Why do Americans hate trains?

Why do Americans hate trains?

You can't claim the country is too big because China just built train routes all the way from China to London and all over Asia and Africa.

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Because of big oil

Explain why trains are better than cars, to a degree to justify the price.

Who needs trains when you have planes?

>58826543
youtube.com/watch?v=mbEfzuCLoAQ
also

you don't have to drive

We put all our eggs in the national highway system, making it a literal requirement to own a car if you want to live outside of a densely packed city.

Baby boomers want their own private safe spaces away from the black people who take the bus. Millennials have no such issues and will gladly take public transportation when its available.

But, judging on who we elected President, it is clear who is in control of things right now. And that means more boondoggles to make our gated cul-de-sac communities as white and protestant as possible.

They don't, it's just that some very rich men, bought out all the trains and electric public transport we had in the usa, then shut it down to force everyone to by cars so they could make money on oil/gas. Kinda fucked up when you think about it, capitalism in action!

Freight trains are several times more energy-efficient than trucks, because

1) the rolling resistance of the steel wheels of trains is lower than that of truck tires on the road, and

2) trains encounter less proportional wind resistance than trucks since a train car is partly shielded from the headwind by the car in front of it.

Railroads now move a ton of freight nearly 410 miles for each gallon of diesel fuel used, up from 235 miles in 1980 and 332 miles in 1990. A truck, on average, moves a ton of freight about 100 miles for each gallon of diesel fuel, and emits 3 times as much pollution.

Trains can carry heavier loads than trucks, and several trucks would be required to carry the equivalent amount of cargo that a single railcar can carry. The average fully-loaded truck does as much damage to pavement as 9,600 automobiles.

And if you don't have trains, you don't have to take the train. That's the shittiest reason I've ever heard.

Train is for poorfag, like a bus.

Sup Forums != reddit.com

Trains are Safer

Taking trucks off the road saves wear and tear on our roads and reduces danger to automobile traffic. Large trucks are involved in fatalities at about twice the rate of motor vehicles on a per-mile basis.

One’s chances of dying as a result of a crash while driving or riding a passenger auto is about 35 times higher than while riding train and 15 times higher than when riding a bus, on a per-mile basis.

If one includes injuries and not just deaths, the differences would be even more striking. When riding a train, one avoidsroad rage, and if you are tired and happen to doze off momentarily, there’s no mortal danger.

Inside the country China has much more concentrated population centers and they are relatively to one side of the country while the US would need to connect the east coast to the west coast and connect from north to south, so much longer railroads.
Outside the country US is not connected to EU by land and there's not a big economy to connect to. Besides, all this pic is is a plan. It seems highly unlikely to be realized.

>you step in
>shitpost on your phone for 10 to 30 minutes
>arrive

as opposed to
>start engine
>put on shitty music or shitty radio
>drive in traffic fearing for your life
>stressfuly look out for pedestrians
>stare at a fucking concrete for 30 minutes
>arrive
>well done car driver, well done, HOWEVER
>you must now find a parking lot
>waste another 30 minutes
>barely park because other assholes who cant park take third of your lot
>now actually arrive

i don't think i fancy that semen slurping form of transportation, thank you very much

In my opinions cars are for "local" use, Trains are for freight and specialist jobs, Aircraft are for moving people long distances and light freight.

Cars are unbeatable for convenience and moderate capability, they're the jack of all trades of vehicles, you can drive, you can be driven, you can move people, you can move freight. They suffer for that freedom though, freight and passenger vehicles share the same roads and congestion is bad for all uses and peoples.

Trains are utterly unbeatable in terms of cost/weight/speed once you're talking long enough distances and large enough loads, unfortunately that doesn't necessarily make them good for personal transportation.

Aircraft are absolute kings of moving large amounts of people large distances quickly, so long as cost isn't an issue. Fast, capable and safe the aircraft is the ideal choice if there isn't much weight involved. Below a certain distance they become less efficient however.

What the fuck are you talking about?
Trains are better because you do not have to sit in them and conduct them (unless of course you happen t be the conductor). Cars, well, unless you have a chaffeur you have to give your full attention to the road and can't sleep. Not much fun when you want to go from China to London, I imagine, compared to a train.

Trains carry more people

The key to reducing traffic congestion is to transport more people in a way that takes up less space. Trains can carry several hundred people. Imagine that you’re stopped at a traffic light and have to wait for 500 hundred single-occupancy automobiles go by before the light changes for you. How many lanes do you think would be required for all 500 cars to cross in ten seconds? Now imagine a five-car train carrying 500 people zipping across the intersection in less than ten seconds. That’s the difference.

A double-tracked rail line has the capacity to carry as many passengers asa twelve-lane freeway going in one direction. Which would you rather have going through your community?

Is this thread bait?

Trains, whether freight or light rail, are slower than cars, and most people agree that their time isn't completely worthless, so they would rather spend 40 minutes driving a congested 20 mile stretch of road than take public transportation and cover the same distance in 2 hours.

Trains improve quality of life

Driving, say, 30 miles round trip for one’s daily commute can be wearisome, not to mention expensive. AAA calculates the average cost to be 52.2 cents per mile, or $7,834 per year based on 15,000 miles of driving.

While riding a train, one can relax, read a book, learn a foreign language, make new friends, take a nap, and many other activities. Many riders comment on how their commute via rail is less stressful than having to drive the same distance

>Trains, whether freight or light rail, are slower than cars

Are you fudging the numbers by taking loading and wait times into effect or do you regularly drive at over 130MPH? Trains in europe and asia are even faster than that, often hitting 175MPH.

>You can't claim the country is too big because China just built train routes all the way from China to London and all over Asia and Africa.

America has train routes that go from one coast to the other. That's not the problem the problem is people are spread out and train routes to all of these separated communities is expensive for private companies to bother with. Private contractors acting on the behalf of the government would love to waste money on it though.

I wish trains came out where I live.

This is now an F40PH thread

Unfortunately, if you live in the U.S., taking a train is at best slow and expensive, and at worst, totally unavailable

this is proposed to be a modern multifunctional train network going at 300 km/h, not only a freight network.

>mfw I often go from Paris to Lyon in two hours in a train going at over 180MPH, whereas it takes five hours by car

Why does America, a country where early railroad tycoons became some of the richest men in history and wielded incredible influence over everything from city development to education (Stanford and Vanderbilt University were both founded on railroad money), have such a bad railroad system?

>outdated architecture
>barely used for passengers
>barely arrives on time
sad! this is the best america can come up with, it's horrendous!

because to the city i'd want to go, it's a half an hour drive in the opposite direction to get to the train station
for an hour and a half train ride
and then i have to walk or take the subway or hail a cab to get anywhere at the other end

or i could drive the two hours and be able to drive everywhere i need to be on the other end

After experiencing the Shinkansen train in Japan, going back and riding Amtrak is like visiting a crack house in an abandoned building

because america is HUGE

it's easy to build a rail system everywhere in france because the entire country is smaller than the state of texas

We don't need it.

Because our infrastructure is old and expensive to replace and incumbent companies do not care.

China is bigger

Trips are for narcissistic faggots, like you.

I love trains, and wish we had more.

>it's easy to build a rail system everywhere in france because the entire country is smaller than the state of texas
well trains in France go also to Spain, Belgium, Italy, Germany and even further. Plus, Texas is barely larger than France.

This is for freight tho, so you can get your chinkshit from gearbest in a week instead of a month.
The US has lots of rail freight.

sparse population
the US is basically empty in the central west area

Once took Amtrak from northern california to LA. The train was like 8 hours late to show up. The trip took 26 hours to do a 9 hour car ride. We sat on the side tracks for hours at a time.

We need to get our shit together. This would never fly in Europe or Asia.

In Europe you can go anywhere by train

Same price (concerning gas), free parking, safer, get dropped off where I need to be and not where the parking lot it, better for the environment, can read the paper you were assigned but put off. That's off the top of my head. Negative would be slightly slower.

Way to ignore the whole population density issue

Because Americans love 'control' even if they have to go in debt to get it.

there sure are a hell lot of people in the northern corridor in OP’s picture

Those junk tractors broke down all the time when i was in the US, they're also noisy as fuck.
And the high speed Acela is way too expensive to compete with flights.

>slurp slurp slurp

In russia they have the trans-siberian, a train journey almost six thousand miles long.

It is slow, depending upon which Train you get it is uncomfortable and rickety.

And people come from all over the world for the experience of riding it.

As a rail aficionado and romanticist I would dearly love to ride the rails across america, I would pay well for the privilege but it is actually extremely difficult to do, the companies are not obliging, the services are not up to par.

It is a terrible shame and a loss.

>Why doesn't a startup buy a train and do sight-seeing trips, make it as famous as the trains-siberian!

HAhaha, oh I wish they could but the problem isn't the TRAIN, it's the rails and routes. Everything is locked down solidly in America, the rail companies have a death-grip on the rails and there's nothing you're going to be able to offer that will change their minds. No startup would get a time allotment on any major american lines.

Such a goddamn shame.

We spent all our money on our military defending Europe the last 50 years from Communism, so they could experiment with socialism and hate America

This video explains it all

youtube.com/watch?v=mbEfzuCLoAQ

Isnt it illegal to use your phone in traffic

Depending on which state you are in

>americans defend this
pottery

You really don't know what America is like, do you?

alright, if we're gonna play the "drastically over emphasize every part of x" game

>somehow get to train station (bike, foot, drive, etc)
>wait in line to buy a ticket or use a pass
>wait for train
>get onto train, depending on area, cramped in with loads of other fags
>sit on a piss stained seat for half an hour
>shove your way out of the train, leave the station
>walk to destination
>destination is a half hour walk away
>what if its winter

fuck that man, compared to
>get in my car
>drive to exact location i need to be or in a parking lot a few minutes away
>all by myself in the comfort of my heated seats and yankee candle beach scented air freshener

eat shit

Trains suck, absolutely
I've been on Moscow-Vladivostok once, you can trust me.

Europeans just have no concept of how absolutely everything is spread out over here.

this

alot of people from other countries really dont know what america is like to get around
its a big place, its still all mainly new structure and city planning, stuff is spaced out compared to european cities

places like the netherlands, where most people live in the same town they work in, many people dont even own cars, because its so compact

compared to america where i work 40 minutes away from my house, the entire area of the netherlands is 16k square miles
the entirety of the metropolitan chicago area is a bit over 10k square miles

and i sometimes have to get there from a state away, it can take me an hour and a half to get to work

thats more than driving across the entirety of the netherlands

This, they think LA to SF is an hours drive.

What is Amtrak?

>You can't claim the country is too big because China just built train routes all the way from China to London

Labor is cheap in communist countries. In America labor is super expensive because of regulations and unions. It's like asking "Why doesn't America produce iphones?"

Not very good.

I'm pretty sure it's all international tourists riding it, because nobody who lives here would waste their time on a passenger rail system that's slower than driving.

>Muh American dream
Trains are collectivist which makes them unappealing to American ideologues

>we

Sorry spic you can no longer pretend to be American anymore. You have to go back now.

Trains for passenger transport make no sense in America.

First you have the infrastructure which by this time is entirely shaped around personal transportation, aka cars.

The public transport system in America is for the most part bad. In some metro areas it's functional but when you get out of the big main cities you might as well walk if you don't have a car because you are not getting anywhere anytime soon.

Trains move a lot of cargo efficiently as bulk, but they need a distribution chain from the station to the end location. With cargo, you have local delivery trucks which take the stuff from train stations or depots and move it around locally. It's the same with passengers, but instead of cargo trucks you have buses and stuff like that. But if you don't have buses, trams, metro or any nearby rapid transport, you won't gain anything by travelling by rail. It's just cheaper to fly, or take your car.

In Europe you have a such a tight public transport system that you can get around even in smaller cities within reasonable time. That's why you can totally take a train to another city, then take a bus or tram to wherever you need to go. You will have to walk under a kilometer from the station to the end location, usually less than half of that.

Why isn't America number one in absolutely everything imaginable?

>China
>communist
lel
>american unions
ayy lmao you're the communists

???

trains are a huge part of economy, you could have such a gargantuan economy if you just fixed your rail roads
instead you are pleased with what you have

no I'm not saying your economy is shit, read my post again

desu Europe is bigger than the entire USA (only a small 300.000km2 though) but even if you take the railroads in europe as one it's still way way better than yours
your "the country is so big" is really no argument
but yes, your population density is not close to ours

>literally has millions of actual slaves in re-education camps and hundreds of millions of serfs on collective farms
>not communist

Well it sure as hell isn't free market capitalism.

Capitalism makes that impossible. Hence free trade.

Passenger trains make sense in certain regions and states in America. They do not make sense on a country-wide scale because like over 3/4ths of the country is empty space.

Unfortunately renovating existing infrastructure is incredibly expensive which discourages politicians from publicly backing it plus companies don't give a crap so they're not going to bother either.

>alright, if we're gonna play the "drastically over emphasize every part of x" game
>>somehow get to train station (bike, foot, drive, etc)

>>wait in line to buy a ticket or use a pass

No lines. You buy your ticket online and 99% of people have monthly or yearly cards. You pay your card online.

>>wait for train

Train times are strict and often and always leave on time.

>>get onto train, depending on area, cramped in with loads of other fags

Trains are never cramped in Europe. In Finland where I live, you can book your own private cabin to suit in our special cabins fire your kids to play in etc.

>>sit on a piss stained seat for half an hour

That never happens. You sit at your seat, plug in your laptop or phone to charge, enjoy the free WiFi, play some games on your 3DS, eat some healthy breakfast, etc
>>shove your way out of the train, leave the station
>>walk to destination

Yes, Americans are fat and lazy

>>destination is a half hour walk away
>>what if its winter

Enjoy the snow

>Americans would rather build a dumb wall than build useful infrastructure

We have space for cars and highways. You don't.

As usual, the truth triggers the Sup Forumsedditor.

cliffslateralso.com/TQOrigin.pdf

>yes goyim buy our car then buy our ekhm their oil to power this car you no longer need safe and affordable public transport when you can have private transport!

You don't have to level millions of people's homes in order to build that wall.

I don't think you understand how difficult it is to build any sort of large scale structure through already developed metropolitan area.

Attempting to build an interstate today would be impossible.

>private property
>no regulations whatsoever towards business
>communist
no
>unions
>regulations
you're commies americuck lmao

your post reminded me of a train I saw just today
it was like 300 meters long and full of new Audi cars

in Europe you see trains like these so often
full with new nice Audi, BMW, VW, Mercedes
makes you think how you transport thousands of cars to the retailers or in other countries
oh wait
you don't
sorry for reminding you

>he wants to tell a German about his american "highway"
Laughable
Mein guter Freund, how about you come for a visit and we take a ride on the Autobahn

How about you come and visit our VW factories here in Alabama. Your gas is taxed to death, as well as your cars. Most simply can't afford them.

Why would I when I live at the source

You fucked up Europe once, you'll fuck it up again.
And Quit acting like the majority of those cars you produce actually go to European drivers

> I would dearly love to ride the rails across america

Same. I like trains. Not NJTransit though, that really sucks and I wish I didn't need to commute to NY

stop acting like I acted that way
as for the first sentence: same goes for you americans with america

higher speed, less traffic, less accidents, you don't need to drive
cars are still cool though

The people who ride trains are mostly people you dont want to encounter.

t. someone who has to ride by train.

We don't start multiple threads daily shitting on our supposed allies. Literally obsessed with proving something is better about your country than America. Its just really wierd.

if you're anal about people just book first class for a few extra yuros

That's the other thing, a lot of Americans are subtly racist and just want to avoid sharing a space with black or mexican people. Having a car is a perfect excuse

yeah, because new yorkers don't shit on the other parts of the USA etc etc
you are one united country
>implications

Being 2m away from all kinds of human scum dosent make it better in anyway, especially since they are still at the train station.

>Americans would rather travel on their mobility scooter than spending money building maglev trains

Lower energy cost.

Faster.

Why has no one ITT mentioned that American gaugue rails are bigger than european? We have heavier, more powerful freight trains that haul more cargo. Freight takes priority over passenger, because mostly poor niggers ride the train. We move freight, both by boat and rail well.

I live in Michigan. Our motto is: Welcome to Michigan, now buy a car. American car cultures permeates more of the population than anywhere else. Owing your own car, knowing how to take car of it, and driving anywhere you want on our stupendous Interstate system (inb4 autobahn shills, it's miniscule in comparison) is part of the American dream.
I am biased towards cars, being from Detroit, but I would still like to see more trains, perhaps even a separate passenger light rail system. I took a train along the Californian coast when I was out there for work, and it was pretty comfy, if somewhat inconvenient.

>China is building new Silk Roads
>America is building walls

really activates my almonds

America is building rail and clean coal too, user. Something which was neglected for far too long.

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_rail_transport_network_size

US, Europe and most of Asia use international standard gauge you fucking sausage.

Also your locomotive units are bigger but often less efficient in terms of size which quite embarrassingly can mean that despite your locomotive units individually being more powerful they often have to be ran double-headed anyway in order to maintain efficiency.

You're quite right however that the US has the most impressive rail freight systems in use today and while they may not be pretty any american rail fan can take pride in them, you move so much freight 24/7 that the rest of the world would be in awe, if they understood the figures.