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> Unlike in much of the rest of the world, the United States’ rail network is fragmented. Rather than having a national railroad, or tracks open to use by any c

> Unlike in much of the rest of the world, the United States’ rail network is fragmented. Rather than having a national railroad, or tracks open to use by any company, our railroads are vertically integrated—they own, maintain, and run their own lines, and compete largely on the strengths and weaknesses of their networks. For what that's worth, that used to be the case in many countries, it was certainly the case in most of europe before the inter-war period (e.g. the ancestor of Deutsche Bahn was created after WWI, the french SNCF in 1938, and British Railways after WWII). And numerous traces of that remain if you know how to look. Paris has several major railway stations each serving a slice of the country (and inconveniently disconnected requiring connecting transit through the city) because each of these slices used to be handled by a different company, each with its own terminus station in Paris.

duxup 3y ago
There was a BBC article (I think) about a guy who travels via train all over Europe and finds these odd disconnections and routes that don't make sense, take too long. Often due to a lack of cooperation between various government imaginations. It was an interesting read, as a tourist I generally can get where I need to go, and that's no small accomplishment, but traveling otherwise seems to present more complications than I assumed.
qwezxcrty 3y ago
Having more than one railway terminals for a city as big as Paris is not unreasonable. There are technical difficulty with connecting the stations as it's not easy to build lines through/beneath the city. A single reasonably sized station also may not have the capacity to handle all the passengers. In China, most long range railway services are centrally planned (this is not necessary a bad thing here.), but Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, etc. all end up with more than one terminal.
- em-bee 3y ago
  all the terminals are historical. you really want trains to go through the city. in china apart from the historical stations there is usually only one new station for high speed trains. the problem in china is that the cities are huge and their high speed tracks are new and independent from the historical infrastructure so they are usually not upgrading old stations but build a new one often outside the city. the shanghai station terminates at one of the airports, which is quite reasonable. beijing seems a bit more complicated because it looks like they actually upgraded existing stations for high speed railway, but they also built a new high speed rail station is in the south, which at first seems odd given that the airport is far away to the north and there is no direct connection (unlike some other cities), but then they built the new airport also in the south and now the placement makes a lot more sense. (still no direct connection to the airport though) in germany at least every larger city is trying to convert terminals into through running stations. vienna just merged its two major stations into one main station in the last decade.
  - mschuster91 3y ago
    > in germany at least every larger city is trying to convert terminals into through running stations. Which is a multi billion dollar effort for very questionable gain. Stuttgart 21 is an unmitigated clusterfuck. Munich is probably never going to switch - the cost alone for the two-track S-Bahn tunnel exploded to well over a dozen billion euros and will take way over a decade to complete. Should the Bahn ever think it would be desirable to convert Munich Central to a through station (if they ever find the place to do so), they'll probably need to spend over a hundred billion euros relocating everything. Frankfurt is similarly bad. The key thing is, if railways would hire enough conductors they could reduce turnaround times in terminal stations to well under a minute - driver in the old front hops off, new driver hops on at the old end, starts up the control unit and off the train goes. But that would require them to hire and invest into staff on their own dime, while the cost for reconstruction or new construction is almost exclusively paid for with tax money. That is why terminal stations fell out of favor. > vienna just merged its two major stations into one main station in the last decade. It's not a complete merger, only the ÖBB moved their long-distance trains - Wien West still serves the Westbahn and regional trains.
    - em-bee 3y ago
      if railways would hire enough conductors they could reduce turnaround times in terminal stations to well under a minute but that's not the only problem. the speed at which the train can enter the station is much lower, and the distance it must travel when coming from the "wrong" direction is also longer, and outgoing and incoming trains get in each others way. these factors all increase the travel time and reduce the capacity a station can handle. the new vienna hauptbahnhof is capable of handling more trains a day on much less space than its predecessors. the rebuilding freed up a lot of real estate space too. of course the location already had the benefit of tracks going in multiple directions that could simply be reused, whereas most other terminal stations probably would have to build new tracks in the other direction or pick a different location. It's not a complete merger, only the ÖBB moved their long-distance trains but that is the point. there is now a single station for long distance transfers, where it matters. regional trains leaving from westbahnhof will only be used by people starting or ending in vienna. those coming from other directions will mostly be able to take a through train or transfer in maybe st. pölten or linz instead of vienna. the westbahnhof is no longer a transfer station except for destinations in vienna itself. the same for the franz-josephs-bahnhof. if you come from the south or east you transfer at hauptbahnhof and then somewhere outside vienna.
- pif 3y ago
  > Having more than one railway terminals for a city as big as Paris is not unreasonable. > There are technical difficulty with connecting the stations Both points of yours are right, but something is missing in the picture. Several non-connected terminals are the right solution is you only consider the service to the people living in the city, but if such city also acts as a transportation hub for a greater region, then you must ensure that travelling via the hub be possible without having to load your luggage on a crowded bus.
anyonecancode 3y ago
Back to the US, but an example people might not know/think of -- the NYC subway system. It's all run by the Metropolitan Transit Agency (MTA) now, but originally there were separate, competing subway companies[1, 2, 3]. That's why some lines are letters, and some numbers, and why switching between these often feels surprisingly long and/or complex. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brooklyn%E2%80%93Manhattan_Transit_Corporation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brooklyn%E2%80%93Manhattan_Tra... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Independent_Subway_System https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Independent_Subway_System [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interborough_Rapid_Transit_Company https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interborough_Rapid_Transit_Com... Ah -- should have continued reading comments, I see marc__1 already posted about this.
- Empact 3y ago
  Notably the system was almost entirely built by these private companies, and basically no progress occurred after the unification. Instead, the system has decayed. A demonstration of how competition fuels progress in infrastructure.
  - Ericson2314 3y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Independent_Subway_System https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Independent_Subway_System is quite large and was built by the city.
  - delfinom 3y ago
    Eh, the problem is the city is now incredibly built up. New stations have to be built even deeper than before to avoid hitting building foundations and utilities. Those earlier companies had the ability to do mostly what they wanted, including building incredibly piss-poor stations that can't withstand the test of time, while making it near impossible to renovate the station because they cut every corner possible and included no bypass tracks.
    - klardotsh 3y ago
      They were also able to pay peanuts to send humans into harrowing situations to get the tunnels and tracks and etc. made, collapses or flooding or other injury-inducing hells be damned. America does build infrastructure painfully slowly and bureaucratically, but I don't think we're ever getting the early-1900s esque speed of building back at a price public entities will pay (or a price private entities could ever realisticlaly recoup). Enough rules have been written in blood to ensure that.
burkaman 3y ago
Isn't Japan like this as well? They have among the best rail systems in the world, so it's obviously possible to succeed with this model. I don't know the details so I could be wrong, I just remember there being separate rail companies in different regions and cities.
- bobthepanda 3y ago
  While there are private railway networks doing their own thing, the overall national network is operated by the JR group, which was formerly the unified JNR until it was privatized. The companies do jointly operate though, in something that they call ‘mutual direct operation’ where they basically each agree to run trains on each others line as one continuous (to the customer) operation and split the fares.
  - burkaman 3y ago
    Ok I didn't realize it used to be nationalized, that helps explain why cooperation between the companies is so much better.
    - bobthepanda 3y ago
      I would also maybe not characterize all of the groups as the best in the world. The profitable ones are in the urban areas of Honshu. JR Kyushu is staying afloat, and Hokkaido and Shikoku are losing money hand over fist.
- starttoaster 3y ago
  Taking into consideration that Japan is little more than a third of a million square kilometers in land area, while the US is over 9 million square kilometers, and the vertical that would impose to railway systems to develop infrastructure similarly. Comparing transit systems from/to the US and most other countries seems to be apples and oranges.
- yabones 3y ago
  Metro systems in Japan work a little differently. The main difference is that they're primarily real estate hedge funds owning most of the property in & near the stations, rather than just being a transport network. Their main interest is in creating economic hot spots around their stations, and it just so happens that moving people with ridiculous efficiency between those is the best way to do so.
PaulDavisThe1st 3y ago
London also, with multiple distinct stations that originally corresponded to both private train/railroad companies and also parts of the country. Even after nationalization, the "natural" geographic separation remained, which is perhaps inevitable for a national hub. Euston: west coast line to Scotland; Kings Cross: east coast line; Paddington: west country; Waterloo: SE England. etc.
Zardoz84 3y ago
Madrid had a similar situation with the trains stations. However all they has been connected by rail and metro. Main connection it's the train tunnels from Atocha-Recoletos-Nuevos ministerios-Chamartin and Atocha-Sol-Nuevos ministerios-Chamartin. Atocha sinks all the train traffic that comes/goes from the spurh of Spain to Madrid. Chamartín does the same thing with the north traffic. Sol, Recoletos and Nuevos ministerios have a pivotal role, moving people from this two exterior stations to the center of Madrid.

duxup 3y ago

There was a BBC article (I think) about a guy who travels via train all over Europe and finds these odd disconnections and routes that don't make sense, take too long. Often due to a lack of cooperation between various government imaginations. It was an interesting read, as a tourist I generally can get where I need to go, and that's no small accomplishment, but traveling otherwise seems to present more complications than I assumed.

qwezxcrty 3y ago

Having more than one railway terminals for a city as big as Paris is not unreasonable. There are technical difficulty with connecting the stations as it's not easy to build lines through/beneath the city. A single reasonably sized station also may not have the capacity to handle all the passengers. In China, most long range railway services are centrally planned (this is not necessary a bad thing here.), but Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, etc. all end up with more than one terminal.

em-bee 3y ago
all the terminals are historical. you really want trains to go through the city. in china apart from the historical stations there is usually only one new station for high speed trains. the problem in china is that the cities are huge and their high speed tracks are new and independent from the historical infrastructure so they are usually not upgrading old stations but build a new one often outside the city. the shanghai station terminates at one of the airports, which is quite reasonable. beijing seems a bit more complicated because it looks like they actually upgraded existing stations for high speed railway, but they also built a new high speed rail station is in the south, which at first seems odd given that the airport is far away to the north and there is no direct connection (unlike some other cities), but then they built the new airport also in the south and now the placement makes a lot more sense. (still no direct connection to the airport though) in germany at least every larger city is trying to convert terminals into through running stations. vienna just merged its two major stations into one main station in the last decade.
- mschuster91 3y ago
  > in germany at least every larger city is trying to convert terminals into through running stations. Which is a multi billion dollar effort for very questionable gain. Stuttgart 21 is an unmitigated clusterfuck. Munich is probably never going to switch - the cost alone for the two-track S-Bahn tunnel exploded to well over a dozen billion euros and will take way over a decade to complete. Should the Bahn ever think it would be desirable to convert Munich Central to a through station (if they ever find the place to do so), they'll probably need to spend over a hundred billion euros relocating everything. Frankfurt is similarly bad. The key thing is, if railways would hire enough conductors they could reduce turnaround times in terminal stations to well under a minute - driver in the old front hops off, new driver hops on at the old end, starts up the control unit and off the train goes. But that would require them to hire and invest into staff on their own dime, while the cost for reconstruction or new construction is almost exclusively paid for with tax money. That is why terminal stations fell out of favor. > vienna just merged its two major stations into one main station in the last decade. It's not a complete merger, only the ÖBB moved their long-distance trains - Wien West still serves the Westbahn and regional trains.
  - em-bee 3y ago
    if railways would hire enough conductors they could reduce turnaround times in terminal stations to well under a minute but that's not the only problem. the speed at which the train can enter the station is much lower, and the distance it must travel when coming from the "wrong" direction is also longer, and outgoing and incoming trains get in each others way. these factors all increase the travel time and reduce the capacity a station can handle. the new vienna hauptbahnhof is capable of handling more trains a day on much less space than its predecessors. the rebuilding freed up a lot of real estate space too. of course the location already had the benefit of tracks going in multiple directions that could simply be reused, whereas most other terminal stations probably would have to build new tracks in the other direction or pick a different location. It's not a complete merger, only the ÖBB moved their long-distance trains but that is the point. there is now a single station for long distance transfers, where it matters. regional trains leaving from westbahnhof will only be used by people starting or ending in vienna. those coming from other directions will mostly be able to take a through train or transfer in maybe st. pölten or linz instead of vienna. the westbahnhof is no longer a transfer station except for destinations in vienna itself. the same for the franz-josephs-bahnhof. if you come from the south or east you transfer at hauptbahnhof and then somewhere outside vienna.
pif 3y ago
> Having more than one railway terminals for a city as big as Paris is not unreasonable. > There are technical difficulty with connecting the stations Both points of yours are right, but something is missing in the picture. Several non-connected terminals are the right solution is you only consider the service to the people living in the city, but if such city also acts as a transportation hub for a greater region, then you must ensure that travelling via the hub be possible without having to load your luggage on a crowded bus.

anyonecancode 3y ago

Back to the US, but an example people might not know/think of -- the NYC subway system. It's all run by the Metropolitan Transit Agency (MTA) now, but originally there were separate, competing subway companies[1, 2, 3]. That's why some lines are letters, and some numbers, and why switching between these often feels surprisingly long and/or complex. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brooklyn%E2%80%93Manhattan_Transit_Corporation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brooklyn%E2%80%93Manhattan_Tra... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Independent_Subway_System https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Independent_Subway_System [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interborough_Rapid_Transit_Company https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interborough_Rapid_Transit_Com... Ah -- should have continued reading comments, I see marc__1 already posted about this.

Empact 3y ago
Notably the system was almost entirely built by these private companies, and basically no progress occurred after the unification. Instead, the system has decayed. A demonstration of how competition fuels progress in infrastructure.
- Ericson2314 3y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Independent_Subway_System https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Independent_Subway_System is quite large and was built by the city.
- delfinom 3y ago
  Eh, the problem is the city is now incredibly built up. New stations have to be built even deeper than before to avoid hitting building foundations and utilities. Those earlier companies had the ability to do mostly what they wanted, including building incredibly piss-poor stations that can't withstand the test of time, while making it near impossible to renovate the station because they cut every corner possible and included no bypass tracks.
  - klardotsh 3y ago
    They were also able to pay peanuts to send humans into harrowing situations to get the tunnels and tracks and etc. made, collapses or flooding or other injury-inducing hells be damned. America does build infrastructure painfully slowly and bureaucratically, but I don't think we're ever getting the early-1900s esque speed of building back at a price public entities will pay (or a price private entities could ever realisticlaly recoup). Enough rules have been written in blood to ensure that.

burkaman 3y ago

Isn't Japan like this as well? They have among the best rail systems in the world, so it's obviously possible to succeed with this model. I don't know the details so I could be wrong, I just remember there being separate rail companies in different regions and cities.

bobthepanda 3y ago
While there are private railway networks doing their own thing, the overall national network is operated by the JR group, which was formerly the unified JNR until it was privatized. The companies do jointly operate though, in something that they call ‘mutual direct operation’ where they basically each agree to run trains on each others line as one continuous (to the customer) operation and split the fares.
- burkaman 3y ago
  Ok I didn't realize it used to be nationalized, that helps explain why cooperation between the companies is so much better.
  - bobthepanda 3y ago
    I would also maybe not characterize all of the groups as the best in the world. The profitable ones are in the urban areas of Honshu. JR Kyushu is staying afloat, and Hokkaido and Shikoku are losing money hand over fist.
starttoaster 3y ago
Taking into consideration that Japan is little more than a third of a million square kilometers in land area, while the US is over 9 million square kilometers, and the vertical that would impose to railway systems to develop infrastructure similarly. Comparing transit systems from/to the US and most other countries seems to be apples and oranges.
yabones 3y ago
Metro systems in Japan work a little differently. The main difference is that they're primarily real estate hedge funds owning most of the property in & near the stations, rather than just being a transport network. Their main interest is in creating economic hot spots around their stations, and it just so happens that moving people with ridiculous efficiency between those is the best way to do so.

PaulDavisThe1st 3y ago

London also, with multiple distinct stations that originally corresponded to both private train/railroad companies and also parts of the country. Even after nationalization, the "natural" geographic separation remained, which is perhaps inevitable for a national hub. Euston: west coast line to Scotland; Kings Cross: east coast line; Paddington: west country; Waterloo: SE England. etc.

Zardoz84 3y ago

Madrid had a similar situation with the trains stations. However all they has been connected by rail and metro. Main connection it's the train tunnels from Atocha-Recoletos-Nuevos ministerios-Chamartin and Atocha-Sol-Nuevos ministerios-Chamartin. Atocha sinks all the train traffic that comes/goes from the spurh of Spain to Madrid. Chamartín does the same thing with the north traffic. Sol, Recoletos and Nuevos ministerios have a pivotal role, moving people from this two exterior stations to the center of Madrid.