I had some vacation time and I’ve never ridden a train before, so I thought I’d look it up. I’d seen a few YouTube videos and it looked like something I’d like. I’m not a fan of air travel at all.
I went to look up tickets and was shocked at the price. I could drive for cheaper and faster including my own stops. I could fly for cheaper and faster and wouldn’t have to pay for a sleeper car or hotel. It seems like there’s no benefit to taking a train at all. Even the hassle of flying is worth the time and money saved.
Ps and why does a sleeper car (the thing that had me curious from YouTube) $1000/night?!
Not enough people use it so the fixed costs are higher per passenger. That’s the concrete reason but it’s decades if not a century at this point of subsidizing cars and highways instead.
It becomes a cycle. We had that problem in Orlando. The “high speed” rail It was too expensive so nobody took it which made it even more expensive. I’d love to take a train to Tampa and do some gambling, get drunk, take a train back.
But not if it’s way more expensive than driving.
Yeah the sleeper car was so expensive it was wild
Roads in the US are subsidized at billions of dollars. Public rail service is maybe a fraction of a fraction of that. To boot, most the railways in the US are owned by a handful of private companies in local, regional monopolies.
I’ve only taken the train a few times, I’ve flown even less, normally I just drive where I need to go. My preference is the tain. I’ve throughly enjoyed traveling everytime I’ve taken the train.
The American rail network was built mainly as private enterprise regulated by public agencies. This worked when rail had an effective monopoly on long distance travel, but fell apart when other modes could compete. When a major railroad (Penn Central) went bankrupt, the federal government relieved all private companies from having to maintain passenger service and the long distance trips went into Amtrak in the 1970’s.
Until Biden, there was little public demand for building out rail transit. The Interstate system built out a decent highway network and air deregulation meant that flights got very cheap.
Deregulation and subsidies for air male it cheaper. Having to work against that makes train a tough sell
It also doesn’t help when private train companies didn’t want to run passenger service.
Was in a train the other day. Across the European country side. Doing 160 mph. Reading a book, taking a nap. Whatever. No traffic. No dealing with road rage and aggressive drivers. Show up like 10 minutes before the train. No TSA. No hassles. Just get on the train and relax. Fuck cars and airplanes.
im claustrophobic so this is the only way i can travel without screaming FUCK really loud and freaking people out
I truly don’t understand the railway network in the US. Living in China now and the high-speed railway is amazing here.
It takes 4 hours from the center of Shanghai to the center of Beijing and next year will be cut to under 3 hours.
And nothing to do with but the US is a big country. China actually has a larger landmass than the US and I can go from one side of the country to the other by high-speed train.
It’s cheaper, more comfortable than by plane. They even have high-speed sleeper trains now for these long journeys. Japan, South Korea, Europe, UK, and even African countries like Morocco have proper high-speed rail.
The lack of investment in infrastructure in the US puts it decades behind the rest of the world. I guess to money for infrastructure goes to worthy causes like invading Venezuela and Iran.
In China, your populations are mainly confined to a few large, major cities. With farms and farming communities nearby those same cities.
I live in an unincorporated area about 30 miles outside of the nearest city, which has a population of about 250k people: Mobile, AL
It’s about 150 miles in the other direction to a fairly large city, named New Orleans, LA.
Thing is, there’s not any real “country side” between those cities. It’s all houses and neighborhoods. All of it. It’s not quite heavy enough population density to be a city, but still higher than farmland.
That said there is a passenger train service that runs from New Orleans to Mobile, with two trains, one leaves New Orleans and the other Leaves Mobile at pretty much the same time. 2 engines, 4 cars on the Mobile-based train, and 2 engines 3 cars on the New Orleans based train.
Thing is, they each have multiple stops along the way, too.
It’s a 4 hour ride in the train from end to end, and another 4 hour ride back. Each train ends up where they started at the end of the day.
So to use that train, I must drive 30miles into town, find parking, leave my car there for 8 to 10 hours, and spend maybe an hour or two in New Orleans,
Or, I could just drive for 2 hours, and spend however long I want to, in New Orleans, and not have a set schedule.
There’s absolutely not enough demand for more than the two trains in either direction for that to make any sort of sense, either.
Ok but high speed rail isn’t for connecting you to New Orleans, it’s more for connecting New Orleans to Chicago.
We’re unlikely to wind up as train connected as Japan, but let’s look at the shinkansen. It goes between major population centers and sometimes stops at decent sized cities on the way. When I had to go to a smaller town in Japan I took high speed rail from Tokyo to the nearest major city, then I took their local rail to a town, then another line to the place I was going.
For comparison this is the equivalent of flying into New York from Europe, taking high speed rail to Chicago, taking an Illinois rail network to Peoria, then taking it again to say Lincoln. Northeastern states have the rail network to do that last mile stuff. But even just having the ability to drive into your nearest city and take a high speed rail to a city your friends live in or that you want to vacation or do business in would be huge. That’s why the main proposals for high speed rail are to connect New York to Chicago or San Diego to Seattle. The latter would make it convenient to go from any major city on the west coast to any other one, even if you have to take BART or a bus or whatever first and last mile transit you need to get there
One thing some people fail to consider is the personnel costs. Crewing an aircraft for 2 hours is half the price of crewing a train for 4 hours to get the same distance.
You’re also discounting your labor as a driver. Driving takes attention whereas on a train you can just kick back and relax.
Car travel is massively subsidised. The road maintenance, emergency services, new road construction, traffic light electricity, smart highway monitoring, snow ploughing and more are subsidised for roads.
Many railways are privately owned, so all costs are paid by the owner or anyone who uses it. If railways had similar subsidies to roads they would be far cheaper.
Or, we could go the other way, and stop those subsidies, too, and quit spending our kids’ future on today’s problems.
I sense you haven’t seen Canadian rail travel. Go look.
Because in the US, freight and passengers share rail. Most of the civilized world segregated both to ensure massive transit priority. The USA did the opposite because freight brings in more profit. And all the railways are private owned, so profit overules public interest.
I used to be a freight conductor for BNSF. Amtrak always gets priority.
Also, unless you’re talking high-speed rail, freight and pax share track in most civilized world.
Most of the civilized world segregated both to ensure massive transit priority.
I don’t think that’s accurate. Lots of europe at least share tracks. But passenger trains get priority. In the US, freight gets priority.
Also, the freight companies own the track and the land its on.
I believe in Germany at least, freight gets priority at night, and passenger gets priority in daytime
Unfortunately it’s operated by Deutsche Bahn, so you won’t notice anything about daytime priority.
Well, that tracks…
Heyyyyoooo
The soul of the USA is rotten. We don’t believe in collective things like mass transit.
I have no answers, but I sympathize. I’ve always wanted to ride a train across the country, but damn the prices are ridiculous. When I did make a cross-country trip a few years back (specifically so I could see the country and go through states I’d never been to before), I compared prices and decided to drive instead. The price of a train vs the price of fuel made the decision for me. Such a shame. But at least the road trip was worth it!
how much does it cost to have a motel room and not travel anywhere. you are comparing apples and oranges. compare a car trip if you rent an RV with the associated gas costs of a few miles a gallon.
Because the car and air industries are so powerful they can effectively pay to suppress all other forms of transportation
And the rails are all privately owned.
I went from SF to Chicago for a few hundred dollars for a couple nights where I got my own cabin (probably 450 total — that might have been the price all the way to New York or just to Chicago, don’t remember). But I only booked about a month in advance. That was around 2019 so maybe prices have gone up radically since then?
But the long distance train experience in the US felt closer to a cruise than a sleeper train in Europe which I’m used to (all meals included, lounge carriage and so on).
