USA has a very efficient railway network, but only use trains to transport merchandises. Why not people ?
Trains are not part of American culture (Western, gold rush etc...) ?
I even heard it is possible to travel from New York to San Fransisco in train for merely 300$ .
What happened to this industry ?
Because the petrol dollar
>what is amtrak
And ? Planes consume more oil than trains.
muh cars
>implying i'm going to ride a train to work with nigs and spics
I've used it to cross the country a few times but I prefer flying. It easier to fly for 4 hours than sit on a train for 18. If someone gets the money to upgrade the rail system to high speed rails then it might make it back into US culture.
Individuals using cars uses more oil than many people using a single train
We have Amtrak. But nobody uses it for long distance because it's cheaper and faster to take flights.
It takes days to travel across the US by train. It only takes 6 hours by plane.
Look up Amtrack ticket costs and duration of travel.
Now look up busses. Why the fuck would you spend more money to take longer to get somewhere?
I did not consider this point of view.
It might be true if you want to travel accros your entire country, but if you just want to go in a "near" state it is not a bad idea meh ?
Most non-Americans simply can't comprehend how big the US actually is.
>cheaper to fly
generally no
Depends on what carriers and destinations you can get at your local airport. Mine sucks, so if you can go somewhere by train, it's usually cheaper.
My uncle took a train when traveling from Mass. to Virginia. Also, the dollar sign goes in front of the number...
Why take a train when everybody has a car?
Poor millennial bastards could use rail systems, but nope.
If it's in or near state then it's better to just drive.
>More freedom of movement
>Faster than Amtrak because they have to do stops
>Probably costs less since gas is cheap
Goods are more profitable to transport than people. Mostly because need to eat and shit, which makes packing them very inefficient.
He didnt say amtrack retard, amtrack is retarded its why trains are dead
a real train is much faster than a bus you retarded waste of breath
A fairly complicated explanation that most people disagree over the extent. But cars just seem to have been more viable in the US than in Europe, I guess because there is more areas that have dispersed and light populations out west. In my state, New Jersey and the surrounding areas, trains and trolleys used to dominate. Most people act as though it was the collusion of the gasoline and automobile industries that drove the death of the trolley industry, but it was likely just an aspect of the death of smaller urban regions and large-scale buyouts and mergers on a national scale leading to fewer and more dense industrial centers. My reason for saying this is that the passenger lines seem to have just been unable to keep up with changing in circumstances, growth of suburban regions and the availability of cars.
Don't get me wrong, my state and area are better than most places, but I would rather pay whatever in insurance, gas, and maintenance for a car than depend on NJtransit and SEPTA for commuting.
The amount of freight transported by train in the United States dwarfs that of France.
People don't take the train from Los Angeles to New York because it is about the same distance as Lisbon to Moscow.
Planes exist.
There's almost no demand for more long distance passenger rails here. Unless it was something super-fast, it'd be a waste.
Freight rail is a different story, we desperately need to expand that network. Too many god-damned 18-wheelers jamming up our highway system.
I've heard Amtrak sucks, and buses are usually better in every way for long distance travel.
Besides that, cities do have public transportation, and my city's rail is pretty great.
>>implying i'm going to ride a train to work with nigs and spics
this is why
most white people don't want to be around spics and niggers even if they say they do / are fine with them
Nigga do you even know how big north america is
If you're going more than 1 state/province over, might as well fly.
>taking a train
>not driving, having the ability to go anywhere you want, stop when you want, drive straight through when you want etc etc
Here's a question: Why would you take a train, EVER, when you have a car?
Cost me $170 to fly from portland oregon to detroit michigan two weeks ago.
Very cheap desu.
Yes but driving is a boring activity, you can not read. But you can in a train.
LA to CHI, $95 and it only takes hours. You can get a flight from LA to NYC for less than $150 too. With Amtrak, this would cost hundreds more and take several days. Look, if passenger rail was faster and cheaper more people would use that option but it's simply not the case in 99.9% of situations for most Americans.
no one wants to be stuck on a train for hours with a bunch of broke ass ghetto niggers, that's why
because it's slow as fuck and scheduling of the rails prioritize goods and merchandise over humans
The train is potentially cheaper if you time worthless to you.
We all just take a plane.
Trains is ghey, homie.
Cars = individual freedom
What website/app is that?
A train ride costs $300 from NY to SF and takes a whopping 3 days
You pay $400 for a flight but that'll take only 4 hours.
In USA time is money so if you're a hipster libcuck that's boarding trains for old times sake go ahead and be a degenerate
Amtrak is pretty fun desu.
Its abour 5 hours to drive to Richmond VA from Philly, it takes about ~7 hours by train without adding in wait time at station or commut to it which makes it like 10 on average. trains for interstate travel is slow on the north east coast, but for getting around DC, NYC, or Philly they are pretty good
>a real train is much faster
So Amtrack uses fake trains?
That's just Southwest Airlines website. I could probably find cheaper flights using Google Flights.
>2 bags fly free
Why the one and only Southwest Airlines
Google flights doesn't list Southwest prices though
Trains are a kike scam. (((Amtrak))) takes over a billion dollars a year in taxpayer money just to break even. No joke: en.wikipedia.org
Because 90% of the railway network isn't owned by the state, its owned by private companies that transport freight. Amtrak has to pay for using their networks. Also most of the rail network is not efficient a lot of lines don't even have signals and max speed is slow.
>being in a wheeled rolling bin full of niggers and everything else that could scrape up $300 for a multi-DAY trip across the country
>driving is boring
I think you don't get it. If you're going to go across the country, you fly. It's cheaper and faster and if you need to read you can read on a plane.
If you're going to a nearby state, you drive. For one thing, American cities are big and generally don't have great mass transit. So it's almost always cheaper to take your car rather than use cabs and uber/lyft to go everywhere you want. Primarily though, people want to do shit on their own time, not on someone else's schedule.
As far as boring goes, I drove from coast to coast a few years ago, and while it was boring at times, almost every state has something cool, quirky, or amazing to visit on your trip. Also, as the other poster said, I don't think Europeans get how big America is.
Because Obama gutted Amtrak
Give them a few billion to improve the NEC, give them control of California High Speed Rail, and whatever else they need and they're gold.
>1 billion
>A lot
this, amtrak proves time and time again that government run services are poorly run. I went amtrak and to be honest even first class indian railways are better.
t.railfan
I can drive 1,000 miles for about $70. That's from Kentucky to Florida. And I can hold 6 people in my car, so a little over $10 per person to travel 1,000 miles by car. Train and plane can't top that
Amtrak only exists because commuter trains were no longer profitable in the first place.
>LA to CHI
That's a highly trafficked air corridor that can cheaply accommodate high volume. It's not like that in a lot of the country.
Which route did you take?
I took the Amtrack from DC to Toledo and back and it seemed fine. Some of the people on board were awful, but still a nice and scenic ride
Commuter trains will never make up revenue, but Acela Express makes a profit and Brightline is being done by a private company
Then compare buses to Southwest.
Greyhounds are filled with niggers and old people who think they don't belong in the air, thank god.
Car ownership is so widespread that there's not really a market for it. Also they'd have to compete against Greyhound and other bus companies which are cheaper.
>americans will never know the joy of defending your homeland's pride and glory on /n/
what other fucking trains are there besides cargo trains that'll get you from state to state you stupid motherfucker?
The California Zephyr. It's a great trip. Going across America in a train stopping and seeing cool shit.
>USA has a very efficient railway network, but only use trains to transport merchandises.
This, combined with cheap and vastly more efficient air travel is why we don't have intercoastal trains. There are only two possible corridors that make sense and they already have trains: California's Bay Area and the East Coast Boston to Washington routes.
Indian railway is shit,but it can be good if we get someone like Trump.
>But nobody uses it for long distance because it's cheaper and faster to take flights.
Costs me nearly 3 times as much to take a flight from Columbus, OH to Chicago, IL than it would for me to take a greyhound from Columbus to Cincinnati (no amtrak in columbus), and then a train back to Chicago.
I wouldn't mind a long trip with nice scenery if it wasn't so ridiculously expensive. Thanks government monopolies!
Laws regulating it. No, seriously, look up the laws and why amtrak was created. The lack of people rail in the USA but it's huge amount of cargo rail is because one requires less bullshit than the other one.
the airline industry has a very powerful and well-paid lobby.
We use cars, planes and bus. Trains are for plebs.
Texas Triangle makes sense too
>I even heard it is possible to travel from New York to San Fransisco in train for merely 300$
a plane ticket is about a hundred dollars cheaper and 10X faster
as it stands, our railways are only economically viable to transport goods.
why would I take a train when I can drive?
why would I take a train when a flight to Denver from the east coast costs $200?
I went to savannah from miami, dont get me wrong i liked it but the food was bad. Now it may have improved because it was years ago when I was in the cub scouts.
No lie it made my love of trains even bigger.
Us is way too big
We are already loosing so much money with
trains in France It would be a financial disaster in united states
But If you have a romantic side it's a fantastic
way to travel
yeah exactly man, whats good is that they know since a lot of people rely on it it has to be useful. dont remember the route i took, but the conductor was helpful.
>ITT so much corporate molded bluepill
The commuter railroad system was dismantled by the auto industry in the 40s and 50s. Airlines overtook it for long distance travel but rail travel was intentionally fucked to sell everyone in the USA 1.4 automobiles and a dream of "freedom"
Eg en.m.wikipedia.org
If you think rail travel is a meme check the costs of Eurorail. Europe did not have a market to prop up at the time
>The California Zephyr.
No lie i would love to take this as my college graduation trip.
USA railroad is booming
Most of our shit is thrown onto trains and taken around the US.
And train tickets are still pretty cheap.
Well russians have even a bigger country, do they travel more with trains than cars/buses/planes?
Also fatmuricans spend much more oil than any other country bechause even their fucking cabs have V8 engines that burn a lot of fuel compared with usual cars from europe.
I love trains, too. That is why I prefer that overnight trip rather than a plane.
But the food is definitely still shitty. I didn't eat in the restaurant style car, though. I went to the dining car and got a sandwich. It was ice cold and even a little frozen.
Miamifag here, not sure if you guys have heard but they are bringing a new railway over to miami called brightline. Here is more information gobrightline.com
>inb4 shilling for brightline im mentioning it since we are talking about trains.
the jet engine after ww2 made flights much more attractive and largely killed long distance train rides
rail / high speed rail / maglev / hyper loop will eventually be viable in the northeast (New York ) area and in central California but will probably stay a pipe dream everywhere else
I hope Elon gets things moving
Agree with you man, would love to take a sleeper train to atlanta.
yeah of course man, one can pray
Hum hum... I have learn very much...
Thank you Sup Forums.
It is the same with Canada, too much space to travel especially just to go from 2 cities with a million in population each. For it to be worthwhile it would have to be faster and cheaper which would essentially mean we have to have TGV or whatever for a train line bigger than Europe just so two small(ish) cities could be connected. The only train that could even be remotely considered worthwhile is the Toronto/Ottawa/Montreal route if you don't want to drive since they are close enough together. Go trains are okay for people travelling daily from outside Toronto to downtown, but that's still just for the one city.
The U.S really needs to over haul their system, frankly.
Not sure if it's been said, but the destruction of America's railway system was intentional, and done for one reason. They did it to create millions of false jobs.
Trucking jobs.
American trains for human transport are outdates as fuck. I rode it once from new england to Washington and the trains were as slow as in Russia and seemingly older and run down
The slow train (not commute) here is going 180kmh(110mph). On normal tracks.
A greyhound ought to be way slower than trains,but you never updated your systems since the 50s/60s
There this pass that you can buy that lets you ride the train and get off wherever you want for 15 days I believe. I want to do that and take it out west one day,
It's 300 by train NY to SF, but it's like 250 from SF to Seattle. Train prices are gay as fuck, it's usually the exact same price or actually cheaper just to fly. I actually like the train, but it's not worth the money or the time.
If you look up the projected prices and time on that bullshit 'bullet train' from SF to LA the california government is giving money to Dianne Feinstien to build, you'll see that it's going to cost the same amount and take just as long as driving there yourself would.
People still ride trains in the US. Its rather cheaper than driving halfway across the country. I will also add a lot of people ride subways if they have to work in DC, NYC, or another large city.
Trains are apart of American culture which is rather praised in Pennsylvania with the Train Museum near Strasburg and Amtrak hub in Harrisburg.
The major issues are rather location of people. Since the suburban sprawl, people became more car dependent. Buses became a bigger role and cheaper than trains at one point.
But today trains are just cheaper long distance if you have no time constraints. Or if you live closer to a large city. Buses kind of took the highlight until the age of affordable cars.
>taking a greyhound to cinci and a train from there to chicago
And how many weeks would it take for you to arrive in chicago? lol
How about neither and drive there in 6 hours-ish with $50 in gas money.
I fucking despise driving. It is the only thing in life I actually hate.
A lot of trucking jobs are simply to bring a shipping container to a place where they are loaded on to a train...you realize that right? I know first hand because I work with a few companies that do that.
Too slow. A train from NYC to Syracuse, NY takes like 7 hours. A car is faster. If ut was a high speed train it would be like 2 hours.
china knows how to economise railways.. I don’t see why the US couldn’t open up experimental fast tracks in a few states, and then expand if it’d work well.
They are all privately owned. Ancaps BTFO
So? My parents travel often via train from the Netherlands to Austria. They find it much more pleasant than flying. But of course, they are going with German railers and do not meet many non-Europeans. But yeah, US is big and airplane is probably faster for a comparable price.
Travelling on a relatively empty train is very relaxing. I like to chill and watch the world go by.
I'd imagine that there would be some sweet scenery on that northern route.
Driving is fun IMO, it's traffic that sucks balls