Passenger trains in the United States vs Europe

In Europe there is definitely a difference between TGV quality lines and the regional ones which are rarely better than taking the car, sadly (speaking from my years of experience).

I wonder what the map would look like if you at least greyed out the slow lines.

Is this joke?

No :(

My baby doesn't take the morning train?

The US absolutely needs more and better trains. But also, the US has large areas with no population. That's why when you look at electoral maps you need to control population density.

Even with a high quality rail system with support for populated areas of the US the map would still have large gaps and wouldn't be nearly as full as the EU map.

Simply putting two maps side by side and saying "this one bad" isn't great. Yes, it's absolutely bad, but for the exact reasons this map shows.

US also has the advantage of being one big federation with established standards bodies and a federal budget. A train that goes Between Belgium, Netherlands, Germany has to pass through 3 different electrical standards (yes, they are very different), 2 traffic regulations (left or right side), and 3 signalization standards. And they make it work.
Yeah, but excluding entire states is ridiculous.
- Is it? There are entire states with populations less than that of major cities.
- Exactly. Every state has a major population hub. Excluding major cities is pretty bad. Except Wyoming. No one fucking lives in Wyoming. Why are they even a state...
- Are you willing to pay the profit loss of keeping a station running? I’d wager trains aren’t cheap.
- Yeah where's my train to Hawaii?!

The United States is more rural than Europe.

That's too vague. What would be nice to see is cities above a certain population, so you could quickly see if the US lines reaches them at all.
Not to this significant a degree ;-)

And Europe is zoomed in too

And, living in enclaves as I have, I always think we don't have much. But it's kinda terrifying how bad the US have it.
- Well, they make up for it with planes. They can move around. It's just awfully polluting

Germany used to have more 30 years ago. Scheiß Kohl und Schröder

France too :'( Putain de Chirac et Sarkozy.
- For the unaware:
  In the small town where I grew up, the train station got turned into a supermarket + gas station + mcdonalds (yes, really 🤮 ). To take a train to anywhere else in France, you first have to drive 25 minutes (not the longest, but really defeats the point of taking local / regional trains).
- Faudrait le mettre en prison 🤨😁

And still here in Europe they are not a meaningful alternative to the plane. Taking for example an Amsterdam to Barcelona is an exhausting 12-14h deal (almost 10x as long) and 5x more expensive.

What we need is express trains that go from A to B without stopping anywhere, avoiding city centres and constantly running max speed. If I'm going to Barcelona I don't want to stop in Schiphol, Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Antwerp, Brussels, and various cities in France. There should just be a dedicated departure just for that (and judging by how many planes go back & forth daily these trains could certainly be filled). This would cut down on that exhausting travel time a lot. But we lack the high-speed network capacity for that. And won't have it for at least 15 years even if they decided to build them now :( So planes it is.

honestly I wouldn't mind it taking 12 hours, but it also being more expensive just doesn't make any sense at all. Europe needs to stop subsidizing air travel and needs to up its rail subsidies
- Yes. In Italy train travel, and especially bus travel, is still somewhat affordable. In most other places you feel just stupid in paying 100€ to cross 300 kilometres when you can go much farther with 30€ on a plane...
Twelve hours to get across a whole continent is fine.
I think we must stop thinking of the whole world being just a few hours away. Travel has to include some actual travelling again.
- Amsterdam to Barcelona isn't crossing an entire continent, though.
  And you still haven't countered his point about planes being faster and cheaper.
  Let's stop being tribalists and look for real solutions to real problems, eh?
The will never be enough capacity to connect capitals with no intermediate stops. And let me tell you, it's in general a stupid idea.
12h is not a big deal if travelled overnight. Which is currently not possible. So this what we really miss, not constant 300 km/h direct connections.
And of course, we need to stop taxing passenger rail companies. And maybe re-nationalise them, while we are at it. Forcing free market in the railway has been one of the biggest mistakes of the European Union.
- There was a concept I thought was neat. Imagine around stops you had a parallel set of tracks with cars that would connect to the train and passengers would have X number of minutes to transfer between the parallel trains before they decouple.
  So a 'fast lane' train wouldn't actually stop, it would just couple to another train that does pretty much nothing but transfer passengers to and from the stop.
  Though the reality is that would require a lot of work when the counter argument can be "fly a plane direct instead"
- I think 12h is a big deal, for business travelers it makes the whole trip pointless. And for leasure travelers it means paying for a really expensive sleeping cabin or "sleep" in an uncomfortable seat.
  I agree the privatisation was a big mistake, also in healthcare, energy etc.
The LowTech Magazine disagrees
- Interesting, well-written and nerdy report from 2013! I wonder if the aspects of the trans-European rail situation (pricing, travel times, frequencies, interconnectivity, train changes etc.) have gotten better or worse since then.

It gets cut off here, but Estonia only has like 4 lines or something, all from the capital in the north. No interconnection between the other cities except through the capital, and for two of the lines about 30 km away from the capital. It really sucks, I wish there was more and I'm also hoping for Rail Baltica to be ready sooner rather than later. And I REALLY wish there was a way to connect Tartu, Viljandi and Pärnu to each other directly - right now you have to make a near 200 km detour to get between the first two, and Pärnu is disconnected altogether until Rail Baltica is finished, the Tallinn-Pärnu line is dead. Sadly though, that dream route of mine (which would connect two culturally significant cities (Tartu and Viljandi) to each other and to the future Rail Baltica line in a slightly less detour-y fashion) will likely never exist because of all the wetlands in between those cities. I am glad they're being preserved, but... trains would be nice.

It also doesn't acknowledge that a lot of that is just empty space. The US is ranked 180 of 242 nations in population density.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_and_dependencies_by_population_density

The US rail system has been bastardized since its inception, but this map is basically useless. The UK has 7x the population density as the US.

That's a problem that is easily solved by building less trains in places with no people and more trains in places with lots of people.
To be clear, the U.S has plenty of places that could easily support rail transit, and High-speed rail. That they are not getting built is just good old political failure.
- Also I read that in the US Amtrak gives priority to cargo trains even though laws exist expressly forbidding that, so that a 200km trip with no stops ends up taking 4 hours.
- it's important to stress that rails only work in densely populated areas. it's very economically stupid to build railways in thinly populated areas. unfortunately, i see way too many idiots advocating that public transport be built everywhere, which smears the reputation of the whole public transport system, because it is then perceived as economically stupid and inefficient. public transport needs to focus on the cities and inter-city rail.
Ok... so why isnt the east coast covered in rails? The western states pulls the average way down.
It also doesn't acknowledge that a lot of that is just empty space.
Yes, we have a lot of empty space, but we have very few N/S passenger trains out west.
For example, a train from Albuquerque to Denver is a 45 hour one way ride because you have to go to Chicago from Albuquerque, then back to Denver. This is a 6 hour drive. There is also nothing from El Paso to Albuquerque. However this does not show the train from Belen to Santa Fe that goes through Albuquerque.

All roads lead to… Chicago?

Chicago has been a major transportation hub for nearly 200 years, it is the furthest inland you can reach from the sea by ship. cattle arrived from Texas ranches to Slaughterhouses on their way to the east coast. Wells Fargo was founded because American Express didn't want to operate further than Chicago, but they saw there was the opportunity of linking NY to San Francisco by Chicago
- it is the furthest inland you can reach from the sea by ship
  That's not actually true. There are several further in than Chicago. Duluth is the furthest inland sea port in the US
- You can reach farther inland than Chicago - Duluth MN. But Duluth is otherwise not a useful destination (unless you need iron ore).
When in Chicago…
As someone who grew up in Chicago, it has a wonderful rail system. The "US not having public rail" argument always confused me when I was young because I figured everywhere was like Chicago
Fun fact: Cleveland OH was all set to become North America's hub for continental and transatlantic airship traffic. The problem was that airships fundamentally suck, something that the Hindenburg disaster merely highlighted.
*Tracks
But yes, if you ever need a train you most likely will hit up Chicago.

Plate glass vs laminated glass

Goes to show how successful the oil and automobile lobbyists. The US passenger railway network is a fucking flop. When will they finally use electric locomotive instead of the pollution belching diesel electrics.

Wasn't always this way
- If you build it, they will come.

I once decided to take the train from Denver to Chicago rather than flying. Just to see the country.

One train per day.

Just fucking one train per day.

Amtrak, and the dots in Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Illinois saw this and added just a second train between Msp And Chicago daily and ridership exploded, trains sold out. A frequent thing that they do to save money is cut trips, but it's doing so much more harm than good. They're now finally realizing that if you want ridership people want options, they want to be able to arrive close to when they want, and some may want to just show up day of and ask when the next train is.
Here in Seattle they just added a 5th or 6th roundtrip to Portland because each time they do, ridership goes up. Turns out there's a lot of people who would rather not drive.
- To be fair, I took that train back in the early 2000's. If they've improved the service then great.
  It was a great trip, and I recommend it, but as a European I was just gobsmacked by the lack of daily options!
- Driver here! I love my car, she is incredible and comfy and has an amazing sound system.
  …if I have the option, 100% bus or train, I don’t want to drive. I’d much rather put on noise cancelling headphones and zone out and read or something then pilot a deathmobile (who, I will repeat, I love her very much because she’s best)
- Don't hate on Amtrak, they have been beaten to pulp by lack of interest and investment but still are making meaningful improvements every year.
  One of the biggest issue is that rail was privatised way back when and the cargo rail got the ownership of the tracks. This just means that products, patient as they are get priority.
  The North East corridor is getting tunnels rebuilt, added frequency. North Carolina has funded a major rail extension and so on. It's very slow but it might be necessary for it be that way to not attract attention from the GOP. Slow incremental gains until it reaches escape velocity.
  It shouldn't be that way but Amtrak is doing well considering how little help they've gotten.

Why is no one concerned that europe has taken the place of mexico??? Where is mexico now??? How is this not international news?

It's an exchange program so that the Scandinavians can learn to cook Mexican food for us
- Yeah but now Mexicans are cooking pickled herring tacos.

Yeah but what about the size difference between the two countries?

... Oh wait...

...the density is the flex here, not the size of the country. If you put the US rail on your map, you'd think Europeans hate trains.
- Yea, that is true. I mean having more robust regional routes covering smaller sections would be cool but don't expect an extensive web of trains going around the Rockies or Wyoming.
  I'd love to see something reasonable to cover the empire builder line- I just want to get home to Seattle from Chicago for the holidays in under $100 round trip :/ otherwise it's Alaska Airlines for me.
But Europe actually has a slightly larger land area than the united states? aproximately 3.9 million square miles as opposed to aproximately 3.5 million square miles.
- Isn't europe over 700M people though? We so often get caught up in the EU population.
- That 3.9M figure includes European Russia and the Nordic countries, which are largely excluded from the map image to make the difference more glaring. Not as much rail connectivity in the north. But even with that, Europe is twice as densely populated as the USA. If you look only at the EU, it is 3x as densely populated.
  It's not the only reason for the difference, but it's a big one.

I mean yes this does show passenger trains but it doesn't actually show all of the passenger trains such as the lines that run in Utah nor south well over a hundred miles carrying passengers for commuter purposes. So there's quite a few lines that are missing on here there's also lines that run up and down the East Coast I know as well and there's other passenger trains and other cities such as salt lake as well.

The european map does not show all minor railsystems, I am not 100% sure but it looks more like interregional rails.
- In Holland it seems to show them all but it probably differs by country.
  One thing we are really really bad at in Europe is homogenising rail systems. Every country does its own thing, like voltage, signalling systems, sometimes even with their own gauge (e.g. spain). Only the high speed lines are fairly commonised.
  There's some projects going on like the ETCS safety system but they go at a snail's pace because there's so much installed base and design by a 25-country committee that are all trying to rope in their own industry ties is a slow process.
Yup, I can see multiple NJTransit and SEPTA lines missing from this map.
- Yeah, you're right. The train at the end of my street isn't pictured.
would be good to have a good map ...

bUt tHe US Is a yOunGEr coUnTrY! wE haVeN't HaD mUCh TiMe tO caTcHuP.

Looks at China over the last 10 years...
- Are we suggesting China is a younger country? I don’t deny they’ve caught up insanely fast though.
I always find this one funny as perhaps more than any other nation railways massively shaped how the US grew into what it is today.
- It's much harder to plan around property ownership when you can't just kill the property owners.
  American culture is generally anti-collective so that "independence" coupled with cars becoming status symbols ensured the death of rail in America.
- the UA
  … Ukraine? Normally you’re not supposed to use “the” when referring to it these days.
  And while I’m sure rail is an important element of the development of modern Ukraine, I don’t think its the most significant example.
US was constituted in 1787. Trains were invented in 1804 and made commercial in 1829. You've had the same time as the rest of us.
- That's the joke

And as a Canadian, I'm even envious of the trains in the US. Pretty much the only thing but here we are.

Anecdote time: I was visiting Europe, sitting in Liège and arrived there from Aachen with a train ticket I bought the day before. My next step was Brussels or Ghent but I wasn't decided yet and didn't have a ticket, so I just bought one on the spot for the next train, in an hour. While eating fast food and waiting for that train, I was trying to book a train in Canada next week when I'd return, to go from Montréal to Drummondville. However I was already too late. There was still available tickets but there were over $100 CAD for a trip that would normally cost about $32 CAD if I would have booked it a month in advance. And the next departure was 3 hours later, still overpriced. So, no train in Canada for me, even a week in advance.

In short, in Canada, there's only 5 trains a day between major cities, and you have to book weeks in advance otherwise the prices can triple if you're last minute. And they don't take bikes. And they weigh your bagage.

So I was in Europe, taking trains last minute here and there, while unable to book a train ticket at a reasonable price for the next week in Canada. VIA Rail sucks so much.

So that's why the price was wack for Niagara to Toronto.... I wondered who tf would ever take the train at those prices.

Apparently the situation with freight is the opposite, where the US networks are efficient compared to Europe (and even China), hence so much stuff is trucked across Europe instead.

As always, take YT videos with grains of salt, but it makes good points:

https://youtu.be/77pIj8kURoY

Meanwhile, other videos suggest that the US's own passenger rail suppliers (like manufacturers/designers) are basically gone because the situation is so bad, hence companies like Amtrak end up importing EU stuff.

The way I understand it in the states is that all the rail lines are freight lines, and amtrack shares the rails. I've taken amtrak before and had to stop for like 15 minutes for a freight train because they have the right of way
- AFAIK passenger trains have priority. But they have a lot of single rail infrastructre and freight games the system with trains that are too long for passing sidings, so the passenger trains have to wait.
Here in Italy most cargo is on trucks, our highways are a nightmare when it comes to traffic. The rest of Europe is usually better.
Kind of? The new locomotives are the Siemens Alc 42, but they are built in California.
Edit: To your point, Seimens makes a way better locomotive, and profits go overseas.
- And big tech profits from the EU flow to the US you win sum dim sum
couldn’t they add freight cars to passenger trains to help with this?
- Based on my experience playing Railway Empire, passenger cars with people and their luggage is significantly lighter than a freight car of the same size loaded with cargo. This means it takes a lot more energy to get the freight moving at a higher speed, and maybe more importantly a lot more to stop (I think it takes 3-4 football fields for a loaded freight train to stop from 30mph). So just having passengers allows the train to travel at much higher speeds. Speed is something more valuable for passengers because they want to get where they are going sooner. Freight is more about total throughput volume so it may be better to have one heavier train carrying twice much at a slower speed than two trains have the size each moving faster. So while you could have a mixed train it's not going to be as fast as the passengers want due to the heavy freight cars slowing the train down and won't carry as large a volume as the freight customers want because some cars are being taken up by passengers.
- Freight and passenger trains optimize for very different things, and those things are largely incompatible.
  Passenger trains want speed, quick turnaround on the vehicles, frequent stops etc.
  Freight wants efficient transport (= lower speed), few stops, turnaround time is less important.

Population Density in the United States vs Europe

I mean I'd love more trains in the US, but let's not oversimplify.

All the more reason we need high speed rail.
- Yeah, China might be a better comparison than Europe ironically.
So the eastern half of the USA should at least have more trains than Scandinavia per square km, and the coasts should be like France. Doesn't seem oversimplified at all.
- The east coast probably does, and most of the big cities do, it's just that airplane makes a lot more sense when the country is big.
So Ohio has the same population density as France. France has the TGV and Ohio has?
- Racists, mostly.
- Manly men in coal rolling trucks?
Reminder that the US had a much denser rail network in the past.

US is grossly wasting fossil fuels on airplane flights. O&G industry is behind this. Their bottom line depends on society being wasteful and inefficient.

This map must be at least a few years out of date. I somewhat regularly take a passenger train in FL that isn't shown here.

The brightline?
This looks like it's only got Amtrak and Via Rail (Canada).
There are lots of smaller rail services missing.

It’s even worse if you do a high speed train map. The US only has about 150 miles and even the. A chunk doesn’t exceed 60mph even though they call it “high speed”

I find it interesting that there's a noticeable difference in rail density between western Europe and former Warsaw pact countries, despite rail being important for Soviet union logistics. In top of that, Russian rail is severely lacking today.

Could it be a rail gauge issue where eastern rail standard caused development to be prohibitively more expensive?

I would guess wealth and population density have something to do with it. Though car ownership rates are also lower in those countries, so you'd assume there would be more demand for alternatives like rail.

One of the many reasons why those "fuck cars" groups are so ridiculous to many Americans.

It sucks, but cars are pretty much mandatory here.

As an American, I don't find those groups ridiculous at all - they are incredibly sane, actually. They can imagine what our world would look like if we reduced our reliance and dependency on cars and I believe there is a lot of value in that.
I believe that we need high-speed rail for freight and passengers in the US. A nationwide push would create a lot of jobs and tractor-trailers would likely be vastly be reduced on our roadways, which I'd consider to be a big win.
This may seem like a bad deal for truckers, but their jobs are already threatened (in some part) due to self-driving tractor-trailers.
- Trucking jobs should never be considered universally essential anyway. Trucking should be a stopgap until public infrastructure can improve.
I'd be happy if the people that decide road layouts were at the very least people that got passing marks in elementary school.
instead we get signs like:
"die if you're a cyclist"
I lived in Arizona with no car until I was 25 and it was pretty hard to get by even here with 340ish days of sunshine. Everything in the US is incredibly spaced out, and if you’re in any suburban place, there simply aren’t bike racks anywhere. In rural NH where I lived, there was nowhere fun to ride to, and nowhere to lock up even if I wanted to go do errands close enough for me to do on bicycle. The US, in many places, needs a page 1 rewrite of its public infrastructure.