Trains kind of suck though. I used them a lot in the UK because I didn't have a car. The UK has an OK train network.

The problem with trains is that they are very, very inconvenient for most journeys. Sunday evening? forget it. After 11pm? Nope. Journey that runs perpendicular to the local line to London? Lol, enjoy a 5 hour journey to go 100 miles. Want to take cargo like a new washing machine? Lol. Want to go somewhere that's not near a station by bus? Enjoy Journey times that are 4, 5 or 10 times slower than a car.

Trains are good for busy commuter lines and nothing else.

1) trains go basically everywhere frequently in Japan, it’s very much a functioning rail network, they exist and kick ass.

2) a train doesn’t need to replace 100% of personal car trips to be useful. I’m sure you’re not transporting dishwashers or taking trips after 11 pm every day. Covering 90% of use cases is sufficient, and the other 10% can be handled by either renting a car or taking an Uber.

3) we can and should make busses faster than cars during times of congestion by giving them their own lanes.

Look, from the point of view of a passenger, the best transport system goes:

- where you want,

- when you want,

- carrying what you want,

- as fast

- and as safely as possible,

- at the lowest cost possible.

Trains are weak on multiple axes here: they do not go where you want to go and they do not go when you want to go, and you cannot carry large amounts on them. They are also quite slow.

The only reason that anyone uses trains is because in dense urban areas like London, cars are even slower, and for intercity trips it is both slow and hard to park when you get to the destination city. There are perhaps some exceptions to this but they don't really exist in the West. Really fast intercity trains are a thing in China and Japan, but the UK has no trains that take you from A to B at an average speed greater than a fast car once you take waiting and stopping time into account. As far as I am aware the same applies to the US as well.

Trains do not cover 90% of use cases, they cover maybe 10%. In my opinion, trains are a technology that should be completely scrapped in favor of driverless minibus and driverless car networks. Modern electric & driverless vehicles with internet connectivity and global transport optimization like Uber would beat trains on every single axis.

I agree. For people who really like trains, think of a bunch of automatic buses traveling right next to each other as a train.

Train definitely does not go "everywhere" in Japan, and one of the problems he mentioned (late night) is especially relevant there even in Tokyo.

The Japanese rail network is awesome but it does not stop everywhere and it’s quite expensive. Japan is huge and taxis get expensive real quick.

Consider Singapore, which is tiny, has a kick ass public transport system (trains and busses) and where it costs 90-100k SGD to own a beater Corolla: people still own cars.

Some people own cars. Car ownership rate is around 11% according to [1], which doesn't look that high.

That said, Singapore public transportation (at least SMRT trains [2]) is freaking strict about food and drinks. I could not even have a sip of water without triggering a warning message. So anyone who can't control their thirst or hunger (like, you know, basically any kid) isn't really welcome there.

[1] https://www.budgetdirect.com.sg/car-insurance/research/car-o...

[2] https://www.smrttrains.com.sg/Journey-with-Us/Travel-Informa...

I life in a city of 600,000 in Japan. Trains DO NOT go everywhere. And as GP wrote, they don't run at night. Everyone here owns a car.

The biggest fault of the entire Japanese system is the stoppage at night. 24 hour service is not the solution and is one of the reasons the services there work very well. But I don't understand why they don't have a replacement system. In Philadelphia the (smaller) system is completely replaced by buses. In other countries the trains run 24 hours but only Friday nights and weekends nights which could increase the use case of 90% of riders to 95% of riders.

Nowadays I live in a city with a tram system, trains to other larger cities and bike lanes.

If you are going from one city centre to another, during the day, the train is the best choice.

If you are moving within a bike-friendly city, bike is best (or Uber, but it is banned here). If you are somewhere in an urban sprawl, it's car or Uber.

I definitely find trains useful, but I think that they are consistently overrated by people for emotional and irrational reasons. I personally use trains for maybe 1% of my journeys and trams for 0% despite them being extremely prominent in my city.

Most people don’t live in Japan.

There are no commuter trains Tasmania.

Compared to Japan, there are no people in Tasmania.

I guess my wider point was that today, 55% of the world’s population lives in urban areas, a proportion that is expected to increase to 68% by 2050.[1]

Urban commuter trains will have little effect on that ~45% of people who won't live near them even if they are built.

On the flip side, though, I guess, that doesn't mean we shouldn't build more train lines.

1. https://www.un.org/development/desa/en/news/population/2018-...

No, trains in the UK are not "OK", they are crap compared to most of Western Europe. Fewer trains and more cancellations than any other country I've ever used trains in, stupid connections and pricing structure, all because of privatization. Look to Switzerland for the best train network in Europe. Reliability is top notch, there's only one company to deal with, and prices are reasonable for the income level.

Reliability of trains in the UK really varies by route. When I was studying and when I first started working I extensively used mainline routes and had no issues.

The last train I could take on a Friday night was 10pm, but given it was a 3 hour journey that didn't seem unreasonable. Each year there was usually one incident that caused delays, but other than they worked well. If I took a fast train the journey time was around the same as driving - quicker in fact given on the journey I would stop for a break - and ticket prices were about the same as driving (for 1 person).

On the other hand I was working in London in 2018, and at weekends often flying from LTN. In the end I added an hour buffer (to a 45 minute journey) because the reliability of Thameslink was so bad.

They're not as good as the best, but they're a lot better than the worst countries for trains. The train network is also fairly thorough in its coverage of the country. I think it's a good representative example (not best, not worst).

Aren't all of those problems solved by more trains?

But it is not really efficient, to use one train, for one passenger.

I can't find where the parent mentioned drinking.

But to stab at that anyway, it wouldn't be silly if he did. People driving impaired for lack of other good and affordable options is an emergent reality, no matter how morally hazardous it is.

I don't drink, but it is very, very inconvenient if your activities are constrained by the train timetable. Much better to have a car available and be able to travel when you want to.

Of course sometimes you dont want to travel late or at weekends

I quite like trains. I hope someday the US gets back to having better rail service.

Highway-autonomous vehicles would give you the benefits of rail service plus arbitrary departure times, more direct routes, on-demand route changes, and you're traveling in a vehicle that you can use for first and last mile and intra-city travel.

Yep. Intercity traffic is a problem we solved in the 1800s.

Riding trains is great, getting to the train station(s) in a busy city, worrying about the schedule and being in the right spot for the right train, etc, is not at all fun.

But otherwise agreed a ton of this stuff could be solved with modern trains.

But appeasing all of the special interest groups in between has made infrastructure development impossibly expensive or takes a decade. So we keep driving cars even long distances between cities.

This is still a solved problem in many European cities. Train stations are often in the city centre, or on the edge of it. They almost always connect with either metro or bus networks, typically with frequent services.

Not in Germany, may be in big cities, but any other region is plagued by disruptions and way less frequent services paired together with horrible local public transport.

The former government owned national railway basically owns every piece of important track and doesn’t give a damn about customers. The prices are constantly rising while the service declines. Can’t count how much time I’ve wasted on several train stations, waiting for up to two hours for late trains, hell, even having to get a hotel multiple times.

Cities like Tokyo have solved most of that for now decades. Def depends on whether the government is willing to make the investment (heavy) into the right amount and level of infrastructure. When you know that Los Angeles used to have over a 1000 miles of rails before the 60's and after pressure from car and tire makers ripped it all away, you understand where all our traffic problems come from :)

> Riding trains is great, getting to the train station(s) in a busy city, worrying about the schedule and being in the right spot for the right train, etc, is not at all fun.

I'd say that, in the majority of cases, it's either no more difficult or outright easier than getting to an airport, as airports tend to be located on the outskirts of cities (requiring connecting train/bus service or private cars), while most rail hubs tend to be in city centers.

I know it’s practically impossible and sheer utopic but I dream of an never-ending Train going in a circle, kind of like a moving tunnel.

The main loop in Tokyo comes every two minutes; it’s as close as you can get practically get to a constantly moving tunnel.

You might enjoy this classic story.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Roads_Must_Roll

Intracity transportation was also solved in the 1800s.

(compact towns & bicycles)

It's interesting to consider what would have happened had the US invested the money it spent on the interstate system on intercity rail instead.

Albany is a middlin' sized city. Taking the train to NYC is like, still a nontrivial event. Also passenger rail has to sidestep freight on this corridor. Megabus is a bit better experience overall but also kinda meh.

On top of that, I personally (and know many agree) HATE the stress of keeping track of times, scheduling around infrequent departures, logistics to/from stations, etc.

> Bonus: the vehicle can be resized at will, depending on the number of passengers.

Yeahno. "please wait 15-30 minutes as we shuffle cars around the rail yard" is not exactly "at will"

Waiting 30 minutes while a new carriage is attached still beats sitting in a traffic jam. At least for me.

I gladly pick rail over car for good lines, because it's stress free. Get to the station in time (with public transportation it's quite deterministic, subways and trams don't get into traffic jams, buses sometimes do).

Cars of course win when it comes to flexibility (late night getting to a small town address).

The problem in the US is we aren’t going to start getting European level train infrastructure anytime soon. Also it’s arguably not a worthwhile goal, we have so much space, and it’s an uphill battle to change US culture to be one where trains are going to be a good fit for our land use and urban planning.

I think surmounting those challenges is useful in itself, not just as a way to enable trains. Using self driving cars to avoid doing that would be a real shame.