> In fact passenger trains usually travel on freight tracks

But the idea of ‘freight tracks’ vs ‘passenger tracks’ isn’t a thing in most other places.

In most of the world they’re the same thing and they prioritise using a schedule. This is another artificial problem that Americans see as an inherent one.

> But the idea of ‘freight tracks’ vs ‘passenger tracks’ isn’t a thing in most other places.

Actually Shinkansen/TGV/ICE run on special tracks. Passenger-only local service (e.g. BART, nyc subway) has proprietary track systems.

In the US, apart from municipal systems, essentially all the rail roads are owned by private freight companies; passenger rolling stock runs on those roads at second priority. This is true in Australia as well.

In Europe freight on, say, SNCF roads has second priority to passenger service.

Majority of Australian railways are government owned. What makes you think passenger trains there are deprioritised?

I took the Overland a few months ago and discussed it with the train crew...after having to wait for a freight train.

When I was a kid we used to take the sleeper trains on that route but these days it's pretty much entirely freight. Most of the country stations have been shut.

It's not a thing here either honestly - and we have freight trains, and amtrak is now mostly ontime - but still slow - and it would remain slow - even with high speed rail.

Is “here” Hawaii? (Looking at your user name). Because it is definitely the case in the USA. Amtrak owns rolling stock but no rail infrastructure.

(here is indeed the USA)

Amtrak does actually own its own infrastructure.

From wikipedia: "Amtrak owns approximately 623 miles of this track and operates an additional 132 miles of track."

From the top of my head, this is the NEC (North East Corridor), some track in Michigan, and some track in New Mexico.

I sit corrected! Though it’s a tiny amount.

I live on the cascade corridor, amtrak is always delayed between Portland and Seattle because of priority freight traffic.

There is a distinct lack of capacity between Seattle and Portland particularly anytime there are capacity issues over the cascades on Stampede/Stevens Pass due to accident, track work, or weather - then things get routed down to Portland and east thru the Columbia River Gorge.

Ironically, their used to be a third rail line over the cascades, with was flatter and honestly, better engineered - but it was ripped up in 1978-1982 era - that is the former Milwaukee Road route thru Snoqualamie pass

Please correct me if I’m wrong, but a major problem I see with many train systems is relatively low utilization of land. Most of the time, train tracks are empty, awaiting an incoming train. Roads, in comparison are far more utilized. For any given foot of train track or road, a car will be passing over that road far more often than a train.

In popular US corridors where real estate is at a premium, that can be significant.

In our current economy, I simply don’t see how building new trains can be economical or even efficient (frok a traveler usage of real estate perspective).

Rail Roads called roads for a reason. Some paved roads are heavily used and some are not. Same for rail. But you are right that $/mi rail roads are more expensive than paved roads.

Also the right of ways are used for all sorts of things e.g. the SPRINT phone company was originally the Southern Pacific Railroad Internal Network Telecommunications

Most of the world transports a much smaller proportion of their freight by rail than the US. I mean, I guess it's an "artificial problem" in the sense that if the US killed their rail freight industry and displaced all that freight to other modes it'd go away, but I'm not convinced that's a step forward.

How many places you are comparing have USA’s size and GDP or amount of goods moved around?

Well, the European rail networks are pretty dense and interconnect dense regions comparable to the US east coast at least from Boston to Virginia and west into Pennsylvania. Somehow they also work in less densely populated regions like France and Spain, so extend the comparison westward to Chicago and south down to Florida and Texas.

> More importantly, tying Bakersfield, Merced and Fresno into the Bay Area and LA regional economies would be great for all three.

One the one hand, that's true. On the other hand, the more stops you add to your high-speed train, the less high-speed it becomes. One of the great things about the Paris-Lyon TGV mentioned in the article is that it was very purposefully built to bypass all other settlements. Slowing down, stopping, letting passengers disembark and board, and starting up again would really eat into the time budget.

Not every train has to stop at every station.

True, but just passing through stations often means slowing down to less-than-blazing speeds. Also, you must account for the possibility of the faster trains needing some way to pass slower ones. This might mean more track infrastructure to allow the slower ones to pass to a side track. It might also mean that the slow train's having to wait slows it down further, making running them on high-speed infrastructure a questionable idea.

I trust that the French made the right decision. Germany has fast trains that stop at more places than the French, and in my experience they don't have the theoretical fast trains that just pass through almost all stations with very few stops. Presumably because it's hard to make it work.