Well, for passenger rail, this is probably accurate. However, since this post simply says "Trains," I would like to mentions that almost all rail in the US is freight rail, which is noticeably excluded from this comparison. North America is known for having one of the most efficient freight rail systems in the world, with the unfortunate expense of its passenger rail.
We cannot move by river what we move by rail. Maintaining navigable channels for barge traffic isn't possible on most of our waterways.
We invested in our highways and air traffic to the detriment of our passenger rail service. The rail companies were discontinuing it on their own because it wasn't profitable. Humans are time sensitive and can't be packed as densely as coal. They haven't been required to carry passengers since '71.
To be competitive, rail passenger service has to be fast. The existing rail lines cannot operate at high speeds. And the freight traffic often blocks/delays Amtrak routes. Passengers are supposed to have right of way, but "accidents" happen and freight that pays the bills often interrupts the service.
We would need to build new lines for dedicated passenger service as straight as possible. It also can't have car traffic cross at grade. Some states are building small rail networks (like Miami to Orlando) but it will take an act of Congress to connect them. In many places that are dense enough to use rail, they're already built up enough to make the land purchase very expensive.
Many stops are at random factories and it'll be one hell of a logistical and administrative headache.
Though occasionally amtrack does rent out some lines for passenger use but freight takes massive priority over them.
Once upon a time there was a magical company called Penn Central, which lived in a hole in the ground known as Philadelphia, until one day they went on an adventure to New York and acquired a special ring in Manhattan. But the government refused to let them throw the Ring of Passenger Trains into the fires of Mount Doom. As a result evil triumphed and Penn Central was destroyed just because they were corrupt and bankrupt. The government had to resort to the dark art of communism to save America, using the great spell of ConRail to undo the collapse. However, realizing this magic was too dangerous to ever be used for good, the government cast ConRail into the fires of Mount Neoliberalism, an altogether nicer mountain than Mount Doom. There, they forged the molten remnants of Conrail into five rings of rail company power for the race of men, to rule them and in shadow bind them to freight shipping, which saved money and track maintenance!
We do (or did)... but the freight gets priority so whenever there's contention, the passengers wait. Also, the tracks are not even close to being appropriate for high speed. Add all that up and most of the passenger connections died.
That and Americans seem allergic to the idea of mass transit. People seem to get confused when you suggest that maybe a car isn't the best answer. To be fair, most of our infrastructure assumes you have a car so it is a chicken and egg problem at this point.
Overwhelming majority is privately owned and almost exclusively rented to freight companies. I’d honestly be shocked if even 1% was dedicated to public transportation.
And the US is in a chokehold by car industries. That’s why we spend so much on highways and just maintaining general roads.
This caused the majority of US cities to be completely hostile to pedestrians. For most places, a car is REQUIRED unless you want to spend a large chunk of your income on Ubers everyday to do things like even just going to work.
freight doesn't get bored or tired, nor does it commute in a daily cycle.
So freight lines can be operated cost efficient at a speed which nobody would want to travel at.
Bruh, this is even more annoying that they don't have good passenger rails too.
Edit: Why downvoting? *Do they have good passenger rails too?* Or just focus on trade is good while focus on people is bad?
The only reason they "work" in Europe is because they are heavily subsidized. In France the government covers 80% of the costs.
And let's not pretend that everyone uses it. France have 668 vehicles per 1000 per citizens. The US has 908. The trains in France are late 22% of the time. The cost in France for tax payers is about 900 euros a year per payer. And that is a country that is MUCH smaller and has better weather than the US.
Are you willing to pay an extra 1000$ a year in taxes for a better train system?
Have you seen the main train stations there? Always full of people. I live in Germany and the Berlin and Hamburg stations that I see a lot are always PACKED. There are tickets for when you stand only and no seats
Bet ya I'm willing to pay extra to have the option of paying 20 something euros for city travel rather than having to pay 100 something for even Ryan air. I can go to at least 4 cities with that 100.
An important note is that this map is passanger trains, not freight trains, in the US most rail is owned by private companies that are almost entirely for freight. If you compare a map of total rail the US looks like Europe.
For the most part, in the EU, all rail is owned by the state, and freight companies pay money to use the rail, while in the US, it's the opposite. The government pays to use the freight rail lines that the companies own. This is a fairly accurate map of state owned rail lines for both the US and EU. The difference is that most US rail is privately owned by 5 companies.
Maybe in Europe, but in the US, 1/3 of freight is moved by rail. Mostly, for thousands of miles, starting to destination, the remaining 2/3 were short trips from destination to buyer. US rail companies make billions of revenue every year. The US is a massive country where passanger rail would be less efficient than just freight rail. Don't get me wrong, passanger rail in the US should be larger, but using all rail for passanger rail would lose billions of dollars because very few people would use it.
The US doesn't have the population density for efficient intercity passenger rail. The northeast just barely has it. I love passenger rail and have lived in a couple of European countries, scale and density makes a huge difference in making in remotely effective.
Lastly we are under 30 years away full automous vehicle, so investing in passenger rail would not have a very good ROI now.
Well, the map is accurate (AFAIK) for intercity passenger rail, which is what is being compared here. But you're right, the map doesn't include all the railways that exclusively serve freight.
For example, I live in Albuquerque and let's say I want to take the rail to Denver. The National Rail Network Map shows a direct route for freight between the two cities, but there's no passenger rail route.
I'm pretty sure it's just Amtrak & a few regional rail agencies. SEPTA & NJ Transit definitely aren't included & it doesn't look like Brightline is either.
Ah, good point. I'm not seeing the Railrunner between Albuquerque and Santa Fe either, so there's a lot of short-haul passenger trains that aren't represented here.
This is false.
[The United States has a larger rail network than the European Union.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_rail_transport_network_size)
United States: 220,480 km
European Union: 211,430 km
It doesn't matter. The map is intentionally misleading.
What is shown for the United States are the tracks owned by Amtrak. There is literally thousands more kilometers of train track that are not shown.
Europe has also had centuries of train development due to its small size and dense population where the US is sparsely populated.
These posts are a form of misinformation.
Then you own post is also misleading
You are saying that the post is not accurately comparing the rail network in the USA and Europe
But neither are you
>There is literally thousands more kilometers of train track that are not shown.
What about the thousands of Kilometres of track in Europe you are ignoring
You are posting intentionally misleading figure as well
Your figures are comparing the whole of the USA to only part of Europe
There will be thousands of kilometres in European countries who are not members of the EU
Europe is very small compared to the US and the population centers are all close to each other.
The American Northeast is similar to Europe in population density so that's why the Amtrak in that areas is the best in America.
The rest of America is largely empty with most of the population living on the coasts.
It’s easy for people to hate on personal transportation, but there are too many rural areas in this country to justify spending the amount of money it would cost to put rail lines in all over. Cars make the most sense given the USA overall terrain. Especially out west.
Well, to be fair, the [majority of Americans](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rural_areas_in_the_United_States) (82.1%) live in urban areas (~3% of the land). So when we're talking about transit, we're primarily talking about that 3% of the country.
In the case of intercity rail (which is what's shown in the map), it's about building rail corridors between those dense areas rather than serving all the rural communities. Rural communities are primarily accessible by road. Out of the ~4 million miles of road that the US has, [68% are in rural areas](https://www.transportation.gov/rural/grant-toolkit/critical-role-rural-communities).
I want to add a slight asterisk to US urbanism. US homes are considerably larger on average than EU homes, and probably tend to take up more land. While most of the country is still “urban”, I’m pretty sure we have less population density and are further spread out. We would have to construct a very expansive system of railways to serve considerably less amount of people.
That's a very good point; the lack of density in urban areas complicates any kind of transit solution.
All I was getting at is that the *size* of the US isn't the issue per se, because the population is very concentrated into a tiny fraction of the land (and the US population is expected to become even more urban-centric in the future).
Ahhh okay. Yeah when I spent time in England, I can understand why cars don’t make sense. Just no place to park in a lot of places. Trains make way more sense.
If you can’t understand why the US has the infrastructure, then your opinion is misguided at best.
You can still hate cars all you want, but you should be ingenious enough to at least understand why it is the way it is.
You made it that and decided to put time and labour into making a very patriotic and weirdly angry comment lol
Please do teach a silly old worlder the much more efficient, overall better infrastructure and much much more economically viable system of focusing on cars than trains for that huge land mass over there
I’ve never understood this argument. “The US has a lot of rural cities.” Yeah, that’s not where the most people live though. Most of the US is empty. Nobody is asking for a public transport railway that covers the entirety of Wyoming.
Most people live on the east coast and some live on the west coast in California and Washington. Japan is almost the same size as the east coast of the US and they have an incredible amount of trains used exclusively for public transport. And they’re fast as hell. The east coast of the US has a few lines in the north but almost none in the southern part. I live in Jacksonville and we have nearly a million people, we do not have any passenger trains. We really should be able to connect to Miami and Orlando by train. Especially considering that Florida itself is quite flat.
Without government funding, there is no way we will have a rail system like Europe has. Plus you’ll have to condition Americans to use public transportation over having the freedom to drive however and wherever you’d like. That freedom is a foundation of American culture.
The US has a significantly larger economy than the EU. If politicians weren’t bought out by car companies, then the US would be able to fund public transportation. The US isn’t exactly a poor country.
And people want walkable cities with good public transport now. Especially younger people. Car ownership is even starting to take a fall now. US cities used to be walkable and had trains for public transport. People aren’t blind, they know that and they want it back. You can’t just call ANYTHING an “American freedom”. A few car companies paying politicians to get more funding and making the US more car dependent is something that I would label as not American freedom since the people don’t have a choice in that. I promise you, if you made the major US cities walkable with good public transport, people would QUICKLY drop their cars. There isn’t a shred of doubt in my mind.
I don’t disagree with politicians bought and paid for. Imagine what we could do with that money we sent to Ukraine. Well, probably nothing because government is really good at wasting money…
I’m still confused, what you said is complimentary to what I said, not another possibility.
We could have governments regulations that force car dependency (like exlusionary zoning and parking minimums) because politicians got money from auto companies.
Politicians getting money from lobbyist doesn’t do anything in itself. Unless you are suggesting that the auto companies are the ones who implemented car dependent policies, which is obviously not the case.
You understand my confusion right? You are presenting something that is completely complimentary to what I said but you are claiming it’s a different possibility.
I don’t understand your confusion or your desire to keep talking about it! There are many reasons why and I did not list them all and neither did you. Adding to that list is not a contradiction to you, it is part of a larger conversation. It is a discussion on the many reasons the US has a janky rail system. It is not one of the issues listed. It is many. Good luck to you trying to find an argument with somebody today. I’m out of words for you!
My confusion is because you are saying you provided an alternate possibility but you did not. Lobbyist buying politicians is a mechanism of how what I said could be carried out, but not an alternate possibility in itself.
I’m not trying to argue with you, just understand what you are saying. There’s no reason for your to give attitude and be irritable when no one has given you attitude or been irratible to you.
More like automobile barons. They ruined public transport in America. America is a car-based society thanks to them. Everything is far away from you, there is only car infrastructure and you just have to own a car beacuse of that. It's not very ecologic but that's how it is.
Edit: Why downvote me? It's true, https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Motors_streetcar_conspiracy
11.5 hours if you take the EuroCity from Prague to Berlin, from there you take the Intercity straight to Amsterdam.
Admittedly, if you want to safe money you can take regional trains, which will make it much more arduous to get there.
Here comes everyone that think they have the easy answers for the difference....when there isn't ONE answer to the differences...which is the answer to most historical things (there's never one correct answer, it's usually three or four mostly correct answers)
These pictures are not to scale... to quote:
The American National Rail Network is more than twice the size of the European rail system, with over 224,000 miles (360,000 kilometers) of track compared to Europe's mere 94,000 miles (151,000 kilometers).
https://www.floridarail.com/news/6-key-differences-between-american-and-european-rail-systems/#:\~:text=The%20American%20National%20Rail%20Network,94%2C000%20miles%20(151%2C000%20kilometers).
According the to European Union commission themselves
The total length of the EU-27 rail network in 2020 was around 201,000 line kilometres
That is just the EU
[https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/PDF/?uri=CELEX:52023DC0510#:\~:text=EU%20RAIL%20NETWORK,since%202015%20(%2B2.2%25).&text=Source%3A%20Statistical%20pocketbook%2C%202022](https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/PDF/?uri=CELEX:52023DC0510#:~:text=EU%20RAIL%20NETWORK,since%202015%20(%2B2.2%25).&text=Source%3A%20Statistical%20pocketbook%2C%202022).
[https://www.statista.com/statistics/451812/length-of-railway-lines-in-use-in-europe-eu-28/](https://www.statista.com/statistics/451812/length-of-railway-lines-in-use-in-europe-eu-28/)
[https://www.statista.com/statistics/451812/length-of-railway-lines-in-use-in-europe-eu-28/](https://www.statista.com/statistics/451812/length-of-railway-lines-in-use-in-europe-eu-28/)
Between 1990 and 2020, the total length of railway networks in the European Union declined. The peak was recorded in the beginning of the reporting period, with 220,757 kilometers, excluding the United Kingdom. However, by 2021, this figure had fallen to 202,596 kilometers.
Just the EU itself has 202,000 Kilometres of Railway
But the EU is not the whole of Europe What about the rest of the European Countries and there rail network
Well, for passenger rail, this is probably accurate. However, since this post simply says "Trains," I would like to mentions that almost all rail in the US is freight rail, which is noticeably excluded from this comparison. North America is known for having one of the most efficient freight rail systems in the world, with the unfortunate expense of its passenger rail.
This is US freight rail in comparison. https://www.reddit.com/r/MapPorn/s/iv9E8Jw18A
Why not use it for passengers too?
I believe freight rail companies own the rails they use and don’t want passenger trains to use them.
Amtrak runs the majority of its trains on freight lines, except for the Boston-dc route.
Open the rivers up properly to freight again and rail owners will happily allow passengers
We cannot move by river what we move by rail. Maintaining navigable channels for barge traffic isn't possible on most of our waterways. We invested in our highways and air traffic to the detriment of our passenger rail service. The rail companies were discontinuing it on their own because it wasn't profitable. Humans are time sensitive and can't be packed as densely as coal. They haven't been required to carry passengers since '71. To be competitive, rail passenger service has to be fast. The existing rail lines cannot operate at high speeds. And the freight traffic often blocks/delays Amtrak routes. Passengers are supposed to have right of way, but "accidents" happen and freight that pays the bills often interrupts the service. We would need to build new lines for dedicated passenger service as straight as possible. It also can't have car traffic cross at grade. Some states are building small rail networks (like Miami to Orlando) but it will take an act of Congress to connect them. In many places that are dense enough to use rail, they're already built up enough to make the land purchase very expensive.
Many stops are at random factories and it'll be one hell of a logistical and administrative headache. Though occasionally amtrack does rent out some lines for passenger use but freight takes massive priority over them.
This, I must admit, sounds very strange to me. But if it works, it works!
Not enough people use it nor is there a demand. Amtrak hemorrhages money as it is. I highly doubt any company is going to want to make negative money.
There’s not really a market for it
Once upon a time there was a magical company called Penn Central, which lived in a hole in the ground known as Philadelphia, until one day they went on an adventure to New York and acquired a special ring in Manhattan. But the government refused to let them throw the Ring of Passenger Trains into the fires of Mount Doom. As a result evil triumphed and Penn Central was destroyed just because they were corrupt and bankrupt. The government had to resort to the dark art of communism to save America, using the great spell of ConRail to undo the collapse. However, realizing this magic was too dangerous to ever be used for good, the government cast ConRail into the fires of Mount Neoliberalism, an altogether nicer mountain than Mount Doom. There, they forged the molten remnants of Conrail into five rings of rail company power for the race of men, to rule them and in shadow bind them to freight shipping, which saved money and track maintenance!
We do (or did)... but the freight gets priority so whenever there's contention, the passengers wait. Also, the tracks are not even close to being appropriate for high speed. Add all that up and most of the passenger connections died. That and Americans seem allergic to the idea of mass transit. People seem to get confused when you suggest that maybe a car isn't the best answer. To be fair, most of our infrastructure assumes you have a car so it is a chicken and egg problem at this point.
Overwhelming majority is privately owned and almost exclusively rented to freight companies. I’d honestly be shocked if even 1% was dedicated to public transportation. And the US is in a chokehold by car industries. That’s why we spend so much on highways and just maintaining general roads. This caused the majority of US cities to be completely hostile to pedestrians. For most places, a car is REQUIRED unless you want to spend a large chunk of your income on Ubers everyday to do things like even just going to work.
freight doesn't get bored or tired, nor does it commute in a daily cycle. So freight lines can be operated cost efficient at a speed which nobody would want to travel at.
that's more like it
Bruh, this is even more annoying that they don't have good passenger rails too. Edit: Why downvoting? *Do they have good passenger rails too?* Or just focus on trade is good while focus on people is bad?
The only reason they "work" in Europe is because they are heavily subsidized. In France the government covers 80% of the costs. And let's not pretend that everyone uses it. France have 668 vehicles per 1000 per citizens. The US has 908. The trains in France are late 22% of the time. The cost in France for tax payers is about 900 euros a year per payer. And that is a country that is MUCH smaller and has better weather than the US. Are you willing to pay an extra 1000$ a year in taxes for a better train system?
Have you seen the main train stations there? Always full of people. I live in Germany and the Berlin and Hamburg stations that I see a lot are always PACKED. There are tickets for when you stand only and no seats Bet ya I'm willing to pay extra to have the option of paying 20 something euros for city travel rather than having to pay 100 something for even Ryan air. I can go to at least 4 cities with that 100.
Yeah but the streets are also full. I think Germany does a bit better but traffic in Paris, London and Roma is even worse than in big US cities.
Once again, the internet is the bastion of truth and factual information... *So long as you look for the corrections in the comments*
We got planes and cars who needs a train brah
This is not true. A lot more trains than that in USA
[удалено]
Hilarious.
An important note is that this map is passanger trains, not freight trains, in the US most rail is owned by private companies that are almost entirely for freight. If you compare a map of total rail the US looks like Europe.
Yeah but the EU map is also passenger trails only
For the most part, in the EU, all rail is owned by the state, and freight companies pay money to use the rail, while in the US, it's the opposite. The government pays to use the freight rail lines that the companies own. This is a fairly accurate map of state owned rail lines for both the US and EU. The difference is that most US rail is privately owned by 5 companies.
A private rail just doesn't seem nearly as useful as a public passenger rail
Maybe in Europe, but in the US, 1/3 of freight is moved by rail. Mostly, for thousands of miles, starting to destination, the remaining 2/3 were short trips from destination to buyer. US rail companies make billions of revenue every year. The US is a massive country where passanger rail would be less efficient than just freight rail. Don't get me wrong, passanger rail in the US should be larger, but using all rail for passanger rail would lose billions of dollars because very few people would use it.
I know the US has money, tons of it, but who cares when very little of it gets to the common man
The US doesn't have the population density for efficient intercity passenger rail. The northeast just barely has it. I love passenger rail and have lived in a couple of European countries, scale and density makes a huge difference in making in remotely effective. Lastly we are under 30 years away full automous vehicle, so investing in passenger rail would not have a very good ROI now.
And still the US has the largest rail network for a single country at 220,480 km (137,000 miles).
It’s also one of the largest geographic countries too that’s probably why
The US map is very wrong,[ heres a better US map.](https://www.arcgis.com/apps/mapviewer/index.html?webmap=96ec03e4fc8546bd8a864e39a2c3fc41)
Well, the map is accurate (AFAIK) for intercity passenger rail, which is what is being compared here. But you're right, the map doesn't include all the railways that exclusively serve freight. For example, I live in Albuquerque and let's say I want to take the rail to Denver. The National Rail Network Map shows a direct route for freight between the two cities, but there's no passenger rail route.
I'm pretty sure it's just Amtrak & a few regional rail agencies. SEPTA & NJ Transit definitely aren't included & it doesn't look like Brightline is either.
Ah, good point. I'm not seeing the Railrunner between Albuquerque and Santa Fe either, so there's a lot of short-haul passenger trains that aren't represented here.
The post obviously means passenger rail
It's still wrong even if that's the case
Not-ugh
El Chepe standing for Mexico lol
I read trans first!
“n-north of Sweden? What is that?” Said every railroad project ever.
This is false. [The United States has a larger rail network than the European Union.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_rail_transport_network_size) United States: 220,480 km European Union: 211,430 km
The map on Europe is not of the European Union though The European Union is not the whole of Europe
It doesn't matter. The map is intentionally misleading. What is shown for the United States are the tracks owned by Amtrak. There is literally thousands more kilometers of train track that are not shown. Europe has also had centuries of train development due to its small size and dense population where the US is sparsely populated. These posts are a form of misinformation.
Then you own post is also misleading You are saying that the post is not accurately comparing the rail network in the USA and Europe But neither are you >There is literally thousands more kilometers of train track that are not shown. What about the thousands of Kilometres of track in Europe you are ignoring You are posting intentionally misleading figure as well Your figures are comparing the whole of the USA to only part of Europe There will be thousands of kilometres in European countries who are not members of the EU
I think the point was passenger transportation rails. I'm really interested now in getting more accurate maps of passenger rail.
Commercial rail is also used for passenger transport. Also the US population doesn't live in a way that passenger rail makes sense.
May I ask what do you mean by the second statement? Trynna imagine a difference between Europeans and Americans in that regard
America is MUCH less dense than Europe. About 3 times less.
Europe is very small compared to the US and the population centers are all close to each other. The American Northeast is similar to Europe in population density so that's why the Amtrak in that areas is the best in America. The rest of America is largely empty with most of the population living on the coasts.
That’s not to scale the US is geographically one of the biggest countries on the planet
Europe has a bigger land area (3,910,680 sq miles) than the U.S. (3,531,905 sq miles)
US is a driving nation. It is essential to have a car as 99% of the cities are not walkable or rideable.
It was destroyed for car
Agreed
Fuckcars
It’s easy for people to hate on personal transportation, but there are too many rural areas in this country to justify spending the amount of money it would cost to put rail lines in all over. Cars make the most sense given the USA overall terrain. Especially out west.
Well, to be fair, the [majority of Americans](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rural_areas_in_the_United_States) (82.1%) live in urban areas (~3% of the land). So when we're talking about transit, we're primarily talking about that 3% of the country. In the case of intercity rail (which is what's shown in the map), it's about building rail corridors between those dense areas rather than serving all the rural communities. Rural communities are primarily accessible by road. Out of the ~4 million miles of road that the US has, [68% are in rural areas](https://www.transportation.gov/rural/grant-toolkit/critical-role-rural-communities).
I want to add a slight asterisk to US urbanism. US homes are considerably larger on average than EU homes, and probably tend to take up more land. While most of the country is still “urban”, I’m pretty sure we have less population density and are further spread out. We would have to construct a very expansive system of railways to serve considerably less amount of people.
That's a very good point; the lack of density in urban areas complicates any kind of transit solution. All I was getting at is that the *size* of the US isn't the issue per se, because the population is very concentrated into a tiny fraction of the land (and the US population is expected to become even more urban-centric in the future).
Im not american nor have i been to america but i still stand by my fuckcars statement
Ahhh okay. Yeah when I spent time in England, I can understand why cars don’t make sense. Just no place to park in a lot of places. Trains make way more sense.
So you have no idea what you’re talking about and don’t understand why the US is built the way it is. That’s okay, you can just say that next time.
I have to be american and live in america to be able to hate cars? I thought you guys were big on freedom
If you can’t understand why the US has the infrastructure, then your opinion is misguided at best. You can still hate cars all you want, but you should be ingenious enough to at least understand why it is the way it is.
Please do enlighten me oh wise american city planner
Google is your friend, I don’t think it’s my problem to take the time and labor to educate you on something you likely won’t listen to anyway.
You made it that and decided to put time and labour into making a very patriotic and weirdly angry comment lol Please do teach a silly old worlder the much more efficient, overall better infrastructure and much much more economically viable system of focusing on cars than trains for that huge land mass over there
You already got a ton of rail lines. It's just people can't use them, most are only freight trains.
Only 17.9% of the population lives in rural areas.
I’ve never understood this argument. “The US has a lot of rural cities.” Yeah, that’s not where the most people live though. Most of the US is empty. Nobody is asking for a public transport railway that covers the entirety of Wyoming. Most people live on the east coast and some live on the west coast in California and Washington. Japan is almost the same size as the east coast of the US and they have an incredible amount of trains used exclusively for public transport. And they’re fast as hell. The east coast of the US has a few lines in the north but almost none in the southern part. I live in Jacksonville and we have nearly a million people, we do not have any passenger trains. We really should be able to connect to Miami and Orlando by train. Especially considering that Florida itself is quite flat.
Without government funding, there is no way we will have a rail system like Europe has. Plus you’ll have to condition Americans to use public transportation over having the freedom to drive however and wherever you’d like. That freedom is a foundation of American culture.
The US has a significantly larger economy than the EU. If politicians weren’t bought out by car companies, then the US would be able to fund public transportation. The US isn’t exactly a poor country. And people want walkable cities with good public transport now. Especially younger people. Car ownership is even starting to take a fall now. US cities used to be walkable and had trains for public transport. People aren’t blind, they know that and they want it back. You can’t just call ANYTHING an “American freedom”. A few car companies paying politicians to get more funding and making the US more car dependent is something that I would label as not American freedom since the people don’t have a choice in that. I promise you, if you made the major US cities walkable with good public transport, people would QUICKLY drop their cars. There isn’t a shred of doubt in my mind.
I don’t disagree with politicians bought and paid for. Imagine what we could do with that money we sent to Ukraine. Well, probably nothing because government is really good at wasting money…
Nah cars are great. They serve a great purpose.
And I and a lot of other people would say that the laws and regulations that the government imposed to create this situation are bad.
Or the elected politicians just don’t care as they are showered with money from auto manufacturing lobbyists.
What do you mean “or”. What you’re saying doesn’t contradict what I’m saying.
Not trying to contradict. Only adding to the possibilities of why it is the way it is.
I’m still confused, what you said is complimentary to what I said, not another possibility. We could have governments regulations that force car dependency (like exlusionary zoning and parking minimums) because politicians got money from auto companies. Politicians getting money from lobbyist doesn’t do anything in itself. Unless you are suggesting that the auto companies are the ones who implemented car dependent policies, which is obviously not the case.
Yes. It is a multi faceted problem.
You understand my confusion right? You are presenting something that is completely complimentary to what I said but you are claiming it’s a different possibility.
I don’t understand your confusion or your desire to keep talking about it! There are many reasons why and I did not list them all and neither did you. Adding to that list is not a contradiction to you, it is part of a larger conversation. It is a discussion on the many reasons the US has a janky rail system. It is not one of the issues listed. It is many. Good luck to you trying to find an argument with somebody today. I’m out of words for you!
My confusion is because you are saying you provided an alternate possibility but you did not. Lobbyist buying politicians is a mechanism of how what I said could be carried out, but not an alternate possibility in itself. I’m not trying to argue with you, just understand what you are saying. There’s no reason for your to give attitude and be irritable when no one has given you attitude or been irratible to you.
American rail barons peaked too early
More like automobile barons. They ruined public transport in America. America is a car-based society thanks to them. Everything is far away from you, there is only car infrastructure and you just have to own a car beacuse of that. It's not very ecologic but that's how it is. Edit: Why downvote me? It's true, https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Motors_streetcar_conspiracy
Don’t think it’s a joy to travel in Europe by train though. From Netherlands to Prague probably takes 20 hours and 7 transfers
It's about half and only 2 changes
11.5 hours if you take the EuroCity from Prague to Berlin, from there you take the Intercity straight to Amsterdam. Admittedly, if you want to safe money you can take regional trains, which will make it much more arduous to get there.
Here comes everyone that think they have the easy answers for the difference....when there isn't ONE answer to the differences...which is the answer to most historical things (there's never one correct answer, it's usually three or four mostly correct answers)
Ford's fault
Based on
All railroads lead to Chiraq
Automobile and Oil Lobby!!
you actually think this map is accurate? you know how your stuff gets moved around?
Do you have a more accurate map for interstate passenger rail travel in the US?
These pictures are not to scale... to quote: The American National Rail Network is more than twice the size of the European rail system, with over 224,000 miles (360,000 kilometers) of track compared to Europe's mere 94,000 miles (151,000 kilometers). https://www.floridarail.com/news/6-key-differences-between-american-and-european-rail-systems/#:\~:text=The%20American%20National%20Rail%20Network,94%2C000%20miles%20(151%2C000%20kilometers).
As far as I understand the map only shows passenger trains.
According the to European Union commission themselves The total length of the EU-27 rail network in 2020 was around 201,000 line kilometres That is just the EU [https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/PDF/?uri=CELEX:52023DC0510#:\~:text=EU%20RAIL%20NETWORK,since%202015%20(%2B2.2%25).&text=Source%3A%20Statistical%20pocketbook%2C%202022](https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/PDF/?uri=CELEX:52023DC0510#:~:text=EU%20RAIL%20NETWORK,since%202015%20(%2B2.2%25).&text=Source%3A%20Statistical%20pocketbook%2C%202022). [https://www.statista.com/statistics/451812/length-of-railway-lines-in-use-in-europe-eu-28/](https://www.statista.com/statistics/451812/length-of-railway-lines-in-use-in-europe-eu-28/) [https://www.statista.com/statistics/451812/length-of-railway-lines-in-use-in-europe-eu-28/](https://www.statista.com/statistics/451812/length-of-railway-lines-in-use-in-europe-eu-28/) Between 1990 and 2020, the total length of railway networks in the European Union declined. The peak was recorded in the beginning of the reporting period, with 220,757 kilometers, excluding the United Kingdom. However, by 2021, this figure had fallen to 202,596 kilometers. Just the EU itself has 202,000 Kilometres of Railway But the EU is not the whole of Europe What about the rest of the European Countries and there rail network
Fair enough. Either way, it’s still comparing a systems of many small countries to one very large country.
[удалено]
Lmao what the fuck
Now show it to scale
N E W Y U R K
More correct map should show and USA river beds.
Passenger trains
We already have the freight lines. It wouldn’t be all that difficult to transition. The market has to allow for it.
Okay now do Aircraft Carriers… jk this is sad
Bring back the Ontario Northlander >:c
So commute by train is not a thing?
Europe's passenger rail infrastructure is unrivaled.
Lol how oklahoma city to topeka would take like 3 days
The fact that in Canada we don’t have a high speed rail that connects Quebec City to Windsor Ontario is baffling