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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?!?
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
NY to DC is solid, it’s the one inter-metro train I’ve taken that’s faster than driving or flying (when accounting for security and travel to/from the airport).
Using it really makes you realize how much better the train system could be. Not even bullet trains, and they’re so much better than cars.
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.
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.
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.
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
"Who needs a car in LA? We got the best public transportation system in the world!"
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.
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
thats what you get when you put car and oil billionaires in charge
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.
The USA is a lot older than 70 years, so no the USA did not come of age in the jet era. It would be a lot more accurate to say that the modern USA came together in the age of trains, because it was trains that connected east + west together (+the bits in the middle). There used to be passenger trains between all major cities + many towns literally grew around the railways. That train infrastructure is still there, but now there are just very few passenger lines running on them.
Even worse some were repurposed to trails. I mean, I love having trails too and these days use them more than trains, but once rail loses a right of way, the cost to build service skyrockets.
Why can’t I have a trail made from closed down stroads instead of closed down rails?
I was just reading something advocating for restoring useful passenger rail to Cape Cod. I should have made the connection years ago but somehow never did - there’s an amazing rail trail through the national seashore area ….. but it used to be passenger rail the length of the Cape. And many of these towns, including P-Town all the way out, already have nice walkable centers that would do well with trains.
We desperately need rail service here. Not only is Cape Cod environmentally sensitive but the bridges are way overloaded. Even if we were to expand the bridges, there’s nowhere for the cars to go. There’s just too many. All too often I’ve sat in traffic for hours listening to the radio blather on about “43 mile backup to the Cape” just to finally get there and be stuck in traffic. We need a train (and no, the Cape Codder is really not especially useful)
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.
Isn’t the USA about the same size as Europe?
if you include eastern, and western europe, they're comparable. The problem here is that most of the US population is centered on the coasts, and in the midwest, and a bit of the south, so most rail infrastructure would be useful there, everything between about illinois, and nevada is a wasteland of like, 12 people living there.
God damnit I hate cars bro
I feel you bro. Especially the endless stroads and parking lots. We lost a lot to make a suburbia we can't even take ownership of.
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.
all rails lead to chicago.
Veiny ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
Iberia needs to keep up, damn it!
Spain has the second largest high speed rail network in the world. They're doing alright.
High speed rail is worthless if you don't have the local rail to support it. That's where the most traffic occurs by far, with millions of passengers per day. Compare that with the capacity of a few dozen high speed trains and they're a mere drop in the bucket when it comes to mass transit.
They make up for what they don't have in volume by having crazy cheap and fast trains instead.
They also build them remarkably cheap as well. We should all be envious of Spain.
Portugal not included on account of being an Eastern European country
I'm more worried about all the lightning bolts Chicago can shoot out to the rest of the country.
I’m curious about this map because I definitely live near passenger rail and it’s not showing here.
Non-Amtrak line? I think this is Amtrak specific. There are a few bits of passenger service in the US outside Amtrak, but it wouldn't add much to this map.
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.