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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 😉
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.
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'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.
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
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.
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
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]
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 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.
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...
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.
Meanwhile, right wing parties in Quebec are fighting against a tramway project in Quebec city, that the entire country agreed to pay for, for which we have already invested half a billion, build stations, etc. They call it "War on cars".
So you love driving and more people on the road will get off the road and take the train. It means you can drive even more! Why wouldn't you want that.
Because they don't give a shit about driving? They care a lot more about their family members that own car dealerships, or are involved with the petrochemical industry.
Or they saw that American rightwing grifters talk like this so they are cargo culting the fuck out?
The US has been fighting for years to put a high speed rail in between DC and New York. Every right-wing neighborhood in between is throwing signs out stop the maglev.
Not to shit on your perfectly reasonable parade, but in Germany there is high speed rail through the whole . takes about 6 hours from top to bottom.
Now look at the scale of the US versus Germany and then the density of people living there. High speed rail makes alot of sense where it's difficult to build (bosnywash) and does not scale well in terms of time spent traveling.
Its better than car, but won't replace air travel anytime soon. Sadly.
France has nearly the same population density as Ohio, and it has the TGV, which covers more than 5 times the land area of Ohio. So where's the Ohio high speed rail network?
This is the scale of Japan compared to the US east coast:
So why aren't there high speed lines that cover that same distance in the US?
Americans complain about US politicians and US policy on a near constant basis, and yet when comparing the US to other nations its apparently impossible for anyone to have made a stupid or self-serving decision. The US apparently is always operating at the absolute limit of what's physically possible, and if there's any deficiency compared to its peers its never because something was done wrong. Its always because "the US is too big" or "we're too diverse" (what does that even mean? You can't have nice things because black people exist?).
To be clear there are actual answers to the questions I posed above, but its not either of those moronic excuses.
what does that even mean? You can't have nice things because black people exist?
It kind of is though.
Can't have nice downtown because blacks live their so all the whites go out to the suburbs. End up with shitty inefficient suburb hell and under funded downtown.
No one wants to use public transport because of a sense of crime so only the lowest income people use it meaning further funding loss.
Nothing in America is for "the people" paid by the state except highways, oil and pouring water into the desert everything else needs to run a direct profit ignoring externalities.
That statement is a bit too broad for me. You can not only use highspeed rail within Germany but also to reach the countries around it. E.g. Belgium, Netherlands, Austria, (ICE trains) or use the TGV to reach Paris in a reasonable time.
But with the (illegal) border controls currently it's insufferable. Will travel through France by train in September and I fear that the border controls will totally derail (haha) our time and travel plans.
We decided to use the train because the air connections took us longer since we didn't want to vacate in a city with an airport and don't live in one either.
How are the illegal border controls from outside into Germany on train currently? By car, they didn't even look us in the eyes when we passed, a complete waste of time.
The Bundespolizei could do actual work instead of just sort of chilling on the borders and checking people that don't look German enough (presumingly).
I haven't crossed border by train since they started to do this again. But when I'm travelling within Germany the trains that come from out of country are usually delayed.
Afaik the train is sometimes stopped to check the papers of all passengers. I guess these are the cases with the heavy delay. But they also do controls in moving trains which makes it more tolerable but still...
Even if you adjusted for population (550 mil vs 330 mil) you could easily at least connect all the major cities in the US, given how many smaller regional lines there are in Europe too
I think parts of the problems of train in the US is that they have a lot of desert in the western part of the country (rocky mountains and such) where public transport just wouldn't make sense. You don't have that in Europe.
China is disagreeing, right now.
Not disagreeing with your arguments, but they are definitely pushing a lot more than us because the amount of people you can move is ridonkulous compared to planes and cars, their geography seems to be helping and the technology is getting ridiculous (450kph trains, right now).
Not to shit on your perfectly reasonable parade, but in Germany there is high speed rail through the whole . takes about 6 hours from top to bottom.
Maybe not a great example there, with that running something like 100 km/h average speed.
If you bump those numbers up to be competitive with actually high-performing HSR operators, that trip would take 2-3 hours, immediately killing any competitive edge that air travel would have on those segments - 2-3 hours will basically get you to the airport and through security, you'll have arrived already if you were on a well-performing train by then.
HSR is the best alternative for any trip up to approximately 800 km, at which point air travel starts beating it out. This is for daytime travel only - trains could be competitive for far longer distances with overnight sleeper service. I'd not be against taking night HSRs going between any points in Europe basically.
Alas, this would require non-shit politicians, which definitely does not exist
Honestly I think it's just sticker shock. I would say that as soon as we get some people would be more willing to get more, but no, because people are hesitant to expand existing rail. MARTA please expand, I beg you. Oh great spirits of public transit, I pray that you soften the NIMBYs' hearts.
It's so upsetting that every small town in my state has an old historic train stop but none of them are actually passenger train stops anymore. Once you see it you can't unsee it. I am 15 minutes from my town's historic train stop which is a steak house now. My parents are about the same distance from theirs, probably even closer, but it's a museum or something. Can I just take a walk to the train, ride down, and see them? Nope. Gotta deal with the hellscape that is metro Atlanta traffic.
In theory, you could make a carbon-neutral coal-burning steam locomotive. You would need to make synthetic coal out of atmospherically-captured CO2. But in theory it would be possible...
Copilot’s deep think says it would take a 2K passenger train to be more environmentally friendly than 2K electric cars, given a coal-steam train and electric cars recharged by a coal fired power plant.
But that’s irrelevant, electric cars lose the coolness factor against steam trains. Choo-choo electric drivers!
I cannot express the depth of disappointment i feel here.
Suffice to say that this is not an answer, and if you think it is; you're going to get a lot of people hurt very badly someday. I sincerely hope you are never responsible for so much as brunch.
Well I don’t know anyone who works in either designing mass transportation nor makes environmental impact analysis, so no one could give me an accurate guess, hence why I specified that I asked.
I cannot express the depth of disappointment i feel here.
I even let it ‘think’ some extra time, come on
I sincerely hope you are never responsible for so much as brunch
I’ll make it my goal to ensure I’m supervising every single brunch you’re going to for the rest of our lives
I'm not sure about other countries but one thing Amtrak has over planes is that they're more disability accessible. Still making improvements on legacy equipment but they're under the ADA, whereas airlines lobbied themselves out of it, which is why they never bothered to create wheelchair spaces or accessible bathrooms or even seats a normal human can occupy comfortably.
A rail system is expensive, but the alternatives are even more expensive. The roads cost more to maintain and fuck do i know how planes keep getting cheaper. Maybe no tax and city funding?
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.
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.
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.
Is there any parody porn about TSA? I want to masturbate to it. As long as it's not too noncon (like TSA in real life), I don't really care about the details (I'm ok with any gender, large insertions/fisting, etc.).
Same in the US, and they're slow. Going halfway across the country (i.e. anywhere interesting) takes ~24 hours, and the cheapest seats (not a room) cost about the same as a regular flight, more if you consider budget airlines. And that's if there's a train going where you want to go without ridiculous transfers.
try travelling between countries. eurorail is generally 2-3x times more expensive than cheapest airline. Trains have so much capacity and yet even within countries ticket prices are around £20-30 per two hours of travel. Should be much cheaper, governments should give train lines more incentives than airlines but I feel like that is probably the opposite.
Ameribro here, I can almost guarantee that your airlines are running at a loss as part of a long term EEE strategy to monopolize long distance travel. Once they've got the market cornered, your tickets are going to get A LOT more expensive like ours are. Oh, and they'll start demanding subsidies from your governments to keep from going tits up because they accidentally the whole thing to their shareholders. Don't fucking fall for it.
Traveling by ICE in Europe was fucking awesome. 300kph and like $10 euro to go basically anywhere...well 15 years ago it was that cheap. Dunno about now. And I say this as a gear head.
It really depends, if you take a direct line between 2 cities it is easy and cheap but the more times you have to switch trains the more expensive it gets (+ also a lot more problems when a train is delayed).
Such infrastructure should be completely & unlimitedly free for private use.
When Germany did (twice? Forgot the details :/) the experiment with the unlimited EU monthly tickets for 7€ or whatever people were really glad, everyone could travel & see more. And they still talk about that.
The "unlimited" ticket for 9€ (then 49€, now it's 58€, "conserveratives" hate it so who knows what it'll be next year) is limited to regional and local transit. No long distance IC/ICE trains with some exceptions where an IC is operating as part of a regional connection.
My prediction is that (barring a heavy left shift in politics, i.e. a linke grüne spd government or similar) it will keep getting more expensive until it becomes useless enough that cancelling it is no longer political suicide.
It's honestly insane to me that it seemingly wasn't a huge topic in the election (at least I didn't hear much about it), millions use it and many more benefit indirectly as it lead to better offers for local transport ticket subscriptions.
Cuz of all the issues that come with laying rail lines. Eminent Domain has somehow become even more unpopular as of late. And guess what building rail lines requires?
Rich people owning land and trying to get a mark up on the value or a backhand. Or just being near it.
I know this website is pretty communist and I'm not. But surely anyone with half a brain even a die hard capitalist can see the gain in buying land and resetting the market for what is most valuable now not legacy at what was most valuable in the 60's.
Anyone that is against heavy funding in public transport, tax on land/ reallocation for more density and education isn't a capitalist they are just a cunt.
Anyone that is against heavy funding in public transport, tax on land/ reallocation for more density and education isn't a capitalist they are just a cunt.
Especially true since there's a lot more potential for capitalism in trains than there is in roads—the latter of which is probably the biggest socialised cost in America.
Doesn't Europe have an extensive passenger train network?
Also, I recently rode on Amtrak for a long trip from Columbia, SC to Baltimore, MD. This was my first time on any kind of train other than a subway or metro line. It had its drawbacks (incredibly long travel time and delays), but I always felt safe, and I had a lot more room than I would have had on any flight. The major drawbacks where the seats were somewhat uncomfortable and things like that are largely due to the fact that the cars were pretty old, and not inherent to train travel if it was properly maintained. The cost was much less, and the free parking was such a great bonus.
Europe has an extensive passenger train network, but most of it is not high speed rail.
I looked on travelling from Madrid to Paris and it takes 2 hours if you fly (and then some time before for travelling from the city center to the airport, luggage check-in etc.), 11 hours with train and 13.5 hours with car. I think there are high speed rails between Madrid and Barcelona and in France, but still it takes that long time. The cost is similar.
Trains are really good but they have limitations, each type of travel has its advantages.
When I checked how long distance it was between Columbia, SC and Baltimore, MD I realised it was much shorter than Madrid - Paris. So I checked Munich - Paris instead which is only a 10 km longer than Columbus - Baltimore. It takes 7 hours with train and 8.5 - 9 hours with car. The flight takes 1 hour 35 minutes but the estimated time for travelling from central Munich to the airport, transfer time, flight, transfer and travel to central Paris is 5 hours.
With delays, my actual time was around 11 hours. The last leg, from Washington, DC to Baltimore was actually on high speed commuter rail, and that was phenomenal. The cars were newer and the speed was far greater. I imagine if most traffic in the northeast US is like that, it's actually pretty good.
Thanks for the European info. It's interesting to know we have similar challenges. I would think, though, that high speed rail would be easier to implement in Europe since you don't seem to have as many people stuck on automobile culture as we do in North America. However, I could see politics being an issue, wherever you go for various reasons.
and that's the one legitimately good reason to oppose it. The city folk act like they are the only places in the world and completely ignore the rest of the country, the worlds largest ball of yarn wouldn't exist without small towns, neither would wal-mikes.
Also, I recently rode on Amtrak for a long trip from Columbia, SC to Baltimore, MD. This was my first time on any kind of train other than a subway or metro line. It had its drawbacks (incredibly long travel time and delays)
I thought about taking an Amtrak to Boston for a trip since it was a vacation and I wasn't in a huge rush travel wise. By "incredibly long travel time" in my case it would have gone from ~3 hours (two roughly one hour flights with a very short layover you've got to haul ass through because for some reason the relevant gates are both at the far ends of different concourses at Dulles) to about a day. Wasn't in a rush, but that's a bit too far to the other extreme.
It does, though there are some issues with track sizes that are being solved here and there every 10 years. Depends on what someone means by "high speed rail" though, since most people think "maglev" as if it isn't almost the same bullcrap as hyperloop in terms of viability.
The only national passenger train service I know of is Amtrak, which shares its tracks with freight carriers. So the current infrastructure isn't designed for high-speed rail and freight carriers usually get priority.
Also, The US is really big, so everything isn't a short train ride away from everything else. If I wanted to visit the Grand Canyon from where I live, it's over 2,000 miles away. That's 30 hours of driving just by car.
There's absolutely no good reason why you shouldn't be able to take a train from LA to Seattle or Miami to El Paso. The US coastline is plenty dense, with highway exits every five or ten miles state after state after state.
I have heard that China has made significant efforts in this area, but that really is a massive change in just over a decade.
Meanwhile, the UK will take as long to build a single high-speed line.
UK deliberately defunded their HR connection between Manchester and London. The Tories sold off the land in a rapid auction, just to make sure Labour couldn't take over and finish the job after the next election.
The secret to it being affordable, doesn't mean it can't be done any other way. Authoritarian government also helped a lot in getting it done this fast but still doesn't mean it can't be done. Just not as fast and as cheap as China did.
Some asshole Mba/lawyers figured out that if they made the trains physically too long to fit onto the pull outs, then they could just shrug and say "golly, we'd love to pull over for you, but we just can't lmao" and it's perfectly fine. It's called Precision Scheduled Railroading
Well, see, for that to happen, you'd need politicians who aren't complicit in trying to rip the wiring out of the walls. Also, regulating railroads is hella complicated in the US because we've got a bunch of ancient laws that give the railroads more rights than God, to the point where you almost stop being a citizen when you step onto railroad right of way. We COULD deal with that, but it'd be almost as much of an almighty fucking lobbyist shitshow as when we try to regulate oil.
presented regulated that way: companies can buy kerosene for airplanes tax-free, but need to pay tax on electricity for trains. Funding for airports and trainstations differ greatly from high ways. Governments hand out money to make the best mode of transportation (from their pov) also the cheapest.
But else laws got passed bcs it was presented like how airplanes deserve being untaxed (to the cost of taxpayers) but railroad doesn't.
You can try to change those laws & get the same lobby propaganda in return.
Like how is there always money for another lane but much cheaper infrastructure is crumbling.
Governments hand out money to make the best mode of transportation (from their pov) also the cheapest.
Yeah, no, corruption & short-term gains are the main factors by which the gov decided what is best.
And why more socialist or even communist states tend to have that sorted out better.
Yes, the US is really big, and we have a bunch of mountains, but there's still no good reason why reasonable train infrastructure doesn't exist. We have train lines from Seattle to LA, SF to Chicago (and transfers to NYC and DC), and NYC to Miami, but they're all super slow and have to share with even slower freight sometimes.
I live in Utah and know a bunch of people who would take a train to Vegas almost every weekend if it existed and was somewhat fast. I'd take one from SLC to LA if it existed, and I'd consider one across the country if it was reasonably priced. But no, the train takes twice as long as a car for most destinations, and is often more expensive than an airplane, so why would I ever take the train outside of the train being the point (i.e. as a novelty)?
Make them fast and convenient and people will rife them. Apparently Amtrak gets decent usage in the NE because they're fast and convenient. Do that for the west and people will use them.
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 live in South Korea and HSRs are pretty much the only mode of (intercity) transportation that is relevant. Buses take too long, planes are expensive, while HSR(KTX)s are marginally cheaper than buses and take about ⅔ of a time.
Of course, our country's much much smaller than US/Canada so even the farthest lane takes only about 2.5 hours. It's pretty cool.
I fly because it's fast, not because I like airplanes. Even the fastest train is way too slow to replace a plane for a long-distance trip. Then for shorter distances cars win out because of how convenient they are. There's no niche for passenger trains except for commuting into urban areas with no parking.
It doesn't help that in the USA train tickets seem to cost more than plane tickets. I think I'd still usually fly even if the train was free, so I'm certainly not going to pay extra for a slower method of transportation even if it is a little more comfortable.
Depends what you are thinking of as long distance. NY to LA? Sure. NY to Chicago would be 4-4.5 hours, downtown to downtown, with a proper train (typical French TGV speeds of 330 kmh / 205 mph). Faster than flying when you count the time and cost of getting to the airport etc., and that's by no means the fastest train. The fastest lines of the Shinkansen and the next generation TGV they're planning in France are over 1.5 times as fast as that.
Exactly this. People too often compare price and time of "train ride" vs. "flight", which the flight often wins. You need to compare the full travel, and train travel has a lot less overhead, which means a train travelling 100-200 km/h usually wins on stretches below 500 km.
But 500 km (or rather 310 miles since I'm in the USA) is at the upper end of the distance I'd drive. There isn't a distance for which a train is better than both flying and driving.
With what I've heard about the train infrastructure in the US, that doesn't surprise me. Personally, I only ever use a car if I'm travelling into the mountains or transporting a lot of luggage. I never drive if I'm travelling between cities with little luggage, if only because it's much less of a hassle to just hop on a train and get where I'm going.
So in most Western European countries I think that limit is actually more like 1000km, or if it includes crossing France even more than that, or if you're not close to the airport too. Beyond about 7 hours of train, flying starts to be faster and more convenient, most people around here find, but you can get quite far with a train in that time. I appreciate the current situation in the US isn't the same and it would cost money to upgrade the network, but I think the rest of the world does show that it's actually worthwhile.
It depends on what you mean by "shorter distances".
Going from Amsterdam to Paris by train is about the same time as going by plane, and actually a bit faster if you show up to the flight two hours early as recommend.
Dane here. While I love trains, they are a) more expensive than flying in almost every long distance scenario, and b) take much longer. We are trialling sleeping trains but reception is mixed and capacity limited. People don't like to waste an extra 2-4 days of their vacation on travel. Especially if they're paying more for that privilege. I should note that this isn't an issue of imbalanced subsidies. The EU subsidises air travel (in many ways) to the tune of around €30–40 billion annually depending on what you include and what you consider to be a "subsidy." Using similar criteria, rail is subsidised to the tune of €40–75 billion per year. So rail gets a lot more investment despite it serving 16% fewer travel kilometers per year in the EU than air travel.
The thing is, if even we can't make it cheaper and faster despite our relatively high population densities and high rail subsidies, I fear the case is much harder still in the U.S. My personal position is that trains are excellent commuter alternatives, and should be liberally built and subsidised in all dense cities. For longer travel, there is no substitute for airoplanes.
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.
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.
Every time I take an airplane, I feel tired and worn out. I don't want to do anything for the rest of the day except take a nap.
Trains are no problem.
The main reasons might be relatively low oxygen at altitude (cabins are usually pressurized somewhere between 1/3rd to 1/2 atmosphere) and uncomfortable seats. But I think the whole dreary process of getting on and off the airplane is part of it, too. Train stations are so much more low key, even in large metropolitan areas.
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.
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)
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.
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.
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.
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.
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, with rail 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.
I mean, some of this is just silly and entirely based on the locations involved. For instance, a flight from Chicago to Florida is going to be cheaper and faster than Rail, and you’re not going to just hop off wherever the hell you want. And no you can’t just hop on the next one, you miss your train departure and you’re SOL.
I do also question the “safety” aspect. I’m pretty sure both trains and planes have extremely high safety rates, and are pretty much on par with each other.
Also… why is “on the ground” a bullet point? You’re on the ground 99.9% of your life, you telling me it’s not cool as shit to be flying through the air?
Because rail is the abused bastard and air travel has the government pay for most of it's everything.
Cars too. The government buys your roads, your gas, your parking, and part of your car for you. Only trains need to more than vaguely gesture at paying their own way in this country.
Yes, the theoretical maximum speed for a plane is faster, but we dont fly supersonic anymore, and supersonic trains still exist.
hop on hop off
As run right now, sure. If we invested half as much in trains as cars and planes? Oh, easily. And even right now, amtrak's 'trip insurance' is basically license to do exactly that. I have used it this way before.
hop on hop off does exist for the Alaska Railroad, it just makes it less valuable as a transportation system between cities because it is intended for the people that live on the route to use almost anywhere.
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.
Nearly the entire northern half of california lost internet a few years back because crackheads decided to try and steal fiberoptic cable, which is made of glass, so dont question the dedication to debauchery of the american crackhead.
Parking is cheaper
No TSA fingering your asshole
Tickets are cheaper
Safer travel
On the ground
Can take the next train if late
These aren't (completely) true where I live, it's still more convenient to take a plane or even drive to go to another major city 500-600km away, which is ridiculous specially considering that it's consistently ranked among the best high speed rail systems in the world.
I heard that their is two issue for massive train transportation :
-1. Public fund : to make every city more attractive for tourists, kerosene is take free for company. Which lower the price of the ticket
-2. Freight : in order to not use massively truck, train freight need to have some span.
Edit: I love trains, it's the best transport. But depending on the terrain, railway can be very expensive. Not to mention is difficult to add tracks today, because cities are densely populated and you need space that is not available. It's much easier to buy and rud a couple of planes, than to add tracks.
A train can't take me up remote roads 15 miles up a canyon to destinations that only a capable 4x4 can reach (this is the point of those roads), then take me out the other end of the canyon via those trails into a small town with a delicious diner and ice cream shop. All while checking out abandoned mines (no I don't go in), ghost towns, and other history from before my time.
Ok, cool. But I don't think your experience would still be very good if you were joined by an additional trainload of people riding 4x4s right alongside you. It'd be time to pave over that canyon so that the people visiting it can park.
And trains aren't mutually exclusive with cars. I might take the train to visit my parents a few cities over, but that didn't mean there wasn't a highway for the moving truck to drive along when I had to get my stuff over to where I live now.
No-one is saying no-one should drive a car. Rather, that the right tool for the right job should be used. In the US, cars are used for a lot more than what they're best at. That you are using them effectively for personal use, is not a reason to also have them used where they aren't as effective (in this case in comparison to trains, large volume transit of people who are mainly transporting themselves between hubs of human activity).
In Tokyo, Shinjuku train station routes 3.8 million people to where they are going, EVERY, DAY.
Interstate 5 in the US, the busiest in the country, does a pathetic 0.75 million a day on its busiest strip. And the cost-effectiveness of trains beats out cars waaay before you hit capacity on such a highway.
Ok, cool. But I don’t think your experience would still be very good if you were joined by an additional trainload of people riding 4x4s right alongside you. It’d be time to pave over that canyon so that the people visiting it can park.
Completely missed the point. Less "general public" is the entire idea of offroading in remote locations with no cell service or anything else. It takes actual skills to get up there, and the more-skilled people tend to be more respectful of the lands. But I digress.
And trains aren’t mutually exclusive with cars. I might take the train to visit my parents a few cities over, but that didn’t mean there wasn’t a highway for the moving truck to drive along when I had to get my stuff over to where I live now.
For sure. I don't disagree with that at all. I've moved across the USA twice, and both times it was more cost-effective to just drive. Paying a transporter to haul a minivan, paying a moving company to ship my family's stuff, and loading us all on a plane to live at the in-laws while we wait for our stuff to arrive - was our first choice. However, I did the math and found that sending my family on a plane while I rented a UHaul trailer and just towed it with the minivan was over $1000 cheaper, despite the 5-day drive I had to do. But I enjoyed it.
No-one is saying no-one should drive a car. Rather, that the right tool for the right job should be used. In the US, cars are used for a lot more than what they’re best at. That you are using them effectively for personal use, is not a reason to also have them used where they aren’t as effective (in this case in comparison to trains, large volume transit of people who are mainly transporting themselves between hubs of human activity).
Absolutely. I just get really fucking tired of seeing the "fuck cars" morons beating a dead horse over and over again with "all cars are bad and should be illegal right now".
In Tokyo, Shinjuku train station routes 3.8 million people to where they are going, EVERY, DAY.
And it's a beautiful thing. The fact that Japan is roughly the size of the entire US east coast and somehow manages with trains just fine is an engineering marvel.
Interstate 5 in the US, the busiest in the country, does a pathetic 0.75 million a day on its busiest strip. And the cost-effectiveness of trains beats out cars waaay before you hit capacity on such a highway.
Completely missed the point. Less "general public" is the entire idea of offroading in remote locations with no cell service or anything else. It takes actual skills to get up there, and the more-skilled people tend to be more respectful of the lands. But I digress.
Exactly.
I'm pointing out that your low volume scenario has literally zero equivalence with high volume transit, and you shouldn't have brought it up.
Rail doesn't work to solve most transit issues. I say this as someone in the area of NJTransit. I know why SEPTA is able to cut 45% of their train service - it doesn't do the job.We just need a lot more buses, nationwide.
Wow, I disagree with everything you said, that's amazing!
Buses suck, nobody wants to ride them because they're slow. Buses work well as last mile transit to get to and from trains, but they're poor as a transit backbone. If you only have buses, only the poor will take them since most vastly prefer driving to riding the bus, whereas trains actually attract people who would otherwise drive.
The ideal is to have a good commuter rail line, a few light rail lines that connects to the commuter line, and bus lines that go wherever the light rail doesn't. If the city is designed well, cut out a lot of the buses and put the main destinations near the rail lines, connected by good walking infrastructure.
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)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tempi_train_crash
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.
It has been done before ...
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.
Or driving it into a sky scraper !!!
Ok. Thinking explosives. Where are high speed trains being attacked by explosives? I don’t hear much in Germany, France, China, or Japan.
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.
Madrid, 2004.
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.
So, even fucking worse when it comes to number of victims.
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 😉
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
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.
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
Americans can't do trains because it requires public infrastructure (rails), which apparently we are allergic to.
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.
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
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?
Please read the comment in it's entirety before responding ❤️
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.
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
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.
But they could be fucking train stop bucolic paradise exurbs from (bigcity)!
Tough luck, that's the free market at work
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
Can't do public infrastructure, unless it's roads.
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
The monkey paw grants your wish but all the trains are built by Boeing.
Those are called trolleys because they don't have doors
*pipes, as those do have a few holes
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.
Meanwhile, right wing parties in Quebec are fighting against a tramway project in Quebec city, that the entire country agreed to pay for, for which we have already invested half a billion, build stations, etc. They call it "War on cars".
Where do I enlist?
[email protected]
Honest fuck this.
So you love driving and more people on the road will get off the road and take the train. It means you can drive even more! Why wouldn't you want that.
Because they don't give a shit about driving? They care a lot more about their family members that own car dealerships, or are involved with the petrochemical industry.
Or they saw that American rightwing grifters talk like this so they are cargo culting the fuck out?
The US has been fighting for years to put a high speed rail in between DC and New York. Every right-wing neighborhood in between is throwing signs out stop the maglev.
Not to shit on your perfectly reasonable parade, but in Germany there is high speed rail through the whole . takes about 6 hours from top to bottom.
Now look at the scale of the US versus Germany and then the density of people living there. High speed rail makes alot of sense where it's difficult to build (bosnywash) and does not scale well in terms of time spent traveling.
Its better than car, but won't replace air travel anytime soon. Sadly.
France has nearly the same population density as Ohio, and it has the TGV, which covers more than 5 times the land area of Ohio. So where's the Ohio high speed rail network?
This is the scale of Japan compared to the US east coast:
So why aren't there high speed lines that cover that same distance in the US?
Americans complain about US politicians and US policy on a near constant basis, and yet when comparing the US to other nations its apparently impossible for anyone to have made a stupid or self-serving decision. The US apparently is always operating at the absolute limit of what's physically possible, and if there's any deficiency compared to its peers its never because something was done wrong. Its always because "the US is too big" or "we're too diverse" (what does that even mean? You can't have nice things because black people exist?).
To be clear there are actual answers to the questions I posed above, but its not either of those moronic excuses.
Those lines do exist in the US. They are privatized, shitty, and expensive.
It kind of is though.
Can't have nice downtown because blacks live their so all the whites go out to the suburbs. End up with shitty inefficient suburb hell and under funded downtown.
No one wants to use public transport because of a sense of crime so only the lowest income people use it meaning further funding loss.
Nothing in America is for "the people" paid by the state except highways, oil and pouring water into the desert everything else needs to run a direct profit ignoring externalities.
That statement is a bit too broad for me. You can not only use highspeed rail within Germany but also to reach the countries around it. E.g. Belgium, Netherlands, Austria, (ICE trains) or use the TGV to reach Paris in a reasonable time.
But with the (illegal) border controls currently it's insufferable. Will travel through France by train in September and I fear that the border controls will totally derail (haha) our time and travel plans.
We decided to use the train because the air connections took us longer since we didn't want to vacate in a city with an airport and don't live in one either.
How are the illegal border controls from outside into Germany on train currently? By car, they didn't even look us in the eyes when we passed, a complete waste of time.
The Bundespolizei could do actual work instead of just sort of chilling on the borders and checking people that don't look German enough (presumingly).
I haven't crossed border by train since they started to do this again. But when I'm travelling within Germany the trains that come from out of country are usually delayed.
Afaik the train is sometimes stopped to check the papers of all passengers. I guess these are the cases with the heavy delay. But they also do controls in moving trains which makes it more tolerable but still...
When you add up all the miles of rail in Europe, how far could you stretch it out over the US?
Here are numbers from 2022 but you still need to do the math
Even if you adjusted for population (550 mil vs 330 mil) you could easily at least connect all the major cities in the US, given how many smaller regional lines there are in Europe too
I think parts of the problems of train in the US is that they have a lot of desert in the western part of the country (rocky mountains and such) where public transport just wouldn't make sense. You don't have that in Europe.
Why wouldn't it make sense to cross these areas by train? You don't need a stop in the desert but before and after sounds sensible to me.
crossing it makes sense, yes, but you could also do so by plane, which is much faster
China is disagreeing, right now. Not disagreeing with your arguments, but they are definitely pushing a lot more than us because the amount of people you can move is ridonkulous compared to planes and cars, their geography seems to be helping and the technology is getting ridiculous (450kph trains, right now).
Maybe not a great example there, with that running something like 100 km/h average speed.
If you bump those numbers up to be competitive with actually high-performing HSR operators, that trip would take 2-3 hours, immediately killing any competitive edge that air travel would have on those segments - 2-3 hours will basically get you to the airport and through security, you'll have arrived already if you were on a well-performing train by then.
HSR is the best alternative for any trip up to approximately 800 km, at which point air travel starts beating it out. This is for daytime travel only - trains could be competitive for far longer distances with overnight sleeper service. I'd not be against taking night HSRs going between any points in Europe basically.
Alas, this would require non-shit politicians, which definitely does not exist
Honestly I think it's just sticker shock. I would say that as soon as we get some people would be more willing to get more, but no, because people are hesitant to expand existing rail. MARTA please expand, I beg you. Oh great spirits of public transit, I pray that you soften the NIMBYs' hearts.
It's so upsetting that every small town in my state has an old historic train stop but none of them are actually passenger train stops anymore. Once you see it you can't unsee it. I am 15 minutes from my town's historic train stop which is a steak house now. My parents are about the same distance from theirs, probably even closer, but it's a museum or something. Can I just take a walk to the train, ride down, and see them? Nope. Gotta deal with the hellscape that is metro Atlanta traffic.
Glorious coal for scenic steam locomotives. It’s a win-win
Still cleaner than even the cleanest electric car, just by physics.
In theory, you could make a carbon-neutral coal-burning steam locomotive. You would need to make synthetic coal out of atmospherically-captured CO2. But in theory it would be possible...
Nope. Thermodynamics.
You'd just be making batteries at that point
And the making wouldn't be free
Copilot’s deep think says it would take a 2K passenger train to be more environmentally friendly than 2K electric cars, given a coal-steam train and electric cars recharged by a coal fired power plant.
But that’s irrelevant, electric cars lose the coolness factor against steam trains. Choo-choo electric drivers!
I cannot express the depth of disappointment i feel here.
Suffice to say that this is not an answer, and if you think it is; you're going to get a lot of people hurt very badly someday. I sincerely hope you are never responsible for so much as brunch.
Well I don’t know anyone who works in either designing mass transportation nor makes environmental impact analysis, so no one could give me an accurate guess, hence why I specified that I asked.
I even let it ‘think’ some extra time, come on
I’ll make it my goal to ensure I’m supervising every single brunch you’re going to for the rest of our lives
There are rough numbers to be foubd, math to be done. Not enough for real work, but enough for guessing a rough course, or knowing when it's close.
I'm not sure about other countries but one thing Amtrak has over planes is that they're more disability accessible. Still making improvements on legacy equipment but they're under the ADA, whereas airlines lobbied themselves out of it, which is why they never bothered to create wheelchair spaces or accessible bathrooms or even seats a normal human can occupy comfortably.
tbf if airlines had to serve people they could not be profitable
Not my problem.
you say that but could you say that to an A class shareholder on the verge of tears over not being able to retire at 50 they might even have to work
Ha!
I would, and look them in the eyes the whole time while smiling.
Cheaper? come to the UK, where flying can be less expensive than rail
You guys pay to get railed in UK?
woah i wouldn't pay for that
A rail system is expensive, but the alternatives are even more expensive. The roads cost more to maintain and fuck do i know how planes keep getting cheaper. Maybe no tax and city funding?
This again? The answer is no one knows. We heard legends about it but the prophecy says line go up!
Why would Americans care about trains when they're gonna be a billionaire any day now and have their own private jet?
/s
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.
Is there any parody porn about TSA? I want to masturbate to it. As long as it's not too noncon (like TSA in real life), I don't really care about the details (I'm ok with any gender, large insertions/fisting, etc.).
TSA exists, therefore...
Yes. The answer is always yes.
Yeah i got used to TSA sexually assulting me just to get to the to my plane
tickets are cheaper? if you want to travel the same distance it is far from cheap to travel by train, in Europe at least
Same in the US, and they're slow. Going halfway across the country (i.e. anywhere interesting) takes ~24 hours, and the cheapest seats (not a room) cost about the same as a regular flight, more if you consider budget airlines. And that's if there's a train going where you want to go without ridiculous transfers.
try travelling between countries. eurorail is generally 2-3x times more expensive than cheapest airline. Trains have so much capacity and yet even within countries ticket prices are around £20-30 per two hours of travel. Should be much cheaper, governments should give train lines more incentives than airlines but I feel like that is probably the opposite.
yeah it's outrageous how governments spend millions on airports and then claim that trains are too expensive
Ameribro here, I can almost guarantee that your airlines are running at a loss as part of a long term EEE strategy to monopolize long distance travel. Once they've got the market cornered, your tickets are going to get A LOT more expensive like ours are. Oh, and they'll start demanding subsidies from your governments to keep from going tits up because they accidentally the whole thing to their shareholders. Don't fucking fall for it.
Traveling by ICE in Europe was fucking awesome. 300kph and like $10 euro to go basically anywhere...well 15 years ago it was that cheap. Dunno about now. And I say this as a gear head.
It really depends, if you take a direct line between 2 cities it is easy and cheap but the more times you have to switch trains the more expensive it gets (+ also a lot more problems when a train is delayed).
Such infrastructure should be completely & unlimitedly free for private use.
When Germany did (twice? Forgot the details :/) the experiment with the unlimited EU monthly tickets for 7€ or whatever people were really glad, everyone could travel & see more. And they still talk about that.
The "unlimited" ticket for 9€ (then 49€, now it's 58€, "conserveratives" hate it so who knows what it'll be next year) is limited to regional and local transit. No long distance IC/ICE trains with some exceptions where an IC is operating as part of a regional connection.
My prediction is that (barring a heavy left shift in politics, i.e. a linke grüne spd government or similar) it will keep getting more expensive until it becomes useless enough that cancelling it is no longer political suicide.
It's honestly insane to me that it seemingly wasn't a huge topic in the election (at least I didn't hear much about it), millions use it and many more benefit indirectly as it lead to better offers for local transport ticket subscriptions.
Thx for the info & insight!
Cuz of all the issues that come with laying rail lines. Eminent Domain has somehow become even more unpopular as of late. And guess what building rail lines requires?
Steel?
And indentured workers!
Frequently, blowing holes in hills and mountains so you can get that 3% gradient.
Rich people owning land and trying to get a mark up on the value or a backhand. Or just being near it.
I know this website is pretty communist and I'm not. But surely anyone with half a brain even a die hard capitalist can see the gain in buying land and resetting the market for what is most valuable now not legacy at what was most valuable in the 60's.
Anyone that is against heavy funding in public transport, tax on land/ reallocation for more density and education isn't a capitalist they are just a cunt.
Especially true since there's a lot more potential for capitalism in trains than there is in roads—the latter of which is probably the biggest socialised cost in America.
Right, but you pay that price once. Cars and planes have a lot more maintenance costs than trains.
Because they like TSA fingering their assholes?
I'll sometimes go back & go through TSA multiple times, they love that, makes them feel appreciated!
Doesn't Europe have an extensive passenger train network?
Also, I recently rode on Amtrak for a long trip from Columbia, SC to Baltimore, MD. This was my first time on any kind of train other than a subway or metro line. It had its drawbacks (incredibly long travel time and delays), but I always felt safe, and I had a lot more room than I would have had on any flight. The major drawbacks where the seats were somewhat uncomfortable and things like that are largely due to the fact that the cars were pretty old, and not inherent to train travel if it was properly maintained. The cost was much less, and the free parking was such a great bonus.
Europe has an extensive passenger train network, but most of it is not high speed rail.
I looked on travelling from Madrid to Paris and it takes 2 hours if you fly (and then some time before for travelling from the city center to the airport, luggage check-in etc.), 11 hours with train and 13.5 hours with car. I think there are high speed rails between Madrid and Barcelona and in France, but still it takes that long time. The cost is similar.
Trains are really good but they have limitations, each type of travel has its advantages.
When I checked how long distance it was between Columbia, SC and Baltimore, MD I realised it was much shorter than Madrid - Paris. So I checked Munich - Paris instead which is only a 10 km longer than Columbus - Baltimore. It takes 7 hours with train and 8.5 - 9 hours with car. The flight takes 1 hour 35 minutes but the estimated time for travelling from central Munich to the airport, transfer time, flight, transfer and travel to central Paris is 5 hours.
With delays, my actual time was around 11 hours. The last leg, from Washington, DC to Baltimore was actually on high speed commuter rail, and that was phenomenal. The cars were newer and the speed was far greater. I imagine if most traffic in the northeast US is like that, it's actually pretty good.
Thanks for the European info. It's interesting to know we have similar challenges. I would think, though, that high speed rail would be easier to implement in Europe since you don't seem to have as many people stuck on automobile culture as we do in North America. However, I could see politics being an issue, wherever you go for various reasons.
Yes and no. It depends on which part of Europe you are in.
It's a bit like that in the States, with a lot of the infrastructure appearing to be concentrated in the Northeast.
Where there are lots of people close together, weird how that works...
No. Used to be everywhere. That's just where people held onto it after.
and that's the one legitimately good reason to oppose it. The city folk act like they are the only places in the world and completely ignore the rest of the country, the worlds largest ball of yarn wouldn't exist without small towns, neither would wal-mikes.
I thought about taking an Amtrak to Boston for a trip since it was a vacation and I wasn't in a huge rush travel wise. By "incredibly long travel time" in my case it would have gone from ~3 hours (two roughly one hour flights with a very short layover you've got to haul ass through because for some reason the relevant gates are both at the far ends of different concourses at Dulles) to about a day. Wasn't in a rush, but that's a bit too far to the other extreme.
It does, though there are some issues with track sizes that are being solved here and there every 10 years. Depends on what someone means by "high speed rail" though, since most people think "maglev" as if it isn't almost the same bullcrap as hyperloop in terms of viability.
The only national passenger train service I know of is Amtrak, which shares its tracks with freight carriers. So the current infrastructure isn't designed for high-speed rail and freight carriers usually get priority.
Also, The US is really big, so everything isn't a short train ride away from everything else. If I wanted to visit the Grand Canyon from where I live, it's over 2,000 miles away. That's 30 hours of driving just by car.
There's absolutely no good reason why you shouldn't be able to take a train from LA to Seattle or Miami to El Paso. The US coastline is plenty dense, with highway exits every five or ten miles state after state after state.
I have heard that China has made significant efforts in this area, but that really is a massive change in just over a decade.
Meanwhile, the UK will take as long to build a single high-speed line.
UK deliberately defunded their HR connection between Manchester and London. The Tories sold off the land in a rapid auction, just to make sure Labour couldn't take over and finish the job after the next election.
The secret is slavery.
Actual Footage! China's Modern Track Laying Methods For High Speed Railways
I guess paying for labour isn't something that can happen, it has to be slaves.
Well the US has slavery for prisoners(13th amendment), yet STILL no modern rail infrastructure.
In China, the only time you get a good thing is if someone does ten bad things.
A small price to pay for Christianity, Liberty, and Prosperity
The secret to it being affordable, doesn't mean it can't be done any other way. Authoritarian government also helped a lot in getting it done this fast but still doesn't mean it can't be done. Just not as fast and as cheap as China did.
They're not supposed to. Passenger traffic on Amtrak should be getting priority but the rail lines basically say "fuck it" and do what they want.
Some asshole Mba/lawyers figured out that if they made the trains physically too long to fit onto the pull outs, then they could just shrug and say "golly, we'd love to pull over for you, but we just can't lmao" and it's perfectly fine. It's called Precision Scheduled Railroading
Seems like an easy solution would be fining the shit out of them for that. Or requiring an expensive permit for overly long trains.
Well, see, for that to happen, you'd need politicians who aren't complicit in trying to rip the wiring out of the walls. Also, regulating railroads is hella complicated in the US because we've got a bunch of ancient laws that give the railroads more rights than God, to the point where you almost stop being a citizen when you step onto railroad right of way. We COULD deal with that, but it'd be almost as much of an almighty fucking lobbyist shitshow as when we try to regulate oil.
Lmao, money concentration wins over all the things human.
We deserve ourselves as a species.
Not sure if the rest of the species do.
With 300mph trains instead is highways that's 7 hours, k, let's say 10 hours of leisure, dining, sightseeing.
(vs 2h airport + 4h flight + 1 or 2h airport taxiing & stuff again)
The railroad infrastructure seems expensive just bcs it is presented that way (and planes & roads arent).
presentedregulated that way: companies can buy kerosene for airplanes tax-free, but need to pay tax on electricity for trains. Funding for airports and trainstations differ greatly from high ways. Governments hand out money to make the best mode of transportation (from their pov) also the cheapest.Yes.
But else laws got passed bcs it was presented like how airplanes deserve being untaxed (to the cost of taxpayers) but railroad doesn't.
You can try to change those laws & get the same lobby propaganda in return.
Like how is there always money for another lane but much cheaper infrastructure is crumbling.
Yeah, no, corruption & short-term gains are the main factors by which the gov decided what is best.
And why more socialist or even communist states tend to have that sorted out better.
Cars were never that tho.
Yes, the US is really big, and we have a bunch of mountains, but there's still no good reason why reasonable train infrastructure doesn't exist. We have train lines from Seattle to LA, SF to Chicago (and transfers to NYC and DC), and NYC to Miami, but they're all super slow and have to share with even slower freight sometimes.
I live in Utah and know a bunch of people who would take a train to Vegas almost every weekend if it existed and was somewhat fast. I'd take one from SLC to LA if it existed, and I'd consider one across the country if it was reasonably priced. But no, the train takes twice as long as a car for most destinations, and is often more expensive than an airplane, so why would I ever take the train outside of the train being the point (i.e. as a novelty)?
Make them fast and convenient and people will rife them. Apparently Amtrak gets decent usage in the NE because they're fast and convenient. Do that for the west and people will use them.
I really really wish I wasn't American
That's a sad statement.
Train infrastructure is so underfunded (thx oil) that you can still get the fingering at most train stations for a really reasonable fee.
Something something Hungarian National Railway fucking useless once you go further than a 100 kms from the capital city.
Hungary have repetedly fucked up aid money from the EU by being anti democratic, maybe that's the reason?
No lol it's been shit since before we joined the EU, it's basically like our very own original sin.
Edit: sorry almost forgot to say fuck orbán
Hopefully it'll change for the better next election!
& Fuck Orban of course.
Are they stupid?
(Yes)
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 live in South Korea and HSRs are pretty much the only mode of (intercity) transportation that is relevant. Buses take too long, planes are expensive, while HSR(KTX)s are marginally cheaper than buses and take about ⅔ of a time.
Of course, our country's much much smaller than US/Canada so even the farthest lane takes only about 2.5 hours. It's pretty cool.
I fly because it's fast, not because I like airplanes. Even the fastest train is way too slow to replace a plane for a long-distance trip. Then for shorter distances cars win out because of how convenient they are. There's no niche for passenger trains except for commuting into urban areas with no parking.
It doesn't help that in the USA train tickets seem to cost more than plane tickets. I think I'd still usually fly even if the train was free, so I'm certainly not going to pay extra for a slower method of transportation even if it is a little more comfortable.
Depends what you are thinking of as long distance. NY to LA? Sure. NY to Chicago would be 4-4.5 hours, downtown to downtown, with a proper train (typical French TGV speeds of 330 kmh / 205 mph). Faster than flying when you count the time and cost of getting to the airport etc., and that's by no means the fastest train. The fastest lines of the Shinkansen and the next generation TGV they're planning in France are over 1.5 times as fast as that.
Exactly this. People too often compare price and time of "train ride" vs. "flight", which the flight often wins. You need to compare the full travel, and train travel has a lot less overhead, which means a train travelling 100-200 km/h usually wins on stretches below 500 km.
But 500 km (or rather 310 miles since I'm in the USA) is at the upper end of the distance I'd drive. There isn't a distance for which a train is better than both flying and driving.
With what I've heard about the train infrastructure in the US, that doesn't surprise me. Personally, I only ever use a car if I'm travelling into the mountains or transporting a lot of luggage. I never drive if I'm travelling between cities with little luggage, if only because it's much less of a hassle to just hop on a train and get where I'm going.
So in most Western European countries I think that limit is actually more like 1000km, or if it includes crossing France even more than that, or if you're not close to the airport too. Beyond about 7 hours of train, flying starts to be faster and more convenient, most people around here find, but you can get quite far with a train in that time. I appreciate the current situation in the US isn't the same and it would cost money to upgrade the network, but I think the rest of the world does show that it's actually worthwhile.
It depends on what you mean by "shorter distances".
Going from Amsterdam to Paris by train is about the same time as going by plane, and actually a bit faster if you show up to the flight two hours early as recommend.
Guess I'm the opposite.
Dane here. While I love trains, they are a) more expensive than flying in almost every long distance scenario, and b) take much longer. We are trialling sleeping trains but reception is mixed and capacity limited. People don't like to waste an extra 2-4 days of their vacation on travel. Especially if they're paying more for that privilege. I should note that this isn't an issue of imbalanced subsidies. The EU subsidises air travel (in many ways) to the tune of around €30–40 billion annually depending on what you include and what you consider to be a "subsidy." Using similar criteria, rail is subsidised to the tune of €40–75 billion per year. So rail gets a lot more investment despite it serving 16% fewer travel kilometers per year in the EU than air travel.
The thing is, if even we can't make it cheaper and faster despite our relatively high population densities and high rail subsidies, I fear the case is much harder still in the U.S. My personal position is that trains are excellent commuter alternatives, and should be liberally built and subsidised in all dense cities. For longer travel, there is no substitute for airoplanes.
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.
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.
Every time I take an airplane, I feel tired and worn out. I don't want to do anything for the rest of the day except take a nap.
Trains are no problem.
The main reasons might be relatively low oxygen at altitude (cabins are usually pressurized somewhere between 1/3rd to 1/2 atmosphere) and uncomfortable seats. But I think the whole dreary process of getting on and off the airplane is part of it, too. Train stations are so much more low key, even in large metropolitan areas.
You also don't have to show up 2 hours in advance to a train station and plan your entire day(or two) around a trip.
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
And for one more added bonus we wouldn’t have to fix the problems with air traffic control
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?
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.
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, with rail 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.
I kind of like the thought of me pissing in the train and it travelling 300+ kph sideways and 9.8 m/s² downwards
based.
The US public transportation, especially the passenger rail network is fucking pathetic.
I mean, some of this is just silly and entirely based on the locations involved. For instance, a flight from Chicago to Florida is going to be cheaper and faster than Rail, and you’re not going to just hop off wherever the hell you want. And no you can’t just hop on the next one, you miss your train departure and you’re SOL.
I do also question the “safety” aspect. I’m pretty sure both trains and planes have extremely high safety rates, and are pretty much on par with each other.
Also… why is “on the ground” a bullet point? You’re on the ground 99.9% of your life, you telling me it’s not cool as shit to be flying through the air?
As it's run now, yes.
Because rail is the abused bastard and air travel has the government pay for most of it's everything.
Cars too. The government buys your roads, your gas, your parking, and part of your car for you. Only trains need to more than vaguely gesture at paying their own way in this country.
Yes, the theoretical maximum speed for a plane is faster, but we dont fly supersonic anymore, and supersonic trains still exist.
As run right now, sure. If we invested half as much in trains as cars and planes? Oh, easily. And even right now, amtrak's 'trip insurance' is basically license to do exactly that. I have used it this way before.
Shut the fuck up, hippie
hop on hop off does exist for the Alaska Railroad, it just makes it less valuable as a transportation system between cities because it is intended for the people that live on the route to use almost anywhere.
Oops, i often reference a hop on hop off in the extreme, stopping at flag-downs and requests, up in canada.
But you were talking earlier about jumping off at a dtop for like lunch then getting the next train, shiftijg goal posts
Not that you should have to get off for lunch.
good to see Canada has those too
Well its in canada. Operated by a first nations community.
Yeah, but i can get shit faced at the airport and on the plane, but i do that in a train and people start throwing coins at me
Seems like a win-win to me
More evidence Britain's the best country in the world.
Drinking on the train to go somewhere sporting, night out. Is a time honoured tradition. Wouldn't change that for all the Trumps in the world.
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.
Nearly the entire northern half of california lost internet a few years back because crackheads decided to try and steal fiberoptic cable, which is made of glass, so dont question the dedication to debauchery of the american crackhead.
There will be no crackheads once the rail is built. It will help disband the cia
These aren't (completely) true where I live, it's still more convenient to take a plane or even drive to go to another major city 500-600km away, which is ridiculous specially considering that it's consistently ranked among the best high speed rail systems in the world.
Can Boeing make a train? Just wondering if I should look out for occasional flying safety exist door while watching trains go by.
Maybe they do make trains, but like so badly they just accidentally take off (for an uncontrolled amount of time).
I heard that their is two issue for massive train transportation : -1. Public fund : to make every city more attractive for tourists, kerosene is take free for company. Which lower the price of the ticket -2. Freight : in order to not use massively truck, train freight need to have some span.
Railway is expensive to build.
Edit: I love trains, it's the best transport. But depending on the terrain, railway can be very expensive. Not to mention is difficult to add tracks today, because cities are densely populated and you need space that is not available. It's much easier to buy and rud a couple of planes, than to add tracks.
And airports on the other hand are free.
They pay you to make airports
Planes are safer. Plus, TSA is the only way I get any sexual contact. I'm not giving that up.
EDIT: Y'all are free to look this up. Planes safer per mile and trains safer per trip. Pick which stat you want to use.
Planes are not safer than rail. Definitely not if you fly Boeing.
Asking nicely can go a long way.
Rail and aviation are pretty much on par. Both are far far much safer than road traffic.
Safer than American trains.
American trains are safe, they're just really slow.
More of a joke.
American trains do suck compared to other trains.
Americans unironically believe stupid shit like this, hilarious
A train can't take me up remote roads 15 miles up a canyon to destinations that only a capable 4x4 can reach (this is the point of those roads), then take me out the other end of the canyon via those trails into a small town with a delicious diner and ice cream shop. All while checking out abandoned mines (no I don't go in), ghost towns, and other history from before my time.
And yes, I do this often.
Wow, cool, you ride an airplane directly into an abandoned mineshaft?
Of course; do you not?
Yeah, they're an Ace Combat protagonist.
That actually looks like a fun game.
Ok, cool. But I don't think your experience would still be very good if you were joined by an additional trainload of people riding 4x4s right alongside you. It'd be time to pave over that canyon so that the people visiting it can park.
And trains aren't mutually exclusive with cars. I might take the train to visit my parents a few cities over, but that didn't mean there wasn't a highway for the moving truck to drive along when I had to get my stuff over to where I live now.
No-one is saying no-one should drive a car. Rather, that the right tool for the right job should be used. In the US, cars are used for a lot more than what they're best at. That you are using them effectively for personal use, is not a reason to also have them used where they aren't as effective (in this case in comparison to trains, large volume transit of people who are mainly transporting themselves between hubs of human activity).
In Tokyo, Shinjuku train station routes 3.8 million people to where they are going, EVERY, DAY.
Interstate 5 in the US, the busiest in the country, does a pathetic 0.75 million a day on its busiest strip. And the cost-effectiveness of trains beats out cars waaay before you hit capacity on such a highway.
Completely missed the point. Less "general public" is the entire idea of offroading in remote locations with no cell service or anything else. It takes actual skills to get up there, and the more-skilled people tend to be more respectful of the lands. But I digress.
For sure. I don't disagree with that at all. I've moved across the USA twice, and both times it was more cost-effective to just drive. Paying a transporter to haul a minivan, paying a moving company to ship my family's stuff, and loading us all on a plane to live at the in-laws while we wait for our stuff to arrive - was our first choice. However, I did the math and found that sending my family on a plane while I rented a UHaul trailer and just towed it with the minivan was over $1000 cheaper, despite the 5-day drive I had to do. But I enjoyed it.
Absolutely. I just get really fucking tired of seeing the "fuck cars" morons beating a dead horse over and over again with "all cars are bad and should be illegal right now".
And it's a beautiful thing. The fact that Japan is roughly the size of the entire US east coast and somehow manages with trains just fine is an engineering marvel.
I don't disagree with this either.
Honestly though, for general "getting around", I just prefer my bikes.
Exactly.
I'm pointing out that your low volume scenario has literally zero equivalence with high volume transit, and you shouldn't have brought it up.
Rail doesn't work to solve most transit issues. I say this as someone in the area of NJTransit. I know why SEPTA is able to cut 45% of their train service - it doesn't do the job.We just need a lot more buses, nationwide.
I really don't think you should use a neglected regional US train system as a measure of the potential of trains.
(I edited this comment for brevity)
Trains are faster and more efficient than buses.
You don't need buses outside of low traffic areas.
Wow, I disagree with everything you said, that's amazing!
Buses suck, nobody wants to ride them because they're slow. Buses work well as last mile transit to get to and from trains, but they're poor as a transit backbone. If you only have buses, only the poor will take them since most vastly prefer driving to riding the bus, whereas trains actually attract people who would otherwise drive.
The ideal is to have a good commuter rail line, a few light rail lines that connects to the commuter line, and bus lines that go wherever the light rail doesn't. If the city is designed well, cut out a lot of the buses and put the main destinations near the rail lines, connected by good walking infrastructure.