It's hard to understand for me why there even isn't any high-speed train service between large metropolitan areas in the US.

As an example, in 2016 I took the train from New York to Montreal. The distance is only about 600 km, but the train ride took almost 12 hours! Part of that was due to the border checks of course, but even during the part in the States the train tucked along really slowly and had to stop multiple times to let cargo trains pass (which have priority over passenger trains it seems). In Europe, I also regularly took the train from Saarbrücken to Paris, which is not that different in terms of distance (around 500-550 km depending how you count) and takes just 1 hour 45 minutes.

The great thing about Switzerland is their 30 minute schedule btw: Trains are scheduled so they arrive around 5 minutes before half in all major train stations, and depart around 5 minutes after half again, so that you can hop from one train to another with less than 10 minutes delay (and trains are on time in Switzerland). They're already planning to change those intervals to 15 minutes, which would basically turn Switzerland into one giant metropolitan area, with train schedules that feel more like subway connections.

> which have priority over passenger trains it seems

Historical reason: the rails were built by freight companies and not by the government like in most of Europe. For them, passenger trains are, at best, an afterthought that doesn't matter.

Specifically the freight companies own the lines and prioritize their own freight trains above passenger service.

And even more specifically, this means the US moves a lot more stuff by rail freight than in Europe, where the rail freight industry is sickly and dying.

The dimensions seem to be from another world, lol:

> 4730 m – United States — The Kansas City Southern Railway regularly runs between Kansas City, MO and Shreveport, LA

> 3658 m – United States – Trains are limited by air brake capability. electronically controlled pneumatic braked (180 wagons) – AAR Standard S-4200.[15]

Meanwhile, ordinary German trains are limited to 740m (Europe wide/UIC limit: 750m) and single-stack operation because of overhead power lines.

On the other side, the US has a lot of space that can be devoted to something like classification yards - the longer the train, the longer the yards have to be.

I would dispute that, based on the amount of freight traffic I see on cab footage from Europe. What has changed is that much of it moves by container or unit train, so a lot of yard trackage is redundant now.

The other thing to note is that the freights are shorter and more frequent, rather than the 200+-car monstrosities we have in the States (made possible by remotely-controlled diesels mid-train or pushing).

Here's a report by the European rail freight industry:

https://www.railfreightforward.eu/sites/default/files/userco...

"Maintaining its current modal share of 18% will pose a challenge for the rail freight sector due to three main factors: an expected change of goods structure, general logistic trends and the high intensity of road innovation."

Railways are poor at moving freight in Europe due to:

a) Sharing tracks with high speed passenger trains, which makes scheduling complicated

b) Lack of agility compared to trucks which can go anywhere, change their routes at the drop of a hat, can turn up and leave at any time you wish.

c) Being government subsidised, often nationalised, there's no innovation anywhere, nobody cares, all the usual problems of socialised infrastructure. Trucking is entirely privatised with many small firms instead of a tiny number of government run firms, so is more customer focused.

There's more at play.

1) our train length is limited - see the parallel comment. UIC limits our trains to 750m top, we don't have the space required for train yards that can handle longer trains, and the signal blocks are too short apart to handle trains longer than that (basic railway safety, a train must always have enough free space in front so that it can brake from full speed to zero in case of crossing a red light without crashing into the train in front). US trains run in multiple kilometers of length, so they have vastly greater capacity.

2) our car height is limited because our networks are largely electrified which means you can't double stack containers on them

3) our infrastructure is densely packed which means that you can't just run a train uplink to a random warehouse, and for those industries that do have a train uplink, the shunting required is expensive (need to maintain locomotives and trained drivers, which are in rare supply compared to truck drivers).

> Being government subsidised, often nationalised, there's no innovation anywhere, nobody cares, all the usual problems of socialised infrastructure

WTF? That's just flat out wrong and ideological. There is no real innovation anywhere in railways, the only thing that the US makes different is that freight trains are prioritized and longer, but that's hardly innovative (and again, as Europe is smaller and denser, impossible to replicate).

With smaller innovations (I'd call these "improvements") the situation looks different - e.g. the digitalization of train control aka ETCS, automated couplers, more efficient/silent braking systems... the tech exists, vendors exist - but good luck getting all the private freight companies to on-board to that new tech, as they don't want to bear the cost of progress! That, and solely that, is why Europe is still stuck with screw couplers and dumb freight carriages.

How many private rail freight companies are there in Europe? The railfreight firms I know are all semi or fully state backed.

As for the innovation thing, the report I quoted literally says they can't keep up with road innovation. It doesn't say there are no new ideas in railways ever, but, who in SBB or DB is really going to go the extra mile to fight for some cool new idea? Truck firms are far smaller and there are way more of them, so people can conceivably get ahead by doing things differently (doesn't need to be tech innovation).

> How many private rail freight companies are there in Europe? The railfreight firms I know are all semi or fully state backed.

Germany has enough of them to fill a couple pages: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liste_deutscher_Eisenbahngesel...

The vast majority is handled by state-owned DB Cargo though: https://de.statista.com/statistik/daten/studie/568662/umfrag...

> It doesn't say there are no new ideas in railways ever, but, who in SBB or DB is really going to go the extra mile to fight for some cool new idea?

And... what should these be, ETCS and automated couplers aside? The vast majority of truck innovation are related to electrification (which most major European rail corridors are already, and the last mile can be handled by the new dual power locomotives) and driver assistance (autonomous driving, dead spot detectors, emergency automated brakes, driver cab comfort).

> Truck firms are far smaller and there are way more of them, so people can conceivably get ahead by doing things differently

Yeah, they cheat on the safety rules, and enjoy that every business has a road connection while very few businesses have a rail connection so it's easier to do computer assisted magic in scheduling.

There are more rail companies in Europe, than in US. If you bothered looking at the UK, you'd notice that they alone has as many freight companies at US.

In US rail companies aren't exactly known for innovation either, because of extreme distances they haul and already efficient diesel-electric locomotives - there's no practical pressures to innovate at all.

There are multiple reasons why rail traffic in Europe and US is different, but none of it is because "socialism".

In Switzerland a train transfer time of 3 minutes in the schedule is not unheard of. You can easily make it, the two trains involved stop on the opposite side of the same platform.

The main problem with the US interstate train system is that it's run on freight train lines. Amtrak and Acela do not actually own the railway they use and they can only go a certain speed due to the grade of the track.

I don't think you would be willing to pay the amount of taxes you would need to, to completely redo the railways haha.

Anyways Amtrak are barely turning a profit as it is and while it would be great to have Euro quality train lines, the economics aren't there. Even in Europe they're having a hard time competing with flixbus.

> I don't think you would be willing to pay the amount of taxes you would need to, to completely redo the railways haha.

This premise feels wrong: The Swiss, German, Chinese, Spanish experience is that people pay to have high speed rail services, and the G20 economies in that list pay high marginal rates of taxes just fine, for this outcome.

The "you" here is conditionally the "you" of current social mores America. It by no means is the only recent experience of America, under presidents to Reagan, the top rate of marginal tax was significantly higher than at present, and people paid.

Perhaps, if Americans were made to pay more supertax they would discover sooner than you think, how few people it inconvenienced (Bezos) and how many it benefitted.

"you" might be surprised how low the increment was on your tax base, to fund the state investment your country needs, taking into account the superwealthy, and corporate tax evasion.

China high speed rail growth over 9 years. It's an excellent system and I much prefer it to domestic aviation.

https://miro.medium.com/max/1400/1*Jj_k4U1AwuB5Ia-9oHuJKQ.gi...

I had included China and edited it out: I am unsure what the effective tax rate is for their national capital investment projects. Since the primary story was about tax, I didn't want to cloud things without knowing what Chinese salary tax effects were.

In China you can zoom out and see that wages / household income is quite depressed, both to keep the exports flowing and power the reinvestment, so the larger point stands fine.

Major lines like the one between Beijing and Shanghai are profitable and publicly-traded, therefore doesn't require government subsidy.

Of course, Beijing-Shanghai line is the first and only to go public, just at the beginning of 2020, and we can get their financial numnbers easily.

Many other lines are not necesarrily profitable, but few of them require government subsidy besides the initial capital investment, that is their income is more than the operational cost.

That's a fair call, I'm not sure how you'd even try start comparing it to the West, I doubt western countries can even be compared to each other that well.

See people in here talk about land area and population while completely ignoring things like topography/zoning/protectionism. Building 100km of rail in Switzerland is never going to be comparable to building 100km on flat plains elsewhere.

Swiss taxes vary by location but are generally not higher than the US taxes. So it's not about paying more, it's about wasting less.

It's about priorities. Swiss defense spending as a percentage of GDP is 0.675%. US defense spending as a percentage of GDP is 3.2%. I just picked a simple example, but you will find similar disparities across the board.

FWIW, Switzerland has a higher GDP per capita at $82k as compared to $62k for the U.S. Swiss per capita defense expenditures are closer to ~1/4 (28%) of those of the U.S. as compared to ~1/5 (21%) when judging by GDP percentage. (Conversely, France and U.K. have GDPs of about $42k, so they compare much worse by that metric.)

But more importantly, Switzerland isn't a NATO member.

The defence spending isn't much compared to the social expenditures. Switzerland spends roughly 30% on social/welfare (and roughly 10% on transportation infra). US spends roughly 50% of its budget on social/welfare and it ain't getting better any time soon.

And part of US Defense spending helps defend countries like Switzerland. Maybe we still spend too much, but we also "defend" a lot more countries than ourselves, and a lot more territory than Switzerland.

Switzerland is a neutral country and not part of NATO. The US has no obligation to defend them. Almost every adult male Swiss citizen has received military training. The country may not spend as much as the US, but Swiss citizens are willing to pay for their freedom in a different way.

(..and yes, only men are conscripted. Switzerland is a great country, but there continue to be problems with sexism, even today)

Which is a political choice by the US and not about "defending" but influence.

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

I’m failing to see how this makes it an OK justification for the grift/corruption.

Building such a network is less economically feasible in America compared to Europe or China because of America's suburban sprawl. First, it'll cost more to build because you'll need to clear out a route of suburban housing to get between any two cities. Second, the population density of the US is less concentrated, which makes getting to the station take longer, and improves the relative attractiveness of other transportation options such as cars/busses on shorter routes and planes on longer routes.

It's really disappointing to me as a transit enthusiast that the US doesn't have great high speed rail service in the Northeast Corridor, but to do so would involve clearing way for new, less curvy track, and that would be extremely expensive. Even if we did it I'm not sure it would get the usage rates that occur in Europe. The issue here is sadly more complicated that tax policy.

US population density is hardly the issue for two reasons, first nobody wants high speed rail in Alaska. But secondly high speed rail is between cities not every little podunk town. Linking Richmond, DC, Baltimore, NYC, Boston is a single 550 mile high speed rail line, which connects over 10% of the entire Americana population.

I mentioned the Northeast Corridor because it is the most viable location to have passenger rail in the US. But even there presents some issues (which I may not have explained very well in my original post).

I disagree with your assessment because American density is very different than European density. If you look at Google Earth, there is almost continuous suburban development along the entire Northeast route. In Europe, populations are clustered in smaller urban centers. High speed rail can only stop so many times and because of this, it is more difficult for the average American to get to a train station.

This situation is obvious to people who have lived in suburban America but can be surprising to those who have not. Imagine driving up to an hour to a city center, finding a place to long term park your car near the station and then taking a mode of transportation that isn't significantly faster than your car would've been. Then needing to take an expensive taxi once you arrive because your destination city has a limited public transportation system.

Comparing region densities at face value misses the issue, the way cities and regions are designed present unique transit challenges around the world.

American cities are clustered as much as European and there's hardly a good reason why high speed rail is impossible. To the point that there literally is a private company that built a high speed link between Orlando and Miami.

As for the experience of driving to a train station, that's compounded x times by going to an airport.

But in the end the lack of use stems more from discomfort, than anything else. Having high speed connection from Poughkeepsie/Albany to NYC would open up Hudson Valley to commuters decades ago, not a boom of Zoomtowns today (Kingston, NY, Beacon, NY)

The overall infrastructure is crap in US and that is the primary reason for poor use of it. (I mean, FFS, old Tappan Zee Bridge didn't even have pedestrian walkway! While being the only available crossing for miles)

American cities are clustered differently than European ones, it's not something that can be easily quantified, it really takes some time looking at the maps to understand what I am talking about, as it doesn't seem like my explanations are doing the job. Looking at the footprints this way is simplistic but maybe helpful:

https://external-preview.redd.it/W-GAALExjeE8w0aXg7Kh0gOAHcl...

For example, Paris is one of Europe's largest cities and yet it has a footprint comparable to Cleveland, a city with less than 1/5 the population. Meanwhile, the population density of Ohio is over 5 times as high as France.

I never said high speed rail is impossible, just that there are a unique set of challenges in developing such a network in the US. I'm a huge fan of public transportation and HSR, we just need to be realistic and pair it with smart urban/regional development.

High speed rail needs a seed to start growing the network, but as soon as you have that adding other cities becomes increasingly viable. Initially you might build each of these city clusters: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northeast_megalopolis#/media/F... Afterwards, running/maintaining the high rail is more economically viable due to network effects.

High speed rail is roughly double if not triple the speed of the car speed on a speedway, let alone car speed in city.

More importantly, just don't think of city as static, inanimatable object. Many american cities are created because of the rails if you remember the history, High speed rail may not create new cities, but can definitely reshape parts of the city.

Acela's average speed is 82 mph between NYC and Boston. 66 mph between NYC and DC. When you add the time to get to/from the stations my point makes a lot of sense.

If you remember the history, many of the existing rail lines were built before the suburban explosion post WWII. To make Acela go faster, the route would need straighter track which would require buying a lot of expensive, already developed, land.

That’s the basic assumption for any HSR plan. You can’t mingle 160+MPH passenger trains with freight, so you need to buy a lot of land anyway. However, getting out of the urban center at 80+MPH isn’t a major issue and that let’s you avoid buying the most expensive inner city land. Getting off in the center of a city like Penn Station vs Laguardia Airport more than makes up for a few miles of slower speeds especially as these trains take a while to accelerate.

Sounds good. Don’t make us over in California pay for it though.

Why not?

Because we get absolutely no benefit from it. If you want to have a massive government program that primarily benefits 3-4 states, don’t force Californians to shoulder that burden. That’s what state-level taxes are for.

I'm not from the US, so I guess that's why I asked. My country tends to be a tad more social and federalistic.

The US is better compared to the EU than any particular country, both in terms of size, population, and distinct governments.

So this is similar to a train being proposed from Amsterdam to Copenhagen that would be paid for by all of the member countries.

The Northeast has a density comparable to Europe. I do agree on the culture issue, however - Americans definitely prefer cars by default. Although in the Washington-Philadelphia-NYC-Boston corridor it may be possible, if there is ever a culture of large public works again.

Europeans prefers cars when the train options are poor too.

Improve the trains, and people will eventually wake up to them.

I don't know why Americans think that they are so special.

Yes - Europeans do prefer the optimal transport option (cost, speed, comfort, etc)

Americans aren't special and many European places rely on cars or busses for transport.

Surely having big train stations with massive car parks just outside towns will fit well with car culture.

My other idea is high speed trains where you can take your car with you, like eurotunnel but faster.

The US actually has this. It's called the Auto Train: https://www.amtrak.com/auto-train

Runs from just outside of DC to Florida.

In the Northeast, Amtrak has pretty much captured the NYC <-> DC market for business travel.

What's holding it back is a lack of capacity and slower speeds than you'd find in, say, Europe.

Why it's slow is a complex problem with many causes.

It's partly due to US regulations that cause trains to be heavier, slower and more expensive than overseas.

The infrastructure is also old, dating back to the 1800s in some cases, causing bottlenecks in key areas. One 1870s-era tunnel in Baltimore brings speeds down to 30mph for what feels like an eternity.

Amtrak is also not super great at running the NEC. The physical infrastructure could do more, and relatively cheap changes could have a large impact.

Putting cars on High Speed Trains would be uneconomical, a car easily weighs dozens of people, you wouldn't want to pay that kind of fare for a car.

Switzerland doesn't have any high speed rail services, defined conventionally. All trains in Switzerland are pretty slow, but it's a small country so it rarely matters.

Also, Swiss trains are pretty expensive. You don't notice because wages are high, but really, everything in this country is very expensive compared to neighbouring countries. In most countries inter-city rail is used by commuters so governments impose price caps, if there is any political pressure to lower prices here I've never seen it.

I personally would say it matters quite a bit. In most cases the train is not competitive with a car, both in term of time and money. Convenience is less clear: availability is good during peak time, but the trains are crowded so good luck taking your laptop out to work. The rest of the time, availability is still decent if you stick to the main lines and the ride is very confortable.

Also, cars are not expensive in Switzerland, especially when you take into account the high salaries.

California spends 10% of an amazon to not build a train between two cities.

I find that perplexing about US politics in general. Any proposal on taxes and social benefits, throws off people that at a first glance shouldn't. Maybe large part of the voting base are millionaires.

There are 11 million millionaires in the US which is approx 3.3% of the population. Polls show that many more people expect to become millionaires real soon. In fact, 60% expect to become wealthy during their lifetimes. The optimism that one sees in the US is commendable but it reflects itself in the resistance to taxing the rich. After all, why would you vote to increase taxes if it is going to negatively affect you in a few years. In reality, very few actually become rich.

Edit: link to a recent article on how many US persons expect to get rich/wealthy/millionaires ... https://www.cnbc.com/2019/05/13/how-much-money-americans-thi...

Ouf that survey is weak - being a millionaire in the US does not make one wealthy. A lot of people end up having more than 1mil in assets by the time they retire simply due to real estate, this isn't the case for everyone but being a millionaire doesn't mean you're not still somewhere around the midpoint of the middle class in terms of income.

That's why I used separate terms, ie millionaire and wealthy. Being a millionaire requires that you have more than 1m as assets after taking into account your debts. That is easy but being wealthy is more subjective. Polls have shown that people consider 'being wealthy' if you have a wealthy lifestyle or in excess of USD x million. Currently x is about 2.6.

There's the old quote misattributed to John Steinbeck:

> Socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires.

It's because corruption is so rife here.

It's blatant and widespread.

The only respite from corruption in US - the government is severely restricted.

Or, you know, just spend 5% less on the military :)

From what I understand other countries (especially EU) essentially contract out defense to the US for economical reasons (i.e. so they can afford to spend more of their budget on social services and less on military). If US cuts military budget it means EU will have to increase military budget by more than the US cut to make up for it.

Yeah, so there’s some positive externalities too ;)

It’s not healthy for Europe to be so dependent on the US, as has been proven over the past 4 years.

Europe also does not stir up as much conflict in the world as the US does, isn't it? So they are less in need of defense.

The biggest EU defence needs are two: securing oil ingress from the Middle East and securing resource ingress from Africa. Without the US 5th fleet, Iran or any other regional power could shut down oil ingress, pitching the EU into a sizable (-30%) GDP recession. Instability, of which there is plenty in the Middle East, could do the same.

Same for Africa, with the added threat of Chinese competition for the same resources. Without those raw materials (minerals, uranium, some oil and gas) European manufacturing doesn't have a future. Hence the constant French and American interventions to stabilize various African states and their tight relations with their governments.

That state of affairs is because of the Post-WWII order the US constructed via alliances & multilateral organizations, in response to being repeatedly dragged into European wars.

https://ourworldindata.org/uploads/2013/08/Europe-only-Armed...

The only reason they are not in need of defence is because the US umbrella still protects them from invasion by foreign powers. If the US were totally uninterested in Europe, Russia would likely make much bolder moves in the region.

If they feel they're making the US pay for their defense spending good on them. On the US side of things a good chunk of the country thinks we should be world police for patriotic reasons - another chunk of the country thinks we have a duty to defend the world... While the majority of people (who are underrepresented by special interest groups) think it's insane we get five F35s for a billion dollars.

President was throwing a big fit about that a couple years ago. Wanting EU to pay a higher share of defense spending.

What does the $375B in interest payments buy America?

The ability to keep borrowing.

...good credit, that's how lending works.

That's true if you consider all of Amtrak.

The Northeast Corridor, which the GP is talking about, is a bit of a special case. Amtrak owns the tracks from NY to DC (states own the CT/MA part) and they're good enough to go a bit faster than the otherwise-usual 79 mph speed limit. This part of Amtrak is, IIRC, fairly profitable. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northeast_Corridor

In the rest of the country, Amtrak is indeed stuck on freight lines, and service is often slow and unprofitable, but it's not entirely on them either. Passenger traffic is supposed to be prioritized, but the freight lines are not great about it and have been fined for not doing so (though, not enough to make them do it either). There are also weird political considerations about routes.

This is 2014 profitability data per route: http://reasonrail.blogspot.com/2014/11/amtrak-routes-by-2014...

Pretty much all routes lose money except the Acela and Northeast Regional routes.

Living in the Netherlands and Flixbus is no competition to the trains here. As for travel inside of country, most of the passengers are travelling for work and normally employers pay for travel costs and if not it would be tax deductible, so they would naturally take trains. A lot of lines are already at maximum capacity during rush hour. As for travel to outside of the country, trains move a lot more passengers than Flixbus. Cheap train tickets are always bought early for holiday season.

I find public transport more expensive compared to minimum wage keeping other countries that I lived before, but the quality is high.

Trains are fast and reliable here and there's continuous improvements on the trains and their tracks. Every year they would announce that decrease in travel time due to improved tracks or higher frequency for some routes.

The only problem is that when something goes wrong extreme weather, signal failure, problem on the tracks in the rush hour, then that route stops working and all neighbouring routes become delayed or overcrowded. Luckily I only experience it every few months.

Roads don't break even, why should we expect trains to?

I never understand this line of thought. We invest in infrastructure to enable people to move between places, commune with one another, and trade goods. We've invested a tremendous amount in roads. Why do we expect other things like the USPS, Amtrak, etc. to generate profits when they're an expenditure in infrastructure?

The argument goes that if nobody is willing to pay the price for something(passenger rail), and chooses another alternative(driving), then it means that the service is not worth having and subsiding it would just be a waste of taxpayer money.

Of course its not that simple, because driving is subsidized(I would prefer every road to be a toll road and get rid of the general taxes that used to go to roads)...but you get the point.

I mean, the issue is I can't choose to pay for quality rail service because it doesn't exist here. I can't take HSR from e.g., Boston to NYC, SF to LA, or Seattle to Portland/Vancouver. These are all trips I would have gladly made at 100-400 dollar ticket prices in the last year.

Yes but you're exceptionally rare, and might discover you're wrong about your preferences if someone were to take the big gamble of building such a service. Also the whole era of passenger rail may have been killed off by lockdowns.

Train services are basically always hugely subsidised by governments. They could not survive against cars, buses and trucks if they weren't. The subsidies in Switzerland are eye-wateringly high for example. It's effectively a form of government planning designed to boost city/worker density as governments and others believe offices full of workers yields large benefits, and trains are the highest density/capacity form of passenger transport by far. So if you want ultra-dense urban cores you need a lot of trains.

But do we actually need those? Governments sure haven't acted like it this year. Now big corps are eyeing their expensive city centre HQs and wondering if the real estate is worth it, the workers are seeing how much they save when they aren't being forced to pay for the very expensive rail tickets, the managers are seeing that many (but not all) workers are happier without the time sucking, cattle-car commutes ... and governments are basically having to give up on the fiction that rail companies were private in order to keep them from going completely bust. But how long can that be sustained, if travel patterns have been permanently altered? No dense urban cores = few commuters paying business rates for rush hour travel = even worse economics for trains.

> I would prefer every road to be a toll road and get rid of the general taxes that used to go to roads

Off-topic I know, but I'd only like to see this if the tolls were reasonable with respect to the maintenance of the affected stretches of road. $0.50 per car per mile more than pays off a typical 4-lane interstate in a year, yet tolls are often an order of magnitude larger and drawn out for 20+ years.

A fair toll road system would basically ban semi trucks, since they’re the ones that do the overwhelming majority of the damage.

That's an interesting idea. I wonder how workable it would be to automate tolling based on axle weight.

Germany has a toll system for trucks only:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LKW-Maut

From Wikipedia:

> Germany's LKW-Maut is a toll for goods vehicles based on the distance driven in kilometres, the emission category of the vehicle and the number of axles.

It's meant to compensate some of these damages caused by high weight. If I remember correctly, road damage scales at a power of four of axle weight. It's billed semi-automatically (wireless stations along the road + device in the truck) and you don't even notice it as a normal driver.

Legal side note: Germany also has a vehicle tax that roughly scales with the size of the vehicle. But this only applies to vehicles registered in Germany. Because of the European Single Market, a lot of trucks running on German highways are registered in foreign countries (esp. Eastern Europe since drivers from those countries draw smaller salaries). The toll was enacted specifically to ensure that those foreign trucks contribute towards road maintenance as well. It does apply to German trucks, too, because the EU has rules against laws that discriminate against foreign EU citizens.

It's incredibly easy for trucks; they're already licensed and weighed. Most trucks in the US already have something in the cab to handle signaling the driver to pull in to the weigh station, implying that adding tracking & billing wouldn't be too hard. We're also starting to see GPS & LTE in the trailers too, to fight theft, so that's an easy integration point.

It's a bit harder with cars, since there's a lot less infrastructure to track usage, and people would rightfully balk at the invasion of privacy.

Just wanted to point out that carbon taxes are effectively per-mile tolls, but just on vehicles with ICE engines.

It's hard to justify investing in rail. At best, in most parts of the US it is slower, more expensive, and less convenient. There are some edge cases that it makes real sense for, but everywhere else is better served by cars and airplanes.

>> It's hard to justify investing in rail. At best, in most parts of the US it is slower, more expensive, and less convenient

But that's because we haven't invested in it! Before the 1960s most roads in the US were also terrible, so by that logic we shouldn't have invested in the Highway/Freeway Interstate system.

Seriously.

Here's the Amtrak network: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/f6/Am...

Here's the US freight rail network: https://i.imgur.com/4TYsU_d.webp?maxwidth=1024&fidelity=medi...

You can't tell me we can't do better.

We could definitely have a beautiful, big, fast train network. But most people still wouldn't use it.

Evidence from Europe and Asia shows that this is probably wrong. People in those areas strongly prefer high speed rail for trips that are less than 3-4 hours long, and begin to switch over to airplanes beyond that.

We're right back to "remember how big and sparsely populated the US is." 150mph in three hours is good for inter-city transportation in the Northeast, but a lot of other places would have trouble justifying the cost.

And that's nothing compared with what a truly high speed train would cost to implement here.

Again, that's a great reason not to build HSR in Iowa or the Dakotas. But if you look where the population centers of America, this excuse begins to fall down. A huge percentage of America lives on the coasts in fairly dense pockets, far denser than many countries with existing HSR.

High speed rail generally goes a bit faster than 300km/h. At that speed a lot of things are less than 4 hours away. Chicago is a bit less than 4 hours from NYC at that speed, as is Seattle from San Francisco. San Francisco to Seattle is obviously not a great candidate for a high speed rail line because it doesn't pass through much of interest, but it gives a good sense of the scale.

Why not?

There's tons of routes in the US that could make sense if there wasn't so much NIMBYism, corruption and the oil and auto lobby, let's be honest.

SF-Sacramento, SF-LA, LA-San Diego, LA-Vegas, Seattle-Portland, the whole Northeast Corridor (a better truly high speed Acela), Houston-Dallas, Orlando-Miami, Pittsburg-DC and and and. There's lots of large cities in the US in the high speed rail sweetspot of 400-800 miles (2-4h travel time) apart

Trains are like 3 times faster than cars if built properly, and have no luggage issues like planes do

Your point could be correct overall, but to say "rail is more expensive than road transport" you've got to do cirque-de-solei level acrobatics.

You seem to be presenting this as a false dichotomy. The road network can't go away even if we have excellent rail travel. If you look at the incremental costs of additional traffic capacity, road transport is pretty competitive.

Roads could easily break even with gas taxes or other fees that users would complain about but still pay. Federal gas taxes cover the majority of highway operational and capital expenses, even with ~1/6 diverted to mass transit. Double the gas tax and interstate highways are entirely user-funded at fuel prices lower than prevailed a few years ago.

Passenger rail outside of the Northeast corridor can’t even fund its current operating cost through ticket sales, let alone the massive capital needed to build more.

I dont know where you are but in NYC the port authority makes billions from bridge and tunnels to use to subsidize the PATH train system.

>I don't think you would be willing to pay the amount of taxes you would need to, to completely redo the railways haha.

When something becomes a cultural priority, economic sectors shift to accommodate it. We are really good at trucking, for example. We have loads of highways. We also have excellent freight rail.

The reason that the passenger rail sector in the US sucks is because it is small at a national scale and so it doesn't benefit from access to the national market. If you model NYC as a small country building its own rail network in a high-cost area surrounded by countries with no transit and expensive labor, suddenly it makes sense. Passenger rail isn't a priority in the curriculum at most universities. People who might learn how to build subways instead learn to build highways. Companies that might specialize in subways specialize in airports. To use a coding analogy, building passenger rail does not follow the happy path for American construction organizations, be they unions or firms.

(In Latin America, the problem starts earlier: primary and secondary school math scores in LA trail the income quantile for, IIRC, all LA countries)

This is a situation that can be changed, but it won't happen in one place or at one time. Alternatively, the country could reduce taxes on foreign contractors building transit infrastructure and recruit more foreign investment, although that would certainly leave a bitter taste if it hurt the car industry.

> Amtrak and Acela do not actually own the railway they use...

This is true for most of the Amtrak mileage, but the Northeast Corridor rails are largely owned by Amtrak[0,pg4]:

Amtrak owns and operates 363 route-miles of the 457-route-mile Northeast Corridor (NEC) spine between Washington and Boston.

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

The US is willing to run at a $3T deficit so the concept of needing tax money or fiscal viability to build things is tenuous at best.

Did taxpayers get slammed when we built the transcontinental RR?

No, but the early railroads of this country were built when there were no property rights of competing owners to defend (or respect), few comparable alternative modes of transportation, and practically no safety or regulatory measures to govern how it was built.

That said, the cost of building things in the US is a major problem.

It was also built by Chinese immigrants slaves at essentially no cost to the builders, wasn’t it?

Depends on the region. Out West it was mostly Chinese workers. Back East it was the Irish.

> Did taxpayers get slammed when we built the transcontinental RR?

Heh, I don't know much about the history of the transcontinental railroad in the US, but up here in Canada it was relatively cheap because... well... to be blunt, we used primarily Chinese labour and did not give a single crap about whether or not they died building it.

The US government gave railroad companies 175 million acres of free land, 10% of the nation (ex. Alaska), to get those railroads built. It was an incredibly costly endeavor.

I understand that Acalea still suffered an unusual problem. Because the tracks are connected to freight tracks, regulation required it to do well in a collision with a heavier freight train. This means that it has to be much heavier than true HSTs are in other countries. That's why it goes much slower than HSTs elsewhere and is still pricey.

High speed trains in other countries also share tracks with freight- even if there are no freight services on dedicated high-speed lines, they won't necessarily be on such lines all the time.

FRA crash safety standards are stricter because of Not Invented Here syndrome.

I'll probably always take the train into Boston. Even though it's a little more expensive than taking a greyhound or driving (if I can find parking), I don't like to drive in Boston. However, if I needed to go much further I'd be in a bind. The website is really difficult to use at times. I was trying to get to Maryland(?) at one point to buy a used car, but I couldn't find a page that would show me stations near where I needed to go. I ended up finding one nearby using Google, and though the Amtrak website allowed it as a destination, it seemed there were never trains headed there. After 15 minutes of confusion, I checked wikipedia and it turned out the station had been closed to trains for years and only operated as a museum.

So even if they redid the rails, they might have to redo the website as well.

If you can drive in Boston, you can drive almost anywhere -- e.g. I didn't find driving round the Arc de Triomphe in Paris particularly difficult. Who needs lines? :-)

But I'd probably take the commuter train instead if they ran more often -- if we ever go back to offices.

The UI of the Amtrak fare / ticket finding website is terrible.

The website is bad, but phoning Amtrak actually worked pretty well for me! There wasn't much of a wait, the staff were friendly and knowledgeable, and they were able to really quickly plan out complicated routes with multiple transfers and compare different options. (One wonders if they could make whatever fancy planning/booking system they use available to the public.)

Admittedly this was a couple years ago, so it's possible COVID or budget cuts have changed things for the worse.

> The website is bad, but phoning Amtrak actually worked pretty well for me!

Underappreciated these days: web is not always the priority method of interaction for people.

The web is great, but for historical or practical reasons a lot of people and businesses prefer other solutions.

E.g. construction workers and phones

When we built the interstate highway system the top income tax rate was 87%.

>"Anyways Amtrak are barely turning a profit as it is and while it would be great to have Euro quality train lines, ..."

There's no reason that the North Eastern commuter corridor that runs Washington D.C. to Boston couldn't be profitable if Amtrak were to operate as a series of independent regional entities though. The economics are certainly there. Instead Amtrak is a single entity which services large swathes of the country for which there is little demand for rail service.

>I don't think you would be willing to pay the amount of taxes you would need to, to completely redo the railways haha.

We already pay the taxes, but unfortunately we spend a trillion dollars a year maintaining our global military empire instead of shoring up our crumbling domestic infrastructure. Priorities!

We are supposedly building a Shinkansen-like train in Texas:

https://www.texastribune.org/2020/09/21/dallas-houston-high-...

Amtrak does turn a profit on the Northeast corridor. It's just that it has mandates to provide a lot of service outside the Northeast Corridor that is unprofitable.

They own the Northeast corridor.

Of course I'd be willing to pay for new train tracks. I've wasted days of my life in northern virginia waiting for the track to free up. And they wonder why nobody uses the train!

Amtrak has never turned a profit. Ever. They have never even broken even.

Is this the metric we should be grading everything on? My kid hasn’t either but I love her nonetheless.

I think it’s a pretty reasonable metric for a business whose stated goal is to be profitable. I don’t know what that has to do with your kid, but I’m glad you love her.

One interesting thing about the Swiss system is they've prioritized reliable connectivity and frequent service over high-speed service. They do have some higher speed rail, but nothing even as fast as their neighbors in France or Germany. I feel like we have a thing for high speed rail here in the US as an aspirational goal, but maybe we should be aiming for reliable regional connectivity as a first step. Austin to San Antonio, Dallas to OKC, an electrified/more frequent SF to Sacramento - all of that could make a huge dent in local travel patterns.

Switzerland is also very small, as countries go. The longest train route is IC 1 (St. Gallen <-> Geneva) going from the (almost) easternmost point to the westernmost point, and it’s 4 hours (it does have a few higher speed sections close to Bern). They simply don’t need much speed if they run frequent and reliable trains.

People in Europe travel between countries a lot. Luxembourg has high-speed rail with a single stop!

And the Swiss railways operate high-speed trains for those links with neighbouring countries- their routes to Milan, Venice and Frankfurt use trains capable of 250 km/h (ETR610 or Giruno), though they only travel at 200 km/h within Switzerland.

Size is never the reason.

Not sure if your "never" statement is true, but it seems that more frequently than size, it's density or lack of it that makes the difference

TBH considering their mountainous terrain, already the lower speeds they achieve are quite a feat of engineering. Meanwhile a small storm upends most of Germany's rail network for a long time because they let trees grow close to the rails...

Leaves on the tracks is no joke, I found those Network Rail posters pretty amusing :)

https://www.networkrailmediacentre.co.uk/news/leaves-on-the-...

I am now imagining some description of brush extensions on the front of cow catchers that just take a wire brush and scrub the fire out of the track in front of the train to get leaves off the track and scrub of some of the crushed wet leaves off of it as the train goes along.

I think the brushes would wear out pretty quickly.

They use high pressure (1500 Bar!) water jets instead, and apply sand to the rails: https://www.networkrail.co.uk/stories/leaf-busting-trains-pr...

It took me a minute to realize that you are talking about train speeds, not network speeds haha.

I hope that the Swiss will stay level-headed and not get into high-speed trains. Reliable connections are far better for more people. The opposite example I would like to present is the high-speed Berlin-Munich train line. It has gobbled up a lot of the railway budget. According to Wikipedia [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berlin%E2%80%93Munich_high-spe...] this was the most expensive transportation project in Germany. In my opinion it would have been better to bring the rest of the infrastructure up to a higher standard.

You wouldn't even need to pay higher taxes. The American system of private cars on public roads is dramatically more expensive than the Swiss train system.

The American train system is also drastically more expensive than the Swiss train system.

You must be jokin‘. Switzerland paid 11.2 billion in 2016. that would be 600 billions compared in US. But US invested 25.9 in 2016.

Switzerland moved all trucks to the rails to get more capacity on the streets (successfully). So this investments paid out. Fewer traffic = fewer stressed people = more productivity = fewer lost hours

They invested more, which is not the same as it costing more.

Cheaper to just move to Switzerland.

^ Ok I LOL'd at this entire thread

This is true. The USA has over 10x the population and 238x the land area. A national train system = dollar amounts that the human mind can't really grasp.

That is not the reason because if it were, there would be Switzerland-sized bits of the US with Swiss-esque rail service, and there are not. For example, LA County is more populous and five times as dense as Switzerland, but has essentially no rail service of which to boast. It's just a land use choice we are making: we can either have compact urban forms easily served by rail, or distributed forms that are impossible to serve.

I’m not sure that it’s the sprawl either. Many European cities with large suburban areas around them and nearby smaller towns that have effectively become part of them (e.g. Milano) have frequent local/regional rail service out to all the suburbs and associated towns.

I wonder if US sprawl is still structurally different from European sprawl. In Europe even suburban areas seem more likely to have a small mixed-user core on which residents can easily walk to a train stop. The US seems to frequently deter that with zoning dividing residential and commercial areas

You either arrange your town so everyone can walk to the rail station, or you end up with Los Angeles. My favorite example is the Swiss city Chur. This negligibly-populated, irrelevant little town, which is 4% the size of San Francisco, has a 12-track rail station that is much better than the one that San Francisco plans to have by 2050. And, of course, the trains come constantly. In the next hour Bahnhof Chur will enjoy the arrival of 13 trains, and that's their pre-dawn service!

>People tell me the reasons that everything is more expensive than in Switzerland

US is cheaper than Switzerland for pretty much any product. If you are talking about train service, then the reason for that is because US (and Canada) prioritize freight traffic. Freight traffic is much more efficient in North America than in Europe [1] and unfortunately (or fortunately) is prioritized over passenger traffic.

Honestly, I think America made the better decision.

[1]https://www.freightwaves.com/news/why-is-europe-so-absurdly-...

"European railways had no incentive to take risks to re-engineer and spend billions of euros to increase clearances and rework tunnel heights for double-stacked railcars, because the European railway business model was about moving passengers and not freight – the opposite of how North America dealt with its railroad system. "

Switzerland moved 40% of all freight traffic kilometerd to the rails too, which is really a lot. (https://www.bfs.admin.ch/bfsstatic/dam/assets/10547450/maste...)

The passenger modal share for rail in CH is 21%:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_rail_usag...

For the US it is 0.3%.

Given that CH is land-locked, it's not surprising that freight modal share is 46%, because it has to get inland from a port in some way:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_rail_usag...

This is higher than the US, but give that 127M Americans (40%) live in counties that are on the coast, it's probably not too hard to get things to them:

* https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/population.html

* https://www.livescience.com/18997-population-coastal-areas-i...

Heck, Los Angeles county has a population (10M) larger than CH (8.5M), and would be the 10th largest state (between NC and MI):

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_states_and_territories...

So a good number of Americans can get goods pretty direct without long distance inland shipping.

Not everyone living along a coast has an appropriate coast to establish a harbor sufficient for shipping. If you live in big sur you still get your crap from china delivered inland from the port of Los Angeles.

Where did I say that it was necessary? In the US there are lots of major ports all along the coast, which is where most of the population is. For the Pacific:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Panamax_ports#Pacific_...

And from any of those it's probably not that far to any major population centre.

Compare to Switzerland, which has precisely zero ports, and so of course needs rail (and trucks) to get things delivered.

Nitpicking: Switzerland actually does have three ports that provide, protected by international law, access to the North Sea (via the Rhine) and the Black Sea (via the Rhine–Main–Danube canal). In terms of quantities, about 10% of imports are going through these ports, mainly bulk load.

Source (only in german): https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schweizerische_Rheinh%C3%A4fen

You're going to have to provide some context. I don't know what you're trying to argue.

A 40% share of tonne-km by rail in Switzerland is similar to the figure for the USA. It's other European countries that have too much road freight.

Note that ships are much more used in Europe.

https://transportgeography.org/?page_id=1828

Just wanted to clarify that this is not valid for the whole continent and it would work for western europe to move the traffic on rails.

The US is certainly not cheaper for two products that everyone has to buy: healthcare and housing. Switzerland is significantly more affordable than the US because the price of these two goods (which are human rights) are regulated.

Housing in Switzerland is more expensive than the US if you exclude LA, SF and NY.

I'm quite sure Swiss taxes are lower than US taxes. A married person earning CHF 100,000 in Zurich with three kids will receive CHF 92,000 after tax and including the "family allowances", or thereabouts. In Washington State, a married person making $100,000/yr will take home only $83,666.

I'm Swiss, programming tax declaration and calculation software. Your example seems to take into account only the social security deduction. The ~92000 will indeed appear in your bank account, but at the end of the year you will have to pay income and wealth tax on that. Switzerland is one of a few countries where taxes are not automatically deducted from your salary (except for expats and some cornercases). You are responsible yourself to set aside a part of your salary because you will get a pretty hefty tax invoice after your tax declaration next year (big problem for some, as you can imagine). The 'tax return' concept doesn't exist here (again, with some exceptions).

I think the 92k is correct for net income, breakdown would be something like:

    Gross salary: 100k
    Family allowance: ~300 x 3 x 12 = ~10.8k
    Salary deductions (unemployment, retirement, social insurances): ~11k
    Taxes: ~8k

This could be never ending. But I'd like to say that factors like tax rate progression (higher tax if you earn more), marital state, children and location (where you live in Switzerland) have a huge impact on the overall tax burden. So comparing 2 cities with very specific input variables will lead to very wrong conclusions when applying the results to make a statement about differences between two countries.

Side note: Including the significant deductions for payments into your retirement fund seems problematic to me, as you will get that money back at some point. And then there are more factors that have a big impact, like church and wealth tax.

Your numbers on Washington State seem off. I dont think you are including Social Security Taxes (7.65%) https://smartasset.com/taxes/income-taxes#nyI48IDDLI

Also, Washington State is atypical for the US since they dont have a state income tax. In most other states, there is an added state income tax.

You could throw VAT/sales tax in there, too. In Switzerland it's absurdly low (for Europe) at 7.7%.

And we even get a cheap health insurance :D

Does that include mandatory health insurance though? That's effectively an extra ring-fenced tax.

They're probably still lower than US taxes, but in Switzerland the difference between income after tax and actual take-home income can be significant.

Higher taxes won’t get stable and fast internet (or anything else being efficient) - neighboring Germany has high taxes, expensive services and very slow internet even within cities. Also the trains are notoriously unpunctual, and expensive compared to other EU countries. The cause of the internet seems to be a mix of the mobile frequency auctions that didn’t leave any money for a good network combined with low competition. The trains also have pretty bad incentives for infrastructure, eg they can have the state pay for rebuilding a line and not for maintaining it, so they wait till it breaks.

The Swiss model seems to be to think of the consequences of policies before putting them in place, the lower taxes seem to be more of a result of that.

(I’ve lived in all three countries, this is my impression)

> The Swiss model seems to be to think of the consequences of policies before putting them in place, the lower taxes seem to be more of a result of that.

This is a very good point. I suspect that because decision making is very local, they have functioning feedback loops: so you decided to spend too much money on a new fire truck? Well now you can't pay for the sports field renovations. People eventually learn.

Yes you’re much closer to deciding on the people spending your money, since it is clear what is cantonal and what is state responsibility and they tax you very clearly visible and separately. That way you don’t need to blindly trust the claims of the different politicians, you see the result directly.

> The Swiss model seems to be to think of the consequences of policies before putting them in place, the lower taxes seem to be more of a result of that.

Outside of taxes, it is also a matter of political choices

The Swiss took the decision to develop the train as a first transport choice nationally... Even trucks transiting through Switzerland are loaded on trains.

And the result is there: They have a good network with a good service that unify the country.

That a strategy totally at the opposite of what USA and many European countries chose to do in the 90's: Close as many small train lines as possible and develop road transport.

I suspect the Swiss calculated that individual transportation doesn’t scale well.

The US build ever bigger highways (I recall a summit at Stanford on clean energy in 2014 where some guy from McKinsey claimed that the solution to all problems is to increase highway throughout by having self driving cars closer to each other - never would it have occurred to him or anyone on the panel to replace cars with a train or bus) and Germany somehow tries to deal with their bad infrastructure choices after deciding to be car centric in favor of their car industry for many years.

Edit: fun little note: I actually wanted to ask the McKinsey guy what his take on public transportation was, but wasn’t chosen for the q&a since I was sitting in the very back after I arrived late due to some issue on the Caltrain.

> The cause of the internet seems to be a mix of the mobile frequency auctions that didn’t leave any money for a good network combined with low competition.

The version I read for Germany was that when the mobile broadband spectrum was originally auctioned off, the purchase price for the spectrum was too high. So the pensioners and other investors who bought in demanded a juicy return on investment despite overpaying, resulting in high prices and presumably less money for investments in the network.

For the fixed line broadband network in Germany, its quite substandard despite the country being generally good at infrastructure. The reason can be traced back to corruption, where a decision was made to rollout copper backbone instead of fiber optic, which was the original decision. Article in German but copy and paste with Google translate:

https://www.wiwo.de/politik/deutschland/langsames-internet-i...

I have the impression that corruption and being overly friendly towards big corporations seems to be quite the issue, compared to other places I know well the infrastructure is pretty bad (though other large European countries aren't much better - UK, France).

The auction could have easily been fixed, by imposing and enforcing strict rules on maximum prices, minimum coverage and mandating in-country roaming. After all the frequencies should benefit the whole public. With such rules the outcome would have been a much better network, allowing for growth in other regions.

The article you've shared is very interesting, would be helpful if more Germans were informed about this.

Yes the copper story instead of fiber optic is really important to understand. I did some digging after suffering through poor internet in a major German city for some years now.

One of the biggest improvements is absolutely free to do (by Congress).

Give passenger rail priority.

No where in the Western world does a passenger train have to give way to a freight train. It' s always the other way around. Except in the US. In the US when freight companies are late they make passenger trains wait.

They can do this because they own the track. But with a presidential stroke of a pen many delays in Amtrak can be resolved in one go.

Since freight companies own the tracks the only way to do it would be if government bought them, which I assume would cost hundreds billions of dollars. Just passing a bill giving passenger trains priority would be unconstitutional because it would interfere with property rights of the owner.

You forgot the financial black hole that is the military. We could just stop spending trillions on endless wars and have decent infrastructure, healthcare and education as the rest of the Planet.

I'm in Edinburgh and have travelled to London fairly frequently. It's a £30 uber to the airport, arrive 2 hours early, £20 for a flight, and £25 for the Heathrow express.

The other option is the train, it's 4.5 hours, comfortable, but costs £250. It's a much nicer journey, but regularly much more expensive.

The system is unreasonable, but your figures are exaggerations.

You are comparing the price of a budget airline flight, booked at least several days, if not weeks, in advance, with a first class train ticket bought on the day of departure.

Departing tomorrow afternoon, an EasyJet flight is £115. I don't know if the morning flights are sold out, or are currently not running, but they presumably exist. The train is £77 off peak (which matches the flight arrival time), or £166 peak (assuming there are sold-out morning flights). Even this late the day before, it's still possible to book onto a particular train, which is about £60-70.

Train times and ticket costs for tomorrow: https://traintimes.org.uk/edinburgh/london/06:30/tomorrow

The figures can be skewed both ways in fairness. I had a look for travelling for the weekend of Nov 20th (it's a month from this weekend) on Friday and back Monday, leaving after 8:30am both days. Trainline is quoting me £190 return. Easyjet is £60.

As an aside, the train schedule and prices seem substantially cheaper than this time last year. I don't ever recall there being availability on the super off peak trains if travelling within a week or so.

A super off peak single is £78 each way on Edinburgh-London, Anytime £166. This puts a cap on the cost which air travel doesn't have. Often will be significantly cheaper if you

There's no such thing as 'availability' on trains, you can buy a ticket from the ticket machine without booking in advance. You may not get a seat for the whole journey, but it's better IMO than not being able to board at all (like when flights sell out).

The problem with flying is if you want to do it very last minute it can cost an absolute fortune, whereas the train is capped by the walk on ticket prices. Plus with the train you don't need to book it if you don't want, and can literally buy a ticket minutes from departure with a known maximum price, so you don't need to worry about getting a refund or changing the booking if your plans change.

In some countries, high speed trains don't allow standing passengers.

I was caught out with this when I visited Toledo from Madrid. I bought a ticket for the next train to Toledo from a machine, which was fine. When I tried to return, there were no available tickets for several hours. I took a bus instead.

A seat reservation is also compulsory on the TGV in France, but not the ICE in Germany.

£20 for a flight is so, so foreign as a Canadian. Domestic flights here are easily 10x that on a good day.

In the before times, it was pretty much the same price to get a last minute VIA train ticket or a Porter flight between Ottawa and Toronto. If you’re lucky, early, or a student, you can get a train ticket quite a bit cheaper.

For an overview of these super-cheap flights, see the Ryanair website: https://www.ryanair.com/ie/en/plan-trip/explore/getaways

Even some quite long -- for Europe -- flights, like 4½ hours for Dublin to Athens, are just €20. Some shorter ones are €10.

(This only includes a fairly small cabin bag, put under the seat in front. The service level is roughly equivalent to a cheap intercity bus.)

> are just €20

Well, they are for some tickets. Ryanair (like any airline, and indeed train line) is heavily dependent on people booking late and paying much, much more.

>so, so foreign as a Canadian

Canada, as a whole, is an absolute rip-off. There is virtually nothing you can point to in the country and remark that it's a good deal when compared to the prices offered in America or most areas of Europe.

High food costs, high booze costs, high communications costs, high transport costs, high taxes etc., combined with low salaries, is incredibly bleak.

And yet found to be the second-best country in the world after Switzerland:

* https://www.usnews.com/news/best-countries/overall-rankings

And consistently in the Top 10 for happiest:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Happiness_Report

> There is virtually nothing you can point to in the country and remark that it's a good deal when compared to the prices offered in America or most areas of Europe.

America, I understand. But aren't prices in Canada generally lower than Europe when you include taxes? Sales taxes are 5-15% in Canada. They are generally 20% or higher in EU. Car insurance is perhaps more expensive in Canada, but vehicle registration/taxes are lower than Europe, so the total cost of ownership is lower.

I fell like a lot of the perception of things being more expensive in Canada is that CAD is values lower than EUR/USD/CHF/GBP. So looking at raw numbers, things feel more expensive. If you do the currency conversion, they become more comparable. Do you have any data showing things are generally more expensive in Canada compared to Europe, when accounting for currency conversion?

For some reasons some politicians really want to keep the CAD as low as possible?

I recall a pitch to Amazon for their headquarters that they could get away outsourcing for cheaper over there.

> For some reasons some politicians really want to keep the CAD as low as possible?

I think the value of CAD depends on BoC decisions, not politicians. They can increase its value, for example by increasing interest rates, but that would cause an increase in unemployment. I don't think there is a mechanism to increase value of CAD without also messing up some other part of the economy, e.g. employment or inflation.

Easyjet and Ryanair both regularly offer flights for roughly that price. It's very route dependent and usually a limited number of seats, but having regularly flown inside the UK and between the UK and Ireland, I've often gotten fares in the £10-30 each way.

Flying is just too cheap for the environment. 1 EUR per km for car/plain and 0.4-0.5 by train should be the minimum.

Those are some steep numbers, where did you get them? My 400km flight cost me only £2 to offset, prices dont need to go up 100x!

Besides, much more energy is wasted heating old, leaky homes that are an eauivalent of a wet dump. Landlords have no incentive to fix them because the tenants are the ones that pay for heating. If we fixed crappy housing im UK, allegendly worst in europe if yoy consider price, we would save a lot more CO2 and a lot more people would be happy.

Only the rich should be allowed leave their home town!

Back to work, peasants!

I don't think this attitude helps; the parent poster has a point. Jet fuel isn't taxed, yet trains pay the full fuel duty (and even electric trains pay some other duty costs).

Releasing carbon is an externality that isn't taken into account because it doesn't immediately hurt you (in your wallet or otherwise). Taxing it is simply taking that externality and putting a price on it.

Once you tax it markets will immediately respond by finding efficient, low carbon footprint alternatives to everything. That is, if people can get into their heads that capitalism is a system (to be tweaked for the benefit of everyone), not a religion.

By the way rich people will be the least affected global warming.

Sadly I think this is a harder problem to solve than it first appears. Given all the technical obstacles and solutions the defining factor for good rail services in a country seems to be:

"Does this country have a tradition of good rail services and take pride in them."

Establishing that is hard. It seems really hard to make the technical solutions work without it. Japan, France, Germany, Switzerland, Spain and others, trains are great. USA, UK, Australia, Canada - not always terrible but not in the same class. It's not talent. It's not wealth, I doubt the English Language is a hinderance here...

This is why I'm against increasing taxes in the USA. Europeans get more per tax dollar than we do. In the USA, we just waste the money. Europeans pay a bit more than we do, but they get a lot more back in terms of transit, health care, social safety net, etc. If our government can't use the money more efficiently, it shouldn't get even more.

Last time I rode on Amtrak it was absolutely depressing. Same with Caltrain and BART. The problem is not money -- other countries do more with less money. The problem is governance.

The big reason is because the US spends an amount of money equivalent to Jeff Bezos’ entire net worth (~200B USD) every 80 days on its military.

Amtrak’s annual revenue is less than 4B USD.

On that basis, I agree with you wholeheartedly. It would be nice to use some of that massive amount of money for infrastructure, versus funneling it to a dozen companies who exist solely to consume as much of it as possible.

DOD spending is ~15% of the total budget. Blaming defense expenditure when 85% of the US total budget is not defense expenditure is an unconvincing argument.

This isn't as true as you think it is.

Social security is often a lot, lot better in the US than Europe. Take the UK:

UK unemployment 'benefits' are around $100/week regardless of previous salary (so low compared to housing costs in many areas that it is almost pointless). US state unemployment benefits tend to be a lot higher than that.

UK pensions are low - around $10,000/yr, again regardless of salary. US Social Security pensions are vastly higher.

However, the UK government will give pensioners somewhere to live, for free. In the US they can become homeless if they do not have family to rely on.

I love trains and I'm a EU-born US resident, so I get it.

It's a density problem though. US is super sparsely populated. Outside of the northeast corridor (DC <> NYC <> Boston) the rest is too spread out with few exceptions to support train service.

The US highway system is like spaghetti for good reason.

I don't buy this at all. California is only slightly less dense than France (and contains significant basically-empty bits that wouldn't need to be considered; if you're just looking at habitable area it's probably MORE dense than France). Compare their railway systems.

>It's a density problem though.

If you want to take a train to Idaho from Boston, sure, but nobody would do that. And for NY->Boston, it's plenty dense. Freight traffic is miles ahead in American than in Europe, and is always prioritized over passenger trains - that's the reason.

As far as Amtrak is concerned the laws say that they are to take precedent over freight BUT that is not what happens on a regular basis. The rail owners never get in trouble for it.

The NY - Boston corridor is denser than most of Western Europe.

> (a) the US is bigger, so infrastructure cost more [and flights scale easier],

In Europe at least, it's quite densely populated (relative to the US), so the land costs for building new railways is incredibly expensive. In the UK, more and more miles of track are being buried in tunnels (the High Speed 1 line has 3 of the top ten longest tunnels in the UK), and HS2 add to that.

In the US, you have thousands of square miles of empty land where you can just run a straight line 200mph train through it.

I don't think US politicians realise how transformational it would be to the economy to join up East coast cities and West coast cities with high speed rail. I suppose the airline lobby groups are keeping a lid on it.

European example: the Eurostar train from London to the French Alps, door-to-door, is practically the same, if not quicker, than driving to the airport, going through customs, getting the 90 minute flight, then the transfer to the ski resort. At the same time, the train is carrying over 1000 people, vs. a plane with only 200.

Switzerland in fact has significantly lower taxes in most cantons than most (all?) states in the U.S. I am afraid higher taxes would simply yield more mediocre Amtrak.

Some states have 0 income tax AFAIK but it's irrelevant. Contrary to Switzerland, in the US the big tax bill (by a huge amount too) is federal.

> I would honestly pay significantly higher taxes if we could get Swiss-quality train service in parts of the US (and especially if they have good internet).

The US lacks the required density. Trains are by far the most expensive mode of mass transport per mile, both because of infrastructure and labor cost. Labor costs are higher than eg a plane because trains go much slower! In a personal car, there are no other labor costs. The natural monopoly on the network and the ensuing lack of competition doesn't help either.

Planes and electric autonomous cars are the better alternative for the US.

I think if you want a high-quality train service, you should pay for it through higher fares. Saying you would pay higher taxes is sly language for saying you want to others to subsidize you.

We tried this "subsidise nothing" approach in britain in the 1800, people had to pay for being in jail, and for being judged. There was no public police, investigation or fire service. It was miserable, corruption was massive, streets were dangerous, and whole towns burned to the ground. Penatly for the smallest crime was death, and it didn't help.

Either you accept that civilisation needs infrastructure to function, or you live like a medieval peasant.

Do you happen to know where I can read more about how that came to be the situation, or is it more that it’s the default and anything else is gravy?

Seconded, sounds interesting. I don't accept the either-or statement at the end, but I would love to learn more about Britain's history of funding infrastructure.

How are you going to privatize infrastructure? There can be no competition in big infrastructure projects. What's a competitor to do, lay a new railroad next to the existing one? This is also why fiber lines should be owned by cities and leased to ISPs.

> This is also why fiber lines should be owned by cities and leased to ISPs.

In Vietnam, even in smaller cities, there are at least three different ISPs with citywide GPON FTTH. The fact that they weren’t forced to share a government lowest-common-denominator physical layer means that we are now seeing some competition around improvements to that physical layer, with one ISP offering much faster speeds made possible by incrementally improving their physical network. The others will be encouraged by competitive pressure to do the same, or maybe even do better.

> Saying you would pay higher taxes is sly language for saying you want to others to subsidize you.

And per the IMF there are huge subsidies to fossil fuels in the US:

* https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/fossil-f...

I think if you want to pollute the air and cause climate change, you should pay for it without those of us who use public transit subsidizing it.

No, I don't accept IMF's re-definition of subsidy, nor yours. Subsidies are not negative externalities. We can talk about a carbon tax to address externalities. I agree there should be one. We can talk about eliminating energy subsidies. I agree there should be none (in the US renewables get more subsidies per kWh). But asking me to pay for your luxury train rides is not OK.

> I would honestly pay significantly higher taxes if we could get Swiss-quality train service in parts of the US (and especially if they have good internet).

The thing is its not just the taxes you'll be paying for, its the fare on top of that. It gets really costly if its your only form of transportation, and even with a Halb-tax card it can be pretty expensive. I did it for a year while living and working in Switzerland, and the CHF was pegged to the EUR, so in certain places I just risked it and jumped the tram fare into the city, which I'm told by my friend who worked at the SBB is a bad idea as they have cameras everywhere and could 'in theory' compare it against your halbtax card ID.

The SBB is super convenient and punctual, though; going to Zurich airport from just about anywhere in Switzerland is possible with nothing more than just a tram or bus ride to the nearest Bahnhof. But Switzerland is a tiny country compared to the large sprawling US. And just look at the absurdity with the train that was supposed to connect LA and and SF at $77 Billion. But having dealt with plenty of phantom last trains and having to sleep at the bahnhofs makes me paranoid, I slept at Basel bahnhof like 5 times and at Bern I must have stayed 2 times overnight in the freezing cold with several layers on.

Its funny how all the youth had to have driver licensees, and no cars, and how most just got a halb-tax card from their employer or the Government to get to school or work. The costs to own and fuel a car are obscene by US standards in Switzerland too.

> And just look at the absurdity with the train that was supposed to connect LA and and SF at $77 Billion

The California High Speed Rail line is supposed to be 1,300km long. That's more like Paris to Budapest in distance, or another way of thinking, it's 1/3rd of the total railway length in Switzerland - imagine building that from scratch, today. But with earthquakes (and presumably, now, fires). I'm not defending it, but it's a very big project, it was never going to be cheap.

None of the disadvantages you cite are intrinsically related to flying. We don't have to build huge railways, just remove the arbitrary barriers that make air travel suck. The biggest one being the ridiculous security theatre that is the TSA.

Commercial flight, even with the risk of terrorism, is far safer than land travel. If it's acceptable to let people board the Acela without going through body scanners, then there's no reason we can't do the same with JetBlue.

Slightly confused by your complaints r.e. jfk > manhattan via mass transit. You get on the LIRR and you end up in penn station. It's not the same as grand central but from a connectivity perspective it's similar. I've taken the train from Zurich airport to Zurich HB and while I recall it being fancier it's not like it's materially different (both go from point A to point B in a reasonable period of time at a reasonable cost).

> But is (b) a real problem if you can work on the train?

Japan has the Shinkansen that gets you between the two major cities at 300kmph in slightly less than two hours. Nonetheless, they’re still trying to build a maglev that will do the same thing at 500kmph in 1.1 hours. I guess if you already have the convenience of working on the train, you want to do less of it.

I kind of forgot what my point was.

A one way ticket for Tokyo to Osaka (2.5 hrs, 515km) costs around $160 USD. Not that cheap, but you can turn up a few mins before the train, and if you miss it there's another one 10 minutes later.

The problem is that only benefits you. Most of the people would pay higher taxes so a small portion of the people appreciate the speed.

If you regularly fly, security isn't much of an issue with precheck or clear. You can also fly into newark and take path, much faster to get to downtown, or fly into laguardia and uber (ok laguardia sucks I'm not really an advocate for this).

The problem with train investment is it starts to look really uninteresting for most people once the train travel time is 5+ hours. The investment in improving airport connectivity and flexibility has dramatically wider use cases and ROI versus train investment, which is notoriously expensive and realistically only going to serve a very limited set of use cases.

In Europe there are more cases for trains. Density and centralization is much higher. When you build a train line in central Switzerland you are going to reach a much higher percentage of the population, justifying the investment of national resources. That is simply not the case in the United States.

Even with precheck, one still has to show up at the airport earlier than a train, since boarding stops 10-15 minutes prior to departure, TSA adds at least five to ten minutes, and the terminal topology of large airports requires a long walk from the curb to the gate.

For trains, even large stations don't have that long a walk, since the tracks run parallel to one another. As long as one shows up before the train pulls into the station, it's all good.

As you point out, trains definitely don't replace all flights, but for some dense corridors in the US (eg. Washington-Philadelphia-NYC-Boston, Dallas-Houston, San Francisco-San Jose-Los Angeles-San Diego) high speed rail would offer a better experience (larger seats, more comfortable ride, more uninterrupted time for working) and a comparable door to door time.

Not only you need to have slightly higher taxes but also much less corrupt government at all levels!

As for a): That might be true for a coast to coast flight vs. a coast to coast train ride. But most travelling is not that distant.

The population density in America as a hole is far smaller than in Switzerland, but the population density in NY State is almost double that in Switzerland. In fact, the population density on the US coasts, where most of the infrastructure is, is in the same range as in Europe. The cost of laying and maintaining a few train tracks over the sparsely populated US interior is not the reason it's more expensive in the US.

Railroads in Switzerland are built in extremely mountainous terrain with lots of expensive tunnels etc. and in expensive urban areas.

I don't mind using Amtrak for business travel between Boston-NYC. Parts of the trip are pretty scenic. You can get delayed quite a bit by other rail traffic, but as you point out, you still have a table and can move around. Acela isn't much faster, but it is a lot smoother then the regional trains.

But for family travel, we end up driving, as the cost for 4 people is just too high (even considering expensive NYC parking).

The US is bigger, which explains why we don’t have good cross-country high speed rail, but there’s no excuse for the population centers on the coasts. No matter what you want to focus on, size, density, or geography, there’s another country out there with a worse situation and a better functioning high speed rail system.

Lock stock and barrel against tax hikes. Having previously profited from a public project this kind of thinking will just legally mandate you get less money in your paycheck. There is an incredible amount of waste.

Call me naive but I think it’s better to keep those dollars and save for a flight.

The SBB is indeed amazing. Trains are in pristine condition, second class is first class or business class by most other countries standards, the toilets are clean and functional aboard any train I’ve ever taken with stocked water soap and paper (hello sncf, no water or soap or light even during the epidemics), the trains are ON TIME (like to the minute on time), they’re incredibly quiet, all long distance trains have internet, you get service to your seat (in first, and before the virus), the fare system is integrated between all trains and any city’s bus/streetcar (meaning you can buy one ticket for them all no matter which city you’re going from and to), and their phone application is also great. Not to mention the 165.- Halbtax card which gives you 50% off all trains and lower fares on every municipal transit system (and most mountain trains). Oh and I almost forgot the supersaver tickets which cost between 15 and 30% of a full fare if you buy up to a few days in advance for trains that are low occupancy (first class of often cheaper than second for that reason)

I don’t think the « US is bigger do costs more » holds. Switzerland is incredibly mountainous and train go through countless tunnels that require significant engineering and time to build (look up the Gothard tunnel, one of the longest tunnels in the world through a mountain to connect Italian Switzerland with German Switzerland).

Oh and Swiss trains go 120–200+ km/h on most of the network vs 90 tops (I think?) for US trains.

Not to mention additional perks like the FAIRTIQ app where you basically get on any form of public transport in Switzerland or Lichtenstein, slide a button on your phone when you get on the first transport of your journey, and again when you get off the last, and it will automatically charge you the most advantageous and cheapest fare it can find at the end of the day (and convert to a daily ticket if that’s better because you made several trips ins city you know nothing about the bus tickets)

SBB also offers services like picking up your luggage for you at home, putting them in your train for you, and delivering them to your destination. All you have to do is get on and off the train and not think about it.

Or the plan where you get unlimited train for a year (1st or 2nd class) and a Tesla in every city. As in drive a Tesla from home to the train station, leave the Tesla there, get on a train, pickup another Tesla at your destination, drive it around, and return it to the station when you’re done to go back home and pick the other one back up. It’s not cheap but it’s amazing when you think about it.

But any country that refuses to let the government coordinate the building and operating of the infrastructure (I.e. the network) won’t ever be able to get there. These projects are long term and cost a lot of money so it’s very hard for private companies with short term profitability horizons to make it happen.

As a user of the SBB (Swiss railways) for over 30 years I have had a few mishaps (canceled or late trains, bad connections, etc) but, by and large, I have been happy with what I paid for transportation. It is very reliable and convenient. Something like this could not have been pulled off by a private entity. The government has to run a service like this. I am glad that we did not follow the lead of the UK during Maggie T's time and begin privatizing bits and pieces of a functional system.

You say this could not have been pulled off by a private entity, but I would argue the Japanese train system is equal, if not better and to my knowledge is privately ran.

My understanding is that in the US there's a combination of issues which make high speed train impossible. 1. Very high cost to build. 2. Major airlines make most of the profits from short flights and they lobby against the construction or expansion of trains. 3. Regulations, in a state like Ca is close to imposible ti build something without state government pulling a law of _ (you fill it) protected species. Imagine if Bay Area/NYC had a European/Japanese quality trains, the house prices wouldn't be that bad

Except Swiss quality train in Switzerland are used primarily as commuter and are very expensive for that

For anywhere further than Boston -> NY, the flight is considerably cheaper though.

SF-LA

SF-Sacramento

SF-Tahoe

SF-Napa

SEA-PDX

Austin-Dallas-Houston

LA-Las Vegas-Phoenix-Tucson

And I am not talking snail Amtrak 70 mph train. I am suggesting 150 mph that runs in most Europe. What is holding US back in public transport?

>What is holding US back in public transport?

Rail freight transport.

What is holding Europe in rail freight transport? Passenger rail. You choose one or the other. Personally I think America made (or fell into) the correct decision.

Can you share some article to back up your facts? All I could find here is, american freight trains are longer and run over a longer distance.

: https://www.freightwaves.com/news/railroad/us-and-european-f....

After living next to train tracks in SF (for 7 yrs) and in PDX for (over 2 yrs) I can tell you that train tracks traffic is not even 10% of Euro cities like Stuttgart, Rotterdam let alone Berlin or Paris.

If traffic(freight+passenger)US is roughly equal to traffic(freight+passenger)EU then, the tracks should be equally busy no?

Here's something written for non-industry people: https://www.economist.com/briefing/2010/07/22/high-speed-rai...

Your article notes that rail freight costs are much lower in the US (for shippers), while profitability is high. That suggests that the US rail network is... good for freight?

I don't know about Portland, but SF has almost no freight traffic. The caltrain tracks don't go anywhere (what are you going to do with a thousand containers at 4th and King?)

> Their owners worry that the plans will demand expensive train-control technology that freight traffic could do without.

Oh no, a control system to install on a locomotives and tracks that already costs millions of dollars, how could they afford that?

> Most of all they fret that the spending of federal money on upgrading their tracks will lead the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA), the industry watchdog, to impose tough conditions on them

Are you kidding me?

These excuses are pathetic.

> Add the fact that freight trains do not stick to a regular timetable, but run variable services at short notice to meet demand, and the scope for congestion grows.

You were just bragging about having 2.5x the productivity, I would happily trade competent consumer rail for you "only" having 2x productivity.

Exactly so coming back to my original question: my cannot US invest in high speed train from 4th and King to Napa valley? What is holding it back?

NIMBYs. No one in napa or Marin counties want a train.

How so? If we prioritized passengers, then rail freight will regularly take several extra hours to get places. Would that even be a real problem? Would anything else bad happen?

That would be a huge problem. You'd see freeways entirely congested with trucking instead. Freeways that are congested enough as it is. We need to build a grade separated passenger rail network.

This still doesnt make sence to me - the train shipping coal across the country weighs like an aircraft carrier and is about as fast.

This not a last-minute delivery, takes days to arrive, and presumably they know their material demans many days in advance. Whats a few extra hours going to do?

Is my understanding of the system wrong?

What if we made sure trucks still cost more?

> What is holding US back in public transport?

Various things, surely, but things like property rights and an unwillingness to accept wholesale use of eminent domain. A 150mph train requires shallow curves and therefore won't run on an existing freight right-of-way. If not for that, it would be pretty straightforward to build.

Meanwhile, a plane ride from Portland to Seattle is 30 minutes and cheaper anyway. There's no incentive to invest in high speed rail.

Yes there is! And that's the mindset people should change.

SEA airport is 30 mins by taxi, PDX is 45 mins away by taxi and for airport check-in you gotta arrive 1 hr early and then 30 mins travel time.

A high speed transit is just 1.5 hr train ride (city center to city center).

This is a good read on what goes wrong when trying to build HSR in the US:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_California_High-S...

> What is holding US back in public transport?

Ideology.

With a car you can go anywhere.

Who needs a train?

Amtrak was Biden’s baby for 40 years and Hunter was a board member. You get what you vote for.