I once decided to take the train from Denver to Chicago rather than flying. Just to see the country.
One train per day.
Just fucking one train per day.
Amtrak, and the dots in Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Illinois saw this and added just a second train between Msp And Chicago daily and ridership exploded, trains sold out. A frequent thing that they do to save money is cut trips, but it’s doing so much more harm than good. They’re now finally realizing that if you want ridership people want options, they want to be able to arrive close to when they want, and some may want to just show up day of and ask when the next train is.
Here in Seattle they just added a 5th or 6th roundtrip to Portland because each time they do, ridership goes up. Turns out there’s a lot of people who would rather not drive.
Don’t hate on Amtrak, they have been beaten to pulp by lack of interest and investment but still are making meaningful improvements every year.
One of the biggest issue is that rail was privatised way back when and the cargo rail got the ownership of the tracks. This just means that products, patient as they are get priority.
The North East corridor is getting tunnels rebuilt, added frequency. North Carolina has funded a major rail extension and so on. It’s very slow but it might be necessary for it be that way to not attract attention from the GOP. Slow incremental gains until it reaches escape velocity.
It shouldn’t be that way but Amtrak is doing well considering how little help they’ve gotten.
To be fair, I took that train back in the early 2000’s. If they’ve improved the service then great.
It was a great trip, and I recommend it, but as a European I was just gobsmacked by the lack of daily options!
Driver here! I love my car, she is incredible and comfy and has an amazing sound system.
…if I have the option, 100% bus or train, I don’t want to drive. I’d much rather put on noise cancelling headphones and zone out and read or something then pilot a deathmobile (who, I will repeat, I love her very much because she’s best)
I think that’s something most forget here in north America. It’s about having the option, and the vast majority just want to be able to say “hey you know, I don’t feel like driving five hours today”
bUt tHe US Is a yOunGEr coUnTrY! wE haVeN’t HaD mUCh TiMe tO caTcHuP.
Looks at China over the last 10 years…
Are we suggesting China is a younger country? I don’t deny they’ve caught up insanely fast though.
It both is and it isn’t. An entity know as China has existed for millennia, but the modern government has existed for a little over 100 years.
It’s an interesting thought exercise on how to treat these types of things though. Like how old is the German state? Do you count it from the original unification in 1866, or do you count the government that’s continued since the fall of the Nazi party? What about the Reunification after the fall of the Soviet Union?
The culture and the idea of a country can carry past the fall of its government, but how old does that then make the new state?
Truthfully I don’t know how to answer this, it’s neat though
And beyond the government, the modern culture of china is like… one or two generations old? Imagine having half the rural population of a country move into cities in the span of like 40 years, that’s what china has experienced.
I think it’s quite fair to say that china is to a large degree one of the youngest countries on earth, right now.
No, I didn’t say anything like that. I’m saying they’re a large country that only took 10 years to build out a high speed rail network.
I always find this one funny as perhaps more than any other nation railways massively shaped how the US grew into what it is today.
the UA
… Ukraine? Normally you’re not supposed to use “the” when referring to it these days.
And while I’m sure rail is an important element of the development of modern Ukraine, I don’t think its the most significant example.
Was a typo. Meant to type US.
US was constituted in 1787. Trains were invented in 1804 and made commercial in 1829. You’ve had the same time as the rest of us.
That’s the joke
Railways were being built in the US as early as 1795, and their first purpose-built “main line”, the Baltimore & Ohio, opened in 1830, 5 years after its British counterpart the Stockton & Darlington.
If the train (with a locomotive engine, I assume) wasn’t invented until 1804, as per the comment you’re replying to, were those first railways in 1795 used with animals like horses? Or maybe there’s a disagreement on what counts as the first “real” railway?
Trains have been in use since the mid-18th century, powered by gravity, men, or horses.
They were likely referring to an event in 1804 when, to satisfy a wager, Richard Trevithick’s second rail locomotive hauled ten tons of coal, 5 wagons and 70 men along the full length of the Merthyr Tramroad. It was this run which publicly resolved the question of whether enough tractive force could be generated with only the adhesion of the locomotive itself to the smooth rail.
While this was an experimental design, commercial use of steam locomotives started in 1812 on the Middleton Railway, which had been built in the 1750s and part of which operates as a museum railway today, the oldest route in continuous operation in the world.
Their 1829 date refers to the opening of the Liverpool & Manchester Railway, which was the first purpose-built inter-city main line, but was pre-dated by a lot of other railways.
As there’s a lot of variability of what constitutes a railway (plateway / edgeway? wood / granite / metal tracks? Common carrier or single-user? Passengers? Nags or Kettles Etc) dates are tough. The British rail industry has decided that “modern railways” began in 1825 with the opening of the Stockton and Darlington, and there has been a full year of celebrations for Rail 200. This is a somewhat arbitrary figure and reflects more the desire to rebrand the “newly” re-nationalised rail operators, because the public apparently didn’t sufficiently notice when they were actually nationalised in 2020 as part of the covid emergency. Like I said, dates are tough.
god 10 tons is a lot more than i expected, i figured the first steam locomotive hauled like, 500kg maybe!
Why is no one concerned that europe has taken the place of mexico??? Where is mexico now??? How is this not international news?
It’s an exchange program so that the Scandinavians can learn to cook Mexican food for us
Yeah but now Mexicans are cooking pickled herring tacos.
Apparently the situation with freight is the opposite, where the US networks are efficient compared to Europe (and even China), hence so much stuff is trucked across Europe instead.
As always, take YT videos with grains of salt, but it makes good points:
Meanwhile, other videos suggest that the US’s own passenger rail suppliers (like manufacturers/designers) are basically gone because the situation is so bad, hence companies like Amtrak end up importing EU stuff.
The way I understand it in the states is that all the rail lines are freight lines, and amtrack shares the rails. I’ve taken amtrak before and had to stop for like 15 minutes for a freight train because they have the right of way
AFAIK passenger trains have priority. But they have a lot of single rail infrastructre and freight games the system with trains that are too long for passing sidings, so the passenger trains have to wait.
Yeah but what about the size difference between the two countries?
… Oh wait…
But Europe actually has a slightly larger land area than the united states? aproximately 3.9 million square miles as opposed to aproximately 3.5 million square miles.
One of the many reasons why those “fuck cars” groups are so ridiculous to many Americans.
It sucks, but cars are pretty much mandatory here.
I lived in Arizona with no car until I was 25 and it was pretty hard to get by even here with 340ish days of sunshine. Everything in the US is incredibly spaced out, and if you’re in any suburban place, there simply aren’t bike racks anywhere. In rural NH where I lived, there was nowhere fun to ride to, and nowhere to lock up even if I wanted to go do errands close enough for me to do on bicycle. The US, in many places, needs a page 1 rewrite of its public infrastructure.
And as a Canadian, I’m even envious of the trains in the US. Pretty much the only thing but here we are.
Anecdote time: I was visiting Europe, sitting in Liège and arrived there from Aachen with a train ticket I bought the day before. My next step was Brussels or Ghent but I wasn’t decided yet and didn’t have a ticket, so I just bought one on the spot for the next train, in an hour. While eating fast food and waiting for that train, I was trying to book a train in Canada next week when I’d return, to go from Montréal to Drummondville. However I was already too late. There was still available tickets but there were over $100 CAD for a trip that would normally cost about $32 CAD if I would have booked it a month in advance. And the next departure was 3 hours later, still overpriced. So, no train in Canada for me, even a week in advance.
In short, in Canada, there’s only 5 trains a day between major cities, and you have to book weeks in advance otherwise the prices can triple if you’re last minute. And they don’t take bikes. And they weigh your bagage.
So I was in Europe, taking trains last minute here and there, while unable to book a train ticket at a reasonable price for the next week in Canada. VIA Rail sucks so much.
This map must be at least a few years out of date. I somewhat regularly take a passenger train in FL that isn’t shown here.
The brightline?
This looks like it’s only got Amtrak and Via Rail (Canada).
There are lots of smaller rail services missing.
Also trirail, but yes.
Population Density in the United States vs Europe
I mean I’d love more trains in the US, but let’s not oversimplify.
All roads lead to… Chicago?
As someone who grew up in Chicago, it has a wonderful rail system. The “US not having public rail” argument always confused me when I was young because I figured everywhere was like Chicago
Chicago has been a major transportation hub for nearly 200 years, it is the furthest inland you can reach from the sea by ship. cattle arrived from Texas ranches to Slaughterhouses on their way to the east coast. Wells Fargo was founded because American Express didn’t want to operate further than Chicago, but they saw there was the opportunity of linking NY to San Francisco by Chicago
it is the furthest inland you can reach from the sea by ship
That’s not actually true. There are several further in than Chicago. Duluth is the furthest inland sea port in the US
I would say that even this is untrue as the US has the largest system of navigable inland waterways in the world You could load a barge with cargo in Albany, NY and get it all the way to Omaha, NE without ever having to portage or unload the barge.
Your wiki link is pointing to the Amazon Sidewalk article.
Thank you. I have been having issues where the Wikipedia app doesn’t properly open up a page and instead puts the text of the new page over the old page.
I didn’t even know there was a Wikipedia app. What’s the point? What does it do better than a web browser?
The UI is much better than the mobile browser and it opens up articles in a new tab that i can come back to without cluttering up my browser tabs
Fun fact: Cleveland OH was all set to become North America’s hub for continental and transatlantic airship traffic. The problem was that airships fundamentally suck, something that the Hindenburg disaster merely highlighted.
I mean yes this does show passenger trains but it doesn’t actually show all of the passenger trains such as the lines that run in Utah nor south well over a hundred miles carrying passengers for commuter purposes. So there’s quite a few lines that are missing on here there’s also lines that run up and down the East Coast I know as well and there’s other passenger trains and other cities such as salt lake as well.
Yup, I can see multiple NJTransit and SEPTA lines missing from this map.
The european map does not show all minor railsystems, I am not 100% sure but it looks more like interregional rails.
In Holland it seems to show them all but it probably differs by country.
One thing we are really really bad at in Europe is homogenising rail systems. Every country does its own thing, like voltage, signalling systems, sometimes even with their own gauge (e.g. spain). Only the high speed lines are fairly commonised.
There’s some projects going on like the ETCS safety system but they go at a snail’s pace because there’s so much installed base and design by a 25-country committee that are all trying to rope in their own industry ties is a slow process.
It also doesn’t acknowledge that a lot of that is just empty space. The US is ranked 180 of 242 nations in population density.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_and_dependencies_by_population_density
The US rail system has been bastardized since its inception, but this map is basically useless. The UK has 7x the population density as the US.
Ok… so why isnt the east coast covered in rails? The western states pulls the average way down.
The East coast is covered in rails. There’s an Amtrak station within walking distance of my house. We have a high speed rail line in the Northeast Corridor and have for decades.
Are we looking at the same image?
I live here. I know where the train tracks are. They’re all over creation.
Actually, I realize we’re not looking at the same map. Those are the passenger routes. I’m thinking of railways. We’ve got more rail than that, we just don’t run passenger trains on them.
Goes to show how successful the oil and automobile lobbyists. The US passenger railway network is a fucking flop. When will they finally use electric locomotive instead of the pollution belching diesel electrics.
Wasn’t always this way
I find it interesting that there’s a noticeable difference in rail density between western Europe and former Warsaw pact countries, despite rail being important for Soviet union logistics. In top of that, Russian rail is severely lacking today.
Could it be a rail gauge issue where eastern rail standard caused development to be prohibitively more expensive?
Its not too different. Your perception is thrown off by that very dense tangle around Germany, but then Germany was a very early adopter of railways having passed proto-railway technology to Britain in the first place, then via the personal union of the British and Hanoverian thrones got modern railways in return from the mid-18th century.
And still here in Europe they are not a meaningful alternative to the plane. Taking for example an Amsterdam to Barcelona is an exhausting 12-14h deal (almost 10x as long) and 5x more expensive.
What we need is express trains that go from A to B without stopping anywhere, avoiding city centres and constantly running max speed. If I’m going to Barcelona I don’t want to stop in Schiphol, Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Antwerp, Brussels, and various cities in France. There should just be a dedicated departure just for that (and judging by how many planes go back & forth daily these trains could certainly be filled). This would cut down on that exhausting travel time a lot. But we lack the high-speed network capacity for that. And won’t have it for at least 15 years even if they decided to build them now :( So planes it is.
honestly I wouldn’t mind it taking 12 hours, but it also being more expensive just doesn’t make any sense at all. Europe needs to stop subsidizing air travel and needs to up its rail subsidies
The will never be enough capacity to connect capitals with no intermediate stops. And let me tell you, it’s in general a stupid idea.
12h is not a big deal if travelled overnight. Which is currently not possible. So this what we really miss, not constant 300 km/h direct connections.
And of course, we need to stop taxing passenger rail companies. And maybe re-nationalise them, while we are at it. Forcing free market in the railway has been one of the biggest mistakes of the European Union.
There was a concept I thought was neat. Imagine around stops you had a parallel set of tracks with cars that would connect to the train and passengers would have X number of minutes to transfer between the parallel trains before they decouple.
So a ‘fast lane’ train wouldn’t actually stop, it would just couple to another train that does pretty much nothing but transfer passengers to and from the stop.
Though the reality is that would require a lot of work when the counter argument can be “fly a plane direct instead”
The Nightjet trains from La Spezia (Italy) goes both to Wien and München, as it splits in Villach.
On the opposite direction, the train from München is coupled with the one from Wien.Why is it not done more often? Because coupling trains is a security operation, and it takes time (1h+).
On top of that, modern trains are a fixed composition that you cannot couple and decouple as you like.Note this concept was about a hypothetical design and infrastructure. That coupling would be horizontal and occurring while moving and using train designs that didn’t yet exist.
I said interesting, not necessarily practical. It’s something we might have tried to do if we didn’t have direct flights as a viable option.
