This YouTube video is the best I’ve seen in explaining why things are the way they are in the US - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mbEfzuCLoAQ

Note that that video specifically mentions the Northeast corridor and the Acela as an exception. The Northeast is definitely dense enough to support rail.

Really good video, thanks for posting.

I liked it but wish I could read for the information instead of waiting 8 minutes for it to be explained.

Unrelated - Are you teejsound?

Nope!

Japanese trains were lovely. Very comfortable. Great views of Mt. Fuji and the coast along that route. Definitely options for snack and drink. Don’t know about a full dining car, but it wouldn’t surprise me.

Japanese train food culture is all about buying stuff at the station. The packaged food you can buy at stores in Japan is shockingly good, and they're generally clustered at train stations.

(A cultural note: eating on long-distance trains is expected (they have fold-down tables and cup-holders), but eating or drinking (other than water) on local trains is an EXTREME faux pas. Don't do it.)

Here's a great video on this food culture

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l25iRW_-4vI&t=2s

As a French that has moved to California : wow does transport suck in the USA !!! Both subway and trains are a big step back from what I was used to in France.

I've only seen restaurants in exhibited historic Shinkansens.

Fret not. There is an on board service, which provides from ice cream over sakes and cold beers a variety of up to 3 bento boxes for sale directly at your seat.

The better option is to buy something on a train station, since the variety is much bigger.

Tokyo (station) is famous for the shop that sells ~ 200 different bentos from the whole country. A short stop makes a delightful train ride even more delightful.

The nice thing in Japan is that eating some fermented fish out of a bento box is completely acceptable, while yakking away on your cell phone is not (you can move out of the carriage if you must make a call).

As for timings. The most impressive for me was 85 minutes from Brussels to Paris, city to city. You must be pretty stupid to use a plane for that.

> Meanwhile in the developed world: TGV takes 2 hours from Lyon to Paris, google maps claims a car takes 4 hours.

Yeah. But try going anywhere around Lyon[0] after the nice TGV trip from Paris[0] and welcome to connection hell.

[0] Or any other TGV connected cities.

What is the problem? Lyon has a fully developed system of trams and subways. It's directly connected to the TGV train station.

http://www.tcl.fr/var/tcl/storage/original/application/b8cb6...

> Yeah. But try going anywhere around Lyon[0] after the nice TGV trip from Paris[0] and welcome to connection hell.

Public transportations are often quite good in European cities. When I was in college, it tooked me sligtly more than 3 hours door to door to go from my parents home in a Paris suburb to my University dorm in Lyon. It's not so bad for a trip of nearly 450km.

People, french people.

I love traveling by train, especially in quiet high speed ones such as TGV, Thalys or ICE.

However half the year I am regularly traveling through France for work from one city to another. I love the train, I enjoy it much better than air travel but the time and the stress lost due to running around with a carriage trying to decipher the connections that's going to take me to the tech zoning is... well stressful and time consuming.

I stand by my point: train station to train station is nice but door-to-door ? That's a much less smoother ride.

Really? We got the TER from Lyon to Saint Etienne last year, connecting out of a TGV. It was fine, and more reliable than the jam-prone parallel road.

The central train station sits right on top of a metro station, a tram line (for longer-distance), and several bus lines. "Connection hell" is not how I would describe the process of switching from one to the other in European city centers.

What about? I’ve made the trip many times. There was nothing hellish about it. Same for Sens, Lille, Montpellier, and Nice.

New York to LA is 4,500 kilometers so comparing to Paris/Lyon might be just a bit apples and oranges.

Paris to Baghdad is about the same distance.

Cities in the US are too far apart for trains to generally make sense. Trains are for freight.

Every thread about high speed rail seems to have this response to an argument no one is making. NY-LA doesn't make sense, but it is nationally embarrassing not to have the BosWash corridor connected.

But it is connected.

By a train that averages 55 mph. That is a national embarrassment.

I found 70MPH, where did you see 55?

I misread the comment as Boston-New York like the route in the article. Boston-New York is slower than the rest of the route. South Station in Boston to Penn Station in New York takes 3:46[1] and those stations are 212 miles apart[2] which is an average of about 55 mph.

[1] https://www.amtrak.com/content/dam/projects/dotcom/english/p...

[2] https://www.google.com/maps/dir/Pennsylvania+Station,+New+Yo...

I see. Not that 70MPH is particularly great either.

The comparison was Ney York to Boston.

This all is really only true west of the Mississippi. Trains are quite widely used in the densely populated Northeast.

Good thing there are many major American cities closer to New York than LA, such as nearly every single one.