Are Americans generally against bullet trains and building other better public transportation?
Posted by Cookieman_2023@reddit | AskAnAmerican | View on Reddit | 127 comments
They already have this in Europe, China and Japan. Yet it’s lacking here in North America. Is this due to low support or special political interest groups standing in the way? I know that the Texas GOP platform said that the party “shall not provide funding for high speed rail.” What’s the reasoning for this?
machagogo@reddit
Generally speaking not where it makes sense no.
Just, in much of the country we don't have the population density for it to make sense. There is also the issue of the distance between most of our major cities.
I'll never take the like 20 hour train ride even on a bullet train from New York to Los Angeles for instance, just like no one takes the train from Lisbon to Moscow (same distance)
Montana is the same size as Germany, but with about 82.5 million less people (population of Germany is about 83 million) so it makes no sense there.
In the area of Northeast Megalopolis public transport is abound, no surprise that area is pretty densely populated.
SevenSixOne@reddit
Pretty much! As much as I'd love to see intra- and intercity light rail happen in the US, I've never lived anywhere in the US that was dense enough for a commuter rail to make sense for me. Like... it's still a net good overall, but a lot of people still might not be able (or willing??) to use it regularly.
KingDarius89@reddit
Eh. I took a train from Sacramento to Chicago. Took about 2 days. In a sleeper cabin. Then switched over to a train to Philly.
annaoze94@reddit
What was its scheduled to take and how long did it actually take?
machagogo@reddit
Yah. I can think of tons of things I would prefer to spend billions on that are not niche entertainment ventures.
The flight from Sacramento was far cheaper and about three days faster.
The fastest bullet train goes 286 MPH, and that is top speed, not average average is 140mph. So let's pretend it can travel 140 from LA to NY that's about 20 hours. Reality is there will have to be stops at least in major cities, it will not be direct so add miles.
Argent_Mayakovski@reddit
There’s also the climate argument to consider. Maybe flights shouldn’t be that cheap.
KingDarius89@reddit
I mean, I fucking hate going through the airport.
Intrepid_Isopod_1524@reddit
$2000 and 48 hours later you arrived at your destination. Not the cheapest, not the fastest. Only way this makes any sense is you are doing it for fun
Maxpowr9@reddit
Agree. On those long haul routes like the Empire Builder, Coastal Starlight, Southwest Chief, and California Zephyr, you're traveling mostly for the scenic views; not the convenience.
I feel everyone should do a trip like that once. It's truly stunning going through the Rockies.
Intrepid_Isopod_1524@reddit
There is also one in Canada that crosses the Canadian Rockies that’s on my bucket list.
SuperCooch91@reddit
My grandma did that one for her 80th and talked about it for the rest of her life. It’s now consequently on my bucket list.
shelwood46@reddit
Don't forget you have to change trains in Pittsburgh to go from Chicago to Philly because if you sleep through that 4 am train change, you end up in DC.
annaoze94@reddit
Yeah but you could like go from New York to Chicago with stops in places like Buffalo or Pittsburgh or Cleveland. That makes sense for these types of distances. Things that replace a flight not necessarily a drive.
The_Real_Scrotus@reddit
Arguably everything east of the Mississippi does.
kirils9692@reddit
There are so many areas it would make sense though. Florida, the US west coast, the rust belt, LA to Vegas. Even Texas between its major cities.
machagogo@reddit
Yes. Hence.. "not where it makes sense"
fixed_grin@reddit
There are a couple other things:
1) For various reasons, US infrastructure costs are ludicrously bloated, we easily pay 5-10x as much as what other rich countries do. We are not five times wealthier than e.g. France or Japan.
This is why HSR also doesn't really exist in the parts of the US where it does makes sense. Even Acela has about half the average speed of decent HSR elsewhere, 65-80mph vs 130-165mph. There are sections of track where it can go 125mph+, but also many much slower sections. Improving the track so that it can go at competitive speed would cost $10-15 billion in France but is projected to cost $100-150 billion here. So it isn't really being done.
Nobody would build cross country HSR, there aren't enough major cities between Tucson and Texas or Sacramento and Kansas City to justify the cost. Even if we could build at insanely cheap Spanish costs. But that's not why we don't have a network of good HSR in the eastern US + lines from LA to SF, Vegas, and Phoenix. Same for subways, conventional rail, etc.
2) Because costs are so high, little gets done, which means there's little experience. Likewise, US government agencies are not very interested in outside knowledge or practices. Which also means operating costs are also nuts.
estifxy220@reddit
iirc Amtrak is installing new high speed trains in the northeast corridor in 2025. I dont think its as fast as anything Japan, Europe, or China have, but its a start.
Anustart15@reddit
Yeah, the amount of eminent domain it would require to straighten the track enough to make truly high speed rail is pretty limiting.
jephph_@reddit
Put a tunnel at the bottom of Long Island Sound
estifxy220@reddit
That was the issue. These new high speed trains were supposed to be installed years ago. But the trains are just getting installed now because the tracks were too worn and outdated to handle the trains. Amtrak has just had the trains sitting in storage yard for a while now, but theyve finally been able to properly test them, and prepare them for service
TuskenTaliban@reddit
As someone who doesn't hate public transportation, I feel like proponents of expanded train networks in the US often forget that we can't bulldoze 50,000 people's homes/businesses to make room for an uberlightspeed hyper-rail.
annaoze94@reddit
Follow the highways ROW
L_knight316@reddit
As far as long distance travel goes, every time I've considered taking a train somewhere, the immediate question became "why don't I just fly."
annaoze94@reddit
Because you have to go there two hours early and be crammed into increasingly smaller seats and then have to rent a car when you land
DocTarr@reddit
I didn't understand the problem until I lived in Europe.
The US is just laid out totally different in Europe and poorly adapts to rail transportation. When I was in Germany every town had a station and you could usually walk to a station from wherever you were, or, take a short bus ride.
That is not how the US is organized. Not only is population less dense but it's not clustered into towns like Europe is, so forget the cost issue, there just aren't places you can put a station where people can walk to. Basically people would still need to get into their car and drive to the station, at which point if it's a short distance you might as well drive the rest of the way. And it it's long it becomes a plane flight.
Making rail transportation work in the US outside of a few metro areas means rebuilding communities entirely, otherwise it just doesn't make sense.
annaoze94@reddit
Or if you have a high speed rail stop in your city you could go hey I don't want to drive downtown to the train station I think I'm going to vote for us getting some better city buses and trains.
People have been sick of driving to LAX for so long so now they're expanding rail and public transport around it. The same thing could happen to the train station. Plus a lot of train stations in cities are already transit hubs for city buses. Even in a town of like 100K. I grew up in the most suburban city ever and there was a bus service that went all around town to take you to the downtown of the suburb to get to the commuter rail that would take you into the big city. And then when you get into the big city there's more buses waiting for you outside the train station to take you where you need to go in the city.
Dbgb4@reddit
To be viable high speed passenger rail requires dedicated track so your not restricted by freight rail. Where you going to find the space for that, especially in the east ?
annaoze94@reddit
Highway right of ways. If they can find the room to add more lanes all the time, they can find the room for train tracks.
liberletric@reddit
The problem with implementing this is that America's population centers are so widely dispersed, and there are so many people living in suburbs or just not in cities, you would need to build so much new infrastructure to make this even remotely worthwhile. Are you gonna have buses/trains going between suburbs? How long will those commutes take? How do you even do this in areas where all the space you would need to build it is already taken up?
That's not to say there aren't special interests lobbying against it (namely care manufacturers). They absolutely are. But the people who act like it's no big deal are also lying to you.
Americans in general like the idea of having reliable public transport but don't see it as a big enough priority for how demanding of a task it would be.
annaoze94@reddit
Well yeah you have your last mile commuter/meteo trans that take you to Union station and then the high speed rail takes you to another city's Union station. Kind of like airports. Except commuter rail or metro usually goes straight into where the high speed rail would come out of and not every city has it going straight to the airport.
I think having a high speed stop in a city is a really good incentive to build upon said city's bus and train network. Airports didn't quite do that because when airports were being built we were focusing on driving everywhere.
old_gold_mountain@reddit
Support for public transit is strong in certain places and weak in others.
Virtually the whole West Coast is building a lot of passenger rail right now
annaoze94@reddit
As a California and I really love that we try out stuff here and a lot of times the rest of the country follows suit. There's at least two high speed rail projects being worked on right now in California and if we can show that theyre successful that's a really good catalyst. And LA is a lot more suburban than New York so I feel like if you point to the acella everyone else in America it's like "okay but we are nothing like the Northeast corridor so therefore useless for my medium sized city.
Zealousideal_Let3945@reddit
People have a romantic idea of how great trains are. As someone who has taken Amtrak from central nj to Boston, which just isn’t that far, and dealt with the employees and fellow passengers I can tell you it’s not that romantic, it’s slow. It’s a garbage experience. It’s smelly. I’d rather walk.
I live in Philadelphia and we have a great intra city rail station. That’s me and 1.6 million other people.
About half of my state doesn’t live in an urban area. Are they going to drive the 4 hours into Philadelphia, find parking and get on a train to Boston?
It’d be cheaper and quicker to drive.
The addressable market is small. It doesn’t make sense asking people in york or Harrisburg or Allentown to pay for it.
The northeast is unusual in the us in that there probably is a big enough market. But again why should people in Johnstown pay for it. i f Washington to Philadelphia to Newark to nyc to Stamford to Boston want a real high speed train the private market should raise funds and build it.
That’s the problem with passenger trains. Everyone benefits from freight, both rail and road. Passenger train advocates want everyone to pay but not benefit.
The reason the us had the best rail network on the planet is because people used to raise money, in the stock market and build what they wanted. Now people want cars, so they raise money in the market and build cars.
annaoze94@reddit
Yeah they're going to drive into Philadelphia to get somewhere else just like they do when they need to fly out of Philadelphia but you don't need to sit in an airport for 2 hours ahead of time and you're not getting crammed in like sardines. If you can put an airport in that city why can't you justify a train?
TravelerMSY@reddit
Is definitely a big part of it. The calculus would be different if the cost of owning a car was dramatically higher, and the traffic so bad that the train was substantially faster and cheaper.
MattinglyDineen@reddit
People want it in theory, but no one wants their house taken by eminent domain so they can build the new tracks. Therein lies the problem.
annaoze94@reddit
They're following the 15 freeway from LA to Vegas. There's a lot of freeways they can do this with too so we don't have to knock down anymore neighborhoods like we did for the interstates. The interstate's pretty much take you where you need to go so just speed up that drive by sticking a train right next to the road
JoeCensored@reddit
American cities are really spread out from each other, and the cities themselves are more wide than tall. This makes public transit projects much more expensive, and when installed less convenient, than their European or Asian counterparts.
We've got projects like the high speed rail project in California which have turned into huge money pits with little progress.
California High Speed Rail Authority was established in 1996, to create a high speed rail system between San Francisco and Los Angeles. Original estimated cost was $33b.
Today there's been tens of billions spent, estimated cost has ballooned to well over $100b. Nearly 3 decades after the project started there's exactly 0 miles of usable track complete. The estimated costs go up every year, the estimated date for even a single small segment opening gets pushed back every year. There's no reason to believe either estimate today is remotely accurate.
It's more likely that the project will never actually complete.
annaoze94@reddit
Yeah but you wouldn't go to like every corner of the city you would go to the Union station. The great part about our city is being far away from each other is the empty parts in between where the train can pick up speed and get the trip done with minimal stops.
DrGerbal@reddit
Most everyone would love some super fast train. But it doesn’t make and sense to do it. Were big as hell. You’ll have large population than a lot of nothingness for a while than another big spot. But we’re talking a lot of nothing in between. And an ungodly amount of money to rip up what we already got, to build this new system. I get it’s hard to wrap one’s mind around that the English speaking world super power is that different from england or other super powers. But we are. We do our own thing, have for a while. And it’s gone pretty damn well thus far
annaoze94@reddit
I don't think we're proposing a New York to LA style train or even New York to Chicago. But there's a lot of shorter trips that could replace a lot of 2 hours plane rides.
The annoying thing about planes is whether your flight is 45 minutes or 12 hours you got to get to the airport like 2 hours in advance.
When I lived in Chicago my parents lived 180 mi away in fort Wayne. There was no direct train to it well kind of but it was an Amtrak that would Take about 3 hours And that's only if it was coming from Chicago but if it came from the East Coast it already had 2 hours of delays racked up. A flight would be an hour but you got to add on TSA time. Driving is 3 and 1/2 or 4 hours And it's not an interstate so you can only go like 65. A high speed rail on that Amtrak line would be amazing. No matter which way you went it was minimum 3 hours.
And the best part of the nothingness in between stops that the US has, is that that's where the train can go really fast instead of having to stop in a bunch of important cities all the time.
Avery_Thorn@reddit
The problem is: From New York to San Francisco, by car, the distance is 2,850 miles.
Assume that you have a bullet train that can do 150 mph, including stops. That would be a 20 hour train trip. That's 4-5 times longer than the longest Japanese bullet train trip.
Currently, you can fly that route in about 6 hours for about $130. So that means you would need to provide a sleeper accomodation for about $100 a ticket for it to be a commercial success.
And that is completely and utterly ignoring the fact that there are two mountain ranges and a desert between those two locations.
The sad, cold truth is: as much as we'd LOVE to have trains, coast to coast trains just don't make sense.
There are areas where high speed trains make sense - like the northeast Corridor, Central to Southern Florida, and California. And amazingly enough, there are either high(ish) speed trains there, or they are building them as we speak.
Would a better high speed train for the Washington, DC - NYC - Boston run be better? Sure would.
There are a number of problems with Amtrak. They need their own track. (Which they have in the NE.) They need to be prioritized over other traffic. While the people who provide the services on Amtrak are amazingly kind, caring, and remarkable people doing the best that they can, there sure seem to be a lot of challenges put in their way by their management team. But if you study the Amtrak schedule, the whole reason why they aren't a serious competitor to air travel is pretty apparent. Doubly so if you look at the cost of the tickets, which are at par or higher than air travel.
IMHO, the problem with the train network in the USA is we are too focused on national train travel, and we should be focused on rebuilding our intraurban network, and let the national network grow out of that.
Maxpowr9@reddit
Agree.
It's been studied to death, but trains excel as a mode of transportation when the distance is 150~450mi. Anything less, and a car is (usually) better, anything more and flying is better.
annaoze94@reddit
That sucks because I lived in Chicago and didn't own a car and took 5 mi trips back and forth everyday
SkiingAway@reddit
There's also basically no one proposing them either. None of the HSR proposals that have been made have suggested doing that.
No?
Pretty much all of the proposals/plans are for new/enhanced corridor services between cities/sets of cities that are at more appropriate distances for rail to be a potentially viable option, even without being true HSR.
For a slightly more technical description, there are 3 types of Amtrak services:
Long-Distance - generally 1x/day or less, generally slow and unreliable - these are basically given a handout from Congress to keep running and are pretty much a token service for political reasons + because, even as mediocre as they are, they are somewhat of a transportation lifeline in the rural regions they often pass through. We've basically done nothing with this portion of the system in 50 years besides keep it vaguely as-is and aren't planning to.
State-Supported/"corridor" services - This is basically every train an average person might actually find moderately useful, and what all the expansion proposals are aimed at. Largely state directed in terms of service levels, improvements, etc, and the state has to pay a significant portion of the subsidies required to operate the service.
Example: The Cascades that connects Vancouver BC, Seattle and Portland (with some continuing service to Eugene), runs ~5-7 round-trips a day on the main portion of the corridor.
Northeast Corridor - is it's own thing that's so different from the rest of the system in scope that it's broken out separately, it's like 40% of Amtrak's ridership.
IndependentMix676@reddit
No, it’s largely a bureaucratic, technical, and funding issue for why we don’t have them. Federalism, competing regional interests and lobbies, huge distances, lack of government funding, and so on have coalesced to make it really difficult to make this kind of thing happen. Since American cities and towns are already largely sprawling rather than compact, the utility of trans-continental railways is someone limited to most people. They’d still need a car once they arrived in whatever town they took a train to.
Mr_Kittlesworth@reddit
It’s about density.
Where the US has settlement patterns that mirror Europe’s (really just the northeast) there are many more rail travelers. Intercity and commuter rails work and connect to local transit and those systems carry many passengers.
But the majority of the nation isn’t built that way. Taking a train from Atlanta to Pittsburgh or Dallas to Omaha will cost more, take longer, and offer fewer options than flying. The same is true on almost any major city to city route, and would be true even if we invested hundreds of billions in our passenger rail system.
quesoandcats@reddit
The density argument against trains is always a strange one to me. I'll grant that for sprawling western cities like LA or Houston light rail may not make the most sense, but we had the best rail network in the world for over a century precisely because our country is so big. Trains aren't really meant to compete with flying, they're meant to compete with cars. They're slower than flying but just as fast if not faster as driving, and you get to rest and arrive refreshed at your destination rather than be stuck behind the wheel.
If the federal government subsidized clusters of interurban rail networks like we used to have to the same degree that they now subsidize highways and interstates, I think rail travel here would have a second golden age. Why would I want to spend two hours fighting traffic to drive from Chicago to Milwaukee when I could just catch a train that will get me there quicker?
annaoze94@reddit
New York is behind LA in regional density (meaning the suburbs are way more dense than New York suburbs) but overall neighborhood density is higher in NYC proper. It just doesn't feel like that because everyone is in their car in LA. 30 miles outside of Manhattan you've got a decent amount of space and bigger yards and more green area but 30 miles outside of LA is still never ending houses. It's kind of like if you took Long Island and crammed as many single family houses with small yards onto it as possible And that's only one of the many valleys around.
Mr_Kittlesworth@reddit
I gravity transit would work well in tons of cities with adequate initial investment and much more use of dedicated lane bus systems (people are entirely too enamored of trains vs busses, when you start to break down costs).
But intracity, I still don’t see it. Our system of air travel is very flexible and can accommodate shifts in passenger needs much more easily than a rail system. Especially when you look at travel times, a hub and spokes mode with trains just isn’t feasible for most people.
A passenger aircraft goes 700+ mph and can change route on demand. It’s definitely less pleasant, but it’s so much faster that it opens up a wildly larger set of options for travel.
Right now I can leave from Richmond, VA in the morning and travel to Denver, CO in 3.5 hours for a couple hundred bucks. From Denver I could be anywhere on the west coast by the evening. There’s no rail system in the world that could do that.
And the others who traveled with me from Richmond to Denver could then head off to a dozen different locations, large and small.
quesoandcats@reddit
Oh, for sure there is definitely still a place for air travel over trains in the US and Richmond to Denver is a perfect example of that. What I’m talking about is a different category. Intercity rail is typically defined as journeys that take less than three or four hours, depending on which transit agency you talk to. Those are the journeys that compete best against air travel because very short intercity routes waste so much time on either end.
For example, a few years ago, I took a one-way flight from Chicago to Indianapolis because I had to be there for an event and I was gonna get a ride back with my boyfriend who drove separately. Once you factored in the time, I spent getting to the airport getting through security waiting to board my flight boarding my flight taxi to the runway and waiting behind 15 other planes for takeoff clearance at O’Hare, and then flying to Indianapolis and embarking and waiting for my bags and stuff actually took longer than I had driven. And then I still had to get a ride from the airport to my hotel as well..
Those are the sorts of journeys that inter urban rail thrives at . So in your case that might mean like Richmond to Savannah or Richmond to Atlanta or Richmond to Alexandria or Richmond to fuck, I don’t know what’s the capital of West Virginia. You get the idea. I think there is a vast market for interurban rail networks that think affectively clusters of cities within 100 or 200 miles of each other and allow for convenient travel that doesn’t require a car
SnooRadishes7189@reddit
The trouble is that you could have used the bus. It is only about 3 1/2 to 4 hour trip from downtown Chicago to Indianapolis by bus and there are multiple trips daily. By rail the trouble is not enough trips daily to make it practical Amtrack only has 3 trips per week. Hard to justify the cost there. Indiana did does not have any sort of reginal rail due to the state not funding it so outside of the south shore line to Gary, rail is pretty much a non option for Indiana.
jurassicbond@reddit
I really doubt this unless the rail station is very close to both their departure point and destination.
quesoandcats@reddit
Rail stations tend to be in the middle of the city and airports tend to be where the fuck out in the suburbs. So yes, for most people rail stations are closer to their destination.
SnooRadishes7189@reddit
Depends on what is your destination sometimes your destination could be the burbs or other nearby areas. Areas around airports are not always without jobs or industry.
SnooRadishes7189@reddit
Rail technology is older than 100 years. When the rail network was built it rail was pretty much the only choice when it can to travel over land. Rail did not compete with cars, busses, and trucks at first. Horses were too expensive for most people esp. city dwellers to own. They tended to be owned by farmers, business, and the rich and trains were much faster. Rail is an impressive technology because for the first time in the history mankind could go faster than an horse. However by the beginning of the 20th Centaury new technologies arose.
For Chicago to Milwaukee you could drive, take the bus or use the train. However if you are outside of Chicago public transit would likely be slower than just driving due to needing to drive to the bus stop or station(The famous last mile problem....) along with wait time and transfers. It is only a 90 min. trip(in theory) by rail and for Amtrack it is pretty frequent 6 trips plus also trips from Empire Builder and the new Borealis. If Wisconsin would provide service between the Kenosha Wisconsin Metra station and Milwaukee the entire area would be served by commuter rail. Heck not sure of it's status but the commuter bus system from the Kenosha station used to serve some of it's area.
The vast majority of interurbans went bankrupt in the 20ies and 30ies. because of competition from cars and busses. The South Shore line to Gary was technically the last(or one of the last) interurbans left before some upgrades made it no longer fit the strictest definition of the word.
The interurban that used to exist between Chicago and Milwaukee was actually the slowest of three rail routes to Milwaukee at the time. It is called the Chicago North Shore and Milwaukee Railroad. It actually rain on the CTA L line from the loop to Milwaukee using sections of trolley tracks to make it to dedicated tracks to get to Milwaukee.
Today the CTA and Metra cover the areas served by this railroad in IL. In it's case it first went into receivership(a sort of bankruptcy) in 1932. The company began trying to abandon service in 1954 but it was reject by the state and It would run until 1963 but most of the time outside of WWII it was a money loser. Construction of I94 was the final blow.
KingDarius89@reddit
Took something like 52 hours from Sacramento to Philly the last time I did it, years back. The bulk of it was Sacramento to Chicago, then I had to switch trains.
annaoze94@reddit
That's the thing all trains lead to Chicago because there are no American rail companies that go Coast to Coast unlike Canada so they all have to stop in Chicago or to a lesser extent St Louis. I think working on a high speed rail from Chicago to like even Cleveland or even Detroit would be a good start then you could go on to places like Toronto or Buffalo or Pittsburgh
annaoze94@reddit
I think you could do it a place like Southern Califonia Like Santa Barbara to San Diego,. It's never ending people for five or six counties. There's like 23 million people here. I know people that regularly commute from San Diego to Los Angeles and I don't know how they don't lose their mind when they do it.
sadthrow104@reddit
Are cabs/rideshares here more expensive compared to wages vs those other places?
Not saying you are wrong just curious
IndependentMix676@reddit
For Japan, South Korea, Western/Southern Europe, cabs are about as pricey as in the US but the distances are all smaller and you have better access to other public transport like buses and subways.
For China, there are various services like flat rate cabs and Didi (works like Uber) that are generally cheaper than what you’d see in the US. Also a bunch of buses. The degree of income spread there is pretty huge from one end of the spectrum to the other. Cabs are pretty much dirt cheap (being a taxi driver isn’t considered to be a great job there like it once was). Even driving for a couple of hours, you’ll usually pay much less than $100 USD.
49Flyer@reddit
I agree with all of this; the distances between places is probably one of the largest factors. Looking at New York-Chicago, a flight is about 2 hours. Add in travel between the airports and the actual cities and time for security procedures and you're probably looking at a 5 hour footprint to fly between the two cities. A train would need to maintain an average speed of over 180 miles per hour to be competitive on time; the top speed would obviously need to be higher especially with intermediate stops factored in. Even if you assume people would accept a longer journey time in exchange for the relative convenience of train travel (especially if it were cheaper), you're still looking at an average speed of 130 mph for a 7-hour journey.
tmahfan117@reddit
No.
What Americans can’t agree on is where they should go.
Everyone wants convenient public transport nearby, but nobody wants it running through their backyard. Everyone wants high speed rail, but no one wants the high speed rail to pass THEIR town.
To give an example, New York State years ago proposed a more fast rail line that could get you from NYC to Buffalo (where you could connect onto Canada to Toronto) in like 4-5 hours. Faster than the highway.
But, the project died because every single town wanted to have a stop. But high speed rail doesn’t work like that. You cannot stop every 20 miles and still have it be high speed.
And since no one could agree on which towns/cities deserved a stop and which towns/cities deserved to get skipped, the idea died.
annaoze94@reddit
We can agree on where we want to go based on flight schedules. I think these should be replacing flights first
I can't believe every single town wanted to have a stop cuz usually I would think every single town wouldn't want it in their backyard on their power grid etc especially if they don't have a stop. Even if they don't have enough people to warrant a stop.
Tullyswimmer@reddit
Yeah, this is the crux of the issue, and is exactly the issue in California. The rail needs land, right of way, and infrastructure to work. The towns along the route who are being asked to provide those things get zero benefit from it... So why should they allow it?
tsukiii@reddit
A route connecting SoCal and the Bay Area, also SoCal to Las Vegas, would get a ton of use. Logistically, though, it would be a nightmare. These are already heavily developed areas, any route would collide with thousands of properties owned by businesses and individuals.
annaoze94@reddit
We're getting one from rancho Cucamonga right outside of San Bernardino to Vegas. I think it's a private company called brightline That already has one in Florida and it's just going to follow the 15 to Vegas. We're also getting one from the Bay area to LA and going to go through the central valley so it's not going to have tracks on cliffs that wash out with landslides.
pirawalla22@reddit
There is a remarkable number of Americans who are at best disinterested in, and at worst contemptuous of, public transportation.
But ultimately the reason we have so much less high speed rail in the US is that the US is far more spread out and far less dense than Europe or Japan or eastern China. It's more expensive to build more train infrastructure over longer distances in a culture where people are very, very accustomed to flying those same distances. There are areas where high speed rail would thrive and we are trying to make it happen there, but it's extremely expensive no matter how you frame it.
More limited local public transit is also a problem in a lot of places because it's just SO expensive and, again, people are very, very accustomed to driving to/from all of the places they would otherwise take a train or subway. Even in locations with horrible traffic, a lot of folks would rather drive their own car (often alone) than feel like they are at the quote-unquote mercy of a transit schedule.
shelwood46@reddit
And we also have a very different attitude toward land rights and the environment. It's easy enough to reactivate older rail lines or put passenger trains on existing freight lines, but building actual new tracks and routes would be a timely and extremely costly enterprise. We've gotten away from using eminent domain, especially since in the past it was used against poor and minority residents disproportionately. Finally, tunnels aren't really practical in many areas because of geology and the water tables.
Cr4nkY4nk3r@reddit
Isn't one of the problems that the lines are owned by the freight companies and they won't prioritize passenger traffic for any kind of reasonable price?
annaoze94@reddit
Amtrak is wonderful and it goes all over the place but its ridiculously delayed because even if a freight train is delayed they get right away over Amtrak. The Acela in the Northeast has its own tracks and it's one of the very few if not the only route that has its own dedicated tracks.
We have a wonderful phenomenal phrase system in this country but at the expense of our passenger rail.
Fappy_as_a_Clam@reddit
This is me lol
They could build a train going straight from my neighborhood to my business park, and is still drive.
Only way I'm not driving one of my own cars is if I've been drinking a good bit, then Id use public transportation if I could t get an uber
pm_me_your_4x4@reddit
I’m a car guy but I purposely bought in an area within walking distance of ok public transit and utilize it a lot.
I hate driving to commute. I love driving for fun. Driving in traffic is such a buzz kill
StereoHorizons@reddit
I grew up in Portland and then moved to New York (S Bronx), I never needed a car. Now nearing 40 in Eastern Washington where it makes sense to own one, I just default to public transport if I don’t need to drive. Bought a great little beater with a heater in the event I need a car but i love that fuel is one of my least wasted expenses.
austai@reddit
Yep. Unfortunately, public transit will never take off in the US like in Europe unless it’s really, really painful to drive, and powerful corporations (and thus politicians) will never let that happen.
abetterlogin@reddit
If being packed in a tube with a bunch of strangers after a shitty day at work is your thing more power to you. I’ll drive myself though.
Anustart15@reddit
In places where the density is high enough to make public transit viable, the drive is unpleasant enough to make the packed tube a lot more appealing.
WalkingTarget@reddit
I had a conference in the Boston area earlier this year. The organizers got attendees transit passes and it was great. When I was checking into the place I was staying they asked if I had a car to park and when I explained the situation they said “Smart.”
pirawalla22@reddit
Exactly!
blackhawk905@reddit
Not to mention with china a lot of their high speed rail has incredibly low passenger counts but that doesn't matter since it's a prestige piece giving them X many more miles of high speed rail even if it operates with millions of dollars per year of loss, that just wouldn't be acceptable in the US.
annaoze94@reddit
What I think the major thing is is not only the politics that go with getting the funding for it but also you need a right away for that rail and it's pretty hard to get new right of ways going through cities without pissing some people off.
In LA they're extending the purple line subway under Wilshire boulevard. Beverly Hills had a goddamn fit making up so much BS about how it's going to poison them and be loud and bring crime and all that stuff. And this is like mostly a commercial area. It went out and it's going to be finished by the Olympics but boy was there a lot of noise made about it.
We've been working on the California high speed rail for over a decade. The thing is if you build a whole new train from LA to San Francisco you got to go through a lot of people's properties and farms and municipalities and jurisdictions and counties and whatnot. They're building a high-speed rail from LA to Las Vegas and It's going to be a lot easier because I think they're just going to follow the right of way of the 15 freeway that goes through the desert.
Destroyed a lot of neighborhood's and communities to build the interstates in the 50s and 60s to make the US a very car-centric country. Now we're realizing our errors and it's pretty hard to do that again.
Erotic-Career-7342@reddit
No. It’s just a horrible litigious and long system fraught with NIMBYs
Dinocop1234@reddit
There are probably only a few areas or routes where high speed passenger rail would have enough riders to make it economically worthwhile. It certainly would not make much sense in my region of the country I would say.
nomoreozymandias@reddit
Denver seems to have a pretty decent intra-city rail line. A rail line to Boulder would make sense to me though as there is a sizeable student population in that city alone. I think what would make sense is to funnel people in to Denver from Cheyenne and Co. Springs.
I kind of see it as an integrated intermodal transport system. Funnel people from outlying towns into the airport.
My dream would actually be to connect the entire Front Range megaregion from El Paso to Denver, via train (it's really not worth it to have to fly to Burque from El Paso and make a stop at Denver).
Would it be possible? Probably not, but we got the Rail Runner built between Santa Fe and Burque.
While I think we should look at the economical aspects of transport systems, it ultimately relies on the tax bade for funding? Because roads don't pay for themselves either (except tolls and taxes—and Denver's tolls are annoying tbh).
SkiingAway@reddit
It's been on the drawing board basically forever, and the "B Line" that opened in 2016 is intended to be the first segment of it. They just don't have the funding for building out the rest of it anytime soon, they'd like to. (actually, it's intended to continue beyond Boulder and terminate in Longmont).
Colorado Springs yes, Cheyenne....probably not.
Cheyenne is much smaller than most people think and not really growing that fast. Too small and too far to be worth it. If WY some day decides they want to fund everything north of Fort Collins, I guess, but it probably still won't be a particularly sensible project on the merits unless Cheyenne grows drastically from today.
BRBInvestments@reddit
For most of us it's more convenient to drive because we have a lot of land to cover. Not opposed to public transport, it's just not a realistic solution for most of us due to the geography.
SaintsFanPA@reddit
The answer is simply distance and population density. To the density, the EU is more than 3x more dense; China over 4x, and Japan nearly 10x. For the distance (which obviously plays into density), NYC to Atlanta is further than Hamburg to Milan and Hamburg to Milan takes 12 hours or more by train - who is going to take a 14+ hour train journey when you can fly in 3?. The reality is that most train journeys are short - the average Frenchman travels less than 4km by train per day and they travel by rail more than any other EU country - once you peel out mileage on the likes of the RER, it is highly unlikely that even the French are routinely taking 12-hour train rides; there simply aren't enough miles traveled for that to be true.
Cr4nkY4nk3r@reddit
Especially when you can fly from Hamburg to Milan for €165 (1 hr, 50 minutes). It's 19 hours on the train, but it's not giving me prices. It'd have to be pretty cheap to make it worthwhile (timewise) to train.
DrWhoisOverRated@reddit
I don't think people are actively against it. It's more like for a large (and I mean LARGE) part of the country, it is seen as a very expensive solution for a problem that doesn't exist.
amcjkelly@reddit
Cost and Distance. Greater than in Europe.
azuth89@reddit
I'm not actively against it so much as it's just not a priority or something I would use.
Land rights being what they are and existing infrastructure being in the way keeping a straight enough shot for high speed just isn't feasible without an infeasibly expensive project. So now were on standard passenger. But then...what, I get the Texas triangle where I have to drive to the station and then rent a car on the other end? I'd rather just drive myself. It's less trouble, more flexible, cheaper and if I make a sleight drive through probably roughly as fast by the time you account for getting to and from train stations compared to going straight from A to B.
Any given election I have much larger concerns in this state than a train system I wouldn't use and don't know anyone who would.
RoyalInsurance594@reddit
We have several projects underway.
nomoreozymandias@reddit
Rail is interesting as by law, passenger rail is supposed to be given the headway right; however in practice, (as the vast rail infrastructure is owned by rail transport companies) freight usually gets the headway pass.
For example, in NM, there exists a commuter rail line between Albuquerque and Santa Fe (both cities that are not populous or dense as compared to the rest of the developed country), and for it to have been made, the state had to buy the rail from a freight company.
People saying that the US is not dense enough to warrant high density transport system is true, and so developers density areas on or adjacent to transport corridors to increase demand: Transit Oriented Development.
I for one am tired of suburbia as it causes discontinuity from the rest of the urban fabric. It's also a feedback loop.
People move out of cities -> core cities begin to dwindle -> transport corridors drop in ridership -> funding for transport drops -> people drive to work -> more businesses open up in suburbia -> less jobs and opportunities in the decaying core city -> people move out of the core cities.
gordonf23@reddit
Americans are against anything that the opposite political party is in favor of. It’s honestly that simple here.
Brilliant_Towel2727@reddit
There's a few reasons the U.S. doesn't have high speed rail:
HoldMyWong@reddit
I love trains, but driving is just more convenient
Morlock19@reddit
for the past century the infrastructure in this country has been built with cars in mind. for 100 years every decision, especially about interstate travel, has involved at least the thought about cars.
streets are engineered for cars. highways. homes. zoning laws, ordinances, civil engineering as a whole. all of that, even when thinking about public transportation, we think about automobiles. i mean hell sometimes streets are used specifically to screw over whole populations of people - to keep them from purchasing homes in "nice" places or literally forcing them to move (there have been whole neighborhoods that have been demolished to put in new highways through cities)
why? lots of reasons - like othr people have said, the country is so large that a complex network of railways wouldnt be feasible without public funding which no one wants to fork over. there are powerful lobbies that fight against pubic transportation and want more people using cars. the trains probably wouldn't be used that much, especially going across country since planes exist, and lets face it planes are probably faster and safer. the people who would be in charge might not keep these trains clean if there wasn't funding.
and... well as you all see some people just don't want to use it, even if its available. they want to ride in their own personal chariot, they want to be by themselves and not interact with anyone to or from where they're going, and this also comes from a culture that has become actively hostile to any form of public transportation in general. this is why people without cars are completely fucked in some areas that only need increased bus service to make their lives livable.
i think its heartless. i think its selfish. i think we should have robust public transportation everywhere unless you are so far out in the middle of nowhere you can't see your neighbor for miles.
but think on this for a second - trains have been a major form of transportation in europe for a long LONG time. the infrastructure for trains evolved with your countries, not just because they are so tightly packed, but because there was nothing actively fighting against it. you have the trains because the people in your country used it and it became part of your world. on the other hand the US evolved with cars, and now we HAVE to use cars. also, just throwing this out there - americans are intensely attracted to personal freedom. go where you want to go, live where you want to live, i won't live by someone else's schedule. i'll do what i want. so cars, as a mode of transportation, goes along with that easily.
anyway this was just a stream of thought so if its disorganized thats why. i live in western mass, and just having a high speed rail that runs east/west would be a BOON to this state, and it keeps getting held up with pisses me off. our bus system here, the PVTA is lackluster. if you don't have a car you are boned completely, and the only reason we have it in some areas at all is because the colleges fund it so students can get around which means service craters during the summer.
i want trains, but the country as a whole is hostile towards trains.
hope that helps.
BookLuvr7@reddit
No, many of us would LOVE access to any sort of improvement to our railway system.
It's just being killed by the GOP, especially in Texas, bc they have interests in oil and they view it as a threat to the oil and automotive industries. Which is silly bc it's still impossible to function in the US without a car in most places. That's their "logic" for you I guess.
7yearlurkernowposter@reddit
That's a complicated question.
A lot of public transit in the US ends up being closer to a cosplay where it is created with the intention of saying we are a metropolis without any of the attributes of being one.
There is a proposal in St. Louis right now to build a North/South metro (Green Line) and while it would be great to have something like that eventually the reasons rarely go beyond feelings.
MLWwareagle16@reddit
It’s only convenient when the location you’re going to also has a robust public transit network. I don’t know anyone back in Alabama that would really support it and I also wouldn’t care for better high speed rail back home either. Personally, I just like driving and don’t want to be reliant on something out of my control.
Here in Japan, I still own my own truck and vastly prefer to drive unless I’m going to one of the major cities. Take a train to Tokyo and it’s faster and cheaper and the local network is great too. I drive around my home prefecture and I won’t touch the public transit with a ten foot pole. It just isn’t worth using.
Khuros@reddit
Yes, but things get weird the further inland you go. I mean we’re weird on the coasts too, but some people actively work to undermine their own interests in the name of “Freedom”
cmiller4642@reddit
We’re a large country area wise compared to Japan and European nations. Do Canada and Russia have high speed bulletin trains that go all over the country?
liberletric@reddit
Russia does, or at least they try. Kinda hard to compare with it being a much poorer country.
TheBimpo@reddit
Australia, Argentina, Brazil…
Eric848448@reddit
None of which have good intercity rail transit options.
friskybiscuit14382@reddit
I’m an American who rides trains a lot here in the US. Americans are largely misinformed about the benefits of high speed rail, so their opposition is based on misunderstanding that advocates for bullets trains in the US want to ride 2,500 miles from NYC to Los Angeles, when in fact that would be too long to ride on a high speed train. Bullet trains are best for cities distances too long to drive and too short to fly. The US has a lot of city corridors that fit this criteria. The Northeast Corridor, expanding from Washington to NYC to Boston, with all the other large cities in between, is the best candidate for a train that fast. Even though this corridor already has frequent and reliable train connections which peak at a max speed of 150 mph (241 km/h), it could be faster. I would love to see a travel time of DC to NYC of an hour long instead of the current 2 hours and 50 minutes. Other corridors that would benefits from bullet trains would be, the Northwest Cascades region, the Midwest, the Texas Triangle, and the Southern Coast.
WFOMO@reddit
Ben Barnes, former Texas Lt. Governor (Democrat) tried to push one through from central Texas to Houston after he was already out of office. It was an ill-conceived land grab that was backed heavily by Barnes because...wait for it...his construction company stood poised to build it. I went to one of their meetings and other than the hoopla and flag waving, they couldn't answer the simplest of questions about the actual operation of the train. It was shot down and has stayed dead.
Current_Poster@reddit
Do me a favor? Please don't cite the Texas GOP Platform as anything to do with the rest of us, okay?
OceanPoet87@reddit
High Speed Rail is being built in CA and to Las Vegas privately. In most places the cost of High Speed Rail is not worth the investment due to population density and topography.
Fappy_as_a_Clam@reddit
I wouldn't say "against" but most of us are apathetic, and that apathy turns to resistance when the cost to build them is mentioned
danegermaine99@reddit
Americans are generally against spending money on things that won’t be their property.
atlantis_airlines@reddit
NO!
Americans LOVE bullet trains and mass transportation, many even express frustration at not having these and a desire to be more like Europe. Sure having a car is nice as, as it means you can go anywhere at anytime you want so there's this sense of freedom to do what you want when you want. But I think Europeans don't really understand how BIG America is. Hell, I'm American and even I still struggle with how large my country is. I remember a reddit post that really put it in perspective, the Grand Canyon would barely fit inside of England. And the Grand Canyon isn't even surrounded my much. It's surrounded by areas synonymous for being in the middle of nowhere.
KingDarius89@reddit
Special Interest groups. Like car companies.
tcrhs@reddit
I would love to have high speed rails. But, we can’t afford it. We have to fix our current infrastructure first. We’ve got bridges and roads that need repairing before we can think about building bullet trains.
Vexonte@reddit
Its partly rapped up in political partisanship quagmire, mostly just issues with logistics and economics. It's not like you can just build tracks and call it done.
At best, you could get regional projects connecting strings of closely linked cities, but you will come nowhere close to having the same level of utility as other countries.
PghSubie@reddit
High-speed trains here in the States have a number of hurdles that other nations/regions don't face. The size of our geography and spread of our population centers is not something that most Europeans can understand
Adept_Thanks_6993@reddit
More than in lots of other parts of the "developed" world yes, by a bit.
Though by all means this isn't a monolith and has the potential to change.
TravelerMSY@reddit
We’re not against it. We just don’t want to pay for it, and don’t generally have the population density for it to make sense unsubsidized.
Tullyswimmer@reddit
And, more than anything, if you're going to be asking people to give up their property, or deal with the noise pollution, or provide the infrastructure, for HSR, the question is going to be "what do I get from it"
virtual_human@reddit
I'm an American. I am not against any kind of good public transportation.
tlonreddit@reddit
California PROMISED high speed rail. A few years later, they’ve built 1000 feet of track that don’t go anywhere.
old_gold_mountain@reddit
We've built 0 feet of track but we're at about 90% completion on about 171 miles of it
the_real_JFK_killer@reddit
People generally aren't outright against it, but trains are generally not a priority for people.
WingedSeven@reddit
It's the interest groups like you mentioned. damn near everyone i know wants better public transport but no levels of government do. the short answer on how it got like this is that car propaganda was huuuuuge about 20 years after they were invented, so it convinced alot of people around that time to build around car infrastructure instead, and it's been self-perpetuating since.
Superb_Item6839@reddit
No, generally people like public transportation.
GhostOfJamesStrang@reddit
I'm all for it and love traveling by rail where it makes sense.