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> Also not helping trains is the fact that more than any other country on Earth, Americans love cars. Not a little. A lot. Germany -> Car loving country with a

> Also not helping trains is the fact that more than any other country on Earth, Americans love cars. Not a little. A lot. Germany -> Car loving country with a highly efficient railway system, and a well serviced road system as well. So it should be achievable.

wyclif 11y ago
I didn't say cars are the only reason. They're just one reason among many.
fla 11y ago
More than the love of cars, I think one other important factor is that US cities have been built and developed around car-first traffic for the last 80? years. Which makes it much more optimal to drive around. Now if you consider the economical ecosystem that was built around the road traffic, it's no suprise that the train network is having a hard time growing up.
Implicated 11y ago
Land Size: Germany | 137,847 mi^2 (square miles) United States | 3,719,000 mi^2 (square miles) Paved Roads: Germany | 400,784 mi United States | 2,674,830 miles Not sure that's a fair comparison. [1] https://www.cia.gov/Library/publications/the-world-factbook/fields/2085.html https://www.cia.gov/Library/publications/the-world-factbook/...
- tonyedgecombe 11y ago
  The population is far from evenly distributed across that larger area.
  - falcolas 11y ago
    True, but it tends to be concentrated at the four corners. The northeast gets Boston and NY, The southeast gets Miami and Atlanta, Then there's Seattle, California, etc. And if you don't live anywhere near these (a good portion of the population does not), or need to move between them, that means you have a long drive. I live in Montana (tangentially - about the same size as Germany), and if I want to get to the closest population center, I can either ride the bus (yeah, no) or drive. The closest train station is across the state from where I am, and takes 4 hours longer than the drive (or bus) would (not including transit time to the station.
    - yitchelle 11y ago
      Not knowing much about Montana, I looked it on wikipedia and found the following snippet. "Montana is ranked 4th in size, but 44th in population and 48th in population density of the 50 United States." Population density is 2.65 per sq km. Man, that is very sparse. Remind me of outback Australia where traveling distances were measured in "number of beers" drank.
lgbr 11y ago
> Germany -> Car loving country with a highly efficient railway system, and a well serviced road system as well. So it should be achievable. Germany has a highly efficient railway system and the country is so small that I can cross the entire country in a day, and still, I take the car everywhere I go. I think what some people miss is this: Trains are just worse. They're slow, not because they don't have a high top speed, but they have to stop so much that their average speed is just worse than a car's. I think there's a couple city pairs (Berlin <-> Frankfurt) where if I was racing a train I would lose by some small margin to one of the non-stop trains, but not by much, and this would only be a true win if on my trip I was going from one city center to another city center, which I'm never doing. They're still really expensive. Air travel around Germany is always cheaper, and so is the cost of fuel for most cars. You can sometimes find a discount on the train, but those travel at pretty inconvenient times and are quite rare anymore. They leave only so often. So unlike a car, I can't just set off whenever is convenient for me. I have to find a train that leaves when I want and make sure I get to it on time. So if you live in Frankfurt and want to go visit family outside of Munich for the weekend, leaving after work at 18:00 on a Friday you're going to end up sleeping in a train station in Bavaria overnight as opposed to a car which can continue driving after 12:00 unlike a rural train. And they never get where I want. For half of the places I regularly travel, when I get there, I need to have someone pick me up with a car or I need to rent a car. There just are no other choices. As densely populated as this country is, it's just still really difficult to get to a huge portion of the country with public transit. I really find it no wonder the US does not have a decent passenger train system. Every single one of these problems is hugely exacerbated by its sparse population to the point where passenger trains just aren't feasible.
- TheSpiceIsLife 11y ago
  Is there anywhere in the world where the train system is 'really good' for a majority of people? Trains need tracks and if you don't live near the tracks and need to go where the tracks go the train isn't much use to you. So it follows that the US doesn't have a 'good' passenger train system because there is not such thing.
  - paganel 11y ago

wyclif 11y ago

I didn't say cars are the only reason. They're just one reason among many.

fla 11y ago

More than the love of cars, I think one other important factor is that US cities have been built and developed around car-first traffic for the last 80? years. Which makes it much more optimal to drive around. Now if you consider the economical ecosystem that was built around the road traffic, it's no suprise that the train network is having a hard time growing up.

Implicated 11y ago

Land Size: Germany | 137,847 mi^2 (square miles) United States | 3,719,000 mi^2 (square miles) Paved Roads: Germany | 400,784 mi United States | 2,674,830 miles Not sure that's a fair comparison. [1] https://www.cia.gov/Library/publications/the-world-factbook/fields/2085.html https://www.cia.gov/Library/publications/the-world-factbook/...

tonyedgecombe 11y ago
The population is far from evenly distributed across that larger area.
- falcolas 11y ago
  True, but it tends to be concentrated at the four corners. The northeast gets Boston and NY, The southeast gets Miami and Atlanta, Then there's Seattle, California, etc. And if you don't live anywhere near these (a good portion of the population does not), or need to move between them, that means you have a long drive. I live in Montana (tangentially - about the same size as Germany), and if I want to get to the closest population center, I can either ride the bus (yeah, no) or drive. The closest train station is across the state from where I am, and takes 4 hours longer than the drive (or bus) would (not including transit time to the station.
  - yitchelle 11y ago
    Not knowing much about Montana, I looked it on wikipedia and found the following snippet. "Montana is ranked 4th in size, but 44th in population and 48th in population density of the 50 United States." Population density is 2.65 per sq km. Man, that is very sparse. Remind me of outback Australia where traveling distances were measured in "number of beers" drank.

lgbr 11y ago

> Germany -> Car loving country with a highly efficient railway system, and a well serviced road system as well. So it should be achievable. Germany has a highly efficient railway system and the country is so small that I can cross the entire country in a day, and still, I take the car everywhere I go. I think what some people miss is this: Trains are just worse. They're slow, not because they don't have a high top speed, but they have to stop so much that their average speed is just worse than a car's. I think there's a couple city pairs (Berlin <-> Frankfurt) where if I was racing a train I would lose by some small margin to one of the non-stop trains, but not by much, and this would only be a true win if on my trip I was going from one city center to another city center, which I'm never doing. They're still really expensive. Air travel around Germany is always cheaper, and so is the cost of fuel for most cars. You can sometimes find a discount on the train, but those travel at pretty inconvenient times and are quite rare anymore. They leave only so often. So unlike a car, I can't just set off whenever is convenient for me. I have to find a train that leaves when I want and make sure I get to it on time. So if you live in Frankfurt and want to go visit family outside of Munich for the weekend, leaving after work at 18:00 on a Friday you're going to end up sleeping in a train station in Bavaria overnight as opposed to a car which can continue driving after 12:00 unlike a rural train. And they never get where I want. For half of the places I regularly travel, when I get there, I need to have someone pick me up with a car or I need to rent a car. There just are no other choices. As densely populated as this country is, it's just still really difficult to get to a huge portion of the country with public transit. I really find it no wonder the US does not have a decent passenger train system. Every single one of these problems is hugely exacerbated by its sparse population to the point where passenger trains just aren't feasible.

TheSpiceIsLife 11y ago
Is there anywhere in the world where the train system is 'really good' for a majority of people? Trains need tracks and if you don't live near the tracks and need to go where the tracks go the train isn't much use to you. So it follows that the US doesn't have a 'good' passenger train system because there is not such thing.
- paganel 11y ago