Can someone explain why it is believed the U.S. isn't dense enough for trains?

[wuushew]

The gold standard for mass train service is France right?

France has a population density of 295 people per square mile, eight states exceed that and four are above 200 per square mile.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_by_population_density


Living in the sticks is not going to get cheaper, so leave the sparse areas for the farmers and ranchers.

[dbonds]

1. Because car manufactors and oil companies want more business.

[Kolesar]

4. The highway-construction lobby has WAY too much influence

They fund the campaigns of politicians who give them construction contracts in return. New highways are built with, literally, reckless abandon.

[Blue_Tires]

13. and by extension,

the commercial/residential developers who love new territory right along a new highway...developers have bought and paid for a lot of local/county governments years ago....

[Tesha]

23. Bingo. (NT)

[tabasco]

26. Bingo! Trains don't use enough oil!

Big oil and auto companies have constantly fought against public transportation.

Germany is a pretty big country too and you don't even need a car to live and work there. Trains and buses go to the smallest of villages.

It is far past time for America to stand up to the money-grubbing oil executives and their pet politicians!

[hobbit709]

2. The problem is that the mindset is too dense.

[Warpy]

3. We got one in New Mexico

which is one of the poster children for sparse population.

It extends through the central Rio Grande valley and will reach Santa Fe by the end of the year.

The trick is to put those commuter rail systems where the population is highest and they'll work even in sparsely populated states like this one.

[PVnRT]

5. Negative perception of train service, dating back to the 1960's

If I recall correctly, train service outside of commuter rail in large cities started going to shit about this time, as companies stopped offering anything other than cramped, uncomfortable cars to travel in.

[YOY]

8. Have you ridden lately?

Our Acela cars are deeeeeeevine!

[PVnRT]

41. I'm not putting down train service now

Just going by what I've heard as to why it declined in the past. If there were Amtrak service closer by, you can bet I would be riding it to visit the inlaws in Wisconsin rather than driving.

[YOY]

43. Is Danville, IL far from you?

Cos there is rail service there.

Just FYI.

[PVnRT]

44. Little over an hour - Crawfordsville is the same thing

Of course, if gas keeps going up...

[YOY]

6. Well as an Amtrak employee let me tell you by linking to another post

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x3187335

Everyone wants their own giant home and nobody wants to spend money on a train station when they can drive.

That's going to change soon. I hope things go our way. I like working for my company. I want nothing more than a huge boom in business. Nowhere to go but up!

[gatorboy]

10. They have any Summer deals coming up?

My family is considering taking a train to San Diego this Summer.

[YOY]

14. We have a nice program for Vets (that's year round.) if you are.

Students too. Something like 15% off (I'm not pricing nor am I marketing.)

AAA (kind of ironic, huh?) and AARP have discounts too: around 10% I think.

Check out our weekly specials :http://tickets.amtrak.com/itd/amtrak/WeeklySpecials Sometimes you can find things on the fly.

Now I would assume you would be leaving from Little Rock? That's about 165$ for there and 165$ back. It's about a 2.5 day trip too (56 hours) from San Diego. I'm talking a coach seat as well but you may have plenty of leg room there and the chance to get up and move around is constant. For two adults you can get a roomette for a 100$ (before discount) more than that...well worth it and private! For about 100$ more than that you can get a family room that allows room for two kids as well. If you've got a family of four ask about that: it is SO worth it and you travel in style and comfort the likes of which the airlines could only imagine.

Pack a small cooler as well but we serve food (far better than airline and not extremely expensive) on all our lines.

Keep your eyes peeled for promotions as well. You can find all of it on our homepage.

[gatorboy]

16. Cool. Thanks for the info, YOY. Much appreciated!

:hi:

[kestrel91316]

19. The dining car food on Amtrak is EXCELLENT.

[YOY]

20. Yeah but for some reason Anthony Bordain hates us...

The National Parks line we have has 4 star food as I recall. ON A TRAIN.

The only places I know of that do that is the Machu Pichu line in Peru and the Orient Express line...both also catered to tourists.

[taterguy]

24. Probably because you banned smoking on your trains

[YOY]

27. The thing is I think that I've sat across from him once in an Acela (from NY to DC)

He (or his clone) looked pissed as pissed could be. Shame because the guy is cool as hell.

If you take a train from anywhere to anywhere and it is not an express you can get smoke breaks every 6 to 8 hours. It's kind of funny in the middle of winter.

[PVnRT]

42. From what I've seen of his show, he always looks pissed

I saw one of his specials on South Korea, and he pretty much behaved like a spoiled little shit the entire time.

[kestrel91316]

40. Considering it's train food I was very impressed and ate every bite on

my 24-hour trip (Trinidad Co to Los Angeles).

[kestrel91316]

17. I have thought about taking the train to Milwaukee for my annual

Christmas vacation and then flying back to Los Angeles. But two whole days on the train is too much! And it's VERY expensive compared to flying......sigh. I won't take a long train trip without having a bed (those tiny sleeper compartments are cool). Can't take an extra day just for travel, either.

Maybe down the road my attitude will change. Maybe I should just live closer to Milwaukee, lol.

[YOY]

25. Shame about that.

It's cozy and relaxing. far more than any plane ride I've ever had...(I've never flown Virgin...someone told me that they make it wonderful.)

It's cheeper when you have a family I may add. You get one of those rooms. If it's just you then it's not as cost effective.

[spanone]

7. because they would steal revenues from the oil industry....we can't have that

[Crunchy Frog]

9. This country is too dense for any kind of sensible solutions

to any of our problems.

[JohnyCanuck]

15. I was gonna say....

the problem is that all the "denseness" in the US is concentrated mainly in one location, Washingotn D.C..

[Gormy Cuss]

11. The states with higher density population in the U.S. do tend to be the ones with train service.

That's why the Northeast, greater Chicago, parts of coastal CA and a few other areas have train service.
On that list, DC and the first seven states and PA have good Amtrak service along the coast, as does parts of IL and CA. Florida and Ohio are the only outliers and there is some train service in both states, as far as I know.

#District of Columbia
1 New Jersey
2 Rhode Island
3 Massachusetts
4 Connecticut
5 Maryland
6 New York
7 Delaware
8 Florida
9 Ohio
10 Pennsylvania
11 Illinois
12 California

[On the Road]

12. They've Added Trains Between DC and NYC

and I hope they add more. It's very convenient. Now if they could get the prices down a little, it would be better.

A lot of the US IS too sparsely settled for trains. But not the Northeast, and perhaps not parts of the midwest or north central.

[DamnYank]

18. France vs US

About 15 years ago Trains magazine (a publication for railfans) did an article on this very topic. They took a map of the French TGV system and overlaid it on a map of the eastern US. The channel port of Calais corresponded with Lewiston, Maine and the Riviera matched up with Orlando and St. Pete, FL if I recall correctly. Over half of all airline flights are less than 500 miles in length. High speed rail is feasible in this country provided we had the vision and leadership to make it happen. We "invest" $35b in highways, "invest" another $20b in airlines, but "subsidize" Amtrak with less than a billion $. If the playing field were leveled rail would win, since it's the most efficient and cost effective method.

[Fumesucker]

35. Nope...

France and the US to the same scale.

[RaleighNCDUer]

21. Judging by the last several years, nobody's denser than Americans. nt

[High Plains]

22. No, WE'RE too dense for trains.

[Stinky The Clown]

28. I'll take a train over a plane or a car ANY DAY ... and for me, its faster, too.

I travel the Northeast corridor a lot. I can literally get from my home to my destination in NYC faster by train than any other means. The plane is 35 minute flight, but all the screwing around driving to the airport (one hour in the **opposite** direction), getting to the airport in time to allow TSA sufficient time to have their fun sniffing my crotch and patting me down and treating me like a murder suspect, getting off the plane, waiting at LGA for a cab, driving the 45 minutes to Midtown ....... whew ......

I can be to the train station in 20 minutes and on the train five minutes later ..... 2 hours and 25 minutes to NYC, and maybe 15 minutes by cab to anywhere in Midtown.

And Acela is faster than that, but more pricey.

[Fumesucker]

29. Because a lot of it isn't dense enough?

Only the brightest areas on the image below are really dense enough for effective train service, and a lot of those places already have trains.

When taking the train, you still have the same problem as taking a plane to your destination: No effective transportation when you get there.

Those places that have decent train service in the world have spent many decades, indeed over a century in some places, getting to that point.

Some new paradigm of personal transportation is going to have to appear.. Digital hitchhiking, computer routed jitneys or whatever before America can be significantly weaned from the automobile.

[wuushew]

31. Here is Europe at night

[Fumesucker]

32. Energy costs in Europe are a lot higher than in the US

Wasteful outdoor lighting is a good bit less common..

Makes it hard to compare the two images..

Not to mention that that Western Europe is only about half the size of the continental US.

[DS1]

37. I've long considered doing a classic cross-country drive across the US

(obviously, this is a train thread, and this is off-topic)

but after flying back from Yuma, AZ to Boston I've decided that it's just far too f'ing big, and I'm too old for that kind of stuff for leisure purposes.

[Fumesucker]

39. I remember back in the days of the double nickle

We used to joke that driving across Texas was a career, not a trip..

I hitchhiked from San Diego to Atlanta in 1971, that took me five days and I learned that even in the summer it gets cold in the desert at night.. :)

[baldguy]

30. There was a conscious decision made in the '50s

to subsidize cars & airplanes, and eliminate passenger rail travel.

Now we suffer for it.

[mainegreen]

33. Rail is expanding up here in Maine.

Of course our state government has been pushing hard for years, jumping through hoops, hauling out lawyers, and paying bucks to bring us rail after a long absence. Hopefully rail will soon go beyond Portland all the way up to Brunswick to connect to a small private rail firm that runs a coastal route.

The Downeaster, our train, is Amtrak's fastest growing route.

[cayuga]

34. It takes me three days

to get to my destination due to connection schedules. I love Amtrak and love travelling by train. Have never had a bad experience, but I think the 'greatest country in the world' could provide a little better ground transportation for its citizens. I bet Iraq gets a fast train system in the near future...at our expense.

[kwassa]

36. U.S. Railroads are undergoing a big expansion now, says the Post

from today's paper

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/04/20/AR2008042002407_pf.html


A Switch on the Tracks: Railroads Roar Ahead
Global Trade, Fuel Costs Add Up To Expansion for Once-Dying Industry

By Frank Ahrens
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, April 21, 2008; A01


RADFORD, Va. -- When Bob Billingsley hired on with Norfolk Southern railway 31 years ago, he was a rookie on work crews that were closing unused lines as the nation's economy turned its back on the railroads.

Now he's in charge of raising the roof of a Norfolk Southern tunnel in southwestern Virginia to clear headroom for the double-stacked container cars that have become the symbol of the industry's sudden surge thanks to a confluence of powerful global factors.

"For years, we were looking for ways to cut costs to increase profits," said Billingsley, as a train rumbled by. "Now, we're building business to increase profits."

The freight railway industry is enjoying its biggest building boom in nearly a century, a turnaround as abrupt as it is ambitious. It is largely fueled by growing global trade and rising fuel costs for 18-wheelers. In 2002, the major railroads laid off 4,700 workers; in 2006, they hired more than 5,000. Profit has doubled industry-wide since 2003, and stock prices have soared. The value of the largest railroad, the Union Pacific, has tripled since 2001.

[Fumesucker]

38. Norfolk Southern didn't exist 30 years ago..

He worked either for Norfolk or for Southern..

Their merger was in 1982, 25 years ago.

[MindPilot]

45. Amtrak's website should be youcantgettherefromhere.com

It seems like anymore you really can't get from one city to another without a long-assed bus trip in between. If I want to go to Denver from San Diego, I can either ride the train to LA, then go to someplace in New Mexico, whereupon I face a six-hour bus ride to Denver. Or I can go to LA, then up to the Bay Area, take a bus to Sacramento, and then get on the Zephyr to Denver. Of course I will probably arrive 3 to four hours late because the train seems to have to stop and sit out in the middle of nowhere for random periods.

I used to be able to go to Las Vegas almost directly from San Diego. Now, AFAIK, there is no rail service to Vegas at all.

Maybe if there was some rail service available, and if it wasn't so damn slow, (San Diego to LA by train, four hours easy, by car, 90 minutes) more people would use it.

[hedgehog]

46. Only slightly off-topic, but there was once a trolly service that ran

its tracks just behind my barn. It ran through town and from Syracuse to Oswego. When I think of all the hours I've spent driving out to pick up the kids at the junior high and high school, I could just weep.

[Xithras]

47. Amtrak is way too freaking expensive for what it provides.

I wanted to take Amtrak last year for one of our regular visits to my dad's. A half-day train ride from Central California to Central Oregon cost $500 round trip for a family of five, and that's for the cheap seats. If we actually wanted a room so that the rest of the train wouldn't have to deal with my two year old, it would have been about $1000 extra. $1,500 to pack my family into an undersized room about the size of my wifes minivan. Even at $4 a gallon, I can drive it for about a third of that price.

And by taking our own car, we don't have to deal with the problem of renting a car in Eugene, since the train doesn't get within 150 miles of their actual home.

[End Of The Road]

48. Nothing to do with density, IMHO

And everything to do with government subsidies. Subsidies for highways, subsidies for airlines, but screw the railroads.