When traveling through the US I noticed that the railroad infrastructure is very subpar and it there is no overall...

When traveling through the US I noticed that the railroad infrastructure is very subpar and it there is no overall incentive to travel by train.

Why is that?

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Capitalism. Planes are cheaper, faster, safer. Our govt did not subsidize them so they couldn't compete.

Maybe someday we get high speed rail cross country and up the coasts. Elon Musk is working on a hyperloop.

Our railroads are mostly for transporting goods and equipment.

Exactly what incentive is there to traveling by train anyway?

Because trains fucking suck and airplanes exist

>Our government did not subsidize them

Go read a history book.

Because we use 18 wheeled trucks for everything but the heaviest cargo nowadays.
Railroads haven't been mainstream for 55 years.
Not sure if that's for the best, but it's true

Country is too big.

True the interstate highway system cucked railroads out of relevance

Because we're a humongous country with widely dispersed populations with high levels of car ownership.

Plus, rail roads carry a high volume of freight which means that passenger trains have lower priority on rail roads, and anywhere you couldn't drive to you could just fly to cheaper and faster than trains.

Looking at dead landscapes and not getting groped by the TSA

If you had ever driven a big block V8 on an open interstate you wouldn't have to ask.

I'm for it, 18 wheelers mean small towns and rural areas can still host industrial jobs due to cheap transportation costs.

Because we prefer to drive ourselves.

For 50+ years our cars were like sofas on wheels.

Gas has always been cheaper than dirt.

youtube.com/watch?v=mbEfzuCLoAQ

We could fit 100 Germanys in the US.

Wed have state of the art rail if it werent for the sheer enormity or our country Hanz

> Rail subsidies are largest in Europe (€73 billion) and China ($130 billion), while the United States has relatively small subsidies for passenger rail and freight is not subsidized at all.

K

Cargo

>Country is too big.

This.

Travel times are too long by rail for anything interstate. Air travel is more practical.

Our municipal rail systems aren't terrible.

>incentive

seeing the countryside, not having your remains scattered to the wind like shredded meat when the plane crashes, chance to get up and move around

Rail is used for freight in USA, hundreds of billions of dollars worth.

>I prefer to spend days on a passenger train instead of hours on a plane

All the railroads were bought out by the Auto and oil bosses. Was slowly dismantled into shambles giving public transportation the name it has today in the US.

>Being in The US of A and NOT driving a supercharged demon on wheels

Trains can only travel where there are rail road tracks. Trucks are powered by freedom.

>seeing the countryside,

and after 10 minutes of the same shit you go back to playing with your phone and wishing you had taken a flight.

train travel is for romance and train buffs. anything else goes in a car or a plane.

Get ready for autonomous freight.

>anywhere you couldn't drive to you could just fly to cheaper and faster than trains.

Faster, yes. Cheaper? Oh hell no.

At this point, railroad travel is so tiny that large cities like Nashville don't even have a train station. You have to drive to Memphis to get on a train there. Once on the train, there is pretty much zero chance of a non-stop trip. Expect 2 layovers, possibly as many as 5. Even a 500 mile trip can end up being 2 days.

It's not that railroad travel has to be that bad. They just don't have a choice because they've been pushed so hard out of the market. And the result pushes them even further out of the market. That pattern loops.

Sad, really. I love train travel. And it's maybe 20% the cost of flying by air.

Also the nation is huge and most of the times it'd take an ungodly amount of time to get anywhere of import by train.

Because of the auto industry, trains got boxed out insanely hard like 50 years ago.

Sucks because train is the truly patrician way to travel. Comfy seats, you can get up and walk around whenever, go get a fuckin cold one and a sandwich and eat it in the dining car, etc.

Trains are used to move cargo and cattle.

Ford actually purposefully suppressed rail construction.

Rail is the cheapest and most efficient way to transport goods.

Truckera and lorries should only be used locally to transport goods too and from depots, acting as a go between between them, stores and the railways.

Truckera should NOT be driving across thr country. Maybe the state, in certain circumstances.

>Exactly what incentive is there to traveling by train anyway?

Here in my country it is cheap and fast. I travel regularly to a major city that is 40km away and it costs me only 7 euros and takes 25 minutes. Traveling across the country costs around 20 euros if I reserve the ticket some time before.

Your buses were really cheap when I was there a year ago. Mein Frein Büs or something like that?

trains are used but as you may have noticed, our country is larger than yours so they primarily used to go across the state, not the country.

Taking a train from paris to berlin takes like what? Two hours? Taking a train from sacramento to san luis obispo takes roughly the same time, so since they are used less frequently and planes are a straight upgrade on almost all fronts to cross the country or countries. Because of that fact, we don't keep up with it as often.

Crossing states is like you crossing european countries.

Nice gets btw.

>Capitalism
God, you're so cringey. What really happened is they had to deal with every single local government across America.. You know, the thing that isn't capitalism.

>the railroad infrastructure is very subpar
Lack of consumer rail=/=lack of rail. We have the biggest commercial rail system. Just because we use more convenient ways to transport people doesn't mean we don't use trains.

Using cringey as an insult makes me cringe.

This
Trains are the most /comfy/ method of transportation

No, that's personal cars.
>don't have strangers around
>can go where you want and stop when and where you want
>cann drive around when you get to where you're going

When traveling through Germany I noticed you hadn't figured out how to flush toilet paper yet.

Every country besides America is third world tier, why the fuck do I want to spend 2days on a fucking train when I can hop on a plane and be there in 2 hours?

The population of America is too dispersed to have a viable Japan tier train network. You can blame surburbia culture for that. But I think with the trend of Americans moving to major cities for Jobs, increasing gentrification and rustbelts, it will soon become feasible for there to be a Japan tier public transport system in the states.

Out bus networks and train networks are usually owned by the same company and even when they are not companies cooperate together.

The result is that I can buy a single ticket right on the spot at the station and travel to the destination combining busses, trains and routes of my choice.

( checked )
My town was pretty much founded on trains. In a 10 minute trip I could be stopped by 3+ trains carrying coal, fuels, or cars. Yet no passenger trains.

because we 1st world and our $75000 trucks are more fun than trains

Railroad is for cargo, not people. We use planes not trains.

Cities are far apart and car culture has creates a system where everyone drives everywhere. Also no big train companies like DB oder OBB.