thats what you get when you put car and oil billionaires in charge
this post was submitted on 25 Nov 2024
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that’s part of it, but also the continental US is massive and divided by two pretty impactful mountain ranges. Not defending our lack of train infrastructure but we came of age pretty much in line with the rise of the Jet era along with our culture of individualism and the massive expansion of public interstate hiways due to one specific president’s expierence as them being useful tools for self powered land based military vehicles so obviously that was prioritized over investing in new rail infrastructure in the interceding years.
Point being, there’s a lot of spinning plates involved with why we are where we are in regards our national rail network—would be nice to hop on an hourly train and zoop from Boston to LA in 6 hrs for like $50 but we also just elected Trump again for incomprehensible reasons so in all likelihood there will be a nuclear wasteland in between those two cities, which will need additional plates to be spun up to deal with.
Isn't the USA about the same size as Europe? I think Europe might actually be bigger. We also have a bunch of mountain range dividing up our continent too.
(Not denying the rest of your comment, just pointing out)
this (mind you, single country made of disparate states) was only contentiously “settled” about 300 years ago—Europe has had a pretty consistent and coherent cultural thrust for thousands of years, regardless of various clan-based spats, and a consistent build up of infrastructure to match. The US is the product of stolen land, a whole lot of racism and slavery and then being thrust into the center of the world stage right at the point when means of conveyance drastically shifted from ships and trains to planes and cars. the end result is the completely horrific infrastructure of the modern US landscape.
The United States (9,826,630 km2 / 3,794,080 sq mi) is larger than the European Union (4,233,262 km2 / 1,634,472 sq mi)
Can you drive 120km/h in those areas if you don’t take the train?
I don’t take the train here even though I have one because it takes too long. A 3-4 hr car trip takes all day with the train having to makes its stops.
The closest large city is 50 miles (80km) away. I can be there in 45min to an hour depending on traffic. The train takes almost three hours.
Also, there is no public transportation to get to the train stop which is on the bad side of town and there’s no station to wait inside.
You know the difference? I don't have to actually drive when I take the train. I can do literally anything else, especially if wireless is available.
It's like people who say, "I don't need a dishwasher, I can wash them in half the time!". Yeah, sure, but I don't have to fucking wash them. Not to mention the environmental and health benefits which, incidentally, works for trains too.
I can go to Paris (500 km) by train in about three hours. That train is musch faster thatn you'd be allowed to drive.
Hungary where you can basically go 140 legally 💀. Now i live in sweden and its 100 most places but the train connections are shit where i live.
There's an Amtrak station served by two trains a day within walking distance of my house. I've never once taken that train because according to Amtrak it can't be done. I've tried several times. I'm planning a trip across country, maybe to go visit someone. Hey let's try taking the train. Raleigh NC to Altoona PA...can't be done. Those stations aren't on the same route, and the trip planner on their website can't say "Take the Silver Star to Grand Central in New York then wait around 7 hours then take the Pennsylvanian to Altoona." Neither of these trains will spend much time at 70 miles per hour, both will end up sitting on sidings waiting for freight trains to go by, you've got to catch the train when it goes by at 6 AM or 10 PM, you're going to spend two days on a journey you can do by highway in 8 hours, and it actually costs a little more.
at that point, might as well take greyhound.
I don't think I've ever seen a Greyhound bus in person. Do they serve the Eastern Seaboard?
Yeah, I took them a few times in NY/PA when on vacation, was around 2019 or so. Not as good as busses here, but it was good enough.
I've seen an Amtrak passenger train on the rails where I live once. It was like seeing a unicorn. Can see freight trains pretty much every day (most of the rails here are through granaries and other farm shit where they load the cars).
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From station to station and to Dusseldorf city. Meet Iggy Pop and David Bowie.
It's funny how you see American movies about the old times and there's always a train around, but in fact it was the people being around the train.
Actually, every American town founded before 1950 had a train line going through it. Aside from people living on homesteads, and maybe some small antebellum towns, everybody lived in close distance to a train station before they were shut down and torn up.
Worth noting that this map is for passenger rail only. The cargo rail network is much bigger. Basically, this map shows whereever Amtrak runs, where as before the introduction of massively subsidized interstates in the US in 1956, every cargo rail company also ran profitable passenger rail traffic on a massive network that became today's cargo lines.
The cargo companies dumped their traffic onto the federal government in the 70s and have also ran massive cost cutting programs since, tearing up hundreds of thousands of miles of rail.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_rail_transportation_in_the_United_States
What the US has that Europe doesn't is protected former trackbeds - European governments go around salting the earth after closing a railway so when they want to reopen it in 30 years they either can't or have to spend billions. The US can just reopen it.
Another major event in the decline of passenger rail was the elimination of railway post office contracts in 1968 which heavily subsidized passenger transport by also transporting mail
Then the failed merger of the New York Central and the Pennsylvania Railroad(second largest bankruptcy in the country to date, only eclipsed by Enron who simply moved numbers in spreadsheets so do they even count?) created a true crisis as suddenly a significant portion of the eastern US could cease to have rail service
On a related but unrelated note, watching Miles in Transit videos where they take intercity buses, its clear that intercity buses are in danger of ceasing to exist, and he advocates for nationalization. Its hard to imagine such a national bus network as anything but an incredible expansion for Amtrak, greatly improving throughway services and likely improving the quality of bus service. Links here and here(timestamp to the retrospective where he advocates for nationalization)
Who Framed Roger Rabbit was a documentary. Not the toon town stuff. The part about the judge buying the trolley so he could shut it down to build a highway. We used to have a better rail system than anywhere else. Then the car and oil companies bought the tracks and paved over them in the 1920s to 1950s
A perfect example of this is the Boston T. It's half the size it was 100 years ago and is still considered the 3rd best transportation network in the country, with a full 50% of all daily commutes to Boston happening on the T.
"Who needs a car in LA? We got the best public transportation system in the world!"
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It really is crazy how bad the US rail system is. The last time I was taking a trip of about 1000 miles, I looked into taking amtrak. Not only was it more expensive than driving or flying, but it would take significantly longer as well, at 3 days. I know the train themselves are moving faster, and it's due to stops, but that's like 15mh average speed. What year is it?!?
It really is crazy how bad the US rail system is.
It's also crazy to think that at some point in history, it used to be one of the best in the world. And then it got screwed by oil barons.
As far as I know, Amtrak doesn't own any of its own rails. It leases access from freight hauling railroads. Because of this relationship, the freight lines always prioritize their own trains over Amtrak. So Amtrak will always suffer until this changes.
That's not any better in Europe. This is just a random map of some rail tracks. Trying getting from Porto to Rome by train. On this map it would appear as there should be multiple routes. In reality you'll be lucky to get it done in 3 days.
On google maps its 40h while with car its 24. That means its faster with train because with cars you have to stop to rest so thats 2 or 3 days. At that point airplanes make much more sense.
with cars you have to stop to rest
Depends. Two people can drive in shifts to move continuously. I've done this a few times over here in the US. Not the greatest experience, but if you have to haul something there fast...
That's a 2500km journey across 4 countries, taking about 43h by train including an overnight layover in Madrid.
And most of the journey is beelining it straight toward the destination, from Porto to Madrid, Barcelona, Narbonne, Marseille, Nice, Genova, Rome (plus minor stops along the way).
Flying is more reasonable at that distance (and likely cheaper), but I don't see how the train network is at fault here.
Actually, the trains aren't moving faster. I don't think there's a single significant span of passenger rail rated for more than 60mph in the US.
Plus commuter trains get delayed frequently to make way for cargo trains.
That's because Amtrak only owns their own rails in the NEC (North East Corridor) Boston-NYC-Philly-DC. Everywhere else they are riding on privately owned freight railroad tracks, and the Amtrak trains are often shunted for freight to have priority.
Actually the law states that passenger rail has priority.
It’s just unenforced so freight ignores it
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As bad as it is, when it does work out, it's way, way better than flying.
Took a trip to Minneapolis on Amtrak from Columbus, WI (closest station to my house in Madison). Everything is so much more low key than air travel. Seats are fairly comfy, and have legroom that might even beat first class air travel. Food is . . . no worse than airlines.
Most of all, I didn't feel tired at the end of the trip. Air travel always makes me want to spend the rest of the day in bed.
We'd probably go out of Wisconsin Dells next time. It takes the train an hour to go between the Dells and Columbus, and the extra drive time is less than that. But we also found this wonderful pizzeria not far from the station in Columbus, so idk.
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