3 ms·

There is a need for increased geographical coverage in the right corridors. Many corridors with high population density are just not covered. As bad as the pas

by dangus 2y ago

There is a need for increased geographical coverage in the right corridors. Many corridors with high population density are just not covered. As bad as the passenger rail situation is in the US, I can totally understand how it got this way compared to other countries from a pure geographic point of view. The US landscape is ideal for freight trains and not quite as ideal for passenger trains. If you look at countries like Japan, the geography makes a perfect condition for passenger trains to be most ideal. Railroad as a shipping method for goods doesn't make a lot of sense, you can just put goods on ships that travel along the coasts and for shorter journeys trucks make more sense. Or look at China: massively higher population, and their population is much more concentrated in the East of the country than the US with its split up coastal populations. Maybe we could say that a high speed train between Indianapolis and Cleveland would be nice, but there isn't even a single direct commercial direct flight between those destinations, so how will anyone fill up a train? China's huge population makes it an extremely ideal high speed rail use case. But in the US, putting goods on a train from Chicago to LA makes way more sense than any sort of truck or ship situation. And even a high speed train on that route wouldn't make a whole lot of sense compared to a flight. But there's definitely room to improve geographical coverage in specific corridors where that expansion would have great positive impact.

mitthrowaway2 2y ago
How does the geographic context explain how the US was (apparently) an excellent fit for passenger rail until the 1920s-1930s, but not anymore? I don't think geography is the explanation. US geography is great for passenger rail. Japanese geography is terrible for it (too many mountains). In my opinion Japan's passenger rail situation today would be no different than the US if American rail companies had managed Japanese rail lines throughout the 20th century. It's nice to imagine that geography is the reason, and so everything is as it should be, this was the fated result. But that's simply not the case. Of course, rail is not a good fit for a weekend getaway from LA to New York. Even in Japan, where you can ride the bullet train all the way from Kyushu to Hokkaido, almost anyone would book a flight for that unless they really hated flying. But that doesn't mean that rail isn't well suited to American geography.
- bebop 2y ago
  Planes did not exists.
  - mitthrowaway2 2y ago
    Most of the railway trips people were taking would be fairly short distance trips you'd now hop in a car for, not a plane. Inter-urban transit, not trans-continental. You can look at old railway connectivity maps of the US to see the kind of station density available along the lines. This is why the size of the US continent is not a really good explanation. It's like saying "Europe is too big for trains, which is why nobody rides trains in the Netherlands". You don't take a plane from Amsterdam to Rotterdam, and you wouldn't have taken a plane to get from Boston to Providence either. Trains also can serve small towns that airplanes don't, because you don't stop a plane at every town along the way between city centers. In fact, many towns just sprang up around train stations.
    - grues-dinner 2y ago
      > In fact, many towns just sprang up around train stations. And this is how the Japanese system works so well. The trains don't make money, but the massive improvements to land value near stations does and the train companies own that land. They get to make money, society gets the personal and economic benefits of a functional public transit system. Passenger trains on their own fundamentally do not make money for the operators in most cases, except perhaps specialty routes like airports: the value is distributed into society, but doesn't all come back as ticket prices. So any system where a train company is just a train company will either need heavy subsidy or will slowly wither away under "efficiency" drives. What they do have is a huge pile of capital intensive resources that are juicy targets for vampiric extraction and captive markets that are slow to extract themselves when exploited (and slow to come back).
      - ant6n 2y ago
        Long distance (200-800km) passenger rail operators do make money, as long as the infrastructure is at least partially publicly financed. Which is also true for anything happening on roads.

by dangus 2y ago

mitthrowaway2 2y ago

How does the geographic context explain how the US was (apparently) an excellent fit for passenger rail until the 1920s-1930s, but not anymore? I don't think geography is the explanation. US geography is great for passenger rail. Japanese geography is terrible for it (too many mountains). In my opinion Japan's passenger rail situation today would be no different than the US if American rail companies had managed Japanese rail lines throughout the 20th century. It's nice to imagine that geography is the reason, and so everything is as it should be, this was the fated result. But that's simply not the case. Of course, rail is not a good fit for a weekend getaway from LA to New York. Even in Japan, where you can ride the bullet train all the way from Kyushu to Hokkaido, almost anyone would book a flight for that unless they really hated flying. But that doesn't mean that rail isn't well suited to American geography.

bebop 2y ago
Planes did not exists.
- mitthrowaway2 2y ago
  Most of the railway trips people were taking would be fairly short distance trips you'd now hop in a car for, not a plane. Inter-urban transit, not trans-continental. You can look at old railway connectivity maps of the US to see the kind of station density available along the lines. This is why the size of the US continent is not a really good explanation. It's like saying "Europe is too big for trains, which is why nobody rides trains in the Netherlands". You don't take a plane from Amsterdam to Rotterdam, and you wouldn't have taken a plane to get from Boston to Providence either. Trains also can serve small towns that airplanes don't, because you don't stop a plane at every town along the way between city centers. In fact, many towns just sprang up around train stations.
  - grues-dinner 2y ago
    > In fact, many towns just sprang up around train stations. And this is how the Japanese system works so well. The trains don't make money, but the massive improvements to land value near stations does and the train companies own that land. They get to make money, society gets the personal and economic benefits of a functional public transit system. Passenger trains on their own fundamentally do not make money for the operators in most cases, except perhaps specialty routes like airports: the value is distributed into society, but doesn't all come back as ticket prices. So any system where a train company is just a train company will either need heavy subsidy or will slowly wither away under "efficiency" drives. What they do have is a huge pile of capital intensive resources that are juicy targets for vampiric extraction and captive markets that are slow to extract themselves when exploited (and slow to come back).
    - ant6n 2y ago
      Long distance (200-800km) passenger rail operators do make money, as long as the infrastructure is at least partially publicly financed. Which is also true for anything happening on roads.