Fucking this. Every single person who talks about trains for the US is either an idiot Euro who don't understand how fucking vast the continental United States really are over 85% of the landmass, or idiotic Americans who have no idea how population dense Europe is and how the nature of their medieval kingdom history lends itself to trains. I just sit here and laugh in Manifest Destiny.
- Trains require certain lengths and population densities, then you need a reason for enough passengers to go from A to B. Europe's Castle Towns on Rivers layout is absolutely ideal for train-based systems. Almost none of the rest of the world is.
- Having done a bunch of cycles with "but we NEED TRAINS" types, it has little to do with trains. it parallels the issues around Guns. There simply are people that want Big Daddy to take care of things while also wanting to remove the personal control from others. The more modern push is Self-Driving Cars. None of these technologies are bad in & of themselves. But no one should ever trust the people pushing these technologies when their core desire is to take something from you, not find better ways to doing previous tasks.
On the topic of America being fucking huge. This is why it's a pain for California to get all the cons, as once you get past Chicago... or Omaha Nebraska if I'm being generous you are basically stuck ona highway with no civilization. At that point can't get to anywhere on the West Coast from the East/South or Midwest in a timely fashion without a plane. Past Omaha you go through three states of empty highway until Denver. And that might not even be the halfway point to Cali itself.
Now Eastward is quite a trek of course, but at least you have fucking cities to break up the pace.
If you ever have the chance, driving across the States in Fall or Spring is a great drive. But it's also 2 full days of driving. As in 26+ hours to get from Chicago to LA of actual driving. Open Road driving is actually enjoyable, but it's not great when you really need to move from A to B. And the cultural pull into LA is always an issue. It truly is highly disconnected from the rest of the country, both physically and mentally.
While trains don't really work in the States, taking Amtrak across the Western States is a solid trip. At least in Spring/Fall. You get a solid 2 days of beautiful scenery. If you aren't in a hurry and like reading books.
Invader or Phase 3?
Also, I read that as "Pipi-ing" instead of "piping", the brain mold is terminal.
Well, if its terminal, hopefully Calli is your oshi so you can finally meet her.
We could quite possibly have a functional train system on the east coast if Amtrak wasn't congressionally mandated to provide service to the entire country, though - right now we have a monopoly providing incredibly pointless, shitty nationwide service instead of functional trains in the sector of the country where it would probably be economically viable....
There's a number of routes on the East Coast that would still be quite viable. But you'd also have stops at the hometowns of several Congressmen on the way. That's a lot of the issue.
As someone on the east coast, it takes me
nine hours to fly to somewhere like Sacramento, CA for a trade show. It almost exactly the same amount of time it takes for me to fly to the UK. Also, while trains have never been a great option for most Americans, by god, some of the nicest views I've ever seen were in Colorado and the Canadian Rockies.
As a vacations, this was great:
https://www.rockymountaineer.com/
San Fran to London is 10h non-stop, for reference. Which is also why trips to NYC are "a big trip" to West Coasters; same with trips to LA being "a big trip" to East Coasters. A Brit taking a holiday to Greece is roughly the same concept.
As someone who has an interest in geography, I enjoy these discussions about it here. Just a few things to add:
While traveling is more than just visiting geographical locations, the States are so geographically diverse that if that's a person's main reason for traveling, they really don't need to travel outside the States to experience it in many cases. There's a lot of mountains, beaches, the Great Plains, numerous National Parks, deserts, etc to get a change of scenery. Hell, while culturally and politically it's a hellscape, California's geography can have you swimming in the Pacific Ocean in the morning, snowboarding in the mountains in the afternoon, and having a bonfire on a desert lake bed in the evening. If someone has any interest in geography, it's honestly very interesting learning about the US's geography. And like others have pointed out, I didn't even mention the different cultures/customs of different areas.
Don't get me wrong, I enjoy learning about geography all over the world, so I'm not trying to brag about the US because I'm
'Murican, but I do think sometimes people (in general, not here) underestimate how interesting US geography is.
I've actually been wanting to try doing something like this for some time now. I really need to look into it more.
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And to make up for my geography sperging, have a fun Flare clip from a dedicated Flare clipper:
The Amtrak lines through the Rockies are a blast. But you do need time. It's a 3 day trip from West Coast to Chicago. Hilariously enough I met a European couple traveling around the States that way. They were having a grand old time.
I'm no Yank or even New Worlder, but people who aren't tend to absolutely underestimate just how fucking big the country is. The US is like half a continent, Texas is bigger than France. At some point rail travel for passenger purposes kind of becomes unviable. China has an absolutely massive railway system that runs at lightning speeds and it's absurdly expensive and runs at huge losses to the point of ridiculousness. That kind of political will doesn't exist in America nor really should it.
EDIT: Good point about short distance vs long distance travel though by Reticule.
The unsaid aspect about High speed rail. Japan had to write-off/retire what is functionally a 1 Trillion USD (adjusted) for the early Shinkansen system. China has spent something like 2 Trillion on theirs and basically all of it but one section runs massive in the red (heh). And, since it's Chinese build quality, it's going to fall apart very early.
That's essentially what I was asking, is this someone who exists or a new person?
The thing is, people have gone coast to coast via trains and have done so going top to bottom through the US as well. The problem isn't long distance train travel, it's short distance travel as you have too many points of interest with not enough people traveling to any one point. More so, states can have multiple medium sized cities or towns as opposed to one hub city that branches out which makes it even harder as you end up in weird triangles of travel instead of straight lines.
Politicians have pushed for rail systems, many of the new ones are abysmal failures, with California being the worst where they spent billions and hadn't even laid a single mile of track at that point. If there was a need for serious train travel, private business would have already solved it.
Medium and large cities need proper rail-type transport systems. Beyond that, the US was simply built on homestead-based sprawl from 1650 onward. There's a reason only the biggest northern cities have full rail hubs. Only place that can sustain them.
