Posted on 05/09/2014 9:49:39 PM PDT by Cronos
AMERICA has by far the largest rail network in the world, with more than twice as much track as China. But it lags far behind other first-world countries in ridership. Instead of passengers, most of America's massive rail network is used to carry freight. Why don't Americans ride trains?
..the Japanese, the Swiss, the French, the Danes, the Russians, the Austrians, the Ukrainians, the Belarussians and the Belgians all accounted for more than 1,000 passenger-kilometres by rail in 2011; Americans accounted for 80. Amtrak carries 31m passengers per year. Mozambique's railways carried 108m passengers in 2011.
There are many reasons why Americans don't ride the rails as often as their European cousins. Most obviously, America is bigger than most European countries. Outside the northeast corridor, the central Texas megalopolis, California and the eastern Midwest, density is sometimes too low to support intercity train travel. Underinvestment, and a preference for shiny new visions over boring upgrades, has not helped. Most American passenger trains travel on tracks that are owned by freight companies. That means most trains have to defer to freight services, leading to lengthy delays that scare off passengers who want to arrive on time.
(Excerpt) Read more at economist.com ...
For short travel/commutes, trains only work in densely populated areas. That way it is financially feasible to have many stops and available, inexpensive transport to get to a final destination.
Any regular that would have additional expensive transportation to get to a final destination makes it an unlikely choice.
Long distance travel on trains is ruined by the time to get from one large city to another. I considered a trip to Florida a year ago on train, and it was almost a 2 day affair. By plane, it’s a few hours. By my own vehicle, it’s a day and a half and I have my transportation with me.
Cost and convenience seem the bottom line to me.
Eisenhower’s. To ease military transports during the height of the Cold War.
yes and passenger trains all carried people to shore points in NJ. almost every older shore town still has a train station. I think some of the railroad infrastructure got beat to death by military use during WW2 and the car took off afterward leaving trains behind.
Yes, ol’ Willie had a an obsession with passenger rail (especially commuter rail) that bordered on being a special kind of OCD.
You ought to move there and enjoy the excessive British taxes that allow the wonderful mass transit system and everything that comes with it.
The NYC subway sure is a rail system that became government-owned sooner than others in the USA. Before that, private companies had more diverse ideas, e.g. to run freight on the subway at night, even to run commuter service into the subway system (the Long Island RR planned to do this once and even built the MP41 cars to fit the tight dimensions of the Interborough Rapid Transit system).
Doing a long tour to the UK as an American Serviceman wasn’t bad at all. Seeing what the “Crown’s Subjects” put up with told me that I would definitely return to the U.S.
Yes. My point is that it was government involvement in transportation that killed passenger rail. It’s more than a little ironic.
Because Americans are selfish and only care about themselves, which is why we need government to make prices "necessarily skyrocket" so they can be forced onto trains!
I'm right, aren't I?
And the motorways. Not to mention the airports and ferry ports.
Most likely privatization (to the degree it was done) helped save Britain’s intercity rail system, though; before that, it was “British Rail”, a 100-percent government-owned affair.
Really, it is impossible to discuss transportation rationally. We can’t see the true costs and benefits. All we see is a fog of government subsidy, government preferential and punitive taxation, and waves and waves of regulation.
We’re just blind men groping in a government induced darkness.
It’s a line from the movie Silver Streak.
The railroad serving the north Jersey shore originally went south of Bay Head to Seaside Park, crossed Barnegat Bay and went on to Camden; that was the old Philadelphia & Long Branch line of the Pennsylvania Railroad. A lot of roads were built over abandoned railroads; the one I just mentioned is now the southbound lanes of NJ route 35 through Manahawkin and Lavallette.
The state of NJ used to have rail service to Ocean City and Cape May until the early 80s; they got rid of it when the federal government ordered Conrail to stop running passenger trains.
road are not rail.
roads unite.
rails control.
No. That’s what the federal government wants you to believe, in fact. That’s why they control the roads, as well as the airports, and tax the populace to feed that unending black hole, when instead both could be privately owned and paid for per use. That’s why states exert control in the same manner, via vehicle registration and driver licensing. Didn’t notice that increasing government control took a giant leap with federal control of roads?
This country would not have been built as fast as it was without those steel rails—both owned and operated by private companies, which are but a few today thanks to (who?) the feral government (even during the Reagan years, there were about thirty or so Class 1 rail companies; we’re down to five, thanks to instituting crony capitalism). We would not have won WWII without them either. But the feral government then got into the transportation business, and legislated and regulated their “competition” out of business.
we don’t live in huts and a forest either.
last I checked, I use roads on my schedule.
the government does not bring trains to me on my schedule.
“The government has limited those choices for us.”
The “government” has limited the choices? Explain please.
I think I have already. Take a look at the Federal Railroad Administration’s website for all the regulations put on railroads, if you don’t believe me. Never mind the continued support by the federal government of highways and airports, when both should have been in private hands from their beginnings.
No, but they “bring” you roads at the expense of others, instead of letting the private sector build and maintain them. Why countenance socialism of any form?
BTW, it was the expansion of railroads that led to the abandonment of the alleged “huts in the forest” for superior domiciles. (And FWICS, even prior to railroads, the average US domicile was far superior to a hut.)
Older countries put in trains, and built around them, long before cars arrived. Where you are and where you want to go are located where they are due to rail proximity.
The USA had cars for a far longer percentage of its existence, developing around roads instead of rail.
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