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It's an average, so of course it says nothing about the distribution. I don't find that to be misleading, or at least I did not intend to insinuate that the USA

It's an average, so of course it says nothing about the distribution. I don't find that to be misleading, or at least I did not intend to insinuate that the USA is a perfectly distributed wasteland! It shows that while the EU and US kind of look similar in size, actually their population density on average is wildly different. Just look at a population density map of both continents side by side. It's fine to talk about certain parts of the USA being dense and able to support passenger rail. But when we talk about country-scale rail systems, that's where I have a bone to pick. As I said, there are areas of the USA that are perfectly suitable to rail, and there should be more. My criticism is the notion of "you can technically take a train from Madrid to Berlin, so you should also be able to take a train from Boston to Minneapolis". Trains in Europe go long distances, but most importantly they connect a lot of medium-sized cities along the way.

sophacles 3y ago
Boston to minneapolis could pass through: MA: Springfield NY: Albany, Buffalo,Rochester Oh: Sandusky, Cleavland, Toledo, IN: Fort wayne IL: Chicago, Rockford, WI: Madison, LaCrosse, Eu Claire, Milwaukee With some fairly minor deviations on the path. (Assuming a fairly straight path that stays in the US, going south of the lakes). Depending on your tolerance for minor deviations from the straightest possible path it could be all or a subset, but not none of those. They are all medium sized or larger cities. There are ton of small cities too, but the train doesnt have to stop in each one - there's lots of through trains in Europe to that skip towns/cities they pass.
- muspimerol 3y ago
  I don't know why we're still stuck on the Berlin <-> Madrid topic, but I'll bite :-) I added up the population of all those cities: 6.13 million. The population of Berlin and Madrid alone is 6.86 million, and our theoretical journey would take us through several cities of 1m+ along the way: Cologne, Brussels, Paris... The dense parts of Europe have 500k+ cities basically overlapping. As someone who grew up in the Midwest, I would absolutely love this theoretical train, but I'm not surprised it doesn't exist (yet)!
  - Wytwwww 3y ago
    > I added up the population of all those cities: 6.13 million. Well just Boston (where it would presumably start) is over 4 million (and whole Massachusetts is almost as dense as Belgium). Minneapolis is another ~3 million. Chicago is over 8 million. I didn't even look up the other cities... yeah it's lower but really not as much as you're implying.
    - muspimerol 3y ago
      Oh if we're talking about metro area population, then the EU route is also significantly higher (for example, Paris goes from 2 million to 13 million). I was just looking at city limits in both cases. Honestly I agree with your sentiment. We should connect all these urban areas with passenger rail. But I don't think that this is the first step. Most American cities have atrocious public transit, which needs to be fixed first. No one will take a train from Chicago to Minneapolis if they just have to rent a car once they get there anyway. It would be a shame to invest billions in connecting cities with high speed rail, only to have low ridership because it still doesn't compete with flying/driving.
      - Wytwwww 3y ago
        > Oh if we're talking about metro area population I was just looking at the urban area. The official population of many cities in the US is almost entirely meaningless in this context.
  - sophacles 3y ago
    It's a bit misleading to claim: "The dense parts of Europe have 500k+ cities basically overlapping.", while pretending that Chicago doesn't have 6M+ additional people in its immediate suburbs who would also be able to use this hypothetical train. The US and EU structure administrative units a bit differently, so using the Urban or Metro populations for both is a better metric for population served. I agree that Europe is more densly populated than US, so there would be longer stretches without a stop in the US. But that's OK - the long-distance trains in the EU don't stop at every station along the way anyway, it would just be a different structure of "locals" and "through trains" to service the poulations. I disagree however that population density is even all that relevant. All the cities in the US that I've mentioned have rail through them already. It's used profitably for freight all the time. I think the US doesn't have good passenger rail service because of a heck of a lot of other factors - subsidies favoring cars and planes over rail for transit, infrastructure having been created around getting everyone an automobile, a huge amount of FUD from various lobbies against rail (including arguments about population density), and a dozen others probably have more actual impact than "people per square mile is different on average".
fatnoah 3y ago
> so you should also be able to take a train from Boston to Minneapolis Maybe I'm reading this wrong, but you can take a train from Boston to Minneapolis, with either one, two, or three connections.

sophacles 3y ago

Boston to minneapolis could pass through: MA: Springfield NY: Albany, Buffalo,Rochester Oh: Sandusky, Cleavland, Toledo, IN: Fort wayne IL: Chicago, Rockford, WI: Madison, LaCrosse, Eu Claire, Milwaukee With some fairly minor deviations on the path. (Assuming a fairly straight path that stays in the US, going south of the lakes). Depending on your tolerance for minor deviations from the straightest possible path it could be all or a subset, but not none of those. They are all medium sized or larger cities. There are ton of small cities too, but the train doesnt have to stop in each one - there's lots of through trains in Europe to that skip towns/cities they pass.

muspimerol 3y ago
I don't know why we're still stuck on the Berlin <-> Madrid topic, but I'll bite :-) I added up the population of all those cities: 6.13 million. The population of Berlin and Madrid alone is 6.86 million, and our theoretical journey would take us through several cities of 1m+ along the way: Cologne, Brussels, Paris... The dense parts of Europe have 500k+ cities basically overlapping. As someone who grew up in the Midwest, I would absolutely love this theoretical train, but I'm not surprised it doesn't exist (yet)!
- Wytwwww 3y ago
  > I added up the population of all those cities: 6.13 million. Well just Boston (where it would presumably start) is over 4 million (and whole Massachusetts is almost as dense as Belgium). Minneapolis is another ~3 million. Chicago is over 8 million. I didn't even look up the other cities... yeah it's lower but really not as much as you're implying.
  - muspimerol 3y ago
    Oh if we're talking about metro area population, then the EU route is also significantly higher (for example, Paris goes from 2 million to 13 million). I was just looking at city limits in both cases. Honestly I agree with your sentiment. We should connect all these urban areas with passenger rail. But I don't think that this is the first step. Most American cities have atrocious public transit, which needs to be fixed first. No one will take a train from Chicago to Minneapolis if they just have to rent a car once they get there anyway. It would be a shame to invest billions in connecting cities with high speed rail, only to have low ridership because it still doesn't compete with flying/driving.
    - Wytwwww 3y ago
      > Oh if we're talking about metro area population I was just looking at the urban area. The official population of many cities in the US is almost entirely meaningless in this context.
- sophacles 3y ago
  It's a bit misleading to claim: "The dense parts of Europe have 500k+ cities basically overlapping.", while pretending that Chicago doesn't have 6M+ additional people in its immediate suburbs who would also be able to use this hypothetical train. The US and EU structure administrative units a bit differently, so using the Urban or Metro populations for both is a better metric for population served. I agree that Europe is more densly populated than US, so there would be longer stretches without a stop in the US. But that's OK - the long-distance trains in the EU don't stop at every station along the way anyway, it would just be a different structure of "locals" and "through trains" to service the poulations. I disagree however that population density is even all that relevant. All the cities in the US that I've mentioned have rail through them already. It's used profitably for freight all the time. I think the US doesn't have good passenger rail service because of a heck of a lot of other factors - subsidies favoring cars and planes over rail for transit, infrastructure having been created around getting everyone an automobile, a huge amount of FUD from various lobbies against rail (including arguments about population density), and a dozen others probably have more actual impact than "people per square mile is different on average".

fatnoah 3y ago

> so you should also be able to take a train from Boston to Minneapolis Maybe I'm reading this wrong, but you can take a train from Boston to Minneapolis, with either one, two, or three connections.