I never understood why we never went anywhere on the trains. I went to Tokyo and was floored by the immensity of the passenger rail system. Even in San Diego I would ride my bike 17 miles down to the nearest station and take the Coaster into National City to go to work. And then, I was in DC for a month and I took the overnight Acela Amtrak Express from DC to Boston and back. Gritty, dirty. Like a noir film type ... gritty. For another $50 I could have taken a 1 hour flight after dinner and been in bed at a decent hour. As a citizen, I'm a fan of the idea of passenger rail. As a customer, I'm not a huge fan of Amtrak, at least under current management.

Free market, because first, rail leads itself to monopolies. Rail infrastructure is expensive, and you need significant area coverage until you can get enough customers. So if you built one, you as a rail provider will go at extracting the most possible value, since you don‘t have competition. Classic free market failure. The solution here would be to have at least four (proven number to avoid oligopolies) private train providers competing on public infrastructure. Since Americans shudder already at the word „public“, that‘s a significant hurdle.

Individualism because in the US, people have a propensity to not share rides with others. Same fear of „public“ IMHO, as long as public transportation is thought of existing solely for poor people until they can afford a car, nothing is going to change.

There's no reason why train operators should also own the fixed infrastructure. Truck companies don't own the interstate highway system, and airlines don't own all the airports.

Why not have private train operators (passenger & freight) bid for routes / slots / capacity on a publicly-owned rail network? Lucrative routes between major cities will return significant profits, while regional routes will require support/subsidy. But in either case, competition between operators promotes cost efficiency, innovation, and a focus on service quality.

One solution would be to auction off packages of "slots" on the most profitable, and capacity constrained, routes (eg: east & west coast main lines) rather than franchise them as single monolithic entities.

As for "not working very well", those who remember the days of government-owned-and-operated British Rail will attest that the current system is a significant improvement!

In the UK, you can buy expensive, flexible tickets which are valid on any train and any reasonable route, or you can buy cheaper tickets with various restrictions, typically one or more of:

- Valid only on a particular route/operator

- Valid only on off-peak services

- Valid only on a specific train/time

- Must be purchased a certain period in advance (usually by the previous day)

However, in the event of significant disruption, and trains are running late or cancelled, an announcement is usually made relaxing the cheap ticket restrictions. At the very least, if you have a cheap advance ticket and your train is cancelled or delayed, then you're allowed to use it on the next available service, regardless of operator.

the problem isn't the model as Japan has the best trains in the world and runs on a similar one.

" As of April 2015, 211 companies and entities were registered with MLIT as railway operators in Japan.3 A number of these are involved in multiple activities, combining operations of both railway and other transportation services. "

https://www.eubusinessinjapan.eu/sites/default/files/railway...

Cars are much more practical for travel in the US largely because the cost of fuel is much lower than in Europe, Canada, etc. Perhaps in Europe cars would be used more if they were a more affordable option.

I loved riding trains in the EU but often would need to rent a car or fly.

It's mostly privately owned, but you are basically describing the current state of the current US rail network. The United States has an extremely extensive intercity rail network, with dozens of operators. This was basically all built by the dreaded free market, by the way.

The trouble is that the large railroads are only moving freight, because of the misguided decision to nationalize 20 passenger rail systems under Amtrak. We should have just continued to subsidize passenger service under the private operators.

just a nitpick but land ownership-based industries, in which you get a license from the government to own and lease out monopolies on land, are inherently far from free markets. ive always wondered if land ownership could be made to be more free market-like.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BzB5xtGGsTc

Sure, the product is basically the same - a ride from Point A to Point B. But if you offer a private dining room, an observation lounge, a steward who attends to just you and 3 other cabins, you can charge way more than an economy seat.

By only focusing on the "Point A to Point B" aspects, they're entering a downward financial spiral.

But in the Northeast, offering a small private office so that some colleagues can work during the otherwise non-productive 4 hour trip from Boston to New York makes a lot of sense.

The only viable (and still not funded) project is the Southeast Corridor project, from Washington DC to Atlanta Georgia. Top speed is likely to be about 110 mph (180 kph). Average speed will be lower because the passenger trains will always be held up by slower freight trains (no dedicated tracks, like the TGV has)

Cargo makes more money than people transport and most people preferred air; and short range rail is very expensive due to all the legal barriers.

We have an amazing rail system in the USA, it's just not about people transport. It, along with barge and truck, make the modern US possible.

This is a bit of a tangent, but one of the most frustrating things about riding the passenger rail (I've experienced this most going through upstate New York) is being slightly behind schedule, and then falling far, far behind schedule by having to wait for a freight train using the same stretch of track to pass.

As I understand it, passenger trains are always supposed to be given priority. But in practice it never seems to work out that way. The dispatcher or whoever's making the decision often prioritizes the freight.

Compare to the airlines fees for bikes. If you have something heavier, you might not even be able to pack it aboard an airplane. Then there is the inconvenience of traveling to and from an airport. Even with an airline, you'll still need to take off the pedals and bars.

Amtrak is not the best, but still better than air travel for cyclists. For the cost of a flight + bicycle baggage fees I can get a room on Amtrak.

Sure the food isn't the greatest, but you can also pack your own and include a bottle.

If you really look into it you'll discover that the notion that checked bikes are available on most trains is a lie. There are so many exceptions. Just because it's available on a train, doesn't mean it's available at your station. Only the bigger stations allow them and you have no way of getting your bike off the train otherwise. So if you want to go somewhere nice to bike around, you're mostly out of luck.

I'm not going to deal with taking the handlebars and pedals off all the time in a train station.

What am I going to do with that box? I ride my bike to the station.

The checked bike thing is horrible even if you're willing to deal with all of this insanity.

> Amtrak is not the best, but still better than air travel for cyclists. For the cost of a flight + bicycle baggage fees I can get a room on Amtrak.

Air travel is far cheaper than Amtrak in the Northeast. Checked bicycles are about $40 to fly with if you pick the right airline and $20 on Amtrak. But what's even cheaper is travel by car. Just rent a car for the day and you don't need to deal with any of this.

Personally, I'd still prefer to have mine boxed to prevent scratches.

It’s a great way to unblock lots of people to utilize trains that wouldn’t otherwise. 2 or 3 cars of the train are devoted to bikes. That certainly is indicative of the environment and the temperate California weather, but still. Makes for a marvelous multimodal commute for me.

The is because Amtrak must share lines with much slower cargo trains.

Amtrak will file for "track windows" where they have exclusive access to the track for higher speed travel - but if they miss the window (for example a passenger had luggage trouble and delayed the train by a few minutes) then they are stuck behind cargo trains.

And once that happens they have no way to recover their original time table. The train will be late all the way to the final destination! And not just a little late, travel time will double.

I'm not aware of any good solution for this.

Actual use of this almost never happens, however.

This is because unlike other forms of transportation, railways are required to pay property taxes, so they're incentivized to have as little improved property as possible.

Minnesota does: https://www.revenue.state.mn.us/railroad-property-tax#

New Jersey does: https://www.state.nj.us/treasury/taxation/railroadtax.shtml

Missouri does: https://apps1.mo.gov/stcoriginalassessment/report/CompanyRep...

The problem was so bad at one point that one of the steps taken to arrest the rail industry's decline was to ban property tax discrimination against railroads: https://www.thetaxadviser.com/issues/2014/dec/tax-clinic-10....

You never see this in Amtrak discussions, because Amtrak does not own the vast majority of the rails it runs on, and people couldn't care less about private companies. For highways and airports, they're pretty much all on publicly owned land, so they don't pay property tax because that would be silly.

And your 10 minute plan gets complicated when you consider they pick up passengers at multiple stops along the way. If they waited an extra 10 minutes at every stop they might ending up causing themselves an even bigger delay.

But I don't have specific info on what things are causing the most delays.

I agree with all the criticisms of Amtrak that I'm hearing in this thread and that are common for Americans. But I want to tone down the love of European trains a bit. Amtrak is much much cheaper than trains in Europe and in general you get more legroom. European trains have shitty food, as does Amtrak. Actually the best food I had on a train was in the early 1990's on a trip from Warsaw to Prague on a soviet era train. It was actually cooked in a fancy dining car.

The UK has wrecked their train network. Delays are terrible and the network doesn't receive any real new investment. I blame Thatcher. A few weeks ago there were no trains between London and Leeds over a bank holiday weekend. For 3 days there were no trains between London and Leeds. This affected me and I had to change my plans. I suspect that this affect all travel north out of London for 3 days. How can you rely on a network like this? Sure they give you advance notices, but where is the redundancy in the network?

Dutch trains are better, but they're mostly just for commuting. Distances are short so the Dutch rail network is basically what Americans would consider a suburban light rail network. Like privatization everywhere else, the private elements of the Dutch rail network play games with timings and commitments to 'juke the stats'. For example, a late train may be cancelled because the penalties for cancelling trains are less than for a train being late. Yes, this actually happens.

I have less experience with German, French, and Italian trains. But at different times in my life I have been screwed over by them as well. Delays, cancellations, confusing rules that only the locals understand. Trains in these countries are still considered a second rate service compared to airline travel. And how exactly am I supposed to take a train through Paris exactly? Let's say I am in Belgium and I want to go to Lyon. How can I do that without taking the Paris metro or taking some stupid long route? Answer, you can't. Because trains don't go through Paris.

So in short I don't want Americans to think that European trains are all that great. They're much more expensive and come with their own problems. They lack redundancy and delays in one part of the network can cause problems in other parts of the network.

If you've mostly taken trains in the US on the coasts, or for long cross-country trips, you may have an overly rosy view of the situation here.

I live in a mid-sized US city, the capitol of its state, with a metropolitan area population of around one million (city A). To reach the nearest city of at least this size (city B) by car is only a two hour (<150 miles) straight drive along the interstate. Both these cities have train stations serviced by Amtrak.

The only itinerary Amtrak offers to get from A to B using their service passes through city C, which is more than 500 miles from city A or city B. It's a 30 hour trip.

UK train network is not perfect, but generally is in a decent state of repair. It does receive large amount of investment regularly (less so under Conservatives but still a significant amount) - and main disruptions of the recent years were caused by either railway worker strikes fighting for their rights or changes to timetables that were too ambitious (because of the amount of new services added to the network).

Yes, the maintenance closures are annoying - but no piece of infrastructure can avoid periodical maintenance. You usually get 6 months' notice and in most cases a diversionary route. In fact even then you could get to Leeds from London via the West Coast mainline and then Transpennine routes. And it certainly didn't affect all travel to the north - depending on how you count them, London has 3 to 5 separate rail routes to there.

The assumption that delays, cancellations, and odd rules are particular to only railways is frankly bizarre. And so is your statement that train travel is considered a second-rate service here - it is all of course highly anecdotal, but on routes that are competitive with local flights (and longer distance routes with high speed trains) - trains are usually considered to be the better option (although that might have something to do with the never-ending cost saving drive by the airlines).

Your particular example of travel from Brussels to Lyon is also incorrect now, as French railways recently introduced direct high-speed services avoiding Paris (and building even more tracks for that). Crossing Paris old-style involves a Metropolitain trip, but that is not an unusual problem for most places (Boston's infamous North-South railway gap comes to mind).

I have experience with Amtrak, UK, French, and German railways - and I don't think I ever saw Amtrak tickets cheaper - unless you are comparing them to some last-minute train tickets on over-subscribed services in Europe. In fact I was under a distinct impression of Amtrak being noticeably pricier.

And finally, railway redundancy in US is typically way worse - Amtrak doesn't own most of the tracks it runs on and is treated as a second class citizen there. And any contingency route is likely to be untested and not ready for use due to cost-cutting. And apart from North East Corridor most of Amtrak routes are double track only, shared with freight.

Outside of the Northeast corridor, yeah it's pretty impractical compared to almost every other alternative.

And then the profitability of short distance routes is a direct product of the density of population.

This would look differently if airlines were charged for the CO2 externalities (i.e. not receive a de facto subsidy). But we all know how's the carbon pricing going in America ...

I have a lot of experience taking trains all over Europe. In almost no case was a train cheaper than flying once I included transportation to the airport. The few times a train costs more the difference is marginal and you'd end up flying Ryanair or Easyjet --- no thanks.

> And then the profitability of short distance routes is a direct product of the density of population.

Not a problem in the Northeast in the US. Only Amtrak can fail to offer a service that works everywhere else in the world.

That said, I don't understand the hate for easyJet. It's one of my favourite airlines, being straightforward, well-informing, and no more crammed than your usual cattle class option in a traditional airline.

In this case it wasn't that the trains were more or less expensive, but they were just slow from point A to B. I think Americans have a romantic notion that trains are great all over Europe, but it really does depend on the country. Western Europe, with Italy and Germany in particular seem to have a great high speed rail system. Eastern Europe has trains, but they are not nearly as efficient time wise.

You can only book train tickets three months in advance in Germany.

That said, currently they seem to reach only to mid-December so I don't really know.

Especially the Acela mostly competes with short haul air flights. People who are really price sensitive take the bus (or dive).