6 ms·

The US often has cities spaced too far apart to make trains effective. The one exception is the Northeast corridor, which consequently does have a passenger rai

The US often has cities spaced too far apart to make trains effective. The one exception is the Northeast corridor, which consequently does have a passenger rail line.

vidarh 3y ago
Very few rail corridors in the US are so sparsely populated that they can't be as cost-effective as in Europe, with the caveat that this doesn't mean cheap - a whole lot of European routes are heavily subsidised. E.g. even the old closed Amtrak corridor through Southern Montana would today serve more people than some perfectly viable routes in Norway, over a similar stretch (and there is work underway to try to resurrect it). But flights are often cheaper in Europe too despite subsidies for rail. Outside of the busiest corridors trains works best in those places where it's competing with cars or buses, not planes.
- theluketaylor 3y ago
  > But flights are often cheaper in Europe too despite subsidies for rail That's because intra-EU flights are also highly subsidized, especially around taxes for fuel. Decades ago the EU punted on the complex topic of charging taxes on avgas and that is a key contributor to the existence of cheap airlines like ryanair.
  - redeeman 3y ago
    > That's because intra-EU flights are also highly subsidized, especially around taxes for fuel. okay, so by not taking money from them, we are... giving them money?
  - novia 3y ago
    Why not just remove the subsidies for domestic flights that are 2.5 hours away by train instead of banning them?
    - acdha 3y ago
      It’s not fast enough any more. The fossil fuel companies were successful at preventing action for decades and in the intervening half century multiple generations of people have grown accustomed to cheap air travel. Making it more expensive will gradually reduce usage but that’s a slow process and there are a number of companies which didn’t even exist back when the science denial campaign started who would be trying their hardest to slow it down.
      - Manuel_D 3y ago
        Given that almost all trains in America are powered by diesel, fossil fuel companies would not lose if passenger rail was more widely adopted. Passenger rail is not popular in America because cities are more spread out, not because of some fossil fuel company conspiracy.
        acdha 3y ago
        Trains use less fuel and “almost all” is leaving out that Amtrak’s most popular service area is the electrified northeast corridor. Electric trains are also a century old and it’s a straightforward engineering task to confer them. The reason passenger travel isn’t more popular has more to do with the trillions spent subsidizing private vehicle usage. People respond to economic incentives and for the last century the message has been that taxpayers will help you drive.
    - Manuel_D 3y ago
      Even then it'd still be preferable to fly. a 2.5 hour flight is 20+ hours by train at American passenger rail speeds. Going faster would require expensive track upgrades, which would need to be paid for by more expensive tickets.
- Manuel_D 3y ago
  If flights are considerably shorter than rail trips, then they'll outcompete passenger rail. Sure, it'd be cost effective to travel from New York to Chicago by rail. But it'd take way longer than a flight. By contrast, trains in Europe are often about as fast as planes since they avoid the overhead time cost of airport security. Transit time by be longer, but a 2 hour train ride is not much longer than a 1 hour flight when you include time spent in security lines.
  - vidarh 3y ago
    For endpoints that are big enough to warrant airports that is true. But trains have the benefit of being able to serve lots of places in between better. You don't need a lot of people to take the whole journey. E.g. to take the North Coast Hiawatha route that they're hoping to resurrect through Souther Montana - it went from Chicago to Seattle. Very few people would be taking it all the way - it took ~47 hours. But many of the stops only have road connections without it. And as you point out the total time spent is not just the journey time anyway. But beyond the raw time spent, there's a difference in how. It's faster for me to fly to Paris, because I can get flights from an airport close enough to me to outweigh the security, and that's small enough to not usually be so bad. But I still have to go through security, wait around for my gate, walk to the gate and go through another round of waiting, and then I might have to wait for luggage at the other end. I'll happily spend the small amount of extra time to be able to just sit down in the Eurostar instead. The biggest issue with respect to choosing trains in the UK is that the cost of train tickets relative to air travel in the UK is criminal compared to much of the rest of Europe.
    - Manuel_D 3y ago
      > But I still have to go through security, wait around for my gate, walk to the gate and go through another round of waiting, and then I might have to wait for luggage at the other end. I'll happily spend the small amount of extra time to be able to just sit down in the Eurostar instead. But it's not a small amount of time. Planes travel 7-10 times faster than passenger rail (Amtrak runs at 50-70 mph, and can't go faster without track upgrades). If you're going to a city that's a 1 hour plane ride away that's still 7-10 hours of travel time just to skip security and baggage claim. Not exactly a good proposition. Even St. Paul to Chicago is not viable by rail when the flight is only 90 minutes. Even with a two hour security line that's still 1/3 the total transit time. "trains have the benefit of being able to serve lots of places in between better." Yes, but only when those places are fairly close and have enough population to fulfill travel demand. And the US doesn't have many regions with those conditions.
theluketaylor 3y ago
The CityNerd youtube channel recently did a list of city pairs ideally suited for high speed rail based on Spain's own network. spoiler alert: the northeast corridor plays a pretty heavy part, but it's not the only place in the US high speed rail makes a ton of sense. Highly recommended. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wE5G1kTndI4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wE5G1kTndI4
Cheer2171 3y ago
Nope. City distance in the continental US excluding the Northeast is similar to China. Distance is just the excuse.
- Manuel_D 3y ago
  This is not even remotely true. China has 4x the population in roughly the same landmass. And most of that is concentrated in the eastern part of the country (Tibet and inner Mongolia are sparsely populated, but very large). I'd be very, very interested in where you found this claim that China's cities have the same average distance between them as US cities. Wouldn't be surprised if they used totally different criteria for a Chinese city and a US city. I would be astounded if the median distance between cities of >500k people is the same in China as in the USA.
  - vidarh 3y ago
    I have no idea about how reasonable or not their claim is, but I'd note that most of the US population is, while not concentrated only in the East, concentrated heavily. Even in most the lower population density states, most of the population is within tiny part of the area of those states, often in corridors where most of the larger towns are still relatively close to at least a few other large towns. So whether or not they're right, distance largely is an excuse. Trains will not work between every pair of cities in the US, but it doesn't need to - very few US cities are so isolated that train will not work to several nearby cities. The average distance isn't very important, as long as the cities are clustered enough to create viable lines.
    - Manuel_D 3y ago
      Measuring average distance between cities is incredibly naive, that's my whole point. If countries A and B both have 100 cities in the sam land area, except country A has 50 cities over 1 million people and country B only has 10 cities over 1 million then one of these is still much more viable even if average distance between cities is the same. You're right that if all 10 of those larg cities in country A are really close then it may be viable. But that's not the case in America, save for the Northeast corridor which is already served by passenger rail.

The US often has cities spaced too far apart to make trains effective. The one exception is the Northeast corridor, which consequently does have a passenger rail line.

vidarh 3y ago

Very few rail corridors in the US are so sparsely populated that they can't be as cost-effective as in Europe, with the caveat that this doesn't mean cheap - a whole lot of European routes are heavily subsidised. E.g. even the old closed Amtrak corridor through Southern Montana would today serve more people than some perfectly viable routes in Norway, over a similar stretch (and there is work underway to try to resurrect it). But flights are often cheaper in Europe too despite subsidies for rail. Outside of the busiest corridors trains works best in those places where it's competing with cars or buses, not planes.

theluketaylor 3y ago
> But flights are often cheaper in Europe too despite subsidies for rail That's because intra-EU flights are also highly subsidized, especially around taxes for fuel. Decades ago the EU punted on the complex topic of charging taxes on avgas and that is a key contributor to the existence of cheap airlines like ryanair.
- redeeman 3y ago
  > That's because intra-EU flights are also highly subsidized, especially around taxes for fuel. okay, so by not taking money from them, we are... giving them money?
- novia 3y ago
  Why not just remove the subsidies for domestic flights that are 2.5 hours away by train instead of banning them?
  - acdha 3y ago
    It’s not fast enough any more. The fossil fuel companies were successful at preventing action for decades and in the intervening half century multiple generations of people have grown accustomed to cheap air travel. Making it more expensive will gradually reduce usage but that’s a slow process and there are a number of companies which didn’t even exist back when the science denial campaign started who would be trying their hardest to slow it down.
    - Manuel_D 3y ago
      Given that almost all trains in America are powered by diesel, fossil fuel companies would not lose if passenger rail was more widely adopted. Passenger rail is not popular in America because cities are more spread out, not because of some fossil fuel company conspiracy.
      - acdha 3y ago
        Trains use less fuel and “almost all” is leaving out that Amtrak’s most popular service area is the electrified northeast corridor. Electric trains are also a century old and it’s a straightforward engineering task to confer them. The reason passenger travel isn’t more popular has more to do with the trillions spent subsidizing private vehicle usage. People respond to economic incentives and for the last century the message has been that taxpayers will help you drive.
  - Manuel_D 3y ago
    Even then it'd still be preferable to fly. a 2.5 hour flight is 20+ hours by train at American passenger rail speeds. Going faster would require expensive track upgrades, which would need to be paid for by more expensive tickets.
Manuel_D 3y ago
If flights are considerably shorter than rail trips, then they'll outcompete passenger rail. Sure, it'd be cost effective to travel from New York to Chicago by rail. But it'd take way longer than a flight. By contrast, trains in Europe are often about as fast as planes since they avoid the overhead time cost of airport security. Transit time by be longer, but a 2 hour train ride is not much longer than a 1 hour flight when you include time spent in security lines.
- vidarh 3y ago
  For endpoints that are big enough to warrant airports that is true. But trains have the benefit of being able to serve lots of places in between better. You don't need a lot of people to take the whole journey. E.g. to take the North Coast Hiawatha route that they're hoping to resurrect through Souther Montana - it went from Chicago to Seattle. Very few people would be taking it all the way - it took ~47 hours. But many of the stops only have road connections without it. And as you point out the total time spent is not just the journey time anyway. But beyond the raw time spent, there's a difference in how. It's faster for me to fly to Paris, because I can get flights from an airport close enough to me to outweigh the security, and that's small enough to not usually be so bad. But I still have to go through security, wait around for my gate, walk to the gate and go through another round of waiting, and then I might have to wait for luggage at the other end. I'll happily spend the small amount of extra time to be able to just sit down in the Eurostar instead. The biggest issue with respect to choosing trains in the UK is that the cost of train tickets relative to air travel in the UK is criminal compared to much of the rest of Europe.
  - Manuel_D 3y ago
    > But I still have to go through security, wait around for my gate, walk to the gate and go through another round of waiting, and then I might have to wait for luggage at the other end. I'll happily spend the small amount of extra time to be able to just sit down in the Eurostar instead. But it's not a small amount of time. Planes travel 7-10 times faster than passenger rail (Amtrak runs at 50-70 mph, and can't go faster without track upgrades). If you're going to a city that's a 1 hour plane ride away that's still 7-10 hours of travel time just to skip security and baggage claim. Not exactly a good proposition. Even St. Paul to Chicago is not viable by rail when the flight is only 90 minutes. Even with a two hour security line that's still 1/3 the total transit time. "trains have the benefit of being able to serve lots of places in between better." Yes, but only when those places are fairly close and have enough population to fulfill travel demand. And the US doesn't have many regions with those conditions.

theluketaylor 3y ago

The CityNerd youtube channel recently did a list of city pairs ideally suited for high speed rail based on Spain's own network. spoiler alert: the northeast corridor plays a pretty heavy part, but it's not the only place in the US high speed rail makes a ton of sense. Highly recommended. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wE5G1kTndI4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wE5G1kTndI4

Cheer2171 3y ago

Nope. City distance in the continental US excluding the Northeast is similar to China. Distance is just the excuse.

Manuel_D 3y ago
This is not even remotely true. China has 4x the population in roughly the same landmass. And most of that is concentrated in the eastern part of the country (Tibet and inner Mongolia are sparsely populated, but very large). I'd be very, very interested in where you found this claim that China's cities have the same average distance between them as US cities. Wouldn't be surprised if they used totally different criteria for a Chinese city and a US city. I would be astounded if the median distance between cities of >500k people is the same in China as in the USA.
- vidarh 3y ago
  I have no idea about how reasonable or not their claim is, but I'd note that most of the US population is, while not concentrated only in the East, concentrated heavily. Even in most the lower population density states, most of the population is within tiny part of the area of those states, often in corridors where most of the larger towns are still relatively close to at least a few other large towns. So whether or not they're right, distance largely is an excuse. Trains will not work between every pair of cities in the US, but it doesn't need to - very few US cities are so isolated that train will not work to several nearby cities. The average distance isn't very important, as long as the cities are clustered enough to create viable lines.
  - Manuel_D 3y ago
    Measuring average distance between cities is incredibly naive, that's my whole point. If countries A and B both have 100 cities in the sam land area, except country A has 50 cities over 1 million people and country B only has 10 cities over 1 million then one of these is still much more viable even if average distance between cities is the same. You're right that if all 10 of those larg cities in country A are really close then it may be viable. But that's not the case in America, save for the Northeast corridor which is already served by passenger rail.