this post was submitted on 25 Nov 2024
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thats what you get when you put car and oil billionaires in charge
that’s part of it, but also the continental US is massive and divided by two pretty impactful mountain ranges. Not defending our lack of train infrastructure but we came of age pretty much in line with the rise of the Jet era along with our culture of individualism and the massive expansion of public interstate hiways due to one specific president’s expierence as them being useful tools for self powered land based military vehicles so obviously that was prioritized over investing in new rail infrastructure in the interceding years.
Point being, there’s a lot of spinning plates involved with why we are where we are in regards our national rail network—would be nice to hop on an hourly train and zoop from Boston to LA in 6 hrs for like $50 but we also just elected Trump again for incomprehensible reasons so in all likelihood there will be a nuclear wasteland in between those two cities, which will need additional plates to be spun up to deal with.
The USA is a lot older than 70 years, so no the USA did not come of age in the jet era. It would be a lot more accurate to say that the modern USA came together in the age of trains, because it was trains that connected east + west together (+the bits in the middle). There used to be passenger trains between all major cities + many towns literally grew around the railways. That train infrastructure is still there, but now there are just very few passenger lines running on them.
Even worse some were repurposed to trails. I mean, I love having trails too and these days use them more than trains, but once rail loses a right of way, the cost to build service skyrockets.
Why can’t I have a trail made from closed down stroads instead of closed down rails?
I was just reading something advocating for restoring useful passenger rail to Cape Cod. I should have made the connection years ago but somehow never did - there’s an amazing rail trail through the national seashore area ….. but it used to be passenger rail the length of the Cape. And many of these towns, including P-Town all the way out, already have nice walkable centers that would do well with trains.
We desperately need rail service here. Not only is Cape Cod environmentally sensitive but the bridges are way overloaded. Even if we were to expand the bridges, there’s nowhere for the cars to go. There’s just too many. All too often I’ve sat in traffic for hours listening to the radio blather on about “43 mile backup to the Cape” just to finally get there and be stuck in traffic. We need a train (and no, the Cape Codder is really not especially useful)
Isn't the USA about the same size as Europe? I think Europe might actually be bigger. We also have a bunch of mountain range dividing up our continent too.
(Not denying the rest of your comment, just pointing out)
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.
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?
yeah pretty much.
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.
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
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.
The United States (9,826,630 km2 / 3,794,080 sq mi) is larger than the European Union (4,233,262 km2 / 1,634,472 sq mi)
Continental Europe is not that same thing as the EU. There are quite a few countries in continental Europe that are not part of the European Economic Union.
I guess you missed the reply already pointing this out.
China, about 9.7M km2
Edit: is your size source right? I found somewhere that says China is 9.7M km2 vs US which is 9.3M km2
https://www.worldometers.info/geography/largest-countries-in-the-world/
Learn something every day. China ≈ Europe ≈ US as far as area.
Neither the post nor the comment limited themselves to the EU. Europe as a whole (10,014,000 km²) is in fact very slightly larger than the US. In this context you could argue that neither USA's Alaska nor all the barren tundra in Europe should really count, then the contiguous 48 could be bigger depending on how how much of Russia you leave out.
So roughly the same size. I then wondered about population and saw that Europe has over twice the population. Which surprised my immediate expectations. Then again, I live in a pretty densely part of the US, so I think it twisted my thinking. In my past, I spent most of a decade living in Europe. I also spent a couple of years after living in Europe working as a long haul trucker in the US. Reflecting on those memories, it shouldn't have surprised me.
Not that this has too much to do with the original point, that the US has a shitty train system. Which is true. But check out our military!! Ra-ra, or some shit.