To be honest, I haven’t seen anyone else mention the real reason: America allowed private companies to buy and own the lands under the rails in the 1800s in order to deal with the massive distances across the US to connect the West and East. 150 years later and just a few companies own almost all the track and rail across America. Almost all private, not public land. Public citizens and communities have very little control over the railways going through their communities. These companies lobby against and make it difficult to introduce new, public rail lines for a multitude of reasons. This is one of very many examples of how corporations abuse law, monopolistic practices, and media to lessen the power of American citizens.
That doesn’t even take into account that a lot of rails in the US are owned by Canadian companies.
I was in Switzerland and the trains there are incredible. Even the tiniest village in buttfucksburg, nowhere has a train connecting it to the rest of the country.
I’m a huge train and transit advocate and I try to take Amtrak every chance I get. But “tickets are cheaper” does not feel like a blanket statement we can make. Maybe on very specific, usually short legs, like Chicago to Milwaukee. Someone correct me if I’m wrong or there’s more nuance but once a trip goes past 3 or 5+ hour mark, the price seems to skyrocket past airfare.
Oh, that is definitely true in the U.S.
Also, I’ve found that rail travel is inconvenient in the U.S. I can’t confirm, but it seems like the Amtrak only comes through my (Midwest) area once a week, on Wednesdays or something like that. So, if I plan a trip, I need to plan around.
Midwest to the East Coast is so much cheaper and faster by air. I want to travel by rail - and you’d think it should be cheaper - but it’s totally not.
Part of it, I believe, is that Amtrak leases the usage of the rail lines from the shipping companies, so it must adhere to their schedules of shipping freight. The USA spends so much on upgrading its highway system; if they used a fraction of that money towards rail travel we would be set. But certain companies keep lobbying Congress to keep us locked in a model where we are totally reliant on cars and gasoline.
Also true in many cases in Europe.
You can get a flight ticket for under 20€ between Germany and UK (RyanAir), and have to pay tenfold that for a train ticket.
Or a 30€ ticket to Romania per plane. Booking a train to Romania is much more difficult and expensive and also easily over 100€.
I would wish that train tickets are cheaper than plane tickets, but if you cross country borders, booking train tickets becomes expensive and difficult in Europe.
Not even going international on a train can be more expensive.
It cost me almost the same price to take the ICE (not that one yanks) from one part of Germany to another, to visit my mom than it was for me to fly from Germany to Latvia on Ryanair
In Europe when you book ahead of time and are not too specific about the dates you can fly much cheaper. If I want to go from Amsterdam to Barcelona I can get a much much cheaper flight. Why would I go for the option that is slower and more expensive?
I wish trains where cheaper I’d take them more often.
I once heard someone make the argument flying is cheaper because a plane can fly from one airport to almost any other airport. So when you own a plane you can use it in a much more flexible way. A train can only go over a fixed track, yes you can use switches etc. But when you build an airport basically any plane can go there immediately. For trains it doesn’t work like that. Make matters even worse in Europe usually train operators are national and most trains don’t cross borders beyond a few stations.
Trains not planes is a much more reasonable and practical way to get people behind building more railways than planes not cars. We can talk planes not cars once some of the initial infrastructure is in place, but I think focusing on replacing something people hate (flying) rather than replacing something they like (driving) is probably a good place to start.
Yeah, I’d much rather take a train than plane. However, where I live, I seriously need my car and I enjoy the freedom of driving. I am not in a huge city with rush hour traffic though.
I recently went on a holiday using high speed rail in Europe (1100km). Flying was cheaper and faster. Sadly I have feeling of empathy and principles so I went with the train anyway. Wasn’t too bad though just did a lot of reading.
And for one more added bonus we wouldn’t have to fix the problems with air traffic control
The US public transportation, especially the passenger rail network is fucking pathetic.
Rail is hard if it’s from one country to another (I think Europe is the exception)
In my case, I have to take rail from Ankara to Edirne, Edirne to Bucharest, Bucharest to Vienna, and after Vienna I can access anywhere in Europe
The problem is, going from Edirne to Bucharest requires two visas
Even in the EU there are still some difficulties. Like Finland and Estonia are on broad gauge not standard gauge. So their network isn’t connected to the rest of the EU. Spain and French haven’t connected their high speed rail network because of some dispute. So you have to get off at the border take a slow train across the border than walk to another platform to get on the other train.
Also rules says the crew needs to speak the local language of the country the train drives trough and traffic rules vary by country so if the driver doesn’t speak the language or doesn’t know the rules they need to change drivers when a train crosses a border which adds more delays.
Problem is also that there are still many rail networks in Europe that are privately owned.
If you want to dive deeper into how rail cooperation was always hard I recommend looking into the history of the orient express
Crackheads will steal the copper from the rail and cause a 30 car derailment.
In case this is real: you realize that trains already exist, right? Crackheads don’t “steal the copper from the rail”, in part because the rails don’t have copper (they’re made of steel, the copper is in the overhead line), and in part because the rails are giant continuously-welded steel rails nailed to concrete sleepers; you can’t just pick em up and walk off with em.
The cost of dedicated passenger rail lines is staggering, and the US has a LOT of ground to cover.
Yeah no country has ever built a high speed passenger rail network interconnecting cities spread throughout an area comparable to the usa. And it’s absurd to think that it could be done in under 20 years and receive massive popular support and have universally recognised benefits. Guys the cost is too high for the biggest economy on earth and the distance is so far that they could never build a railway across it especially not more than 100 years ago.
(Well to be fair the Chinese did also build the railways across the US so maybe they do have something America doesn’t)
Slave labor.
Man if only the US and a massive incarcerated population with which they could use to forcibly work on a rail project, then it would be possible. If only.
Woosh
Huh?
The rare double woosh.
What’s a woosh
The ideal is a mix, planes for the long haul, trains for short haul.
This comment really needs a /sarcasm tag
I’m sorry are you being serious? Please add /srs if you are to your comment. I don’t know what to think unless explicitly told because I’ve never used my brain before.
I am serious. I read your comment twice wondering if you were being serious. Even with your comment at the end, I imagine a lot of people would read your comment straight, since most people don’t know much about Chinese HSR.
Wait is this serious? I need an /srs if it is?
As someone from Russia, we have even larger territory, and going by rail is almost twice as cheap as by plane.
High speed rail from Saint Petersburg to Moscow will cost you ~$45, going by plane will set you back ~$75 on the cheapest flight with hand luggage only. Considering the time losses associated with airports, you’ll be at your destination almost as fast for way cheaper, so this option is widely preferred.
Same story with long distance trips - I plan on going for a 1000km trip in July, and train ticket costed me the same $45, while cheapest plane tickets go around $100. It’s also a night train with beds and all, so I have one night accommodation for free while on my way. Depart - have a nice sleep - be on your destination in the morning and have a full day to yourself, fully rested.
If you’re feeling adventurous, you can go all the way from Moscow to Vladivostok by single train for $250. This will take almost a week, but it will get you around half the planet for that money.
Something like 30% of the US lives in the strip between Washington DC and Boston. It’s absolutely achievable for the richest country on Earth to provide high speed rail in that section.
There’s already a lot of passenger rail options in that part of the country. I’ve used it, and it works great.
This post is specifically about using it in place of airlines, which is used for longer-distance travel.
If you want to use it in place of airlines, you need high-speed rail. Something that the US has basically none of
Which goes back to the issue of the difficulty of building high-speed rail across long distances.
Higj-speed rail can’t be built at grade like freight rail. You can’t risk a cow getting through a fence or a crossing signal failure leading to a high-speed train collision.
Yeah why doesn’t Europe have trains?
Europe definitely doesn’t have trains already.
Still too much plane for local journeys
And is France train are not cheaper than planes or buses… Which is stupid, they should start to properly taxe Airlines
They’re building high speed rails connecting major European cities as we speak, we’ll be good
Do you happen to use Dvorak?
Sorry for the random question out of this air, but the in/is typo is something that happens a lot to me while being nearly impossible on “standard” keyboard layouts.
No, and I have no idea how I could do this, could be my brain rephrasing after I started writing
And it would be BEPO(dvorak-fr) for me but on the phone I don’t really find any advantage
We do. Not as much as we used to because privatisation is a plague upon mankind, also we have very diverse geography which makes developing new lines prohibitively expensive, even more so when you’re a private company. Add to that a lack of political backing and yeah, it’s all rather turgid, even if there are some extremely recent talks concerning transeuropean night trains and such.
Those are going to be for our nice flat and speedy routes no doubt, but hey, it’s an effort in the right direction.
But yeah, things are not gonna get better fast as long as we are cursed with privatisation. What a shit show to see our glorious TGV reduced to a shell of its former self.
Meanwhile I just got an article yesterday that Wuhan is now connected to the super high speed network and the first 450kph train now connects it to Shanghai. Last time I was there the train was already TGV levels of speed and much more modern, and only a year later they are leaving us on the fucking dust…
China sees investment in mass transit as a loss leader. It costs more to put in than it generates in fairs, but the boost to connected economic zones pays back the cost several times over.
The US sees investment in mass transit as a detriment to the airline, automotive, and fossil fuel industries. It would shrink the economy in three places where the nation has tried to goose growth for the last 60 years.
I never really understand why historically trains were so rare in the US. They had loads of trains at one point left over from the industrial Revolution and then they seemed to decide to get rid of them all. Even Beaching didn’t shut down that many lines
Rail lines were converted to highways. They weren’t simply removed and abandoned, they were cannibalized to clear space for more lanes
We still have them all, we just prioritize moving cargo on them.
Oil and auto industry were literally buying tram tracks to dismantle them and make the roads only for cars. For the curious:
How The Auto Industry Carjacked The American Dream
https://yewtu.be/watch?v=oOttvpjJvAo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oOttvpjJvAo
For real. If those idiot neighbours would stop fucking around, we get trains from Wuhan to Bordeaux in about a week. It’s a real game changer.
What if we told them they could keep killing each other, just on the train, and then we’d make a murder mystery about it?
I’m from Europe. What’s a train?
If you’re on a long tube that travels quickly on the ground from one city to another, and everyone is talking in Spanish, you’re in a train.
If you’re in a long tube that travels quickly on the air from one city to another, and everyone is talking English, you’re on a plane
My total journey from Berlin home this week was about 50 minutes late, and the connection after the ICE was not pretty.
Yeah, but that’s not a rail problem, that’s a Deutsche Bahn problem.
In Romania, CFR makes DB look like the most competent shining lights of progress by comparison.
Track that hasn’t been properly maintained since the fall of communism (and we keep lowering max speeds because of it). Rolling stock consisting of hand-me-downs. Constant engine breakdowns.
And the worst part? Due to political shenanigans finding inventive new ways to siphon money out of the company, it’s still managed to find a way to go bankrupt again, meaning another government bailout.
Yes, not just DB too, but the local transit agencies too. Its a wonder that it all works so well DESPITE decades of mismanagement and austerity.
Apparently Germany’s problem is that they run all the high-speed trains on the normal lines which means all of the normal trains have to work around them. Obviously you can’t have a normal train in front of a high-speed train so if the high-speed train is delayed by even a small amount it has a knock-on effect where a bunch of local service trains have to sit around waiting for the line to clear.
Everyone else runs high-speed rail on their own tracks. So everyone gets to do what they want and not affect anybody else.
The French do it better than the Germans, which is just not an acceptable state of affairs.
I’ve heard flights are sometimes also late or even cancelled
50 minutes isn’t that bad tbh. I dont remember the last time I flew that there wasn’t a delay. Hell even the whole arriving 2 hours before ,finding parking, going through security is all so much more of a hassle.
I’d much rather walk 5 minutes to the local subway head to the hauptbahnhof and wait 50 extra minutes for my train. I can at least go get a reasonably priced coffee while I wait.
It was bad enough. Schlimmer geht immer.
Also, comparing flights and trains doesn’t really work, I think. The getting into the plane time alone makes it too different.
Yeah, we have trains at home… (greece)
If high speed rail becomes popular, all that stands between the current freedom and ID-required tickets and fingering by agents is one terrorist attack, staged or not.
What are you going to do with a hijacked train? The moment you hijack it they’ll just shutdown power. Hostages? Good luck there are like 30 carts on the train all of which have window break tools and emergency door open tools.
Look at Germany or France. High speed trains are everywhere and there is no ID requirement beyond maybe a ticket check if you’re unlucky.
What are you going to do with a hijacked train? The moment you hijack it they’ll just shutdown power. Hostages? Good luck there are like 30 carts on the train all of which have window break tools and emergency door open tools.
Only for Eurostar and some other international trains you get some checks when boarding, especially since Brexit.
There’s barely any checks they basically glance at your passport and go, yep you have a passport, you can pass.
Presumably if there was an arrest warrant out for you there’s a chance they might do something, but then again they are French so you’d have to catch them at a good time.
Yes indeed if you want to be safe book a train that leaves between 12:00 and 14:00 that’s when they’re at the bistrot for lunch.
Who said anything about hijacking? Think explosives etc.
Or driving it into a sky scraper !!!
What if the train is the size of Chrysler building? 🤯
Ok. Thinking explosives. Where are high speed trains being attacked by explosives? I don’t hear much in Germany, France, China, or Japan.
Don’t jinx it.
My point is once a terrorist attack happens, there will be TSA like checks for getting on high speed trains.
My city (Mumbai) has seen multiple local train bombings so the newly built metro lines have baggage scanner at the entry.
Don’t jinx it.
As I said in another reply, too late, by twenty-one years.
And yet, no TSA-like bullshit.
Commuter trains aren’t high speed trains though.
True (though the AVE also stops at Atocha, as it did back in 2004).
They also tend to carry more passengers, which means the number of victims was significantly larger than if it had been an AVE.
And yet, your prediction of a nine-eleven-like security theater didn’t come to pass. 🤷♂️
Those countries arent full of Americans though. If a thing exists Americans will try to attack it.
Didn’t cause security theater, though. 🤷♂️
Those are dense packed commuter trains from more than 20 years ago. Sort of the opposite of comfortable high speed long distance trains now days.
If you search for “bomb train” you’ll get results but it might be worth looking deeper than the headline.
Those are dense packed commuter trains from more than 20 years ago
So, even fucking worse when it comes to number of victims.
If you search for “bomb train” you’ll get results
I don’t need to search for it, it was all over the news for months.
And yet, we got over it.
We’re taking about high speed trains here. Independent of that, regarding attacks on commuter trains getting over it without American style tsa is a good thing.
Somebody didn’t watch Christophe Lambert’s The Hunted…
Or Under Siege 2.
Was that the one with the Apple Newton sending a fax?
What do you mean there’s already been terrorist attacks on trains but nobody really cares because it’s a train.
Shhh! It’s an american, he can’t comprehend high speed trains.
They are already wildly popular in diverse regions in europe btw.
Who, me? The furthest west I’ve been was Wales.
Sorry, I thought someone who didn’t know speedtrains aren’t already wildly popular, and has already been targeted by terrorists must be american. Take that as you like 😉
one terrorist attack
Had one in 2004, didn’t result in security theater (though its mishandling did almost certainly result in the ruling party losing the election).
We don’t even have that stuff on flights here (at least within Schengen). On my last 4 flights I had to show my ID once and the security check is just standing in the scanner thing for a second.
I never had actual cavity search but it varies within Shengen. Germany is the least pleasant, always some problem. Last time they insisted on searching a preschooler.
in china there are similar security checks for high speed rail
Has to harm billionaire asset to matter. Killing the rest of us is a game billionaires already enjoy and would applaud the Panem twist of a visiting team
I’m sure they’d finger you if you asked nicely, and have showered recently.
I hope they don’t find any lump
Are you sure? There’s at least one lump I hope they find, but it’s kind of deep up in there.
Americans can’t do trains because it requires public infrastructure (rails), which apparently we are allergic to.
Can’t do public infrastructure, unless it’s roads.
I’ve read articles in the past about high speed trains and/or just new train lines in general would get held up by little towns who didn’t want to lose the commuter traffic since it was the only thing keeping them afloat. There are too many towns that exist literally just to serve motorists and now nobody wants to get rid of them.
Tough luck, that’s the free market at work
Anybody who is making money off existing transportation is going to be against public transportation. Cab companies lobby against rail everywhere, from city to burbs or airport to downtown. Trucking, for obvious reasons. Passenger rail can carry cargo at night. And of course anybody selling fuel to the mass of cars, the petro industry.
They are just very short sighted. Just lobby to have a station and a have commuter stops and people will flock to those “cheaper” areas to live bringing in tons of tax revenue and boosting the local economy.
These small towns would still be an hour+ away from large cities, even with European speed high speed rail.
Like for me, the nearest “big town” is about 100 miles from me, which is about a 2hr drive. And, at least from some quick googling, it looks like most commuter rail in France tops out at about 100mph. A train would not bring in more people haha
Yeah, while I’m a huge advocate for an American Shinkansen, there’s really 4 zones of America for train speeds. East of the Appalachians its fast and easy and rail already works easy. West of them but east of the Mississippi, you’re gonna need high speed rail, but it’ll be somewhat similar to Europe. Between the Mississippi and the west coast, you’re gonna need high speed rail and quite a bit of patience. And on the west coast, you’ll hit up small cities, but honestly it’d be a great second high speed line after the New York-Chicago
You’d be suprised how many people commute more than an hour by car. The prospect of having affordable housing with more job opportunities will certainly bring in more people.
France spends ~$15 million/mile for high speed commuter rail. Which means that line would cost $1.5 billion.
I don’t think it’s bringing in that many more people. Even when you amortize it across all of the little cities it would go through
Implying the line would stop at the town and not carry on to the next. Also, how much is being spent on building and maintaining freeways?
too much, which is why I propose dirt highways with 45mph speed limits. Low initial cost, drivers drive safer, and helps the towing industry grow.
Even when you amortize it across all of the little cities
Please read the comment in it’s entirety before responding ❤️
Okay but the auto industry isnt paying me to want that and big city people are scary.
Yes but that might take a few years, we need to prop up our shitty city now…
And the construction crews wont eat at our shit hole restaurants.
that is such an absurd and pointless reality
Add some violence, and that’s america!
That is so odd… I’ve only ridden Amtrak a few times, but I was amazed at how many stops were just some small town that happened to lie on the rail line.
Most small towns that lie on a major highway and are supported by commuter traffic are only going to support a truck stop and a few fast food restaurants at best. Sure, a true high speed rail line would likely only stop in larger metropolitan areas, so those meager income sources may dwindle. But on the other hand if I were a rail commuter in one of those rural/suburban areas, I’d be much more likely to spend some time doing a bit of shopping or lingering in a restaurant during that transition from the train to my car after work, than if I were just passing through in my car.
Ignoring trains for a minute, there are even examples of towns in America being against new highways for the same reason. Breezewood, Pennsylvania is the town you see in that one meme image of “america”. The state did some weird tax/federal funding loop shenanigans by routing a highway through some little pit stop town and, now that the laws have been relaxed, the county and the businesses don’t care to fix it.
Although laws have been relaxed since then, local businesses, including many traveler services like fast food restaurants, gas stations and motels, have lobbied to keep the gap and not directly connect I-70 to the Turnpike, fearing a loss of business. In order for a bypass to be considered, Breezewood’s own Bedford County must propose it, which is “just not an issue that really appears on the radar for us,” Donald Schwartz, the Bedford County planning director, said in 2017.[1]
If i had a 24/7 high speed line to the big city from fuvkoffnowhere, i might choose to live in fuvkoffnowhere
But they could be fucking train stop bucolic paradise exurbs from (bigcity)!
It’s literally socialism!
it requires cooperation with the project across all of these counties that the railway runs through. and they’re all corrupt or subject to democracy or whatever
As someone who boycotted the TSA for like 5 years and only took Amtrak, the tickets are not always cheaper. I mean sure, you can get across the country for like $100.
Even when I was doing Boston-Baltimore on the Acela, it was routinely slightly cheaper to fly.
Amtrak is not cheaper, but trains in other countries are. Because Amtrak, specifically, sucks.
AmTrak is designed to suck. Freight lines own most of the rails, and while they are required to give priority to passenger trains, they avoid this in several ways. Like having the freight trains too long to fit on side rails so the passenger trains are required to stop instead to make way.
Flying is way cheaper in Europe. Partially because trains are taxed much higher than flying.
Not always. Flying from Amsterdam to London is cheaper and faster than taking the train. The train is usually sold out because people still prefer it, but…
Amtrak on the east coast is decent, it’s offensively bad on the west coast and most places in the middle of the country.
Americans can’t do high speed rail because we have aircraft, automobile, and petroleum industries who don’t want us to.
ah, the free market
Exactly!
In the words of someone who decided to not stop 9/11:
You dont fuck with billion dollar corporations.
