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
Correct.
Which is illegal, but unenforced
If the government owns the lines, it’s a different story, but most of the rail lines in the US are privately owned. So in most of the US commuter rail is using freight tracks on contract, with one of the stipulations being that the freight trains get priority.
Other way around. Amtrak does have priority on all tracks per the 1973 Amtrak Improvement Act. However, this isn’t enforced, and the rail companies are kicking and screaming to keep it from being enforced.
Interesting. I had heard that many of the rail lines are used under contract because they’re privately owned by the freight companies and that the freight trains having priority was a stipulation of those contracts. Not the lines marked on this map, as those are Amtrak lines, but all the other ones across the country. It might be a local commuter rail thing or something.
Oh no, that’s not owned by Amtrak. Amtrak owns the NEC Boston to DC, but very little of the rest
The map is Amtrak service, which commonly runs on track owned by freight carriers
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.
Absolutely agree. It’s so much less frustrating too
Brightline from Orlando to Miami. It’s not fast by international standards but certainly more than 60mph
It’s also super expensive so…
The NEC (Acela) is for most of its track, however it’s the same deal only at a higher level.
In theory it’s high speed rail, but only about 50 miles is actually rated at 150 mph, the rest is various speeds lower. There’s some century+ old infrastructure taking it down to like 25 mph in spots. Average speeds end up more like 70 mph.
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.
I just don’t have the leave to spend 6 of my leave days simply riding a train or waiting at stations.
Another failure of US rail. Slow as hell.
It might mayyyybe make sense if you just happen to find an overnight route so you can sleep instead of having to drive. But that’s incredibly rare.
That’s only like a 4 hr drive though. I drive farther than that for quick overnight trips all the time.
On a train, your holiday starts the moment you board it.
You can watch movies, play board games, even do cartwheels if you so wished. With a view that is constantly changing.
Have you never had sardine cargo class seats on a train? Or standing? I’ve experienced both what you described, and also what I described. Most Americans have never experienced either. One thing about a car though, I can blast my tunes with my subs kicking and not piss off the strangers riding next to me. I’ve had a bunch of nice train trips, but I have had hundreds if not thousands of amazing road trips in a car or on a motorcycle.
It’s way more pleasant than a drive. We also have an EV, and while we can make that range, charging infrastructure isn’t good in northwest Wisconsin, and the Twin Cities are falling behind there, too. Southeast Wisconsin and Chicagoland are much better.
Trains are generally a better environmental option than EVs, anyway, and they can be a more practical option if we fucking try.
Even as it is, I prefer taking the train on this route if possible.
I probably enjoy driving way more than you do, and that’s an understandable difference. But I do spend 90% of my free time where there are no charging stations, which is why I don’t have an EV yet. I also never have to drive in traffic because of where I spend my free time and the fact that I live on the outskirts of town. So driving is pretty pleasant. Honestly, sometimes it’s amazing. I’ve had a couple of great train experiences, but nothing that ever touched a great road trip in a car or on a motorcycle. I think another factor for me is time. I’ve never had more than a week off at once in my life, and I’ve been working for 40 years. When I do have a vacation, I want to get there quickly, enjoy the drive, enjoy the time there, and enjoy the drive back quickly with the music bumping the whole way. I sometimes fly but if it’s under a 24 hr drive away I just drive it straight thru only stopping for fuel. It’s amazing watching the landscape change so much in just one day.
If you have the time, Amtrak is a pleasant way to go. You are right about the seats. They are very comfortable and it is nice to walk around on the train and stretch your legs.
My most recent trip on Amtrak was from Effingham IL to Chicago. They only bad part about the trip was the last couple of miles in Chicago. The train stops just a mile or two away from Union Station and we had to wait quite a bit until it was our turn to move into the station.
Edit: I have been corrected by another commenter below. Amtrak owns rails in the NE corridor. Which explains why it operates so much better there.
I’m about to board a 12 hour Amtrak ride from Boston to Richmond. It’s a miserable trip (I’ve done it once before) but for two people round trip it cost us $300 less than any flights we could find when we were looking for tickets a month ago.
Northeast coordinator is where Amtrak is at its best. Their coverage of the rest of the country is only barely worthwhile on cost and time.
I was going from ind to den. The cheapest was $600 round trip. A flight is $150-300 and driving would have cost about $450 in gas. Flight and drive would have me arriving the same day.
Plus adding a passenger doubles that while not much affecting the car price.
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.
Although honestly the feuding between the various tram/rail/bus companies contributed to their demise.
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
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)
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.
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.
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.
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
So that’s why there are those four hyper-dense rail networks on the coasts, the midwest and the south and the US’s only problem is that these aren’t properly interconnected?
the US’s only problem is that these aren’t properly interconnected?
Oh no, that’s only the start of our rail problem. It’s not just the sparseness of active lines and the lack of places to go, but slow, unreliable, expensive
I frequently use Acela, which some claim is our only high speed rail. It is a great choice ahead of either car or flying, Boston to nyc or nyc to dc. The thing is, while it meets the definition of high speed rail, that’s only about 50 miles of the line. Average speed Boston to nyc is like 70 mph.
Conditions go wwwaaaayyyyyyy downhill from there. When we were first dating, my ex tried to take a train out. However there was one a day and it took 7 hours, vs 3.5 hours to drive. That’s more typical service for way too much of the track, assuming you’re in one of the few places with rail service
So that’s why there are those four hyper-dense rail networks on the coasts
yeah pretty much.
the US’s only problem is that these aren’t properly interconnected?
i mean, if you wanted to take a multi day train ride, i guess so? But going from coast to coast is never really going to be a popular route, although likely to be available on some time frames. You’re a lot more likely to see 1-4 hour routes popping up in between cities and population centers, rather than across all of the US, granted im sure longer routes will inevitably follow shorter routes given time.
It’s probably going to be more annoying, but if you want to do long distance travel, i.e. coast to coast, it’s going to be a better experience flying. More cramped, but much, much faster.
There are also issues with freight priority rail, and just freight rail in general. It’s a mess right now.
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Veiny ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
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?
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).
Two a day through here, entirely unlike clockwork but they do show up. There’s a station downtown that is basically a concrete pad with some benches and an empty little room that is used for nothing and if you buy a ticket online the train will stop to pick you up. I’m told that’s ever happened.
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.
Be that as it may, Spain is highly urban and are quite good at building things like Metros within their cities as well.
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
>Iberia >Portugal not includedTheir trains quite simply are not as good as the ones in Spain.
Because they are actually an undercover Eastern European country
Seriously what are they even doing, Siesta?
And it’s crazy to think that Europe would fit into North America many times. I would like to see the NA city subways/trains added then compare them to Asia
???
North America is more than the continental USA.
Canadian passenger service isn’t much better than the US. Mexico isn’t too bad.
Train companies have to pay property tax on the lines
And the trucking unions fight against using rail because “jobs”
Those are the two main reasons rail sucks in Canada
Most of the euro side of that map, fits into texas alone. The USA has shit rails but acting like Europe has even half the distance that’s needed to cover the usa like it looks in this map is dishonest.
I miss spoke, but the size of the EU vs the usa is no where near the same.
https://www.newgeography.com/content/005313-which-countries-would-fit-inside-texas
EU 1.7m sq miles USA 3.8m sq miles
Not even in the same ballpark.
What the fuck are you on about
Just France covers most of Texas.
No, you don’t get to add russia into that. That area is 1.7m sq miles while the USA is 3.8m sq miles.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geography_of_the_United_States
You don’t get to super impose the usa as a map image to this image and go “see told you”
You don’t get to spout bullshit like “Most of the euro side of that map, fits into texas alone” then try and defend yourself using area measurements that are completely irrelevant to the point I was refuting.
Besides, the map above doesn’t show a map of the EU’s rails. That’s a political grouping. Better try the geography of Europe (3.9m sq mi) if we’re going that route. Of course then you’d rightfully point out that’s a map of North America not the US.
In any case area is not very relevant. It’s very obvious that US rail is lacking far behind. That’s understandable in much less sparsely populated areas the US has. But look at the highly populous northeast corridor. Hardly compares to EU rails.
I edited my post, but my point still stands. You %100 do use land mass for size, and you absolutely do not use russian land which is basically empty.
US rails are lacking, but it’s because the US is massive compared to the EU…again, stop adding russia which you keep doing.
Give me a reason to?
Western US has huge chunks of empty land. Drop those then. It’s only fair according to that logic.
Parts of Russia are shown ON THE POST. And maybe they are sparse - but they still have much better rail in those areas than most of the US! Furthering the point!
But even if we go with your completely flawed usage of land area and only the EU for some bizarre unexplained reason - The US is only twice as large. But our rail system is many many times worse. Even in areas with similar population density to Europe.
The size has nothing to do with it.
Texas is about the size of France, with The Netherlands tacked on. Europe would fit east of the Mississippi, not in the second largest state.
Alaska, however, is bigger than Europe
you need to familiarize yourself with how Map projections distort the shape and size of land masses, because that’s the only way i can imagine you got this idea.
it’s not even close, Alaska is way smaller than Europe. go look to some actual statistics. with all of its landmass combined the United States is 0.98x the size of Europe. it’s smaller, but barely. they are nearly exactly the same size if you made them both into a circle.
If you added in russia…russia doesn’t count because 95% of it is baren wasteland with no rails.
please look things up to confirm before you comment.
this is not true. Russia is not included in this stat. Russia is way bigger than America on its own.
why does everyone on this website have wild misconceptions about the size of America and Europe. it goes both ways, I’ve had to fight Europeans that thought America was “nearly as big as eastern Europe” on here before too. why are so many people so confidently incorrect about such an easily confirmed fact???
Europe land mass absolutely includes a large chunk of russia. The land mass of the EU does not and is much smaller than the USA. When you include russias chunk it’s roughly the same size of the USA.
Alaska is smaller then Europe by quite a bit.
Alaska is 1 477 300 km2
Europe is 10 180 000 km²
Alaska is huge sure but definitely NOT larger than Europe
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.
I’m more worried about all the lightning bolts Chicago can shoot out to the rest of the country.
He pulls out a knife, you pull out lightning powers. That’s the Chicago way.
all rails lead to chicago.
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.
Do what? Listen to music, a podcast or watch a show? Things I already do driving. I hate travelling. I just want to be there. Anything more than 500 miles it’s better to fly anyway. The price difference is negligible.
Not to mention trains are subsidised by the government yet still cost more than gas even driving a huge SUV.
Ironically I have a dishwasher but don’t use it. I stick to takeout and paper plates/ platicware. Because it’s faster and easier than doing dishes. You’re right, not only do I not have to do dishes, I don’t have to cook or clean up either.
I hope you aren’t watching a show while driving?
I’m usually with someone else switching out or just listening to something I’ve already seen that’s dialogue heavy. And I always have a 5G signal in the car. You have to pay for wifi on the train and it’s slow af
Paying for WiFi sucks. At least in my country pretty much all trains have WiFi. Though if you have 5g in the car you should be able to get it on the train too (at least everywhere the car would). They’re also faster for all but the longest journeys (wish they were cheaper though)
And my point is here they’re more expensive and slower so that’s why people don’t take them.
Does Eurpose use busses, because we have many more travellers take greyhound than Amtrak.
I personally haven’t taken amtrak or via (I’m guessing your in us or canada) i don’t consider traveling on a train wasted time. I can sit and read (i get car sick), i can do work, charge my laptop, use on board Internet or 5g. I can also get a night train and sleep for the journey. America was built by the railways, there is no reason they can’t make a return.
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.
Where we’re going, we won’t need roads!
This needs to be higher. The US has the most rail in the world, at over
224,000 miles257,000 km according to Wikipedia or 149,000 according to Statistica.Europe, by comparison, has 94,000 miles.the European Union, by comparison, has around 200,000 km recently according to Statistica.That’s one country having more rail than the total of a whole continent.The original numbers came from Florida, which automatically makes them suspicious, but these ones are still pretty impressive.The map down in the meme appears to only be Amtrak.
Amtrak service.
Amtrak owns the Northeast Corridor (Boston to DC) track and not much else
The map on the meme is fake both ways
https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:World_railway_network.svg#mw-jump-to-license
Anyway, where did you get the numbers? I’m interested
Oh. I found it. It was Florida rail. I’ll update the numbers with more accurately sourced ones. It should be 260000 km according to Wikipedia, although statistica lists 149000km (still the largest in the world, but significantly less). I wonder if the Wikipedia number is before a bunch of rails were destroyed. Basically that would be our high score, but really the high speed rail should be the goal of which we basically have none.
Statistica also lists the European Union, so not all of Europe, at 220000 km in 1990 (and declining since then, but who isn’t). Dunno where Florida rail got their numbers but I should know better to trust anything coming out of that state.
From station to station and to Dusseldorf city. Meet Iggy Pop and David Bowie.
