Map Enthusiasts

And as a Canadian, I'm even envious of the trains in the US. Pretty much the only thing but here we are.

Anecdote time: I was visiting Europe, sitting in Liège and arrived there from Aachen with a train ticket I bought the day before. My next step was Brussels or Ghent but I wasn't decided yet and didn't have a ticket, so I just bought one on the spot for the next train, in an hour. While eating fast food and waiting for that train, I was trying to book a train in Canada next week when I'd return, to go from Montréal to Drummondville. However I was already too late. There was still available tickets but there were over $100 CAD for a trip that would normally cost about $32 CAD if I would have booked it a month in advance. And the next departure was 3 hours later, still overpriced. So, no train in Canada for me, even a week in advance.

In short, in Canada, there's only 5 trains a day between major cities, and you have to book weeks in advance otherwise the prices can triple if you're last minute. And they don't take bikes. And they weigh your bagage.

So I was in Europe, taking trains last minute here and there, while unable to book a train ticket at a reasonable price for the next week in Canada. VIA Rail sucks so much.

It’s even worse if you do a high speed train map. The US only has about 150 miles and even the. A chunk doesn’t exceed 60mph even though they call it “high speed”

This map must be at least a few years out of date. I somewhat regularly take a passenger train in FL that isn't shown here.

I find it interesting that there's a noticeable difference in rail density between western Europe and former Warsaw pact countries, despite rail being important for Soviet union logistics. In top of that, Russian rail is severely lacking today.

Could it be a rail gauge issue where eastern rail standard caused development to be prohibitively more expensive?

US is grossly wasting fossil fuels on airplane flights. O&G industry is behind this. Their bottom line depends on society being wasteful and inefficient.

My goodness. Never realized Europe had such a train problem!

Population Density in the United States vs Europe

I mean I'd love more trains in the US, but let's not oversimplify.