
Why can't America have great trains? - antigizmo
http://www.nationaljournal.com/magazine/amtrak-acela-high-speed-trains-20150417
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tragomaskhalos
Interesting to compare these very different problems with another country with
a dysfunctional rail system, the UK.

Here, privatisation has led to massive cost inefficiencies and logistical
nightmares caused by trains and track being operated by independent
organisations. It also gives us the more insidious long-term issue that there
is no longer a railway working culture, where someone could start as a
footplateman and ascend to upper management in the warm embrace of a single
national rail company, bringing their invaluable working experience up with
them. Nowadays the people at senior levels are more likely to have moved
sideways from Sainsbury's and will know sod-all about how to run a railway.

~~~
twblalock
And yet, no matter how much you have to complain about, your trains are 10X
better than what we have in the US.

In Silicon Valley, the high-tech capital of the world, a pedestrian suicide
(which happens depressingly often, and therefore cannot be considered an
unusual event by the transit planners) brings the entire Caltrain network to a
halt for two hours. And by "network," I mean the only line the network has.

~~~
creshal
With the German Railways (which are, despite their _shocking_ incompetence – 5
minute delays, really? Are you even _trying?_ – apparently still better than
average), down times for these events depends on the line in question –
usually it's shut down for an hour (depending on how messy the suicide was).
But that down time cascades – one line shut down affects a dozen trains
directly, and many more indirectly (if they wait for the passengers of the
delayed trains, or if there's a single-rail bottleneck somewhere that's
blocked by the sudden rush, etc. …).

~~~
abrugsch
one interesting point to note from your comment, is that a suicide will have
indirect knock-on effects on other trains "if they wait for the passengers of
the delayed trains". that NEVER happens on UK trains anymore. if your train is
late, and there is only one connecting train to your destination... well
that's just too bad, because in all likelihood your connecting train is run by
a completely different operator and they have no obligation to wait for the
delayed one.

~~~
dagw
_if your train is late, and there is only one connecting train to your
destination... well that 's just too bad_

Maybe there's a difference between local and long distance lines, but the last
time I was in England and that happened, they just rounded up everybody who
missed their connection and put them a couple of min cabs.

~~~
claudius
That could also happen in Germany. It’s not that the connecting train has any
obligation to wait, rather, the operator of the late train has an incentive to
bring its customers to their destination despite the delay. If both trains are
run by the same company, having the second one wait may be the cheapest way to
achieve that.

However, if that is – for some reason, e.g. last train late at night or
somesuch – not possible, you can well get a voucher for a taxi ride to your
destination a few hundred kilometres away.

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wyclif
Dear Europeans and East Asians: to paraphrase Douglas Adams, America is big.
Really big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it
is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist, but
that's just peanuts to an American.

I've been to Japan and been a passenger on the Shinkansen, and as the article
says, I wept. I'm also well aware of the disconcerting contrast with the
totally dysfunctional Amtrak—I've taken the Silver Star from NY to DC many
times.

I tell my foreign friends the reason why the most technologically advanced
country in the world has a third-world, Soviet-era train system is because
Amtrak labour is expensive and incompetent, our government is so deeply in
debt that they haven't invested enough in infrastructure for us to have a
modern train system, and public transportation is a political football in the
US Congress. After all, $117 billion USD isn't chump change. And if we weren't
spending $664.84 billion _per year_ on the DOD and military, we'd easily have
enough for up to date trains. [1]

Also not helping trains is the fact that more than any other country on Earth,
Americans love cars. Not a little. A lot.

This doesn't mean we won't have great trains someday. I hope that day is
coming soon, but currently trains don't scale well in the USA.

[1] US military budget for the 2011 fiscal year.

~~~
yitchelle
> Also not helping trains is the fact that more than any other country on
> Earth, Americans love cars. Not a little. A lot.

Germany -> Car loving country with a highly efficient railway system, and a
well serviced road system as well. So it should be achievable.

~~~
lgbr
> Germany -> Car loving country with a highly efficient railway system, and a
> well serviced road system as well. So it should be achievable.

Germany has a highly efficient railway system and the country is so small that
I can cross the entire country in a day, and still, I take the car everywhere
I go.

I think what some people miss is this: Trains are just worse.

They're slow, not because they don't have a high top speed, but they have to
stop so much that their average speed is just worse than a car's. I think
there's a couple city pairs (Berlin <-> Frankfurt) where if I was racing a
train I would lose by some small margin to one of the non-stop trains, but not
by much, and this would only be a true win if on my trip I was going from one
city center to another city center, which I'm never doing.

They're still really expensive. Air travel around Germany is always cheaper,
and so is the cost of fuel for most cars. You can sometimes find a discount on
the train, but those travel at pretty inconvenient times and are quite rare
anymore.

They leave only so often. So unlike a car, I can't just set off whenever is
convenient for me. I have to find a train that leaves when I want and make
sure I get to it on time. So if you live in Frankfurt and want to go visit
family outside of Munich for the weekend, leaving after work at 18:00 on a
Friday you're going to end up sleeping in a train station in Bavaria overnight
as opposed to a car which can continue driving after 12:00 unlike a rural
train.

And they never get where I want. For half of the places I regularly travel,
when I get there, I need to have someone pick me up with a car or I need to
rent a car. There just are no other choices. As densely populated as this
country is, it's just still really difficult to get to a huge portion of the
country with public transit.

I really find it no wonder the US does not have a decent passenger train
system. Every single one of these problems is hugely exacerbated by its sparse
population to the point where passenger trains just aren't feasible.

~~~
lorenzfx
No, they are not really expensive. Let's take your example of Frankfurt ->
Berlin.

A 2nd class ICE ticket (without any reductions) is 123€ (1st class is 203€).

Going the 550km (Google Maps estimate) by car will cost 247€ (estimated by the
ADAC, the largest German automobile club, for a VW Golf VII).

While you might want to argue that if you drive a lot by car, those costs per
km will decrease, the same goes for travelling a lot by train.

~~~
lgbr
This 247 € factors in vehicle costs, taxes, maintenance, and insurance. Keep
in mind that actual fuel costs for this stretch with a VW Golf VII would be
25.4 € (3.3 l/100km * 550km * 1.40 €/liter). So you're right. If you go out
and buy a brand new VW Golf VII, insure it fully, and regularly drive this
stretch, you're probably going to experience an average cost of 247 € for this
stretch.

But there's two problems with this:

The actual marginal cost of the trip is still 25.4 €, plus let's give it a
generous maintenance cost putting it at around 50 €. That's still less than
half of the cost of the ICE. Add to this that you now have a car which can
carry five people and the costs don't increase at all per person. A trip with
5 people is still going to cost you that 500 € instead of 615 €.

The second problem is that this is when you're buying a new car. Buying a used
car would very easily bring your 247 € cost down below that 123 € even with
the increase maintenance costs.

~~~
claudius
If you sink ~7000 Euro into a Bahncard 100 first class, you can go mostly
anywhere for free. So by the logic of only counting marginal costs, it’s 25.4
€ more expensive to travel from Berlin to Frankfurt by car as opposed to
railway.

Berlin to Frankfurt takes about 4 to 5 hours. For the car, this is time spent
driving. For the train, we may have to subtract about 30 mins waiting in
Leipzig or Hanover for a connecting train, leaving you with 3.5 to 4.5 hours
in the train. At a modest 15€/hour, your car trip is now 77.9 to 92.9€ more
expensive than the train journey.

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argc
I am an American. I love trains. Taking the train is 1000x times more
enjoyable than driving for me, even if it takes longer (within reason).
Seriously, I think time spent driving is almost completely wasted. Train rides
can be spent doing whatever the hell I want, including eating Captain Crunch
while reading Kurt Vonnegut (my favorite pastime). Yes, before you start, I
can also do this while driving; but I promise you--its much less enjoyable.

~~~
sdrothrock
> Train rides can be spent doing whatever the hell I want

This is the best part of it for me. I spend > 7 hours a week on trains and
read so, so many books. People always wonder why I can read so much, and it's
because I can ride a train instead of driving.

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sschueller
It is complicated but a core reason is that a train system is not a one time
thing you build and thats it.

It requires a huge commitment of continued maintenance and very long term
planning.

There is no ribbon cutting or photo op after a maintenance project.

In Switzerland alone the yearly operation of the rial system costs almost a
Billion a year plus another 600 Million in maintenance. [1]

[1] [https://www.sbb.ch/content/sbb/en/desktop/sbb-
konzern/ueber-...](https://www.sbb.ch/content/sbb/en/desktop/sbb-
konzern/ueber-die-
sbb/organisation/infrastruktur/finanzierung/_jcr_content/contentPar/downloadlist_2/downloadList/file1.spooler.download.pdf)

~~~
TheSpiceIsLife
For comparison, are you able to tell us how much Switzerland spends on roads.

~~~
sschueller
Around 2.5 Billion for roads, highways etc. and another 1.8 Billion for public
transport (light rail on roads, electric lines for buses etc) in 2013 [1]

[1] [https://www.tcs.ch/de/der-
club/politik/strassenfinanzierung....](https://www.tcs.ch/de/der-
club/politik/strassenfinanzierung.php)

------
jordanthoms
America _does_ have great trains. The world's best, in fact. They're just used
to carry freight, not passengers, which actually makes much more sense for
most of the routes given the distances involved. [1] I can't find a more
recent direct comparision, but in 2000 38% of freight in the US went by Rail,
as opposed to 8% in Europe - by 2010, that rose to 43%. At PPP, US Rail
transport is the cheapest in the world, including China.

There are areas of the US where high-speed passenger rail would make sense,
and it's a shame that more hasn't been done in that area, but I do think that
since the industry was deregulated the market has done a good job of
concentrating rail investment on areas where it actually makes sense.

1 -
[http://www.economist.com/node/16636101](http://www.economist.com/node/16636101)

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DanielBMarkham
I'm an American. I love trains. I have my entire life.

Trains don't make economic sense in a country so widely spread apart with an
150-year-old rail system almost completely dedicated to freight. Especially
where right-of-way and planning issues can cause simple interstate highway
extensions to take decades and billions of dollars to build out.

I'm not saying we couldn't have high-speed trains if we wanted them. If we
wanted, we could probably have all sorts of things. I'm saying that building
such things only makes sense if we have some sort of nationwide insecurity
complex that we would need to address by riding around in cool-looking trains.
We do not.

Creating another construction boondoggle for relatives of connected
politicians shouldn't be high on our list of things to do. We have a much
better shot at creating entirely new infrastructure grids, like the hyperloop.
We should look into creating a few experimental long-distance hyperloops
instead of trying to take existing infrastructure (physical, social, and
technology infrastructure) and beat on it with a hammer until it looks like we
want. This would be even more successful if a company clearly outlined the
conditions it would take to succeed and various government bodies could then
determine whether they could meet these conditions -- which is pretty much the
way Google fiber is rolling out.

------
cmarschner
Europe has gas prices of >5$/Gallon, and treats at least the rail system as a
public service like roads. 'Nuff said.

~~~
saiya-jin
Guys, as an european, i despise a bit US approach you-cannot-get-anywhere-
without-a-car (seriously, looking back at my stay in LA and Hollywood 10 years
ago, many places didn't even have pedestrian access! Or if they had, approach
time was 2-3x more compared to dangerous walking along the road... that's just
plain wrong).

That said... trains are expensive. No, EXPENSIVE. Swiss have probably best
rail system in the world, with train stations being central point of most
towns and villages. Buses are just complementary where putting up rail track
would be ridiculous (hardcore mountain areas, desolate places with very few
people living). But Suisse is small, and wealthy. Not sure about actual cash
flow government -> SBB (rail company), but tickets are expensive like hell.
Cost wise even for single person road costs same (albeit sometimes it's faster
by car, depends), when more people come, car is much cheaper (and convenient).
Never been to japan, so no clue how well known Shinkanzen are integrated with
more local transport.

Thanx to freaking unions for steady high prices, but not only them. When
moving between densely populated areas, trains compete with planes, not cars
(and planes are sometimes much cheaper, sometimes faster, sometimes not). If
in future we'll get trains moving steadily over 500 km/h, that would be a
proper time saving advantage over longer distances. Airports became such a
time and energy drain, with ridiculous and annoying security measures that
most probably doesn't work anyway, just hikes the price and takes time.

Let's not forget fragility of rail network, any delay/accident can have
massive cascading effect that stretches far across network, much more compared
to cars and planes (well, here it's more complicated for those with connecting
flights)

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jakozaur
Well, to start off how about buying off-shelf, standardized components.
Allowing international competition also would help. At least it is the case
for Caltrain and BART.

Caltrain reinvents the wheel with their control system: [http://caltrain-
hsr.blogspot.com/2013/01/cboss-falls-behind....](http://caltrain-
hsr.blogspot.com/2013/01/cboss-falls-behind.html) That would decrease the cost
and time to implement few times.

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pessimism
I love public transportation, and I love how good Denmark is compared to other
countries.

But this is not to say that we haven’t had absolutely execrable forays with
our trains:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IC4](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IC4).

What I mean to say is that, sometimes, public transit is less something to
“figure out” than something to “get right”. We got public transportation
right, but we’ve been doing our darndest to fuck it up on multiple occasions.

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TYPE_FASTER
If it's not profitable, it's not considered worth doing in the US. Public
transportation does not pay for itself, even in high volume (relatively
speaking) areas like the Northeast Corridor, so it's always in danger of
losing federal funding.

Also, it's a localized issue. Nobody wants to spend money on transportation
until the population density in the area grows to the point where things will
break down unless its there.

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fche
... because America doesn't want great trains. There is not enough market
demand for better passenger service, that's simply the bottom line. Whether
it's because of population density, fuel prices, love of the car, whatever
blah blah doesn't matter. There just isn't enough demand.

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sirbetsalot
BECAUSE THAT WOULD REQUIRE COMMON SENSE.

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srsly_srs
Without even clicking - government.

