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I guess it's covered by 5., but the real, actual reason we can't have trains is the civil engineering firms can't extract infinite money from a completed railway.
Also, have you considered how any public works project that runs longer than a single term of the elected official who gets it approved, is letting the next guy get all the credit for it? That's much worse than having functional mass transit.
I guess it’s covered by 5., but the real, actual reason we can’t have trains is the civil engineering firms can’t extract infinite money from a completed railway.
Actually, they kinda can. Railroad tracks need upkeep just like roads do. Maybe not to the same degree and maybe the costs work out differently but they do need to be maintained. So there's plenty of opportunity to grift the hell out of a railroad buildout.
I was assuming the repair would be done by a different firm, but that's fair. It probably ends the cost-plus contract that the construction firm had, at a minimum.
In seriousness the problem seems to be the contract doesn't incentivize the correct behavior, but I would love to hear from someone with actual knowledge on the topic.
Also, maybe there are too many opportunities to kill projects via zoning ordinances, and its inarguable that oil, auto, and other industries actively combat these projects.
Have you SEEN what the UK is doing? HS2 is at around 700 million/mile (about 900 million USD) now, you can absolutely extract infinite money from a rail line without even finishing it.
It is the entire English speaking world that lost the ability to built passenger rail without it costing multiple times of what it costs in other developed countries.
California seems to be good at infinite money extraction for rail that never finishes.
The conservatives that filed the many, many lawsuits that delayed construction over and over again are the same people complaining about how long it's taking to be completed. They caused the delays and are the most vocal about the delays. It makes no sense.
What I don't get is why people are okay with all-day drives that could be comfy train rides. Not to mention commute traffic jams of everyone going in the same direction at the same time every workmorning and workevening.
Ive heard maybe a dozen or so people whip out the ol "if everyone at the light hit the gas at the same time, at least 3+ more cars could get through the intersection"
If only there were some way to connect these many single cars into one vehicle... And if only it were cheaper... And faster... And didnt have to stop as often...
I also can’t comprehend all-day drives over all-day trains. If I take a train on my own or with my family, those are (partially) actionable hours. I can read a book, grab a coffee, work on my laptop, draw with my kid. If I go by car, best I can do is a podcast.
Since I don’t own a car, my point of view is also biased by not having to make sense of a large investment. But if you factor is the costs of having the car, gas and tolls… I’d rather go by train. If necessary, I can rent a car at my arrival destination.
Because public transit is for poor people/minorities, and if they used it they'd be around a bunch of poor people/minorities.
I think this is a big factor. A lot of people are racist, and a lot of people are like pathologically anti-social.
Then they can't fly less than Leer, a 747 is as "public" as any Amtrak train.
Honest answer? Partly because I can operate on my schedule and not the train’s schedule. And the rest of it is getting to have adventures along the way that otherwise would mean getting off the train, finding a bus, taking a long bus ride to the thing, taking a long bus ride back to the train, getting on the train again…
Sometimes I drive to Seattle, sometimes I take the train. There are times when I like the relaxing ‘let someone else get me there’ vibes, but there are times when the train schedule doesn’t work with my schedule, or I want to check stuff out on route, like fun restaurants I’ve read about, cool educational places, silly tourist traps…
I remember seeing a sign for ‘World’s Largest Egg!’ one trip, so I just took that exit and went to find the World’s Largest Egg, because why not?
And another reason is sometimes I just don’t want to be around a lot of people. One crowded train trip up I was treated to a child that felt the best way to pass the time on the 3.5-hour journey was to scream. A lot. It was also a trip where I’d forgotten my headphones. Not fun.
It's a complicated problem. Part of it is that Amtrak is so broken that people wonder if it's even fixable.
I recently went to a concert in another city for my birthday. I looked into what Amtrak options there were, because I get panic attacks in traffic, and they only offer overnight service, with a middle of the night swap from bus to train. It also would have cost $250 round trip for two tickets vs <$100 in gas to drive, and taken 12 hours vs the 7 to drive.
So instead of taking the extra time off work, we wound up driving, and I had multiple panic attacks instead.
Another part of the problem is that the US likes to talk about whether or not people deserve transit options. Like, my local bus only comes by four times a day between 6am and 6pm, but because I live in a low-income area, I apparently don't even deserve a bench at the bus stop.
the worst part of Amtrak is how often it's late, making it not only more expensive than driving or flying but also less reliable.
Old story. That happens when so much of the tracks is owned by freight rail, so little proper passenger rail infrastructure exists and laws that would require passenger rails to be given priority being so weakly enforced and largely ignored, never mind that the infrastructure is maintained as freight rail needs it, which is really bad for passenger rail purposes.
As a Tor user, I will not patronise an anti-Tor establishment.
In light of all of Amtrak’s other problems, they have a looong way to go.
I would be tempted to try train-hopping on freight trains.
If NYC and LA were the only cities, trains would be amazing. Just one HSR sleeper line straight across the empty desert, trains leaving every 5 minutes to meet demand.
With the amount of passengers and the lack of stops along the way, a state-of-the-art 500-600 km/h maglev like the L0 series shinkansen would be able to bring the travel time down to 6-8 hours while being a lot cheaper, more comfortable, more spacious, and with much better access to the city.
My god, it could even be worth trying to build a hyperloop.
Oh man the Shinkansen is amazing. 2 or so hours instead of 9+ by bus to get somewhere while drinking beer or sake and eating is amazing. And you can take a dump lol
For context, a flight is already 6.5 hours and cost 350-400. To have comparable speed it would only take building two complete mag level rails.
I thought this was going to annoy me but it was hilarious
Who cares of trains are profitable?
That's the joke — Americans will complain that trains aren't profitable while ignoring that roads and airports aren't profitable either. Sometimes it's stupidity and sometimes it's a bad faith argument.
Ah, my bad. I thought the graph was showing that they do make money. Now that the full image loads after pressing it, I can see it's about highways.
Fits more with c/fuck cars, but solid meme and welcome here
Spent a couple of weeks in Japan and got to take the shinkansen twice. Of course Tokyo's subway system was awesome aside from shutting down at midnight but I had no problems getting around in Osaka or Kyoto either. The shinkansen is so dope it's hard to describe. They provided the best views I got of Fuji on the way down to Osaka and back from Kyoto. I tried to get a picture of a passing train but it was over in a blink. I took a train from San Francisco to Chicago and it took 3 days. The scenery was beautiful but the roomlette was like trying to sleep in the Disneyland Star Tours ride. 3 days proved too long to rely on edibles and sublingual distillate and I ended up with CHS. The southerly route back was awful, nothing but the drabbest of views and I didn't get a roomlette for the trip back and trying to sleep in economy was very difficult and uncomfortable.
If only people tended to live together in big conglomerations this would be so much easier to solve!
car industry would lobby any meaningful change to it.
My brother bringing the receipts!
I live on a hill in Alaska, am I qualified to be an urban transpotstion person or do you need to live in the denali mountain range?
I was told that part of the reason is that railways are rented and mostly used for freight.
I'm going off of memory here, but what I heard was that passenger rail was never really as profitable as freight, so the government basically had to force all the rail companies to keep doing passenger trains. The massive subsidization of car transit made it hard for them to compete. Amtrak was basically created as a way to take the responsibility for doing passenger rail away from the rail companies, in exchange for guaranteed priority usage of the rails.
The priority of passenger trains is unenforced, so they have to wait for slow freight trains all the time. Additionally, the math on speed is different for freight vs passenger rail. A freight train getting somewhere an hour faster doesnt matter nearly as much as a passenger train getting somewhere an hour faster, so improvements to facilitate faster trains falls on amtrak.
Amtrak does own some rails, e.g., the northeast corridor, which is nice and profitable. It's also worth noting that the "unprofitable" lines are still vastly vastly vastly more profitable than roads.
That's basically correct. Passenger rail was a highly regulated industry, and it was always more profitable to transport freight over the same lines. Eventually, the private passenger rail companies were basically all losing money, and filed for permission to discontinue passenger service (in the previous regulatory framework, companies needed government permission to make any changes to service), so that Congress basically created Amtrak to take over the prior passenger lines. As it stands, though, Amtrak needs to lease/license access to tracks it doesn't own, so it's hard to increase speeds or service, as the track owners would need to give permission for the upgrades to the track or the effect on timetables. That's even true of the Northeast Corridor, where Amtrak owns most of the track, but some segments are owned by freight rail companiex CSX and Norfolk Southern.
Not to mention railroad companies found loop holes to force priority to freight by making trains longer than rails inbetween side stops.
The US is third on the list of countries in freight volume per year, so yes there's a lot of freight trains.
Americans should stop train train-haters.