The view from a train might be marginally nicer, but when I travel it's usually because I want to be somewhere else. Not because I want to sit for hours and watch the scenery go by.

But do you want to spend 1hr getting to the airport, then waiting 2+ Hours to board the plane, wait for air traffic control, taxi, etc and then repeat on the other side? It takes five to six hours to go from SF to LA about the same as it takes to drive. A train would be far better.

Not to mention getting groped and treated like a terrorist by TSA staff. Or paying through your nose for baggage, with the added privilege of carriers regularly losing your stuff.

Expecting nothing good to come from NA, I fully expect the US would follow Canada in making domestic train as inconvenient as planes, including weighting luggage & shitty boarding.

I rather do that and be at the place I chose as my destination in 3hs than to be bound to a train for 18hs no matter how pretty the views are.

The fact that the train takes 18hrs is a political decision. In Japan, the same train over the same distance, often with even more torturous landscape and crowed infrastructure, takes 3hrs.

It is a complex mess. Ground Public transportation in the US is overall too slow. Even local buses are hours slower than anything else.

It doesn't have to be like that to fly. Political decisions have made it like that.

Yes there was a time where you could go to the airport, buy a ticket, and just walk on to the plane. You didn't need to spend hours going through ceremonial activity. And on the plane, you had confortable seats, you could get up and walk around, some airplanes even had a lounge in the back where you could get a drink and socialize. 9/11, and the fact that passengers will seemingly sacrifice all comfort to save a dollar on the fare ended all that.

One question I have on this - if rail travel became more ubiquitous, would it become a more enticing target for malevolent actors and/or a higher priority for security screenings, etc? We marvel at how easy it is to walk on a train today, but would that change / how might it change if rail carried a more significant portion of travelers?

Amtrak already does some screening and they increased their security like all others did from rental cars to busses to trains to planes. However the nature of flying has a much higher reach in terms of potential damage which was realized on 9/11 really.

Trains are less of a threat. Attackers can only really cause damage on a train to a section and maybe a derailment.

Plane terrorism is broader. With a plane everyone is at risk and the plane could be used to attack other things.

Train terrorism is limited. A train can't be taken off course. A train can't be all blown up. Even a massive derailment only affects a section. An attack would be a tragedy but it has rails so to speak on the reach of the damage. Maybe if they blew it up over a bridge or by a building in a city it could cause more damage or some other trigger like causing another disaster. You to have the threat of people setting explosives on the track. There was one of those in 1995 in Arizona where 1 died and 78 were injured, supposedly the attackers were avenging the Waco Siege. [1] Looks like that is the only terrorism event on trains in the US. [2] Subways and metros are probably more targeted in the city.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1995_Palo_Verde,_Arizona_derai...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_terrorist_incidents_in...

I used to fly twice a month, SF<->DC, before 9/11, the seats in economy were not comfortable, and there were no lounges on domestic flights. Maybe in first class, but domestic first class usually is little more than slightly better seats.

This is no way in comparison to train travel. There's no "dining car" on the train. There's no tables for business meetings. There's no 2 to 4 bathrooms per car. Sleeper rooms are much cheaper and accessible than on planes, but sure, you can pay a multiple of $10k for a room on beyond-first-class international flights.

But even if I granted you that in the old days, you could show up 30 minutes before the flight, walk pretty much straight to the gate, you're still ignoring much more time spent getting to the airport, and time spent waiting for takeoff and baggage loading/unloading.

Major airports are generally located outside cities and near water if possible, train stations are usually located in the heart of the metro area. Sure, there are exceptions like Las Vegas, but in general, most people have to spent 45mins-1hr just getting to the airport in the US.

No one's saying you should use train travel for DC to SF. But come on, NYC to DC, or SF to LA is a no-fucking brainer. When you drive from SF to LA, most of Route-5 is straight land on wild open, flat prairie, and the main difficulty is when you hit the mountain range past Bakersfield, which every advanced country, be it the French, Swiss, Germans, Japanese, Chinese, already deal with, on far more harsh terrain.

There's zero excuse for the opposition to high speed rail for regional intercity, except for a stubborn, weirdly political opposition to trains, which George Will kind of outlined (accidentally) in a piece attacking trains as "socialist" but somehow air travel as "non-socialist" despite the fact that the Feds and States have funded aviation infrastructure to the tune of hundreds of billions over the decades.

Yeah fares were 4x as much. You can see go on business class today.

Trains don’t have to be that way either. Also political decisions that have made it so.

A bus route can do all that and more. A car is even more flexible because you can stop, get out, and become part of the landscape.

Except for the driver. I am petrified of driving in a group at the serious risk of distracting the driver. And driverless car is very far off from reality. Till then trains it is for me.

It's unfortunate that fears curtail your travel options. I have a close friend who has a similar experience.

For me, driving the west has been life changing. I wish I could convince my friend to give it a go. They would get a lot out of it.

Second this ... I've been commuting for about 84 km each way each day for five years ... in Germany with the regional trains that took me about 1.5h (and only 40 minutes of that were actual train ride).

In that time I would start to work (on the clock), just "sleep in" or work on hobby projects.

In the same time a friend of mine in the bay area manages to travel 20 km to the office.

As much as I hated commuting ... I'd take commuting by train over commuting by car every day.

> Take the Southwest Chief from Flagstaff to Colorado routes and you'd be amazed at how pretty New Mexico is, the deserts of Arizona and the mountains in Colorado.

I think it leaves Flagstaff really early in the morning - and it's not worth mentioning Flagstaff to LA or LA to Flagstaff because those trips are only scheduled for the middle of the night.

When I took it, it was early morning Flagstaff (6AM) into Trinidad by later that day (5PM). Going through Navajo lands, then New Mexico, then Colorado coal areas and then beautiful mountains was amazing. It gives you lots of perspective.

They could run them more with more routes and funding. On the way back to Flagstaff it was later so maybe they already have some additional times.

It would be nice to see LA sections during the day. But that is another benefit really, you can sleep easier on a train than you can on a plane or car, especially with a private room/car.

How is property ownership standing in the way of US rail?

Railroads (particularly high speed) need to be long and straight. What happens if people don't want a dozen trains roaring through their neighborhood every day? It's difficult to just go around it.

What happens if people don't want a railroad through their property at all? After all, once a railroad is sitting on your land, it's difficult to repurpose it for much else. The state can try eminent domain, but that takes time and lengthy court cases, and the costs add up quick.

The best routes already have railroads. Their right of ways are in private hands.

To put it in perspective, the only all season transcontinental route is the southern most line on the article’s map. It only exists by virtue of the Gadsden Purchase in 1854. The right of way is controlled by the corporate successors of the Southern Pacific.

The non-existence of viable alternative all season grades across the west is why the Gadsden Purchase happened. The US had assumed surely such routes existed in Alta California following its succession in 1848 via the treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo.

Driverless electric vehicles will decimate public transportation.