live without a car, then you can make that argument, but most of us do not.
  - wbsss4412 4y ago
    The resale value of the car, insurance (even if you don’t do pay per mile, insurance quotes are generally going to have some basis in miles driven per year), and maintenance are all directly correlated with miles driven. So, while these are often treated as sunk costs, that is due to improper accounting. So, to reiterate, the cost of driving is much more than the cost of gas.

PeterHolzwarth 4y ago

America actually has a rather vast and impressive rail system. It's just used almost entirely for shipping.

aj7 4y ago
Exactly. People’s time is too valuable when per capita GDP is $60k.
- asdajksah2123 4y ago
  And that's why they prefer a mode of transport that requires you to drive an hour outside the city in traffic, arrive at least an hour before your flight so you can go through the indignity of airport security, take an hour long flight, and then wait for bags and then drive an hour back into your destination city in traffic? Total time 4 hrs. Or they prefer driving through traffic from one city to the other for 4.5 hrs where they have to have complete concentration so they literally don't die and kill a bunch of other people? As opposed to a 4.5 hr train ride where they have lots of seating space, an extremely comfortable ride with great views where they can basically just sleep through the trip and/or work comfortably on their laptops with great wifi? These are not hypotheticals. These are literally your options if you were to travel from NYC to Boston. All the modes of transport take about 4-5 hrs. Train is significantly better in almost every way. The only problem is that Amtrak subsidizes the rest of its highly unprofitable network which means they price gouge the NorthEast corridor and under invest in it, making it more expensive, and not as good as it should be. Even with a sub par train service relative to European and Asian counterparts, train is easily the best option on this route.
  - ghaff 4y ago
    That does assume you live conveniently to the train station in Boston or the suburban station to the south. I do generally take the train to NYC but mostly because I hate driving into NYC so much. I have to drive an hour in the wrong direction to get to Route 128 so the time tradeoff actually isn't great.

CPLX 4y ago

I think any answer to this has to involve two staples of American culture, cars and racism. The prevalence of both has been a big detriment to rail initiatives. For whatever reason people have associated a nearby train station with crime and opening up the neighborhood to the "wrong people". And the incredibly cheap and ubiquitous car culture (especially in the post-war period) provided the alternative. That of course interacts with the dramatic lack of density for new post-war suburban neighborhoods as well, which is a function of both issues mentioned (cars and racism) as well as the fact that the US does indeed (or did) have a whole lot of extra space compared to Europe.

geraldwhen 4y ago
I used to walk past a bus station to lunch most weekdays. Nearly every single day I witnessed an assault at the bus station. Mass transit hubs do bring crime. Why minimize that?
- solar-ice 4y ago
  They just… don’t, elsewhere. That’s not a normal state of affairs. Something is horribly wrong with how you’re doing something - either with the stations, or with society - if that’s the case.
  - foobiekr 4y ago
    At least in my personal experience in Spain, the stations in Madrid were, in direct observation, a gathering place for pickpockets and other scammers.
  - geraldwhen 4y ago
    What is elsewhere? Train and subway stations are hubs for crime in the places I’ve been in America.
    - solar-ice 4y ago
      Germany, the UK, Sweden, NL… India even. Pickpocketing, in the big central stations, same as anywhere lots of people are, sure - violence, no.

cbm-vic-20 4y ago

I live near Boston in the US. In five hours, you can get as far north as Portland Maine (there's no passenger rail service north of there), and as far south as Philadelphia, and as far west as Albany. In New York, you can probably do better, but if you leave the Northeast Corridor (the stretch between Boston and Washington, DC, along the coast) destinations to other major cities like Montreal will take around nine hours (if they ever restart that service post-pandemic), and even the fastest train to Chicago takes around 20 hours. NYC to Los Angeles? at least 70 hours. How far can you get to by train from Paris in 70 hours?

melling 4y ago
I can make it to Portland Maine from NJ in 6 hours. Portland is only 112 miles from Boston.
rr888 4y ago
> How far can you get to by train from Paris in 70 hours? NYC->LA is about the same as Paris->Moscow and that takes nearly 3 days as well. Paris Instanbul is similar distance which is a little quicker but still over 2 days.

PopAlongKid 4y ago

> a pretty hostile terrain - Italy has lots of mountains, hills, rivers So does U.S., a lot more in fact. The length of Italy north to south is 1,320km, the distance from San Francisco to Chicago is 3,220Km and that's only 2/3rds of the east-west distance of the continental U.S. And there are two major mountain ranges to cross on that trip, and huge stretches with almost no population. (How many deserts to cross does Italy have?) Trains need crews, the crews need to work in shifts, the crews need to be available along the way, even in Nowhere, Nevada. That causes delays and restricts schedules.

ClumsyPilot 4y ago
how are deserts a relevant problem?
- robohoe 4y ago
  Getting to desert areas to maintain the rails takes time and resources. We're talking about large swaths of deserts and desolate land with absolutely no cities or towns for double-triple digits of miles.

ChrisMarshallNY 4y ago

As a frequent traveler to Tokyo, I became a fan of mass transit. A guaranteed way to become sad, is use the Tokyo trains, then come home to New York, and use the Metro/LIRR.

decafninja 4y ago
This. I have fond memories of using the subway/trains in Tokyo. Ditto for Seoul (which I'd rank even better than Tokyo's), Hong Kong, Singapore. I dread using the subway in NYC and nowadays try to avoid using it as much as possible (mostly via biking).
aj7 4y ago
Metro/LIRR works fine, if you can tune out the aesthetics.
- ChrisMarshallNY 4y ago
  And the schedules. Tokyo train schedule slippage is measured in seconds.
  - decafninja 4y ago
    I've found many Newyorkers will respond to any negative comparison of the NYC subways to other cities with a retort of "but we have 24/7 service and they don't". I kind of feel that 24/7 service is actually one factor in why the NYC subways have so many problems - both in terms of logistics and aesthetics.

PaulHoule 4y ago

It’s almost forgotten how much resentment Americans had to the private railroads. They would buy land along the tracks, refuse to make a stop in your town, and start a new town. There was a phrase, ‘railroaded’ to describe being a victim of this power imbalance. As such, people saw the roads as belonging to everyone but railroads being to the benefit of a few.

vidanay 4y ago
A significant portion of the land wasn't bought, it was acquired through eminent domain. And an even more significant portion of the land was simply stolen from natives (both by settlers and by the railroads.)
- throwaway0a5e 4y ago
  I see both those cases as "stolen but with a kangaroo court veneer of due process"
panick21_ 4y ago
Yeah partly because the roads were literally paid for by the state, specially the highways, and truck and bus companies don't have to pay for maintenance.

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DrBazza 4y ago

I'm not convinced high speed rail would ever work in the US due to how entrenched the car culture is, regardless of the terrain. In Europe with we have spoke-and-hub railways - want to get into London? There's almost certainly a local station near you in the suburbs. Then jump on the Eurostar to Paris. Get to Paris, and then get a local line back out to wherever you want to go. Right now, it would have to be airport like terminals, and a multi-decade (if not century long) plan to connect the city centres. In the US, drive to the new high speed mainline station outside the city, where there would have to be as much parking as an airport, and then get the high speed line to the destination, and then... hire a car? Building a mainline station in many US city centres for high speed lines isn't going to work right now. There are too few local lines going in, and nowhere to build super-sized car parks.

melling 4y ago
Would never work because of our car culture? I’m going to use my imagination on this one since “never” is a long time. The year 2040. Two technologies combine make never a reality. 1. Maglev trains that travel at 350 miles per hour (600kph) 2. Self-driving taxis Exhibit 1: https://www.cnn.com/travel/amp/china-fastest-maglev-train-intl-hnk/index.html https://www.cnn.com/travel/amp/china-fastest-maglev-train-in... NY to LA in 10 hours by maglev sometime in this century. The 4 hour maglev between Miami and NYC will be popular.
- DrBazza 4y ago
  I did sort of contradict myself there and say never and multi-decade plan. Problems the US has: * Lack of spoke and hub railways. * Cars. * Cost-per-mile, which if I understand correctly is a political and a union-thing. * And just politics by itself. It's not dissimilar in the UK, but somehow we muddle through it. I don't believe that "cheap" maglev will ever help the US, it's been around for decades, and the longest highspeed line built by the Chinese is 19 miles at a cost of "only" $1.3 bn (I'll leave it up to the reader about how realistic that construction cost would be in the West). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maglev#China,_2000-present https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maglev#China,_2000-present The US will still have the same problem huge construction costs, political lobbying from the airlines, no hub and spoke railways, a vast airport style set of car parking around any terminals that are built. The West now suffers from pointless adversarial politics where the opposition votes the opposite to the government simply "because", and for no rational reason other than "it's the other party". Even once you get past that hurdle, it's how "cheap" is the cheapest bidder. Labour/labor laws and so on. I would genuinely love to see the US lead the world with high speed rail, but I just can't see it.

decafninja 4y ago

I'm visiting Italy in a month and have multiple tickets booked on Italo's Club Executive class. The seats look sweet and the price was surprisingly affordable. Looking forward to see how good it is.

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Manuel_D 4y ago

Trains in the US are widely prevalent! It's just that they're used for freight rather than passenger travel. The main driver behind this is the population density of the USA, cities are spaced too far apart to make passenger travel by train viable. Not coincidentally, the only area that does have significant passenger rail networks, the DC - Boston corridor, has population density similar to Western Europe. An interesting video on this topic: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mbEfzuCLoAQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mbEfzuCLoAQ

dfee 4y ago

Italy is much smaller than the US. It’s about the equivalent size of New Mexico - which has 1/30th the population (2M). Public transit isn’t bad - I told on an Amtrak from LA to SD yesterday which was quite nice. But, I also rode on the LA metro which was filed with mobs of mentally ill marauders. My experience to Rome (albeit a bit over a decade ago) was similar. That’s an off putting response that likely plays a big role in sinking demand for public transit - esp. as compared to a car. Of course, America was also designed for the auto - we’re newer, and gas was cheap during the highway construction heyday.

davidw 4y ago
There are plenty of higher density areas within the US though, where trains would be a good option. Maybe Cyanide Springs, Oklahoma to Blandsville, North Dakota doesn't make sense for trains, but you could do bits of the PNW, California and the east coast with higher quality rail pretty successfully.

mastercheif 4y ago

To go against the grain somewhat, I think distance is an overrated factor in regard to its impact in preventing US passenger rail adoption. I think the most overlooked factor is poor intra-city transit and lack of mixed use density in our city cores. I recently traveled to Germany on business, a few nights in Berlin then took the ICE inter-city train to Munich. The ICE train dropped me off at the main station in Munich—my hotel was 7.3 miles driving from the main station. I was able to jump on the u-bahn and with a quick transfer at Odeonsplatz get to my hotel in half-an-hour including a 10 minute walk from the train station. Door to door from Berlin to the hotel in Munich was 05:00 hours. If one were to drive, maps says 361mi/580km traveled if driving direct with a drive time of 05:30. For comparisons sake, let's take a hypothetical trip from Dallas Union Station to Apple's engineering headquarters in Austin, TX 14.7mi/24.6km from the Austin train station. According to Apple Maps, taking public transit would take 09:00 hours. Driving direct from Dallas Union Station to Apple HQ in Austin is 187mi/300km in total with a drive time of 03:00.

reddog 4y ago

Actually the US has the worlds most efficient train system: https://www.masterresource.org/railroads/us-most-advanced-rail-world/ https://www.masterresource.org/railroads/us-most-advanced-ra... For long hauls, we use our RRs to move freight and airlines to move people. By traveling at 600mph instead of 60mph (the speed of most European train travel - intercity high speed rail is rare and expensive) I can get to anyplace in the continental US in under 5 hours from my home in Austin.

Milner08 4y ago
Intercity trains often go much faster than 60mph. More like an average of 90mph with a speed limit 125mph on the main lines in UK. Thats not even the HS1 (and eventually HS2), that's on our old AF Victorian rail roads. The argument for trains is often more about taking out the need to drive everywhere than the need to fly from coast to coast though, as a train is never going to beat that.

andjd 4y ago

The USA has a world-class _Freight_ rail network, and almost all existing track in the country is owned by the freight operators, who manage the track to optimize it for freight operations. In many cases, they are openly hostile to passenger service on their tracks. On top of this, most cities in the USA were built (or destroyed and rebuilt) for private cars being the primary mode of transportation. In Europe, one of the benefits of taking the train over an airplane is that the train stations will often be in a walkable city center with a good connection to public transit. In the USA, outside of a handful of older cities (New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, Boston . . .), the train station drops you off in the middle of nowhere, usually with far less connections and services than the airport has. When compared to air travel, intercity rail travel is often slower, less convenient, less frequent, and more expensive. Even with the Acela/northwest corridor, flights are often cheaper than rail, so it is the convenience of the downtown stations and connections to public transit that drive people to take the train over airplanes. It's no coincidence that the major cities on the route (DC, Philiadelphia, NYC, Boston) are also cities with some of the best metro networks in the country.

nickbauman 4y ago
No it doesn't have a world class freight rail network. The North American rail infra is incredibly primitive. Most of it is "dark territory" (no track sensors), unlike Europe. I used to write rail automation software for a German firm. They were appalled at the state of affairs here. One of the most lucrative rail systems in the US had an average speed of their trains in the single digits MPH!
- skellera 4y ago
  I think it’s easy to call something out as primitive but what changes could be made and how much impact would it have? It doesn’t seem like our freight trains are the bottleneck when moving goods around the country.
  - ant6n 4y ago
    They kind of are if you consider how many goods are still shipped by trucks. The US is perfect for rail - lots of long trips, with lots of goods. It could probably have more market share if goods could move more quickly and flexibly.

rockostrich 4y ago

As an American, it doesn't really boggle my mind at all. We have a very car-centric culture. Just look at how we treat cyclists/cycling infrastructure, especially in cities. It's night and day compared to most European cities. To be fair though, the continental US is almost double the size of Europe and Amtrak is actually alright in the areas that it serves (although my experience with trains in Switzerland/Italy was definitely much better).

simongray 4y ago
> the continental US is almost double the size of Europe Europe (the continent) is slightly bigger than the entirety of the USA... I guess you are talking about continental Western Europe where much of the high speed rail is?
- rootusrootus 4y ago
  > Europe (the continent) is slightly bigger than the entirety of the USA... And a good bit more than double the number of people.

gwbas1c 4y ago

Trains "work" in Europe because many European cities are easily walkable. The trains (and other public transportation) comes every 10-15 minutes, so you can leave and arrive when you want to. Now, consider the convenience of traveling by car: You can leave and arrive when you want to. For a longer journey, you don't need to deal with transferring between trains/busses/whatever, which means that you can keep your luggage in your car until your destination. Chances are, you can park your car at your destination or very close. As far as sprawl: In some places, building codes require more land. Other times, banks won't lend to build unless the land is worth a certain percentage of the building. For example, when I built my house, the bank wanted the land to be worth about 25% of the value of the house; and the town required that it was so many feet away from the road. That forced my neighborhood to have large, open lawns. (And as much as I love my lawn, I'd be just as happy with a postage stamp yard too.) There's also the rumor that the US was deliberately built to sprawl after WWII as a way to survive a nuclear attack. I don't know if that's true or a rumor, though.

panick21_ 4y ago
The solution should be to make US cities walkable, as they were in the past.

glonq 4y ago

Canada is even worse. We are proud of our cross-country rail's history, but today it is slow and expensive compared to other systems.