this post was submitted on 24 Jun 2024
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Y'all can down vote me all you want but it still won't change the fact the United States has a functioning railroad system outside of passenger service. I only mention network size because it was the easiest metric to pull up. But the point is whatever metric you use outside of passenger service the US is in the top three countries which is something not possible unless you have a functioning railroad system.
The US is third for tonnes per kilometer.[1]
The US is second for tonnes hauled per year.[2]
The US moves more intermodal containers by rail then all of Europe combined. [3]
It might seem like the United States doesn't know how to run trains but in reality we have one of the best freight networks out there.
I'd also like to add that on the passenger side of things the US is really trying to improve but the investments haven't had time to come to fruition yet. Amtrak has 768 siemens venture cars and 175 ALC-42 locomotives on order so it can expand to 39 new routes [4]. There's been a significant amount of funding into high speed rails for other corridors outside of the northeast corridor [5].
"We have a functioning car if you ignore that the gas pedal doesn't work!"
Passenger rail is part of our rail system AND the topic of OP for anyone who can read. Its terribleness is in many ways the freight systems fault (at least Amtrak specifically) so it absolutely loses points on the functional scale since usually things that function well don't actively damage other related things
Feels like there's been too many catastrophic accidents to call it functional, maybe that's just me