America is too big for planes
America is too big for planes
America is too big for planes, too. If your transportation solution is flying, now everyone has to get around via endless highways or big, complicated regional airports, and you can only have so many of those. There's a reason why rural areas in North America have completely different politics from urban areas, and why so much of it is driven by a sense of isolation and abandonment. Trains promise to help here because they are able to stop in small places that will never, ever have practical airports.
A good rail network provides a reliable, consistent, repeatable, and straightforward three hour connection from Nowheresberg to the nearest city. Slow, but good enough to feel like they exist in the same planet. Unfortunately, that promise is subtle, and it plays out over decades, so the reward system we've created for ourselves is incapable of supporting it. And thus, we have Amtrak and confederate flags
Rural America is covered in local airports. No large commercial carriers, but the airports exist.
We need more rail. The argument starts from a bad premise.
They're not viable as general passenger hubs.
Every county has a county seat. There's nothing preventing the county seat from being a regional travel hub.
Literally no idea how a regular person would actually use those for realistic transportation. I figured those places were for private jets, people learning to fly and cargo/farm/industrial flights.
Would booking a flight on somebody's cesna even work and be affordable/safe?
It takes a high level license to be paid to fly people.
It is fairly applicable to learn enough to fly one self (in theory from reading). There are airplane clubs where one owns a tiny part of a plane. Fuel and maintenance are not free, but not horrible for a few hours travel.
A very cleverly designed club could work somewhat for weekend trips within a tank of gas distance. Maybe.
I just really hate flying and really like going places. Give me rails, I don’t want to drive either.
Removing all the train stations in towns across the USA was a huge mistake
Not if you own a car factory.
Coming from a more rural region, even if trains were available, when people go to the city they come back with their car filled up with stuff because it's easier to find/cheaper in the city, most won't take the train even if it's available if they have their car they can rely on.
But cars are still more efficient (L/km/passenger) than planes so we don't need more planes for rural regions either.
Yeah going to the grocery store was a 40 minute round trip growing up. You go there and buy as much as you can so you don't have to go again for two more weeks. Having a train will not be suitable for this type of trip.
May I point out that this effect is killing small towns and living-wage jobs? Before the car, there had to be stores and groceries and doctors' practices, et cetera, in small towns. Those provided local jobs for people, and community. Now, people drive into the city, or to the regional Walmart, and the small towns are decaying, mired in crippling poverty, isolation, and the diseases of despair that we see today. So the car might offer "freedom" to load up on a large selection of cheap consumer goods, but at the cost of dignity, connection, and meaning.
(Walmart, by the way, can be seen as predatory, killing small business with prices they can't match, but also, it is successful largely because it is so well-adapted to a car-based lifestyle. It's not the cause, it's an effect.)
Plenty of places with developed rail networks are still conservative in rural places.
Yeah, but passenger rail collapsed hard. Amtrak is a shell of the former service and most states that kept their systems focused only on commuters into cities.
You also see a lot of rural towns encouraged to spread out far more than before because cars provided transportation. A small town in the early 20th century looked a lot more like a very small city instead of the hollow suburban form they have today.
Yeah, but the US is too big for trains too. It's too big for planes, cars, all of it. It's been nearly 25 years since Herbert Garrison invented the gyroscopic monowheel but just like Nikola Tesla, he's being silenced by all these corporate fatcats and government bailouts.
Planes, few cripple trains, and a shitload of giant automobiles
Do Australia, Canada or India have the same problem?
Australia and Canada, yes. India has a much more developed rail infrastructure.
The main driver for passenger rail success is population density--people per square mile or per square kilometer. The US, Canada, and Australia do not have enough population density in most areas to really support a passenger rail service.
There are parts or sections of the US that are starting to get the kind of density that supports trains, and trains do tend to appear when that happens.
I hear this argument often, but it perplexes me. Yeah, the US has large areas with little population density, but surprisingly, comparatively nobody lives there. The places with high population density have lots of people living there. We could have trains in places where people live, but for the most part, we don't. Not even a single high-speed line to connect the Northeast Corridor, just the Acela. The Great Lakes region has higher population density than, and about the same size as, Spain, but Spain has a well-developed rail system.
It's not really about population density.
But we do have that kind of population density. Any pair of million person cities less than 500 miles apart is potentially good,and that’s most of the population
Most of Canada's population is in a few relatively small, population centers that are certainly dense enough for high speed rail. If it is dense enough for the widest north american highway (401), then it is defintely dense enough for rail.
All those countries are very small, poor and sparsely populated with people who'd want to travel.
USA: 9.53 Mio km² | 33.6 inhabitants per km² | $85,373 GDP (PPP) per capita | 32.5 Bn pkm (rail) | 1.98 Tn pkm (air, domestic + international (by departure)
Canada: 9.98 Mio km² | 4.2 inhabitants per km² | $60,495 GDP (PPP) per capita | 1.44 Bn pkm (rail) (2007) | 198 Bn pkm (air, domestic + international (by departure)
Australia: 7.69 Mio km² | 3.6 inhabitants per km² | $66,627 GDP (PPP) per capita | 10.5 Bn pkm (rail) | 220 Bn pkm (air, domestic + international (by departure)
India: 3.29 Mio km² | 426.7 inhabitants per km² | $10,123 GDP (PPP) per capita | 1,157 Bn pkm (rail) | 233 Bn pkm (air, domestic + international (by departure))
This quick comparison misses international inbound tourism, infrastructure size and infrastructure cost per capita as well as an actually spatially differentiated interurban density-adjusted connectivity parameter (or whatever that'd be called), so take it with a grain of salt, but I'd argue that while having different markets, those English-language adjacent countries have similarities and relevant differences.
Thank you for writing the text and a link.
I don't know why this is so hard for people who post screenshots of websites.
A good rail network also connects to major airports to give people a range of choices so they can pick the best combination for their travel
I could provide a pseudo valid arguement for aircraft in the future to these remote locations. But i would rather waste time and comment space providing this pointless comment that doesnt contribute to anything.
I see the argument that OP is quoting but I'm left wondering one thing: if most folks in the countryside could travel to a "big" city in three hours, what business would they conduct? Outside of tourism, that is.
My understanding is this would be most useful to middle-men and business people, but the common man wouldn't have much use for it.
Edit: or is the (implied) application bigger than passenger rail?
It's nice to be able to go see a show, have some drinks after, stay the night in a hotel, then hop on the train the next day. Whether it's with family or friends, a train journey can be a nice time to catch up, read, or watch the scenery go by.
Being able to do this reliably does foster a sense of connection, like you are able and encouraged to also enjoy these activities. It might not be as quick as for those in the city, but it is achievable.
Are you counting things like shopping, medical care, visiting friends and family, education , and events like concerts or sports as tourism?
DO they need to have a reason? You can simply look at existing traffic to see where a train would offer better scale.
- most sufficiently large cities have existing traffic to support rail in and out. Basically commuter rail
- most sufficiently large city pairs less than 500 miles apart have existing traffic to support intercity rail. Amtrak.
- the vast majority of transportation funding goes toward road and air, while rail has been undergfunded at least half a century
Thanks for the deeper think on this. I'm out my depth by not living in such an area - I knew I wasn't going to cover all the bases on my own.
Are you counting things like shopping, medical care, visiting friends and family, education , and events like concerts or sports as tourism?
So, no, but after reading this it makes a lot more sense. Thank you.