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 hanful of private companies in local, regional monopolies.
this post was submitted on 02 Apr 2026
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Rail was owned by the wealthiest and they made their money shipping freight.
Lobbyists got the US government to "sell" them the actual railways, but they had to maintain it.
So if/when there's a conflict on the rail, freight gets to go first. They're giant heavy trains moving insanely slowly, so even tho passenger could get by faster, they sit for hours waiting.
Back to private companies maintaining the rails, they did cost/benefit analysis and decided since they pay insurance anyways, it's not smart to fix anything till insurance rates go up.
The problem is when a wreck happens there's public outcry, so the government uses taxpayer funds to fix it quickly.
They wait till an accident happens, insurances pays for just the cargo, and that's insured by the supper so the train insurance never goes up. Taxpayers pay to clean up the wreck and put in new tracks.
With the current system, the wrecks will keep happening more and more frequently because stuff only gets fixed after it fails, and only that one spot.
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.
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...
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.
It sucks because trains are great, but money and regulations are the general answer. Air travel gets tons of kickbacks from the government, and most airlines don't even pay taxes on fuel. Also planes fly on the air but trains need rails, land to put it on and maintenance to keep it running.
Also planes fly on the air but trains need rails, land to put it on and maintenance to keep it running.
Thousands of airports, plane maintenance crews, airplane security crews and all the money put in general airplane infrastructure ceased to exist after reading that sentence
This is a good point but those are all analogous to train stations and what not. Planes are trains with out rails to maintain
Except for the whole shitload of jet fuel part.
Whats really sad is.. genuinely every town I’ve -ever been to- had a train station. Most of them have been converted into other things, the rest torn down. But they were there.
We had the whole system of rail already spanning most of the country. And stopped maintaining it. 😭😭
I rode a train for the first time last year because it cut the worst part of the drive into/out of a big city off, and wasn’t -too- expensive. So instead of dealing with a car in a place I’m not comfortable driving, we parked where I was comfortable and took the train the rest of the way (appx 2 hrs, if there had been a closer station to board we’d have used it, but had to drive 1.5 hrs just to get to the train), then walked. Could have also used the local light rail once we got there but didn't need to. I fucking loved everything about riding a train! From not driving, to not driving, to holy shit it’s a train, and even not driving! Best trip, and I wish it were practical to make all of them that way. I hate driving.
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 the money for infrastructure goes to worthy causes like invading Venezuela and Iran.
Edit: the continent of Africa is building a high speed railway network connecting 60 cities throughout the whole continent. That is how far the 3rd world country of the United States of America is behind. https://africanagenda.net/african-integrated-high-speed-rail-network/
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
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.
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.
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Deregulation and subsidies for air make it cheaper. Having to work against that makes train a tough sell
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.
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.
You’re in the USA, if it’s $1000 a night.
Roads are subsidized. But the railways must pay for themselves!
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Because D.C. wants it that way.
Except for Amtrak that serves Union Station and Congress.
Except for Amtrak that serves... Everything. There is no passenger rail service in the U.S. other than Amtrak.
I assume they meant that the service for DC specifically is better than elsewhere on account of it being local to congress.
Unless you are being oddly specific with your definition of passenger rail, there absolutely is.
Brightline for instance.
Brightline is commuter rail. We have a bunch of little trains connecting to close cities. What we don't have more than one of is passenger rail, where you can hop on a train in Seattle and get off in New York.
From the article I linked:
“This article is about the passenger rail service in Florida…”
AFAIK the Amtrak route from Seattle only goes to Chicago, you would have to change trains to get to NYC anyway.
ETA: I am pretty sure you would have to change in Portland too as the only route out of Seattle goes south IIRC.
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.
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Amtrak isn't funded by the US government. They have to extract all their funding from operations.
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Amtrak's service is bad mainly because the line operators have found ways to make it impossible to effectively operate. That means late and long delayed trains with unpredictable arrival/departure times.
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Amtrak is slow, mainly because it has almost no dedicated lines. It has to share them with line operators.
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Very few people use amtrak.
The end result is a high price. Few people using amtrak means it has to hike ticket prices up.
The only way for Amtrak to get better is extensive investment by the feds and regulation of rail lines in general. Without that, as you've correctly observed it will always be disadvantaged compared to other modes of transport.
But hey, the war in Iran might make it cheaper than driving so that's something.
Other than city-owned trains like NYC subways or BART in the Bay Area, the only passenger rail I know of in this country is Amtrak. And Amtrak sucks. If there's no other choice, of course they're gonna be expensive AF.
Monopoly plus oil&gas buying out successful rail and shutting it down.
The soul of the USA is rotten. We don't believe in collective things like mass transit.
Yeah the sleeper car was so expensive it was wild
There is another way... To ride the rails.
E: its not cocaine. I'm talking about jumping on the back of freight trains and riding. Thought I should clarify for you heathen's. And to be sure, it will be a lot slower, you may not get to your destination at all but you will understand the meaning of: its about the journey, not the destination...
Got my harmonica and my bindle. Time to live the dream.
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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.
This is really dependent on how many people are taking the same trip you are.
There's a rail line that goes very regularly between my state capital and my state's eponymous megacity. (And more along the entire corridor on south to the national capital). If it's just one or two adults doing that trip it's cheaper to ride the rail, since the two round-trip tickets cover gas, fuel, tolls, parking, and depreciation. Not so if it's enough people to fill the car.
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Coach is plenty good seats. A sleeper would be nice but that is luxury class, coach seats are fine for sleeping in. That gets the price cheaper than flying in most cases.
I sense you haven't seen Canadian rail travel. Go look.
(Edit: Spoiler: it's astoundingly expensive for a time-consuming slog across the flatlands)
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