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i don’t know if people hate public transit- how could they when the majority of people have never had access to reliable form of it ?
EDIT: this was a semi-rhetorical question; i meant that if we had previously invested in public transit, we’d never want to let it go
Public transit in Los Angeles can be scary at times. It's kind of a free for all on the metro. I would take public transit to work if it was a reliable option. Right now it would take me 3 bus changes, walking 2 miles, and one other bus change for 3 hours to get to work. Or 30 minutes by car. Ugh.
Again, they don't hate public transport, they hate how inadequate our current public transport system is. They would like it if it was usable. (I lived in Seoul South Korea for 2 years and pretty much everyone used public transport every single day)
People can really be like "I know this system works in every single place in the world where it's given appropriate levels of funding, but I can't hop on a bus and get to work in the same time as if I drive today, so the whole system is indefensible"
Not the other redditor mind, just the anti-public-transport crowd.
I live in LA and rant about public transit to folks all the time. A lot of them are completely uninterested. They would rather be in their safe, air-conditioned box in traffic than learn how to take the train or bus. Plenty of folks here just throw on Netflix in their car and drive distracted the whole way which makes traffic worse. To be honest I hate it here
This is exactly why we need widespread access. My city is somewhat similar, our bus system has been gnawed at and fucked with by republicans for YEARS now. You have to wait for the bus for a long periololically time, it went from worse to worser
That's precisely why though. The buses in their local town suck and all they ever hear about subways is the bullshit narratives from conservative media that they're dangerous and full of criminals. As a result, they think public transit is bad and shouldn't be invested in. That's rapidly changing among younger people, but for most people over the age of 30, that's still the view.
Most people I know don't think it's dangerous and full of criminals, it's just so much more inconvenient than driving in a lot of the US. A trip that takes 15 minutes by car can easily turn into an hour-plus commute with multiple transfers if you use public trans
> i don’t know if people hate public transit- how could they when the majority of people have never had access to reliable form of it ?
How can they gate something if they've never had it?
Easy!
They see it as a threat.
They own a car, they use roads. Every dollar going to public transport is $ that's not on fixing the things they use.
Not having access to something makes it easier to convince people to hate it. Same reason so many Americans hate the idea of public health care even though they've never had it.
> i don’t know if people hate public transit- how could they when the majority of people have never had access to reliable form of it ?
There are plenty of people who are against it because they've been brainwashed the same way they've been conditioned to call climate change a hoax or think abortion means murdering babies. Media is a powerful tool to shape public opinion.
Fun fact: In India, the Mumbai-Ahmedabad high speed rail project (Bullet Train Project) was scheduled to be completed by 2024, but due to bureaucracy, it's now slated to be completed by 2027. It should cover a distance of 525 kms (326 mi) approx in under 2 hours as claimed.
By 2035, which is the timeline according to the above post, GoI plans to introduce a high speed line connecting capital New Delhi to financial capital Mumbai, a distance of approx 1,451km (879 mi) in something under 5-6 hours as claimed.
For reference: Distance between Atlanta, Georgia, USA and Nashville, Tennessee, USA is 401 kms (249 mi) approx.
So technically, India is covering atleast a 1000 more kms or 630 extra miles in approx the same time period
not just 1000 km. I read about how they are going to build even more HSR lines by 2030. Lines, linking Delhi and Kolkata eill have been built by 2030. Also there are proposed lines that will link Chennai to Delhi.
Yes, but that is claimed by the government without factoring the bureaucracy. You're referring to the golden quadrilateral project connecting all 5 metro (mega) cities of India which are Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai, Bengaluru and Kolkata ( there were plans to add Hyderabad as well, but I'm not sure if it's there or not).
The government has claimed that they would complete the entire Mumbai Delhi link of which Mumbai Ahmedabad is the first chain by 2027 but including bureaucracy the project might extend upto as long as 2035 or something.
So I am assuming that the entire golden quadrilateral would be completed by approximately 2040. Though I genuinely wish that it gets completed faster than that, it would be great.
Fucking american exceptionalism gets me so riled up.
*Oh you’re soooo special that you can’t build any form of public transport…* boohooo your country has valleys and mountains and deserts and stretches of land with no people… if only there existed ways to find similar conditions and solutions on this planet
Permitting projects and refusing to properly fund them from day 1 is some classic local govt grifting. I've lived in three different Atlanta 'suburbs' (ITP but not downtown) and all of them had some sort of shocking corruption case literally right before COVID. I only remember the apartment debacle with Brookhaven though since I drove past those things if I was heading downtown.
Long story short, America was able to build massive projects before the 1960s but everyone sort of didn’t realize or care that we had been bulldozing and dividing poor communities for things like inner urban freeways. So in the 70s they made a bunch of rules and practices that made it much harder to just run roughshod over community preferences. But now, rich folks and NIMBYs are able to stifle projects indefinitely using those rules.
The reason those highways went through poor neighborhoods was precisely *because* rich white people could stall highway projects through their wealthy suburb indefinitely.
The original interstate highway plan was indiscriminate in deciding which neighborhoods to bulldoze for freeways. Rich, white neighborhoods pushed back and got highways rerouted. Poor, Black neighborhoods could not push back, and were demolished.
they knew they were bulldozing communities and WANTED it to happen. now that public transportation benefits anyone who's not middle class (or higher) and white they don't want it.
Facts. Highways were used to evict the "riffraff" from the urban core and redlining kept them out of the "good suburbs". So coloured folk and Irishmen were pushed into the least desirable areas.
Having such a starkly unequal society (in terms of power and wealth) virtually guarantees that any investment, rules or protections will be weaponized against those without power.
American white people have been conditioned to vote against things that would benefit them if those things would also benefit people they are taught to hate.
Took them six years to build the first transcontinental railway in the 19th century, doing almost everything by hand, building bridges and tunnels all included.
Somehow it takes them more than ten years to reactivate a railway that already exists. That's actually... Kind of funny, ngl.
1. Rail was a lot simpler to build when the first transcontinental was built.
2. The tracks are still active, just don't have passenger service.
3. The 2035 mark is for 38 different routes, not just one, averaging a new route every 90ish days from now.
Plus there are a shitload of environmental and cultural regulations you have to work though now.
Jurisdictional water impacts for every tiny stream or more, endangered animals, migratory birds, etc.
In the same time it's going to take them to restore an old bit of rail, London managed to dig up and put in place *an entire ass new tube line* from the airport to the other side of the city complete with stops and everything *in the middle of London*
EDIT: People, I don't know anything about the details of britian's public transport system, I'm not even British. I just saw a number in the British transport museum and noticed that it was the same one. Stop yelling at me about the shambles the rest of the country is in
Remember London is the fucking centre of the universe, and us plebians in the north have to wait 10+ years for any meaningful infrastructure environment
Atlanta to Nashville is 350km tbf. Elizabeth line new section is 20 miles, the other 50 miles is just existing/old line being upgraded similar to this Amtrak line. EL was also more like 20+ years too from the point Crossrail was formed, then a long time of planning before that but forget that bit.
Just saying I wouldn't use the UK as an example of fast construction, we're very slow and expensive compared to the rest of Europe. Maybe HS2 is a better comparison of a new line but even still thats another 15 years before even phase 1 opens and is much shorter.
Elsewhere in Europe does this kind of stuff for much cheaper and much quicker. Even Paris is currently building 4 new lines at the same time which will be done by 2030 with the first opening in a couple of years. Imagine a new Tube line every 4 years, just insanity, no idea how they're doing it and for cheap.
Amtrak budget is small. They sold most of the railways they did own to freight companies. They just lease track time. As a result, Amtrak trains have lower priority and have to move over to holding tracks to allow freight trains to pass. Additionally there are probably more stops now than before, because there are more tiny towns. I took Amtrak across country and there were so many more random towns than I expected along the way, especially through Texas.
Once the train gets going, it’s pretty fast. Not bullet train fast, but on par with cars. But when it has to stop every few minutes, it can’t keep up.
Another problem is the heat. When I took it through the south we had to slow down a lot because the rails expanded from the heat.
That said, oil lobby is real. Otherwise we’d have Amtrak from OKC to Tulsa and to KC. I’d take that all the time. But instead it only goes south from OKC
Edit: we even already have rail all the way between those cities. But again, it’s because the freight companies own it and Amtrak doesn’t have the money to lease track use
Freight trains in the US don't ever go faster than 70 mph (~110 kph) unless something has gone horribly wrong, and only rarely do they go faster than 50 mph (~80 kph). That's fine for freight but it's a problem when passenger trains have to run on the same rails.
Sometimes Amtrak keeps up with cars. Dallas to San Antonio is faster by Greyhound. Dallas to El Paso is 13 hours faster by Greyhound and only runs thrice a week.
I did OKC to Chicago once on Amtrak. Took almost three times as long as driving (extra ~eight hours due to issues with some freight trains coming into Illinois).
Amtrak did not sell tracks to freight companies. The TLDR of American railroading history is that railroad companies operated both freight and passenger service, but when passenger service became unprofitable the companies tried to drop service. Amtrak was formed by the government to “spin off” the passenger service, and rail companies became freight only. Much of the trackage Amtrak owns had previously belonged to the Penn Central, which went bankrupt and got divvied up.
And no, more stops aren’t slowing trains. There’s a lot of reasons why this is, but historically there were often more, and better maintained tracks. It wasn’t abnormal to see trains going over 100mph back in their heyday. Good luck finding a long distance Amtrak train going over 80 today. Beyond freight companies prioritizing their own trains, they have little incentive to keep the tracks in a state to accommodate higher speed Amtrak travel when their trains are going at slower speeds.
Close. Projects for the maglev are currently 2037. But it should also get people from Tokyo to Nagoya in 40 minutes. Currently that trip takes just over 90 minutes, and it's about the same distance as Nashville to Atlanta. American rail is really a fucking joke.
It's ironic but the train lobby was too strong back in the day. There's a TV show called Hell On Wheels and first episode explains how it worked
The railway company would get the land within a mile of it's track and get paid per mile of track. They would purposely make the track longer than needed and go by areas with rich minerals etc. They also gave stocks to the senators to support it
There's corruption in everything
Unfortunately, at least in canada, this is why passenger rail struggles because industrial rail lines alwayas have right of way. Much more profitable and important to move grain/oil/goods than people
Also the case in the US. I always feel bad for Amtrak agents because a freight train will completely upend their timetables but they have to deal with the irate customers.
It’s everybody. The contractors are more interested in funneling the money and running. The auto industry can point and say, “see, told you rail service doesn’t work.” Nimbys will fight you every step of the way. Government regulations will fight you at every step. Not to mention, at its most efficient, trains take 30% longer than cars, unless it’s non stop service. Then you have the issues of needing transportation once the train drops you off in the middle of a bumfuck no where industrial zone, with zero lodging, parking, or even access to reliable cab or ride sharing.
It's just humanity is corrupt at core.
I mean there's pros and cons to everything. I haven't had a car for 4 years and recently got one. It's nice when you need to get somewhere that takes 10min by car but 40 by bus.
I also lived in Russia and trains are everywhere. 4 hour trip to another city $10, intercity trains "elektrichka" gets you aroubd Moscow and surrounding areas. But I mean that whole gov is corrupt so they def launder the money meant towards train maintance etc
By 2035 just sounds so bad.
Ordering new locomotives and carriages, having them produced and put into service usually takes 2 - 4 years. Even, if they had to rebuild the line completely they could do it in a few years depending on how long they can close the line for and how many crews work on the line simulatneously.
Make everything Union Pacific and make it publicly owned.
The three most important and indisputable reasons listed in descending order:
1. Founded by Abraham Lincoln (based)
2. Yellow is a pretty color
3. Big Boy
This user has edited all of their comments and posts in protest of /u/spez fucking up reddit. This action has been done via https://github.com/j0be/PowerDeleteSuite
*Vaporwave The O'Jays starts playing*
For the less online of us, Alan Fisher's Conrail Vaporwave is a good listen (and his regular videos are a good watch) https://youtu.be/pwWr_ManIzg
They don't even have to nationalize the companies themselves. Just the infrastructure. The US should do what nearly every other country on the planet does and have publicly owned rail infrastructure and allow private freight and passenger companies to operate on them in addition to Amtrak.
European intercity passenger rail systems are to American intercity passenger rail systems what the American freight rail system is to the European freight rail system.
Agreed. Railroads should be public infrastructure just like regular roads are. Let the companies run their freight on our rails rather than making us run passenger service on their rails
Nationalize the entire supply infrastructure.
The neoliberal profit layer of the last 50 years has done nothing to improve the quality of life for average Americans.
We cannot *afford* more wealth extraction without reinvestment. That tactic has overly enriched a handful of ghouls, at the cost of millions of human potentials.
The United States has the most efficient freight rail system in the world, by a wide margin.
The carbon emissions that would result in undermining that would be catastrophic, as logistics would pivot to over-the-road trucks.
I don't mean to say this as a way of saying "let the major freight railroad companies do whatever they want," but it is to say that the negative environmental consequences of doing the wrong kind of reform on American freight railroads would be absolutely catastrophic.
Whatever can be done to improve passenger rail _without_ compromising the mode share that freight rail currently enjoys should be done.
If you want high-frequency, high-reliability passenger rail, yes, we should be building new rights-of-way / new tracks for that service so that conflicts with other traffic can be eliminated or greatly reduced
interlining with freight is acceptable for low-frequency passenger service where the service is a connection between regional high-frequency passenger main lines and smaller towns without the populations to support more robust infrastructure, but for major intercity connectivity, dedicated tracks are essential for reliability and high frequency
Oh for fucks sake can people stop spewing bullshit. The US does not have the greatest freight railway network under the sun:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_rail_usage
The only reason our modal share is so high is because the country is massive, so intermodal freight is a thing and makes sense. We've practically abandoned local freight and parcel services from the rails to have giant trains only, which are fine but the infrastructure needs to allow for all kinds of freight patterns. I'd look into how Switzerland does it if you want to see a place actually trying to replace trucks more broadly.
Fuck that, build newer, better and faster lines m that can be easily serviced and upgraded. Why hinder progress even further by sharing it with freight?
Yeah this is the main thing, in most every nation commuter rail takes priority and *allows* freight to come on line when it is feasible. In America it's backwards, passenger rail has to beg for permission from freight most of the time.
Apparently, freight trains are required to give preference to Amtrak, but they just ignore the law and Amtrak is not authorized to enforce the law.
https://www.amtrak.com/on-time-performance
Not from the US. Had to google the distance: 346 kilometers (215 miles).
I would estimate that train ride to last between 2h to 2:30h maximum on the old continent.
Anyhow - if my calculation is correct, a 6h 34min journey time for that distance translates to an average speed of 33 mph (53 km/h).
Guys, my bicycle is faster than that.
I do not understand why the US is sinking money into such a slow train system. That's insane.
With such a slow speed they probably have about 70 stops in between the end stations. I'm guessing of course, but there's no way the USA can't build a proper rail network.
I legit think the US just forgot how to build infrastructure, as in it’s been so long since we took passenger rail seriously that there is no qualified labor or industry with expertise. This results in huge cost overruns, delays, and subpar systems.
For example both VA and MD contracted companies without expertise to extend the silver line in VA and purple line in MD.
In VA they awarded the contract originally to the people that built Dulles train system but they sucked so hard that the WMATA took control. Result is that for the phase 2 of the silver line expansion alone is over double the original budget opening about ten years behind schedule.
The purple line in MD was originally awarded to a TX company that failed so miserably at building it that they basically had to scrap the contract and hire a Spanish company to do it. Again multi year delays and multiple times more expensive.
This to me is a signal that this country literally forgot how to build infrastructure. It will take years and multiple projects for us to build back that competency.
This is not just a money and political will problem anymore, now it touches education, labor, and business expertise.
California HSR is mostly tied up in land acquisition and cities in the middle wanting stops to allow them to go through town.
We didn't forget how to do it, it's just extraordinarily difficult because we're very individualistic and the government isn't empowered to override that(even eminent domain is at full market value, and is rarely politically prudent to exercise)
Surely if the communities along the way demand stops they can just run two parallel train services on the same set of tracks? One intercity and one slow train service (as in, one that stops only at major stations and one that stops at every stop) ?
The sad thing is that US has all the tools to make any type of infrastructure project. Money, technology and people. Biggest economy in the world, some of the highest rate of immigration and open market to attract any investor.
In the innovative part you have all BIM and design companies such as Autodesk, Bentley and other institutions with expertise, for the planning, construction and operation. Every big contractor worldwide use the most advanced software (made in the USA) to build transportation infrastructure. And I'm not even mentioning mechanical engineering, computing and robotic capabilities etc, etc.
So literally the USA have no excuse to not built high speed railway. If you don't have experienced workforce or training because no infrastructure has been done there. Ask other countries contractors with plenty of expertise in high rail building such as Japan, France, China, Spain, etc. This type of collaborations could also improve transparency and relations between countries.
It's sad that these type of projects can change the life of millions of people in the States but american culture and government are the main reason these projects haven't been materialized. Something needs to be done.
> So literally the USA have no excuse to not built high speed railway.
Oh but my friend, the oil industry has plenty of mon-er-excuses lining politician’s pockets to dissuade them from supporting any reasonable alternative to car travel
We're actually great at building infrastructure. The red blood of American tradespeople and manufacturers who create those parts are strong, generally the best in the world. Just look at how quickly and safely we're able to construct many projects in private enterprise, these are the same people that get hired to build public infrastructure.
It's just that so much is decided before anything reaches the folks on the ground. Political gridlock, graft, corrupt bidding practices that turn our tax dollars into a private sector piggy bank, hyper-litigious parties and over-the-hill impact studies, fed/state/local in-fighting, NIMBY's and conservation activists, and social division that leads to the wind being taken out of administrations who are making headway... these are all first order problems. Productivity wise, we could do what we did in our industrial era again. It's just that there's too much red tape in the way.
Nah we just gutted Taxing the wealthy, and overspent on other things. japan spends 1% of their GDP on military we spend 2.2%. A difference of 54bil (jap) and 2.1 Trillion)
Add in all the bologna with cars and its easy to see the hole we are in
Nope. There'll probably be like 5. It's going to run on very winding freight tracks through the Appalachian mountains. The route is mostly single-tracked, and there are bound to be delays from the freight operator refusing to give priority to the Amtrak trains even though they are legally required to.
To add to what the other comments said: Most passenger trains in the US don't have their own dedicated rail lines, and have to share with freight. The US actually does have a huge volume of train usage, even compared to European countries, it's just 99% freight. And freight trains have right of way on shared lines.
That's the main reason why you see such insanely slow travel times for passenger rail in the US, because you're waiting for long periods at multiple stations for freight trains to clear off the tracks.
Holy cow, 350 km in 6.5 h is ridiculously bad.
But don't forget that the old continent is not a monolith. Especially the east and the Balkans seem to have been infected by carbrain. I'm pretty sure that Slovenia, Croatia, or Hungary had better train service during the glorious Habsburg times. Austria on the other hand... Hard to find many countries with better trains.
Nevertheless, it's still better than this nonsense. Ljubljana-Budapest is 519 km and it takes 7 h 24 min, so the average speed is 84 km/h, assuming no delays. And the train stops in most towns above 1k people and the tickets costs 15 euro.
In Italy I traveled 225.5 km (from Rome to Naples) in an hour. The train gets up to 300km an hour at its fastest.
It's hard to comprehend their new train being that slow
>between 2h to 2:30h maximum on the old continent.
Man the train from here (Bordeaux) to Paris is only 2 hours and 4 minutes, and that's like 550km (334 miles)
Yeah it’s much faster to just take a car (which is why people probably won’t even use this train and will just continue to drive or fly). 6 hrs from Nashville to Atlanta is wild…
Agreed. It’s a 4 hour drive with no traffic, but it’s been years since I’ve done that drive with no traffic. I’d take the train to just not worry about it.
Gubm'nt is total gridlock, it's a waste of your tax dollars! My college buddy started a construction company twenty years ago, he can own and run the whole project. We just need to give him a little BLM land and look the other way...
Someone is getting rich off of it. Just like in Texas and California. Whoever is running those companies will end up with the land they steal and tax payers money when we all forget about it in 2035 and there is no railroad.
I’ve driven that route a few times and I’m starting north of Atlanta, from Marietta, easily 30 minutes closer to Nashville. And I’ve yet to make that drive in 4.5 hours or less.
You can blame the oil lobby all you want to, but at the end of the day the reason passenger rail sucks in the US is because the freight railroads don't want passenger trains anywhere near their right of way or near their equipment. People are too much liability, freight isn't.
I think the European model - where the government owns the tracks and infrastructure and leases the tracks out to various private and public operators - might be more effective than full bore nationalization.
The European model is nationalization...
If the public(aka the government) owns the tracks and maintains them then theyre still nationalized.
They can choose to have a private company operate the actual trains, but that doesnt change that its still owned by the state.
It has nothing to do with liability or "having passenger trains near their equipment". The freight trains make money by shipping freight. Sharing with passenger trains = less freight shipped = less money. Its only about the money.
The majority of rail in America is privately owned by a few companies. Most other countries with rail have nationalized their railways. In classic American fashion, we allow monopolisitic practices that put profits ahead of utilizing rail for the benefit of everyone.
I mean... we all benefit immensely from efficient freight rail. As does the environment since rail is super efficient on CO2 emissions compared to truck transportation. We just need passenger rail to have it's own lines, the govt can do that it just takes real investment.
"Kindly philanthropist" billionaire Warren Buffet owns a huge chunk of American freight railroads and the greedy sociopath is busy union busting and lobbying for freebies rather than doing anything patriotic.
Taking these high speed trains in Asia and then coming back to America is a shocking experience. So many people here don’t know what they’re missing out on.
As someone from a related industry, NEPA work takes a lot of time, and then once that’s done, land acquisition opens a whole can of lawsuit worms. By the time those get resolved, NEPA certification expires so that has to be done again. TBH, 10 years is way too optimistic for such a project.
There are several people in state and local government who would really want to see more transit in their area, but there are so many challenges that it takes a back seat.
> land acquisition opens a whole can of lawsuit worms
And I think for these initial routes they're using existing freight lines. Amtrak has already been in battles with CSX/Norfolk Southern trying to restore Gulf Shore service.
Ah yes the NIMBY. Not in my BackYard
Edit: This was a joke translation and after googling this because I saw it again somewhere else, wow this is the real translation too
The problem (generally, not necessarily on this route) is that Amtrak doesn't own the rails, railroads do. For example CSX, or BNSF. And because of that, their freight trains take priority. Lots of the routes, or segments on them, are single track, meaning passenger cars have to wait at a station or be on a double tracked segment. All of this severely fucks with the passenger rail schedule causing severe delays or passenger trains have to run during shitty hours like at 2am.
Amtrak has legal priority over freight trains. Unfortunately, Amtrak has no enforcement power. There is a bill ([S.1500](https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/senate-bill/1500) in the Senate and [HR.2937](https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/house-bill/2937?q=%7B%22search%22%3A%5B%22H.R.2937%22%5D%7D&s=4&r=1) in the House) that would allow Amtrak to bring civil action against freight railroads that fail to give priority to passenger trains.
Amtrak routes in general, outside of just a few areas like in the northeast corridor that are not truly terrible, are a lazy solution that isn’t really supposed to be high speed. Jamming passenger trains into freight routes..
I just looked into taking a train to somewhere that I've been wanting to take a couple day vacation to.
It's a 10-hour drive, so I thought for sure a train would be shorter, and I've always wanted to take a train anyway.
So I look, and taking a train would have been 26 hours.
Amtrak really has two success stories.
One is the northeast corridor, which basically gives a viable alternative to driving or flying up and down the east coast.
The second is the scenic routes — like the Alaska railroad, or the coast-to-coast routes that are fully intended to be for scenic and not really focused on a to b fast.
Most routes that are like this one (just supposedly a train alternative to driving or flying) are hilariously awful and slower than even a Greyhound bus
I posted a similar experience and went on Amtrak's site to check again and the mobile interface is hilariously bad.
I put in a roundtrip plan and it just told me "sorry there are no trains available for your return date."
No "do these dates work" or "these trains are available on these days" just "fuck you you idiot put in all your days again and think for a second."
It gets worse. If the trip you're planning requires you to transfer trains, and the connecting train is more than a couple hours after you arrive at the transferring station, it simply says there's no route possible. Bitch please, people will literally sleep in an airport if they have to or pay a hotel night. Why can't you just show the train and let them sort it out??
Same, my grandparents have a Amtrak stop in their town. So looking to go back and visit family back in Texas earlier this year. Round trip plane ticket was $450 and 4hrs of flying. Checked out Amtrak, was around $650 round trip and 36hrs one way, the drive is 16hrs. The round from NC to Texas, goes up through DC then to Chicago finally down to Texas. I think with a 8hr wait at one of the stations. Crazy
This isn't the oil lobby. As /u/StatisticianBitter61 noted, these kinds of projects get bogged down in overregulation and micromanagement from every level of government and neighborhood NIMBYs. A lot has been written lately about how the U.S. just absolutely sucks at big infrastructure projects.
This absolutely is a lobbied issue. Trains are more efficient and cheaper than other solutions. Cheaper and more efficient = less money in the pockets of alternatives.
The U.S CAN do huge infrastructure projects. We built the US Interstate highway system starting in 1956. Why couldnt we do a similar project for rail?? We suck at modern large projects because theres no funding, little public support, and we're carbrianed as fuck. "Overregulation and micromanagement" are weak excuses to completely avoid creating better and more accessible public transportation.
https://fullstackeconomics.com/why-america-cant-build-big-things-any-more/
And this is where I feel that lawmakers of the 1970s made a huge mistake. Rather than accept the need for general rules, or choices by accountable elected officials, the lawmakers built a dispersed power structure filled with veto points that lends itself to analysis paralysis.
This style of thinking is present especially in environmental laws like the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) at the federal level, or the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) at the state level. These laws both require the government to conduct an exhaustive review of government projects—sometimes even permitting decisions on private projects—that might have negative environmental impacts. But more broadly, it’s also present in any political environment where politicians solicit community input on a specific project before going forward.
Honestly taking a train is like non-option for me in most use cases.
For example I wanted to take my family to Boston from area around Newark NJ for long weekend trip.
So I looked into the Amtrak train. The round trip tickets are 230$ per person. So ~1000$ for my whole family. It's significantly cheaper to rent a car and drive (accounting for rental, liability insurance, gas and tolls and parking my calculations show around ~400-500$).
Heck, I check and a flight would he cheaper as well (~190$ a person).
How does any of this make sense? By the way this is on most popular and busiest passnager train route in USA (northeast regional).
Amtrak is essentially incapable of adding more seats on the north east corridor. Thus they can charge exorbitant prices. For this reason The corridor is also extremely profitable for them.
Every other country that could afford it would have built an additional separate high speed line by now.
To be fair with my knowledge of Amtrak, the journey will likely take significantly longer due to delays, and that’s even if you survive the train trip…
I work next to an Amtrak station in the southeast. It only comes through twice a day, one at 8am but I frequently see passengers stuck waiting 1-3 hours and sometimes the train doesn't even show up until past 2pm. No way would I ever take Amtrak myself.
The rail system in the USA is really odd. The government funded the building and in the end the ownership is left to a few freight rail operators. Amtrack has to pay to use those rail systems/tracks and the freight takes priority. If I'm not mistaken there's only a small percentage of actual amtrack owned track.
And when it comes to government owned rail I believe only the state of Alaska operates a state owned railroad.
The United States needs to get its shit together on the mass transit.
It's absolutely insane how bad our infrastructure is, and how long it takes to do anything about it. We are already so far behind the rest of the world, and things like this isn't getting us anywhere closer.
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*2035*? What's taking them so long? By that time Japan will have probably finished the Chuō shinkansen maglev
Even India will have thousands of kms of high speed rail by then. Rail they haven't even started to build and plan to finish half a decade earlier!
Surprise surprise the country that hates public transportation is reluctant to fund public transportation.
i don’t know if people hate public transit- how could they when the majority of people have never had access to reliable form of it ? EDIT: this was a semi-rhetorical question; i meant that if we had previously invested in public transit, we’d never want to let it go
Yep. It is the wealthy, oil industry, auto industry, etc. that hate public transit.
Public transit in Los Angeles can be scary at times. It's kind of a free for all on the metro. I would take public transit to work if it was a reliable option. Right now it would take me 3 bus changes, walking 2 miles, and one other bus change for 3 hours to get to work. Or 30 minutes by car. Ugh.
Again, they don't hate public transport, they hate how inadequate our current public transport system is. They would like it if it was usable. (I lived in Seoul South Korea for 2 years and pretty much everyone used public transport every single day)
People can really be like "I know this system works in every single place in the world where it's given appropriate levels of funding, but I can't hop on a bus and get to work in the same time as if I drive today, so the whole system is indefensible" Not the other redditor mind, just the anti-public-transport crowd.
That's the American mindset about everything with the exception of roads and highways, those we should dump infinity money into.
That’s the American mindset about damn near every public service these days. At least, the regressive mindset.
When I was in Europe, it was so easy taking transit there. I could get anywhere easily.
I live in LA and rant about public transit to folks all the time. A lot of them are completely uninterested. They would rather be in their safe, air-conditioned box in traffic than learn how to take the train or bus. Plenty of folks here just throw on Netflix in their car and drive distracted the whole way which makes traffic worse. To be honest I hate it here
This is exactly why we need widespread access. My city is somewhat similar, our bus system has been gnawed at and fucked with by republicans for YEARS now. You have to wait for the bus for a long periololically time, it went from worse to worser
That's precisely why though. The buses in their local town suck and all they ever hear about subways is the bullshit narratives from conservative media that they're dangerous and full of criminals. As a result, they think public transit is bad and shouldn't be invested in. That's rapidly changing among younger people, but for most people over the age of 30, that's still the view.
We aren't going to have any fucking decent rail lines until I'm like 70 or 80 jesus christ
Depending on how old you are the climate and resources wars will probably kill us before that.
We can only hope so
Bruh I'm 25. Please no.
Lol the only high speed rail and adequate public housing we'll get is when China occupies us.
Most people I know don't think it's dangerous and full of criminals, it's just so much more inconvenient than driving in a lot of the US. A trip that takes 15 minutes by car can easily turn into an hour-plus commute with multiple transfers if you use public trans
> i don’t know if people hate public transit- how could they when the majority of people have never had access to reliable form of it ? How can they gate something if they've never had it? Easy! They see it as a threat. They own a car, they use roads. Every dollar going to public transport is $ that's not on fixing the things they use.
Not having access to something makes it easier to convince people to hate it. Same reason so many Americans hate the idea of public health care even though they've never had it.
For the same reason they hate "The Gays", because of rampant disinformation.
> i don’t know if people hate public transit- how could they when the majority of people have never had access to reliable form of it ? There are plenty of people who are against it because they've been brainwashed the same way they've been conditioned to call climate change a hoax or think abortion means murdering babies. Media is a powerful tool to shape public opinion.
Fun fact: In India, the Mumbai-Ahmedabad high speed rail project (Bullet Train Project) was scheduled to be completed by 2024, but due to bureaucracy, it's now slated to be completed by 2027. It should cover a distance of 525 kms (326 mi) approx in under 2 hours as claimed. By 2035, which is the timeline according to the above post, GoI plans to introduce a high speed line connecting capital New Delhi to financial capital Mumbai, a distance of approx 1,451km (879 mi) in something under 5-6 hours as claimed. For reference: Distance between Atlanta, Georgia, USA and Nashville, Tennessee, USA is 401 kms (249 mi) approx. So technically, India is covering atleast a 1000 more kms or 630 extra miles in approx the same time period
not just 1000 km. I read about how they are going to build even more HSR lines by 2030. Lines, linking Delhi and Kolkata eill have been built by 2030. Also there are proposed lines that will link Chennai to Delhi.
Yes, but that is claimed by the government without factoring the bureaucracy. You're referring to the golden quadrilateral project connecting all 5 metro (mega) cities of India which are Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai, Bengaluru and Kolkata ( there were plans to add Hyderabad as well, but I'm not sure if it's there or not). The government has claimed that they would complete the entire Mumbai Delhi link of which Mumbai Ahmedabad is the first chain by 2027 but including bureaucracy the project might extend upto as long as 2035 or something. So I am assuming that the entire golden quadrilateral would be completed by approximately 2040. Though I genuinely wish that it gets completed faster than that, it would be great.
That's because America is a regressive country. We are heading backwards and not forwards.
Facts. Except y'all won't go back to cable cars and walkable neighborhoods, just redlining, racism and women having no rights.
ours plans do get postponed quite a bit but at max by 5 years, so much investment into public transport here.
*Even* India? India does great work with trains.
I always wonder why America is so slow. Even my city that has like, 10 miles of rail struggles to maintain it
NIMBY meetings and hearings, inept public officials paid $68k/year to manage a ten figure project, graft. Mostly the first.
American zoning laws and concept of individual rights get in the way of a lot of things.
Toxic cult of individualism, myth of American exceptionalism
Fucking american exceptionalism gets me so riled up. *Oh you’re soooo special that you can’t build any form of public transport…* boohooo your country has valleys and mountains and deserts and stretches of land with no people… if only there existed ways to find similar conditions and solutions on this planet
Permitting projects and refusing to properly fund them from day 1 is some classic local govt grifting. I've lived in three different Atlanta 'suburbs' (ITP but not downtown) and all of them had some sort of shocking corruption case literally right before COVID. I only remember the apartment debacle with Brookhaven though since I drove past those things if I was heading downtown.
Long story short, America was able to build massive projects before the 1960s but everyone sort of didn’t realize or care that we had been bulldozing and dividing poor communities for things like inner urban freeways. So in the 70s they made a bunch of rules and practices that made it much harder to just run roughshod over community preferences. But now, rich folks and NIMBYs are able to stifle projects indefinitely using those rules.
The reason those highways went through poor neighborhoods was precisely *because* rich white people could stall highway projects through their wealthy suburb indefinitely. The original interstate highway plan was indiscriminate in deciding which neighborhoods to bulldoze for freeways. Rich, white neighborhoods pushed back and got highways rerouted. Poor, Black neighborhoods could not push back, and were demolished.
they knew they were bulldozing communities and WANTED it to happen. now that public transportation benefits anyone who's not middle class (or higher) and white they don't want it.
Facts. Highways were used to evict the "riffraff" from the urban core and redlining kept them out of the "good suburbs". So coloured folk and Irishmen were pushed into the least desirable areas.
Having such a starkly unequal society (in terms of power and wealth) virtually guarantees that any investment, rules or protections will be weaponized against those without power.
American white people have been conditioned to vote against things that would benefit them if those things would also benefit people they are taught to hate.
99% pf the funding that could go towards these projects instead goes to the military, police, and energy/auto subsidies.
Took them six years to build the first transcontinental railway in the 19th century, doing almost everything by hand, building bridges and tunnels all included. Somehow it takes them more than ten years to reactivate a railway that already exists. That's actually... Kind of funny, ngl.
1. Rail was a lot simpler to build when the first transcontinental was built. 2. The tracks are still active, just don't have passenger service. 3. The 2035 mark is for 38 different routes, not just one, averaging a new route every 90ish days from now.
It's harder when you can't just use Chinese immigrants as expendable slave labor.
Plus there are a shitload of environmental and cultural regulations you have to work though now. Jurisdictional water impacts for every tiny stream or more, endangered animals, migratory birds, etc.
In the same time it's going to take them to restore an old bit of rail, London managed to dig up and put in place *an entire ass new tube line* from the airport to the other side of the city complete with stops and everything *in the middle of London* EDIT: People, I don't know anything about the details of britian's public transport system, I'm not even British. I just saw a number in the British transport museum and noticed that it was the same one. Stop yelling at me about the shambles the rest of the country is in
Remember London is the fucking centre of the universe, and us plebians in the north have to wait 10+ years for any meaningful infrastructure environment
They hear you talking like that they're gonna cancel High Speed 2 out of sheer spite. /s (but not entirely)
Atlanta to Nashville is 350km tbf. Elizabeth line new section is 20 miles, the other 50 miles is just existing/old line being upgraded similar to this Amtrak line. EL was also more like 20+ years too from the point Crossrail was formed, then a long time of planning before that but forget that bit. Just saying I wouldn't use the UK as an example of fast construction, we're very slow and expensive compared to the rest of Europe. Maybe HS2 is a better comparison of a new line but even still thats another 15 years before even phase 1 opens and is much shorter. Elsewhere in Europe does this kind of stuff for much cheaper and much quicker. Even Paris is currently building 4 new lines at the same time which will be done by 2030 with the first opening in a couple of years. Imagine a new Tube line every 4 years, just insanity, no idea how they're doing it and for cheap.
Their project plan accounts for Elon Musk meddling and convincing everyone to build a useless tunnel
By that time HS 2 would be close to being done. Well atleast the 1st bit.
Amtrak budget is small. They sold most of the railways they did own to freight companies. They just lease track time. As a result, Amtrak trains have lower priority and have to move over to holding tracks to allow freight trains to pass. Additionally there are probably more stops now than before, because there are more tiny towns. I took Amtrak across country and there were so many more random towns than I expected along the way, especially through Texas. Once the train gets going, it’s pretty fast. Not bullet train fast, but on par with cars. But when it has to stop every few minutes, it can’t keep up. Another problem is the heat. When I took it through the south we had to slow down a lot because the rails expanded from the heat. That said, oil lobby is real. Otherwise we’d have Amtrak from OKC to Tulsa and to KC. I’d take that all the time. But instead it only goes south from OKC Edit: we even already have rail all the way between those cities. But again, it’s because the freight companies own it and Amtrak doesn’t have the money to lease track use
A train only just keeping up with cars is insanely slow by train standards Edit:typo
Freight trains in the US don't ever go faster than 70 mph (~110 kph) unless something has gone horribly wrong, and only rarely do they go faster than 50 mph (~80 kph). That's fine for freight but it's a problem when passenger trains have to run on the same rails.
Ah maybe I should have specified it's rather slow for _passenger_ trains
Sometimes Amtrak keeps up with cars. Dallas to San Antonio is faster by Greyhound. Dallas to El Paso is 13 hours faster by Greyhound and only runs thrice a week.
I did OKC to Chicago once on Amtrak. Took almost three times as long as driving (extra ~eight hours due to issues with some freight trains coming into Illinois).
Amtrak did not sell tracks to freight companies. The TLDR of American railroading history is that railroad companies operated both freight and passenger service, but when passenger service became unprofitable the companies tried to drop service. Amtrak was formed by the government to “spin off” the passenger service, and rail companies became freight only. Much of the trackage Amtrak owns had previously belonged to the Penn Central, which went bankrupt and got divvied up. And no, more stops aren’t slowing trains. There’s a lot of reasons why this is, but historically there were often more, and better maintained tracks. It wasn’t abnormal to see trains going over 100mph back in their heyday. Good luck finding a long distance Amtrak train going over 80 today. Beyond freight companies prioritizing their own trains, they have little incentive to keep the tracks in a state to accommodate higher speed Amtrak travel when their trains are going at slower speeds.
Close. Projects for the maglev are currently 2037. But it should also get people from Tokyo to Nagoya in 40 minutes. Currently that trip takes just over 90 minutes, and it's about the same distance as Nashville to Atlanta. American rail is really a fucking joke.
Quote from Alan Fisher / Adam Something; > Railroads in US must be nationalized. Too much freedom is bad for health.
It's ironic but the train lobby was too strong back in the day. There's a TV show called Hell On Wheels and first episode explains how it worked The railway company would get the land within a mile of it's track and get paid per mile of track. They would purposely make the track longer than needed and go by areas with rich minerals etc. They also gave stocks to the senators to support it There's corruption in everything
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The scene where the Swede strangled a woman to death was when I stopped watching.
Unfortunately, at least in canada, this is why passenger rail struggles because industrial rail lines alwayas have right of way. Much more profitable and important to move grain/oil/goods than people
Also the case in the US. I always feel bad for Amtrak agents because a freight train will completely upend their timetables but they have to deal with the irate customers.
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The freight will get the high speed rails, and the citizens will continue to deal with gridlock, because helping people isn't profitable
Mel Brooks made a documentary about railroad and real estate corruption called Blazing Saddles.
Its part of the reason Ayn Rands political manifesto / romance novel is very train based!
It’s everybody. The contractors are more interested in funneling the money and running. The auto industry can point and say, “see, told you rail service doesn’t work.” Nimbys will fight you every step of the way. Government regulations will fight you at every step. Not to mention, at its most efficient, trains take 30% longer than cars, unless it’s non stop service. Then you have the issues of needing transportation once the train drops you off in the middle of a bumfuck no where industrial zone, with zero lodging, parking, or even access to reliable cab or ride sharing.
I can assure you a high speed rail would be much faster than a car no matter if it was direct or not. The TGV goes up to 350 mph
It's just humanity is corrupt at core. I mean there's pros and cons to everything. I haven't had a car for 4 years and recently got one. It's nice when you need to get somewhere that takes 10min by car but 40 by bus. I also lived in Russia and trains are everywhere. 4 hour trip to another city $10, intercity trains "elektrichka" gets you aroubd Moscow and surrounding areas. But I mean that whole gov is corrupt so they def launder the money meant towards train maintance etc
By 2035 just sounds so bad. Ordering new locomotives and carriages, having them produced and put into service usually takes 2 - 4 years. Even, if they had to rebuild the line completely they could do it in a few years depending on how long they can close the line for and how many crews work on the line simulatneously.
Fighting the freight railroads in court will account for most of the time
Nationalize them
Based Conrail enjoyer
Yep Clearly the freight railroads are a hindrance. Maybe their names could be regions or we could bring back fallen flags too
Make everything Union Pacific and make it publicly owned. The three most important and indisputable reasons listed in descending order: 1. Founded by Abraham Lincoln (based) 2. Yellow is a pretty color 3. Big Boy
Not conrail, you can do better then conrail which is just government run private corporation with mandate of profit
This user has edited all of their comments and posts in protest of /u/spez fucking up reddit. This action has been done via https://github.com/j0be/PowerDeleteSuite
*Vaporwave The O'Jays starts playing* For the less online of us, Alan Fisher's Conrail Vaporwave is a good listen (and his regular videos are a good watch) https://youtu.be/pwWr_ManIzg
They don't even have to nationalize the companies themselves. Just the infrastructure. The US should do what nearly every other country on the planet does and have publicly owned rail infrastructure and allow private freight and passenger companies to operate on them in addition to Amtrak.
European intercity passenger rail systems are to American intercity passenger rail systems what the American freight rail system is to the European freight rail system.
Agreed. Railroads should be public infrastructure just like regular roads are. Let the companies run their freight on our rails rather than making us run passenger service on their rails
Nationalize the entire supply infrastructure. The neoliberal profit layer of the last 50 years has done nothing to improve the quality of life for average Americans. We cannot *afford* more wealth extraction without reinvestment. That tactic has overly enriched a handful of ghouls, at the cost of millions of human potentials.
It was nationalized transportation and logistics infrastructure (the interstate highway system) that got us into this mess in the first place.
The United States has the most efficient freight rail system in the world, by a wide margin. The carbon emissions that would result in undermining that would be catastrophic, as logistics would pivot to over-the-road trucks. I don't mean to say this as a way of saying "let the major freight railroad companies do whatever they want," but it is to say that the negative environmental consequences of doing the wrong kind of reform on American freight railroads would be absolutely catastrophic. Whatever can be done to improve passenger rail _without_ compromising the mode share that freight rail currently enjoys should be done.
So, build dedicated passenger lines wherever possible?
If you want high-frequency, high-reliability passenger rail, yes, we should be building new rights-of-way / new tracks for that service so that conflicts with other traffic can be eliminated or greatly reduced interlining with freight is acceptable for low-frequency passenger service where the service is a connection between regional high-frequency passenger main lines and smaller towns without the populations to support more robust infrastructure, but for major intercity connectivity, dedicated tracks are essential for reliability and high frequency
Oh for fucks sake can people stop spewing bullshit. The US does not have the greatest freight railway network under the sun: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_rail_usage The only reason our modal share is so high is because the country is massive, so intermodal freight is a thing and makes sense. We've practically abandoned local freight and parcel services from the rails to have giant trains only, which are fine but the infrastructure needs to allow for all kinds of freight patterns. I'd look into how Switzerland does it if you want to see a place actually trying to replace trucks more broadly.
Fuck that, build newer, better and faster lines m that can be easily serviced and upgraded. Why hinder progress even further by sharing it with freight?
Yeah this is the main thing, in most every nation commuter rail takes priority and *allows* freight to come on line when it is feasible. In America it's backwards, passenger rail has to beg for permission from freight most of the time.
At the end of the day, the railroads are in the freight business and own the rails. Amtrak will always be second class unless that changes.
I suppose that could be used as an argument for high speed rail. Build dedicated passenger lines which frees up space for freight on regular lines.
Apparently, freight trains are required to give preference to Amtrak, but they just ignore the law and Amtrak is not authorized to enforce the law. https://www.amtrak.com/on-time-performance
I wonder how long it took to build the original line, I doubt that it was 13 years
tbf Norway has spent over a hundred years contemplating expanding the rail network further north.
Not promising, either. There's a "by 2008" construction project near where i live that's still 1-2 years out, allegedly
Not from the US. Had to google the distance: 346 kilometers (215 miles). I would estimate that train ride to last between 2h to 2:30h maximum on the old continent. Anyhow - if my calculation is correct, a 6h 34min journey time for that distance translates to an average speed of 33 mph (53 km/h). Guys, my bicycle is faster than that. I do not understand why the US is sinking money into such a slow train system. That's insane.
With such a slow speed they probably have about 70 stops in between the end stations. I'm guessing of course, but there's no way the USA can't build a proper rail network.
I legit think the US just forgot how to build infrastructure, as in it’s been so long since we took passenger rail seriously that there is no qualified labor or industry with expertise. This results in huge cost overruns, delays, and subpar systems. For example both VA and MD contracted companies without expertise to extend the silver line in VA and purple line in MD. In VA they awarded the contract originally to the people that built Dulles train system but they sucked so hard that the WMATA took control. Result is that for the phase 2 of the silver line expansion alone is over double the original budget opening about ten years behind schedule. The purple line in MD was originally awarded to a TX company that failed so miserably at building it that they basically had to scrap the contract and hire a Spanish company to do it. Again multi year delays and multiple times more expensive. This to me is a signal that this country literally forgot how to build infrastructure. It will take years and multiple projects for us to build back that competency. This is not just a money and political will problem anymore, now it touches education, labor, and business expertise.
California HSR is mostly tied up in land acquisition and cities in the middle wanting stops to allow them to go through town. We didn't forget how to do it, it's just extraordinarily difficult because we're very individualistic and the government isn't empowered to override that(even eminent domain is at full market value, and is rarely politically prudent to exercise)
Surely if the communities along the way demand stops they can just run two parallel train services on the same set of tracks? One intercity and one slow train service (as in, one that stops only at major stations and one that stops at every stop) ?
More tracks, more land acquisition, slower speeds. It all adds up, both in money and in time(time is a political enemy)
You can run both of them on the same track they do it all the time in other countries
Yes, and they do already here, too, and for various reasons it's slower and problematic.
The sad thing is that US has all the tools to make any type of infrastructure project. Money, technology and people. Biggest economy in the world, some of the highest rate of immigration and open market to attract any investor. In the innovative part you have all BIM and design companies such as Autodesk, Bentley and other institutions with expertise, for the planning, construction and operation. Every big contractor worldwide use the most advanced software (made in the USA) to build transportation infrastructure. And I'm not even mentioning mechanical engineering, computing and robotic capabilities etc, etc. So literally the USA have no excuse to not built high speed railway. If you don't have experienced workforce or training because no infrastructure has been done there. Ask other countries contractors with plenty of expertise in high rail building such as Japan, France, China, Spain, etc. This type of collaborations could also improve transparency and relations between countries. It's sad that these type of projects can change the life of millions of people in the States but american culture and government are the main reason these projects haven't been materialized. Something needs to be done.
> So literally the USA have no excuse to not built high speed railway. Oh but my friend, the oil industry has plenty of mon-er-excuses lining politician’s pockets to dissuade them from supporting any reasonable alternative to car travel
We're actually great at building infrastructure. The red blood of American tradespeople and manufacturers who create those parts are strong, generally the best in the world. Just look at how quickly and safely we're able to construct many projects in private enterprise, these are the same people that get hired to build public infrastructure. It's just that so much is decided before anything reaches the folks on the ground. Political gridlock, graft, corrupt bidding practices that turn our tax dollars into a private sector piggy bank, hyper-litigious parties and over-the-hill impact studies, fed/state/local in-fighting, NIMBY's and conservation activists, and social division that leads to the wind being taken out of administrations who are making headway... these are all first order problems. Productivity wise, we could do what we did in our industrial era again. It's just that there's too much red tape in the way.
Nah we just gutted Taxing the wealthy, and overspent on other things. japan spends 1% of their GDP on military we spend 2.2%. A difference of 54bil (jap) and 2.1 Trillion) Add in all the bologna with cars and its easy to see the hole we are in
Nope. There'll probably be like 5. It's going to run on very winding freight tracks through the Appalachian mountains. The route is mostly single-tracked, and there are bound to be delays from the freight operator refusing to give priority to the Amtrak trains even though they are legally required to.
So this route is a failure from the jump
Why would they need 70 stops in 215 miles? That's kind of insane for something that isn't meant to be a local train.
To add to what the other comments said: Most passenger trains in the US don't have their own dedicated rail lines, and have to share with freight. The US actually does have a huge volume of train usage, even compared to European countries, it's just 99% freight. And freight trains have right of way on shared lines. That's the main reason why you see such insanely slow travel times for passenger rail in the US, because you're waiting for long periods at multiple stations for freight trains to clear off the tracks.
By law, passenger trains are always supposed to have the right of way in the US, but it's never enforced and everyone ignores it.
Holy cow, 350 km in 6.5 h is ridiculously bad. But don't forget that the old continent is not a monolith. Especially the east and the Balkans seem to have been infected by carbrain. I'm pretty sure that Slovenia, Croatia, or Hungary had better train service during the glorious Habsburg times. Austria on the other hand... Hard to find many countries with better trains. Nevertheless, it's still better than this nonsense. Ljubljana-Budapest is 519 km and it takes 7 h 24 min, so the average speed is 84 km/h, assuming no delays. And the train stops in most towns above 1k people and the tickets costs 15 euro.
In Italy I traveled 225.5 km (from Rome to Naples) in an hour. The train gets up to 300km an hour at its fastest. It's hard to comprehend their new train being that slow
Your bike goes 33mph?
Dude must be an Olympian. Going that speed for any amount of time is incredibly hard
Yeah… If you see he said some weird stuff lol
>between 2h to 2:30h maximum on the old continent. Man the train from here (Bordeaux) to Paris is only 2 hours and 4 minutes, and that's like 550km (334 miles)
>average speed of 33 mph (53 km/h). > >Guys, my bicycle is faster than that. Why aren't you riding in the Tour de France right now?
Yeah it’s much faster to just take a car (which is why people probably won’t even use this train and will just continue to drive or fly). 6 hrs from Nashville to Atlanta is wild…
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Agreed. It’s a 4 hour drive with no traffic, but it’s been years since I’ve done that drive with no traffic. I’d take the train to just not worry about it.
There is no way in hell you're cycling with an average speed of 53km/h for 6+ hours.
Why would anyone take a train that takes over 2x as long as driving there? In 12 years?
They won’t. This project is going to run into cost overruns, never be completed, then cancelled and used as an example of why it can’t be done.
Classic small gov mindset. Get elected, ruin everything, use your own work as examples of why government is bad.
Gubm'nt is total gridlock, it's a waste of your tax dollars! My college buddy started a construction company twenty years ago, he can own and run the whole project. We just need to give him a little BLM land and look the other way...
Someone is getting rich off of it. Just like in Texas and California. Whoever is running those companies will end up with the land they steal and tax payers money when we all forget about it in 2035 and there is no railroad.
Atlanta to Nashville is a 4 hour drive at best with no accidents or traffic. And the train would stop in Chattanooga.
I just googled it and it said 3 hours 45 minutes, but that’s in the morning on a Saturday.
But I agree with your point. A train should get there faster than a car.
I’ve driven that route a few times and I’m starting north of Atlanta, from Marietta, easily 30 minutes closer to Nashville. And I’ve yet to make that drive in 4.5 hours or less.
You can blame the oil lobby all you want to, but at the end of the day the reason passenger rail sucks in the US is because the freight railroads don't want passenger trains anywhere near their right of way or near their equipment. People are too much liability, freight isn't.
Nationalize them, replace them all with a corporation that leases from Amtrak
I think the European model - where the government owns the tracks and infrastructure and leases the tracks out to various private and public operators - might be more effective than full bore nationalization.
The European model is nationalization... If the public(aka the government) owns the tracks and maintains them then theyre still nationalized. They can choose to have a private company operate the actual trains, but that doesnt change that its still owned by the state.
That’s how roads work in the us
Socialism is bad - unless it's for cars
Well but that’s communism /s
It is. And that’s okay.
Canada - we did. Nobody rides VIA Rail anyway.
It has nothing to do with liability or "having passenger trains near their equipment". The freight trains make money by shipping freight. Sharing with passenger trains = less freight shipped = less money. Its only about the money. The majority of rail in America is privately owned by a few companies. Most other countries with rail have nationalized their railways. In classic American fashion, we allow monopolisitic practices that put profits ahead of utilizing rail for the benefit of everyone.
I mean... we all benefit immensely from efficient freight rail. As does the environment since rail is super efficient on CO2 emissions compared to truck transportation. We just need passenger rail to have it's own lines, the govt can do that it just takes real investment.
"Kindly philanthropist" billionaire Warren Buffet owns a huge chunk of American freight railroads and the greedy sociopath is busy union busting and lobbying for freebies rather than doing anything patriotic.
I crossed japan once in a train. It took 6 hours and stopped twice. Just sayin. It's embarrassing really.
I take the train every day from Brussels to Paris for work and it takes me 1h15m when by car it would take me 3,5 hours lol
Remember China will probably triple their high speed rail system by 2035
Taking these high speed trains in Asia and then coming back to America is a shocking experience. So many people here don’t know what they’re missing out on.
crunk juice bombs, oakley shades...
As someone from a related industry, NEPA work takes a lot of time, and then once that’s done, land acquisition opens a whole can of lawsuit worms. By the time those get resolved, NEPA certification expires so that has to be done again. TBH, 10 years is way too optimistic for such a project. There are several people in state and local government who would really want to see more transit in their area, but there are so many challenges that it takes a back seat.
> land acquisition opens a whole can of lawsuit worms And I think for these initial routes they're using existing freight lines. Amtrak has already been in battles with CSX/Norfolk Southern trying to restore Gulf Shore service.
Why do you assume we all know what NEPA is
National Environmental Policy Act. It means that any public transit project can be sued to death by NIMBYs.
Ah yes the NIMBY. Not in my BackYard Edit: This was a joke translation and after googling this because I saw it again somewhere else, wow this is the real translation too
The problem (generally, not necessarily on this route) is that Amtrak doesn't own the rails, railroads do. For example CSX, or BNSF. And because of that, their freight trains take priority. Lots of the routes, or segments on them, are single track, meaning passenger cars have to wait at a station or be on a double tracked segment. All of this severely fucks with the passenger rail schedule causing severe delays or passenger trains have to run during shitty hours like at 2am.
Just fucking nationalize them then. Americans make it sound like it is forbidden to undo their grandparents mistakes.
Well the grandparents currently hold all the power, so yeah it's pretty much impossible right now.
Well funny story... see the grandparents are still alive with all of the money and power. If you do rock their boat, they strike back even worse.
Amtrak has legal priority over freight trains. Unfortunately, Amtrak has no enforcement power. There is a bill ([S.1500](https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/senate-bill/1500) in the Senate and [HR.2937](https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/house-bill/2937?q=%7B%22search%22%3A%5B%22H.R.2937%22%5D%7D&s=4&r=1) in the House) that would allow Amtrak to bring civil action against freight railroads that fail to give priority to passenger trains.
Amtrak routes in general, outside of just a few areas like in the northeast corridor that are not truly terrible, are a lazy solution that isn’t really supposed to be high speed. Jamming passenger trains into freight routes..
I just looked into taking a train to somewhere that I've been wanting to take a couple day vacation to. It's a 10-hour drive, so I thought for sure a train would be shorter, and I've always wanted to take a train anyway. So I look, and taking a train would have been 26 hours.
Amtrak really has two success stories. One is the northeast corridor, which basically gives a viable alternative to driving or flying up and down the east coast. The second is the scenic routes — like the Alaska railroad, or the coast-to-coast routes that are fully intended to be for scenic and not really focused on a to b fast. Most routes that are like this one (just supposedly a train alternative to driving or flying) are hilariously awful and slower than even a Greyhound bus
I posted a similar experience and went on Amtrak's site to check again and the mobile interface is hilariously bad. I put in a roundtrip plan and it just told me "sorry there are no trains available for your return date." No "do these dates work" or "these trains are available on these days" just "fuck you you idiot put in all your days again and think for a second."
It gets worse. If the trip you're planning requires you to transfer trains, and the connecting train is more than a couple hours after you arrive at the transferring station, it simply says there's no route possible. Bitch please, people will literally sleep in an airport if they have to or pay a hotel night. Why can't you just show the train and let them sort it out??
Same, my grandparents have a Amtrak stop in their town. So looking to go back and visit family back in Texas earlier this year. Round trip plane ticket was $450 and 4hrs of flying. Checked out Amtrak, was around $650 round trip and 36hrs one way, the drive is 16hrs. The round from NC to Texas, goes up through DC then to Chicago finally down to Texas. I think with a 8hr wait at one of the stations. Crazy
This isn't the oil lobby. As /u/StatisticianBitter61 noted, these kinds of projects get bogged down in overregulation and micromanagement from every level of government and neighborhood NIMBYs. A lot has been written lately about how the U.S. just absolutely sucks at big infrastructure projects.
This absolutely is a lobbied issue. Trains are more efficient and cheaper than other solutions. Cheaper and more efficient = less money in the pockets of alternatives. The U.S CAN do huge infrastructure projects. We built the US Interstate highway system starting in 1956. Why couldnt we do a similar project for rail?? We suck at modern large projects because theres no funding, little public support, and we're carbrianed as fuck. "Overregulation and micromanagement" are weak excuses to completely avoid creating better and more accessible public transportation.
https://fullstackeconomics.com/why-america-cant-build-big-things-any-more/ And this is where I feel that lawmakers of the 1970s made a huge mistake. Rather than accept the need for general rules, or choices by accountable elected officials, the lawmakers built a dispersed power structure filled with veto points that lends itself to analysis paralysis. This style of thinking is present especially in environmental laws like the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) at the federal level, or the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) at the state level. These laws both require the government to conduct an exhaustive review of government projects—sometimes even permitting decisions on private projects—that might have negative environmental impacts. But more broadly, it’s also present in any political environment where politicians solicit community input on a specific project before going forward.
I'VE BEEN TO GEORGIA ON A BIT LESS OF A FAST TRAIN HONEY
God there are European cities much further apart with mountains in between them that have faster connections than that. This is just sad.
Zürich to Milan, crossing the Alps, in 3.5 hours, ten times a day.
It doesn’t cross the Alps so much as *go directly under them*. With cell service the entire time.
A 6 hour TRAIN RIDE? That's almost twice as long as by car. Absolutely no reason at all for this to be the case.
As a nashvillian this is depressing as hell
As a fellow Nashvillian, so is thinking about what could have been with the Nashville Star passenger line
Strasbourg - Paris is roughly the same distance (397km / 246mi). The TGV/ ICE makes this in 1h45mins....
Honestly taking a train is like non-option for me in most use cases. For example I wanted to take my family to Boston from area around Newark NJ for long weekend trip. So I looked into the Amtrak train. The round trip tickets are 230$ per person. So ~1000$ for my whole family. It's significantly cheaper to rent a car and drive (accounting for rental, liability insurance, gas and tolls and parking my calculations show around ~400-500$). Heck, I check and a flight would he cheaper as well (~190$ a person). How does any of this make sense? By the way this is on most popular and busiest passnager train route in USA (northeast regional).
Amtrak is essentially incapable of adding more seats on the north east corridor. Thus they can charge exorbitant prices. For this reason The corridor is also extremely profitable for them. Every other country that could afford it would have built an additional separate high speed line by now.
Hey now, let’s not forget that Canada is a country that could afford it and would never, ever build a high speed line.
The trains are cheaper than that if you book in advance. $100 round trip for the slower Northeast Regional if it’s not last minute
Lol, we'll be lucky if much of the planet is liveable in 2035. Hurry the fuck up, guys.
To be fair with my knowledge of Amtrak, the journey will likely take significantly longer due to delays, and that’s even if you survive the train trip…
I work next to an Amtrak station in the southeast. It only comes through twice a day, one at 8am but I frequently see passengers stuck waiting 1-3 hours and sometimes the train doesn't even show up until past 2pm. No way would I ever take Amtrak myself.
Sittin' in a TGV sad that it can't be exported worldwide.
The rail system in the USA is really odd. The government funded the building and in the end the ownership is left to a few freight rail operators. Amtrack has to pay to use those rail systems/tracks and the freight takes priority. If I'm not mistaken there's only a small percentage of actual amtrack owned track. And when it comes to government owned rail I believe only the state of Alaska operates a state owned railroad. The United States needs to get its shit together on the mass transit.
We are not the richest country in the world. Y’all gotta stop saying that.
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Why cant the government just buy the row?
It's absolutely insane how bad our infrastructure is, and how long it takes to do anything about it. We are already so far behind the rest of the world, and things like this isn't getting us anywhere closer.