Why does rail travel suck so much in the US?

Question

And why is there always opposition to any initiatives to implement modern rail systems? Are Americans just too dumb to know what's going on in the rest of the world?

I am an American, btw.

Answer 1

Rail travel in the US is impractical because of the longer distances between destinations.



But the real problem is AMTRAK is run by the government and they can't compete with other transportation services like the airlines. No competition means lower revenues, lower ridership and lower funds for expansion.



Where tracks exist the rail service work well but just try going from St. Louis to Atlanta on a train. You have to go to Chicago, then to Washington DC then to Atlanta because those are the only tracks available. It takes 47 hours to make the trip. You can hop on a plane for the same money and be there in 3 hours.



This is completely differrent than Europe where train tavel is more practical because the destinations are closer.

Answer 2

I think Americans are extremely ignorant of modern rail travel. When they think rail travel, they envision steam locomotives. I know for a fact that hardly any Americans EVER travel outside the country; when I tell people I traveled to Africa they react like I am the most amazing person they have ever met.



I used to live in Tucson where there was a light rail proposal that was being attacked as "a trolley, from the '30s". In my hometown, we used to have a very efficient streetcar system, but it was dismantled between about 1950 and 1975 to increase street sizes for cars and trucks... of course, cars and trucks carry people at about 1/4th to 1/6th the efficiency, space-wise, so the traffic is awful anyway, and it takes an hour to travel 2.5 miles by bus.

Answer 3

Yes Americans are too dumb to know whats going on in the rest of the world because the majority of Americans live in a bubble and never venture outside of the U.S borders. It's just one of the MANY problems with convincing people in this country that trains actually do work and work well. All they know is the FOX News talking point of "Amtrak, Amtrak, Amtrak". If Amtrak did not have to share the rails with freight trains and had better tracks to increase speed and add 200mph trains like China, Europe, Japan etc, it would be just fine. The problem is the Republicans don't want to spend money on infrastructure to improve it because they prefer big tax breaks for major oil companies <- and guess who would be hurt by high speed, efficient rail service.

Answer 4

Bravo to Rango...



American aren't dumb... we just haven't forced our politicians to do the right thing in most cases !!



Three years ago, California's voters passed a bond-issue to fund a high-speed rail line from San Diego to Sacramento with a branch to serve the San Jose / San Francisco area. It is advertised to get a rider from San Francisco to Los Angeles in 2 hours !! It takes 5-8 hours to make the DRIVE if you drive at the speed limit... it's "only" a 45 minute flight... but you need to add 2 hours on either end of the trip for getting to and from the airport, check in, delays, etc.



Sadly, wealthy towns / neighborhoods along the Peninsula have filed NIMBY (Not In My BackYard) suits saying it will be "too noisy, will lower their property values, etc). NOW the Big Cities (LA, SF) are trying to get the funds diverted to their LOCAL commuter rail systems.



DESPITE the set-backs, the organizing group is going to start construction on a 50 mile stretch next year... and hopefully complete the system by 2020. I HOPE that if we get a system up and running, the rest of the country will take note and build more in select corridors.

Answer 5

$$$, pure and simple money.

We are unwilling to adequatly fund a good public transportation system. Public transportation is always subsidized, and to have a good system money has to be spent, lots of it.

Our population density in much of the US is not such that there is a lot of potential riders, but every time gas goes up a dime that changes.

We had a passenger rail system that was the envy of th world, because every passenger train had at least one or more cars for sorting mail, it was delivered and picked all along the way and sorted in the cars.

Those were incredibly lucrative contracts and when the US Postal Service started sorting it's own mail in post offices and then trucking the mail two things happened, our mail service went down and passenger service was no longer profitable so individual railroads discontinued it.

Answer 6

The US is one of the largest countries in the world by land area. How many other countries need to connect two coasts, three thousand miles apart, and have done so with half a dozen connections, which all must be kept in a state of good repair as they cross three mountain ranges, two deserts and a thousand miles of flat nothingness. the hurricane just took two days to head from florida to the north east could have covered the entirety of Continental Europe.

Answer 7

I am a european living in the usa.



There is a trainstation in our town that is closed, trains still pass through, but homeless shelter/soup kitcen is now the shelter.

So you can't get that train to the capitol and cannot get it to the closest railway station that is open.

They are building a new car park in our town so that you can get a bus to the train station that is 20mins away...if you're driving to our town, why not go 4 exits down on the highway and park at the train station??



Anything at all that seems good for the common good of the community seems to be called socialist and therefore communist and therefore evil so we should not have it.

Answer 8

Because everything that the US "does" for it's citizens pretty much sucks here. We lack common sense, and we're too lazy to pay attention to the politcs that go on around us.



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Answer 9

well to me there already is modern rail system

i don't know what you are expecting

now if you are talking amtrak they are doing good business

the problem lies that the tracks that amtrak uses are not owned by amtrak

but by the freight railroads so sometime the freight get priority over amtrak