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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?!?
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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.
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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.
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Brightline from Orlando to Miami. It's not fast by international standards but certainly more than 60mph
It's also super expensive so....
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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That's not any better in Europe. This is just a random map of some rail tracks. Trying getting from Porto to Rome by train. On this map it would appear as there should be multiple routes. In reality you'll be lucky to get it done in 3 days.
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That's a 2500km journey across 4 countries, taking about 43h by train including an overnight layover in Madrid.
And most of the journey is beelining it straight toward the destination, from Porto to Madrid, Barcelona, Narbonne, Marseille, Nice, Genova, Rome (plus minor stops along the way).
Flying is more reasonable at that distance (and likely cheaper), but I don't see how the train network is at fault here.
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It's probably as good as it is in the UK. It would cost me roughly £20k+ a year to travel 90 mins to work if I were to stay at my job in London. On the bright side, the trains are so unreliable that I would claw some of that back through delay repay...
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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.
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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
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"Who needs a car in LA? We got the best public transportation system in the world!"
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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.
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Although honestly the feuding between the various tram/rail/bus companies contributed to their demise.
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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
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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)
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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.
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thats what you get when you put car and oil billionaires in charge
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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.
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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.
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I am curious what effects will still be felt in the distant future from Trump's Presidency. Reagan was historically bad... and Trump will be even worse! (Unrelated to the train issue)
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God damnit I hate cars bro
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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.
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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.
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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).
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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.
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all rails lead to chicago.
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Veiny ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
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Iberia needs to keep up, damn it!
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Spain has the second largest high speed rail network in the world. They're doing alright.
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So, then explain to me how long would it take by train from Bilbao to Vigo.
On that map above we can clearly see a train route. Can I take a train on it?
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Seriously what are they even doing, Siesta?
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I’m curious about this map because I definitely live near passenger rail and it’s not showing here.
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Non-Amtrak line? I think this is Amtrak specific. There are a few bits of passenger service in the US outside Amtrak, but it wouldn't add much to this map.
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The US map are all Amtrak services and the European map all mainline railways.
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I'm more worried about all the lightning bolts Chicago can shoot out to the rest of the country.
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He pulls out a knife, you pull out lightning powers. That's the Chicago way.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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I can go to Paris (500 km) by train in about three hours. That train is musch faster thatn you'd be allowed to drive.
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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.
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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
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???
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North America is more than the continental USA.
Canadian passenger service isn't much better than the US. Mexico isn't too bad.
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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.
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Where we're going, we won't need roads!
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This needs to be higher. The US has the most rail in the world, at over 224,000 miles. Europe, by comparison, has 94,000 miles. That's one country having more rail than the total of a whole continent.
The map down in the meme appears to only be Amtrak.
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Amtrak service.
Amtrak owns the Northeast Corridor (Boston to DC) track and not much else
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From station to station and to Dusseldorf city. Meet Iggy Pop and David Bowie.
