There is no reason to cross the U.S. by train, but I did it anyway

Re:There is no reason to cross the U.S. by train, but I did ... by rayiner on Thursday March 21, 2019 @03:40PM (#19456421)

Government services in the U.S. are both bad and expensive. The NYC MTA spends seven times as much money to build subway per mile than London or Paris. It spends about twice as much per passenger mile for subway service as London's Tube. We spend more per student than almost anyone else on schools. Why would someone in the U.S., confronted with the evidence, believe that government services aren't poor?

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Re:There is no reason to cross the U.S. by train, but I did ... by landryraccoon on Thursday March 21, 2019 @04:58PM (#19457244)

The US government should model its train service after Europe, since Europe clearly knows what it’s doing and the US clearly doesn’t.

Also, would you then be consistent and argue that the government shouldn’t be spending so much on highways for cars, since it’ll just waste that money too?

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Re:There is no reason to cross the U.S. by train, but I did ... by johannes1234321 on Friday March 22, 2019 @09:28AM (#19462299)

A key reason for American trains being bad is that demand is different. (Which to some degree is caused by offer)

The USA has large areas of sparsley populted land where flying for long distance, and car for the the closer area are hard to beat. This is way different from more densly populated Europe and even more densly populated Japan (especially when excluding Japan's motain regions)

If there were drive more more trains this would first require massive investment in infrastructure, to build both: the medium distance lines through populated area (for example along the east and west coast) as well as a network of connecting services fading out in the suburbs of the hub. Hardly anybody wants to go from hub to hub. If they need an car for "the last mile" anyways it's likely they won't take the detour to the train station and then having no way to continue on the other end ... If instead they can drive the complete distance.

Successful railways need a network connecting complete regions providing enough potential for a frequent service.

Building that requires huge support by politics/society.

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Re:There is no reason to cross the U.S. by train, but I did ... by rayiner on Thursday March 21, 2019 @06:32PM (#19458006)

Or Japan. Privatize Amtrak completely.

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Re:There is no reason to cross the U.S. by train, but I did ... by hestefisk on Thursday March 21, 2019 @06:49PM (#19458133)

The UK is case in point evidence that private railroad operations will not make it cheaper. Rail travel in the UK is insanely expensive and delayed.

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Re:There is no reason to cross the U.S. by train, but I did ... by irq11 on Thursday March 21, 2019 @11:30PM (#19459411)

Japan’s rail lines were almost entirely developed by the government, and transferred to private companies later.

Private enterprise is great when taxpayers pay for the expensive part.

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Re:There is no reason to cross the U.S. by train, but I did ... by ghaff on Friday March 22, 2019 @09:08AM (#19462150)

And, while Japanese rail service in general is pretty much as good as anyplace in the world, the Shinkansen is not inexpensive. It's nonetheless popular because HSR is a good match for the distances between a number of populous cities.

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Re:There is no reason to cross the U.S. by train, but I did ... by Kadin on Thursday March 21, 2019 @09:59PM (#19459049)

There's no reason to think that what makes train service in Japan better than in America is related to it being privatized.

I have total faith that we could privatize Amtrak and have it be just as execrable in comparison. And then it would be sold off for parts, some assholes would get tremendously wealthy, and we wouldn't have any passenger rail network at all.

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Re:There is no reason to cross the U.S. by train, but I did ... by enraged_camel on Thursday March 21, 2019 @06:33PM (#19458022)

>>Government services in the U.S. are both bad and expensive. The NYC MTA spends seven times as much money to build subway per mile than London or Paris.

This has basically nothing to do with the fact that it is government-run.

I don't know if you noticed, but building massive infrastructure cost a shitload of money for private enterprise as well.

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Re:There is no reason to cross the U.S. by train, but I did ... by ceejayoz on Thursday March 21, 2019 @11:07PM (#19459328)

London and Paris both involve massive infrastructure, too.

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