Passenger trains in the United States vs Europe.

[Magmoormaster]

The issue in america is that, by law, rails are treated different then roads. Roads are publicly owned, publicly funded. Government can emminent doman themselves more roads whenever they wnat. Roads are considered infrastructure.

The rail right-of-way is private, and they have to PAY taxes for that. The story I've always heard is that back in the 30s and 40s, the military started seeing the rails as a liability that could easily be bombed, so laws and money were directed towards roads and highways, and away from rails. Unlike much of Europe, which treated rail like infrastructure, and was practically crippled during ww2.

I'm sure the military side is a big part of it. The auto industry also lobbied pretty heavily against the rail industry, to the point of buying out street cars and then ripping them out.

[Number six]

No one solution works for everyone. Billions of dollars spent to route trains through thousands of rural towns? Not likely. The map doesn't show urban streetcars or subways, either, but they are there. Then there's the politicians. Do a little research on California's high speed rail project sometime. Lotsa money spent for not a lot of track. It was more about whom that money went to, than anything.

[vijil]

I went to China in 2018.

We took trains everywhere - fast trains, typically going 300kph (186mph). And they were *cheap*, even first class. So we only went first class. Because the processing time and security was much easier, it was faster for most travel than taking a plane. They were also on time. Like Japan, a five minute delay is completely unheard of. In Japan the drivers get pay docked if they're even one minute late - I suspect there's something similar in China.

Also took the Pudong-Shanghai maglev, which is a 15 minute trip at 431kph (268mph) that would otherwise take 1.5 hours on the subway. It was only $8 each way, so we just bought a bunch of tickets and rode back and forth a bunch of times while waiting for our plane. 30 degree banked corners at that speed are amazing, you can still walk around normally.

In short: Pretty much everyone has better passenger train infrastructure than the US. Freight, maybe not so much.

Here in NZ our main problem is population density. We simply don't have enough people paying taxes to invest in upgrading our 4000km of ancient track. You've got only about 1000 taxpayers to pay for each km. It doesn't math.

[Riot]

I’ve never seen a train.

[William the Third]

Sure you have. Remember that train we ran on %kBI*CHUbu3a?!22&^ wife at AH*hn3oi*Hbdia8&^&^#TR6as<NO CARRIER

[Carp]

[chrislognshot]

lies lies lies. he lies and does not care

[Falcon16]

I took a bullet train in Spain and it made me realize how God awful rail is in North America. Honestly if we had a better rail network it'd mean less congested skys and you'd move more people almost as fast. Heck a 600 KM journey only took like 2 hours on the train and it was honestly nicer than a flight, smoother, I could easily get up and walk around no ascending and descending and feeling like crap because of pressurization etc

[Riot]

I took a bullet train in Spain and it made me realize how God awful rail is in North America. Honestly if we had a better rail network it'd mean less congested skys and you'd move more people almost as fast. Heck a 600 KM journey only took like 2 hours on the train and it was honestly nicer than a flight, smoother, I could easily get up and walk around no ascending and descending and feeling like crap because of pressurization etc

The amount of work it would take to get our rails ready train movement that fast…. Not in our life time. Hahah

[Hp_lovecraft]

The amount of work it would take to get our rails ready train movement that fast…. Not in our life time. Hahah

Authortarian countries have the advantage in that they can easily kick out anyone in the way, like China. Europe is less authortarian then china, but more then the USA. They call it "compulsory purchase", which is like "eminent domain" in the USA, but it is much easier in the USA to fight it.

[Refoogee]

If you look at just how many inner city communities got completely destroyed to make room for the highway system, the U.S was just as "authoritarian" in building up its infrastructure.

[Riot]

Authortarian countries have the advantage in that they can easily kick out anyone in the way, like China. Europe is less authortarian then china, but more then the USA. They call it "compulsory purchase", which is like "eminent domain" in the USA, but it is much easier in the USA to fight it.

Oh god, I wasn’t even considering getting the space for more rail, I just mean to get the new technology and conditions of already existing rail implemented would be… a life time of work.

[Refoogee]

Some of the sticking points brought up, such as lobbying, and the laws around roads vs. rail in the USA, are pretty spot on. It's interesting to note how we got here.

An important thing to remember is that, while the car was invented in Europe, the ability to mass produce cars was an American invention. the Ford factory was able to pump out Model T's in 15 minute intervals, the whole process was so smooth running that getting the paint to dry was the real bottleneck. Ford took note to try to maintain pricing so that any worker, at any Ford factory, could afford to purchase a Model T, with less than half a years wages.

Despite this, the car wasn't terribly well loved, by the public at large, for quite some time. Early cars were uncomfortable, and unreliable machines, only saved by just how convenient, and private, they were. The infrastructure was not there, and the law had not caught up to how dangerous they could be in a world where everyone walked in the middle of the street. Cities were built around tram service, trains, and horse drawn carriages. There was actually a pretty widespread public outcry to keep cars out of the city, and limit them to countryside usage.

There was a lot of PR work funded by the early auto industry. The auto industry itself coined the term "jaywalker", meant to slander those people who used the city streets for walking (which is how it was intended to be used at the time) as "uneducated" about proper city street etiquette. Free street shows meant for children were funded by auto corporations, and taught pro car lessons. The car was increasingly advertised as a progressive, convenient, and refined way of personal travel. Younger people who could afford one found them very handy as a way to go on private dates, have private fun, and secretly spend the night with one another. So, the cultural bedrock was growing. Rich Americans were already heavily invested in the car, and the auto industry, so the government was as well.

Despite these efforts, public transit remained king in the U.S until roughly WW2. There's reasons for this shift already outlined in this thread, but it's important to remember the irrational reasons for some decisions. The mass production auto industry began in the U.S, and for many cultural leaders, the car was an important symbol of the industrial might of the United States, and American exceptionalism. Many futurists saw the car as an aesthetic good, and those people would go on to influence how we saw the future. The 1939 New York Worlds Fair, said to be centered around social progress, was centered heavily around cars as the only means of travel in the "city of tomorrow".

The response to Europe's reliance on rail infrastructure to fuel their war effort, and the subsequent "post war economic boom", was instrumental in shaping the United States in the later half of the 20th century. The cultural bedrock for car infrastructure to completely take over was already laid out, and rail travel quickly became mothballed. Street cars were bought out, the tracks paved over, and the trams destroyed. Because road infrastructure was seen as necessary for national security, it was heavily publicly funded. It's actually quite insane how much cars, gas, and road infrastructure is subsidized to this day. The rail infrastructure was all privately owned still, and was expected to turn a profit. This became increasingly difficult to do, in the shadow of so much public funding of car infrastructure, and the comparatively "free ride" the auto industry was getting. Commuter rail downsized, and became increasingly bankrupted under this pressure. Eventually, everything folded into Amtrak. The vast majority of rail lines are still privately owned in the U.S. for shipping. Commuter rail is an afterthought.