Why Amtrak Is Undermined by America's Geography
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- Опубликовано: 10 фев 2025
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Amtrak is the United States' only cross-country passenger trail service. And this means that its been tasked with moving people around a country that is otherwise really large. Unfortunately, due to the prominence of cars and planes, ridership of passenger rail in the United States dipped considerably in the 1900s and never really recovered, even as other countries, such as China, rapidly build out a national high speed rail system that far and away surpasses Amtrak's meager routes. So what's going on? Well, the geography of it all certainly doesn't help!
In this episode, we'll cover the geography and history of how Amtrak expanded, its recent ridership trends, and why Amtrak can't replicate the same success found elsewhere and what that means for Amtrak going forward.
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It seems like the whole video shows how geography is one of the smallest issues for Amtrak expansion and improvement
@@piketrekfsdf209CA alone has 40 million, another 13 million in Oregon and Washington. Even Arizona has 7.5 million and growing.
@@piketrekfsdf209 ... California alone has 40 million people.
They cost too much
@@TheMysteryDriver Building and maintaining highways is still more expensive than building and maintaining railways.
@@elijamescabangon I mean to take. Their tickets are too expensive
Geography/train trivia: Why is the CDC based in Atlanta?
The CDC was originally founded to combat tropical diseases - primarily malaria and yellow fever. These were still prevalent well into the first half of the 20th century in the southeastern US. And when you look at the geography, you know why. Most of the coastline is swampy and flat, and the climate is sub-tropical - perfect breeding grounds for the mosquitoes that spread malaria and other diseases. Well, before air travel, Atlanta was the biggest rail hub in the southeast. CDC researchers/doctors could deploy pretty much anywhere in the southeast from there by train, hence the CDC became headquartered in Atlanta, and never moved.
@@nothanks3236
The CDC was featured in The Walking Dead when Rick's crew busted inside
Significantly the Atlantic AIR hub carries more passengers than any other airport in the world. Reminding me that almost all of South America etc lies to the South and East of the USA.
And now, Atlanta has the most used airport so that’s also a reason they should stay there in Atlanta
@ I mean to be fair, these days if the CDC has to deploy, they take government/military flights. They're not flying out of Hartsfield.
We've taken many cross-country Amtrak trips, which has given us a great way to experience the vast landscapes and diverse geography of the U.S.-a perfect journey for anyone with a love for world geography.
@@SudoOgami more like a tourist attraction than a serious passenger service
@@FBAV
No, people use it for that too. They just don't go all the way from end of the LD line to the other. They'll ride it for 500 miles or so. That's 60% of the ridership on those trains.
Rail is never going to compete with a jet aircraft for 2000 miles, dude. I can fly from here (Silicon Valley) to Chicago in four hours. On HSR it would still take 10 hours, that's over twice the time. The Shanghai maglev averages 225 mph so it would take a little less, 9 hours, but still about double the time of the jet.
And the expense to build out super straight HSR and/or maglev track over that distance would be astronomical.
need to make tickets cheaper and more accessible!
@@christianhansen3292
"make tickets cheaper and more accessible!"
How so? You can get a ticket cross country for like $350 for coach, and GasBuddy says the gas would be over $600 if you're driving a Chevy Malibu. Shorter trips for like 500 miles or so are under $100.
@@christianhansen3292 when you factor in check in, the hassle of airport security, airport transfer, the train becomes a lot more competetive. The 10 hour route from paris to berlin is viable, despite only being 1.5 hr by plane. 2 hours for transfers, 1.5 hours for airport and the relaxed comfortable ride, really puts corridors like Seattle LA, Houston to Denver, et within range of competetive high speed rail, it starts to compound further when you can localise to smaller tows, which can reduce the final mile by 1 hour.
You can sit back, relax, upgrade to first class for a cheap last minute upgrade, get some work done, catch up on some sleep, get fed like a king. Honestly, the USA is missing out on this great infrastructure, also proven to boost local economies massively, without congested roads.
"geography"... yes... most other countries with HSR also have mountains... Japan, China, Spain, Italy, France...
Yes and most of those mentioned countries would rank under 10th state size….. ok there’s China ., the US moved to a ‘ personal size ‘ transportation
It's not just geography it's population density and the vast nothingness in between the population centers. Between Southern California and Phoenix Arizona there isn't any other large cities but is roughly 350 miles and it takes about 5 to 6 hours in a car to get there. If you want to take an Amtrak train it takes at bare minimum 7 hours and 30 minutes to go from the LA station to the Phoenix station and I just looked it up a ticket is 94 bucks. And that only works if you are in the LA area for me living 50 miles east of LA I would have to commute west into LA before I could grab the train sitting in typical Southern California traffic for probably an hour and a half to get to the LA Grand Central station.
By comparison to a vehicle, The number one selling vehicle in the United States of America is the Ford F-150 pickup and according to the EPA it gets 23 mi a gallon on the highway so it uses approximately 15 gallons of fuel to go to Phoenix at $4 a gallon which that is the price of gas in California currently where I live the Ford F-150 would only cost $62 and some change to drive to Phoenix. If you actually drove something fuel efficient like a Toyota Corolla or a Prius or something along those lines your price would even be cheaper. Once you go to Phoenix gas is roughly a dollar a gallon cheaper at least it was a week and a half ago when I was there meaning it will cost even less to come back home.
The real fact of the matter is trains are more expensive, They are generally speaking slower than automobiles and definitely slower than an airplane and arguably if you are going 350 miles or less a automobile is a cheap and fast mode of transportation and If you are going over 350 miles an airplane becomes the most efficient and fastest way to get somewhere. Trains have quite a few shortcomings that they will never overcome no matter how much everyone wants them to work They are subject to weather (just like a car) and the reality is they have increased infrastructure cost compared to a plane because not only do you have to keep the train running correctly but you also have to take care of the hundreds of miles of track and bridges and railroad crossings. A plane by comparison you pay for the maintenance of the plane and the maintenance of the airports everything in between You fly over which includes the weather. An automobile is similar to a train that it has a lot of infrastructure that has to be supported but the reality is it is majority-funded by tax payer commerce (think of a retail store as it pay state and local taxes which includes maintenance to roads and other infrastructure) and by vehicles that fill up at the pump In the form of vehicle gas taxes which up until about 20 years ago pretty much funded the entire roadway project today it funds probably about 60% because vehicles have gotten more efficient.
A train was cutting-edge technology in 1860 but by 1960 it had been replaced by commercial air travel and automobiles for a reason. The reason why trains are all over in Europe and in China is because the tax payers fund the train which means anybody that works helps fund something that does not provide any real economic gains put actually cost money to operate and maintain (obviously a train is part of infrastructure so it technically does create jobs How many jobs could be argued but it definitely has a higher cost to operate per mile traveled than other forms of transportation and It definitely doesn't make the same amount of tax revenue per rider mile). Now you can argue this is good or bad when it comes to taxes It just depends what side of the political spectrum you're on but for me the one thing I've learned with the United States government it's not real good at spending tax money as we're learning for the last couple of weeks now with the new DOGE exposing everything they waste our money on I am pretty much believe the United States government is incompetent when it comes to money spending and efficiency.
If we end up with a privately funded train we will see if It actually works, the train that goes from Los Angeles to Las Vegas is supposed to be a profitable, cost effective option to compete directly with air travel from LAX or Ontario and of course the automobile.
I don't think it's going to be and I don't think it's going to get the ridership that they think it's going to get but that's only my opinion and only what time will tell if I'm wrong. The problem is with that train is it's got to get up the grapevine or the cajon pass and three more long grades after that that follow the I-15 corridor. In a car Los Angeles to Vegas takes about 3 and 1/2 to 4 hours and If you live near an airport which Ontario and LAX both have non-stop flights to Vegas it's realistically probably a 30 minute commute plus a 30 minute flight and 30 minutes at the airport and the cost is around 40 bucks for a one-way ticket. It's going to be hard for a train to compete with that...
@@AtomicReverend I understand TOTALLY. I was raised in Hemet (it was nicer 50-60 years ago) but as an adult my work week may have taken me to Riverside, Palm Springs, Idyllwild in the San Jacinto Mountains, or the wine country near Temecula. I couldn't have functioned without a car or truck. Same with eastern Washington where I live now. And when I lived in Buenos Aires, hundreds of thousands of people from outlying areas would spend 2-3 hours a day getting to and from work...in an area with good public transportation! As soon as someone could afford a Fiat 600 or a Citroen 2CV, they'd buy it whether it made sense economically or not. They simply got tired of chasing busses, trains, and subways to their final destination.
@@AtomicReverend population characteristics are geographical facts too not just physical features
USA is a dumb country it can’t build no local talent
amtrak isnt competing against airlines, it is competing against the interstate highway system. for ppl to choose amtrak over driving their car, it has to be more convenient and at least as affordable as driving a personal car between major cities. meaning they have to run trains frequently enough and price tickets affordable enough to be an economically beneficial decision to ride instead of driving. if the government funded amtrak anywhere close to the amount it funds the interstate highway system each year, amtrak would be a much better run and more convenient system than it is currently. amtrak is only funded 3 to 4 billion a year, opposed to the highway system which is funded 50+ billion a year. so the main problem with amtrak is not geography it is funding from the federal government.
Anything run by our government sucks, and never comes close to private endeavors.
@@billwhite1603 our government is run by people who benifit from the 'private endeavors', so it's designed to suck. an actual competently run system would be miles better than anything made up by some greedy dipshit billionaire
@@billwhite1603 Interstate highways are totally paid for and run by government. So lets privatize them and make users pay for them with tolls.Then they'd compete with rail on a level playing field.
It's not just the journey. How many people do you know in L.A. that don't drive?
@@soulscanner66 I disagree with the premise that you should make certain modes of transportation less effective or more expensive simply to prop up another form of transportation. All should be run as cheaply and efficiently as possible and popularity should be shifted based off genuine interest and passenger needs instead of an artificially propped up network that is only used because of intentional malpractice to the other forms of transport. I absolutely support more trains and less cars. But I think the best way to get people on board is to provide cheap and effective alternatives. Not hike up the cost of driving to make it inconvenient. Especially for the majority of the population that riding a train everywhere is not and was never an option. In their cases your just raising their cost of transport with absolutely no alternative for them. This is not a good idea in my opinion.
Density and political will. If President Kennedy had said, "We choose to install high speed rail in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard", we’d of had at least as much trackage as Japan’s bullet train.
I mean we have 2 coasts the size of Japan with pretty high population density, so that was never a valid argument. It's always been political will (read: auto industry money).
Japan has 100m people in line shorter from Tokyo to South that is shorter than Oregon border to San Francisco with 16m. A 600% denser area ... And US already has airports which are faster and CHEAPER TICKETS than Euro fast rail though not greener..... Europe road and sky miles has NOT dropped, fast rail mostly took over the long distance buses in Germany and France and Spain, not car and air trips.... What next, demanding a passenger horse network, to go with the road, air, train, network... Duplication is wasteful..... I ride Greyhound bus, which is good measure of demand for train and wish to sit alongside strangers, and I'm the only white guy, white people hate sitting among strangers.... Be honest, when's the last time you looked up Greyhound or took it, do you have any idea if it would serve you, or just admit yeah you don't want to sit among strangers.... Us US whites are hermity spoiled babies, a train is just a long bus....
Or half of china
@ The west coast has nowhere near the population density of Japan. Only the Northeast corridor comes close.
Density is a stupid argument - high speed rail will NEVER compete on the NY-LA route. So realistically you need to treat this as building at least 3-4 different high speed rail systems: one around the NEC, another that is currently being built in California/Las Vegas, third in Texas, and etc. All of these have more than enough density to support high speed rail.
Political will is pretty much impossible tho, when you have so much NIMBYism and how the US system enables it. You don't need political will just from the federal government, you need political will from EVERY SINGLE COUNTY along a given route.
Taking the chief next week to complete my ridership on all of the major Amtrak routes cannot wait. It’s such a relaxing chill way to see the entire country. Versus blasting over in an airplane.
we've taken many cross country Amtrak trips. Love the food and the scenery (that you can find with no other transportation).
Yup travelling by Amtrak is sooo underrated
@@nicktheavatar_ seems like it
It's true that density is more concentrated in the east in China but the US definitely has a solid density East of the Mississippi it could take advantage of and has relatively flat land as well until it hits the Rockies.
It's not flat east of the Mississippi there's this giant mountain range called the Appalachians that basically run along the western edge of all the eastern states... The reality is the only area that is somewhat flat in the United States is what you would consider to be the Mississippi water basin which would include the Ohio River and the Missouri River The problem is outside of the Great lakes area that region is fairly void of people.
On the east coast where the people actually are which are east of the Appalachians they're actually is already a fairly robust Amtrak train system and most people do not ride it because it is cheaper to fly not to mention it is way faster.
The problem is with the United States is the population density is just not there to support a high speed rail system and if you're going to travel more than about 350 miles it is actually cheaper and fater to fly generally speaking. And if you are taking three or four people with you it is actually pretty reasonable to drive a vehicle the same distances as a train which in most cases people are traveling with their friends and/or family.
A transcontinental railroad is 1850s technology by the 1950s it was surpassed for a reason because better and more efficient ways to travel appeared.
Bingo
@@AtomicReverendEurope has mountains too sit down
@@AtomicReverend I’ve been saying this for 30 years. Thank our population doubled, there might be an argument for a upgraded train system.
@@AtomicReverendThe problem with Amtrak is it shares rails with freight. If the government had managed to give them abandoned freight lines at the beginning, the issue could have been avoided.
Amtrak has a freight rail problem
amen. also lets do more eminent domain
Explain how this makes sense...
Ok, now explain how Amtrak has rails to run on without freight companies. Since they’re the problem.
Hey, explain the "Freight Rail Problem" please
@ Assuming you're asking in good faith, Wendover Productions has made a video (also on RUclips) that explains the situation far better than I can in a passing comment. It's titled "The One Tiny Law That Keeps Amtrak Terrible".
The summary is the few remaining freight companies have strong armed passenger rail to take the back seat on the rails, contrary to federal law. They use much slower and longer trains to maximize their profits. These trains have grown so long that passenger rail cannot even use most bypass lanes to go around them. The longer heavier trains have also caused more wear and tear on this shared infrastructure which they continuously deter repairing for the sake of short term profit, making it dangerous to travel at faster speeds. And the freight lines prefer to maintain inconsistent schedules to maximize their loads, which causes any passenger rail to run inconsistently
US passenger rail rarely paid for itself. It was both required by Federal law (ICC) and was subsidized by mail carrier contracts with the USPS. Once those requirements and supports went away so did most private passenger rail service.
Interstates and airports don't pay for themselves but are heavily subsidized. Rail should be underwritten as a public good and also not be held to a different standard.
The biggest problem with travel by rail in the US, is poor local transportation when you reach your destination city.
Lets say I want to travel from Seattle to Los Angeles Train tracks connect both cities. The problem is ... once I get there, I still need local transportation. Buses just don't have the routes or practically. If I rent a car when I arrive in LA, the total trip costs more than just driving my own car. Its better to just drive my own car (which takes half the time) and then I have my car when I get to Los Angeles.
That's definitely not a problem in the Chicagoland area. And not that bad in the Cleveland area, unless you go way out into the burbs.😊
Your example is simply terrible. You chose two cities with extensive local rail transit options that connect directly to their intercity rail stations! 🤣
This is why DC to NYC is the place where it makes the most sense, because a lot of people on that route need to get somewhere downtown anyways and both ends of the line have good public transportation
@ That's why they established Acela service on the NEC first. DC, Baltimore, Philadelphia, NNJ/Newark, NYC, and Boston all have decent rail transit. I used to take day trips from DC to other cities along the NEC using the good ol' Metroliners because even those were MUCH faster and more convenient than driving on I-95.
That might be the case if you're headed to say, Creston, Iowa, but certainly not Los Angeles. I travel rail extensively, and end up using public transit exclusively. It can be done even in the small cities. Even hear of Uber or Lyft?
I used to travel from Chicago to Toronto and Montreal on AMTRAK and Canada's VIA. Because I lived near the train station in downtown Chicago and my work was in downtown Toronto and Montreal, the logistics of getting there by train were about the same time as spending hours riding to and from airports. The train was considerably less stressful than an airport, and I could wind down a bit from the stress of work, while I walked around the train and drank beer in the lounge car. I also took the train from Chicago to Seattle a couple times and that was great. Returning from Seattle I talked to the guy sitting next to me in the lounge car; who had broken arm. He said he was going home to Pittsburgh. He said his arm had been broken on the way to Seattle when a landslide derailed the train in Colorado and knocked it into a canyon.
It is important to clarify that high speed rail cannot be used by freight or vice versa. While the right of ways could be used it would most likely require new routes to accommodate the higher speeds. Track tolerances on high speed are at a much higher level than freight.
And?
You could have 2 sets of tracks running close together. The only divergence would be more gentle corners for the high speed.
@ So any individual track has to be able to sustain itself through freight or high speed passenger traffic alone. You don't get the cost benefits of sharing the trackage.
@ That only works in flatter areas. Low speed freight cares more about keeping costs low, so they will gladly choose a winding path to reduce construction and eminent domain costs. As a result there's not many places where both tracks would parallel each other.
@@jmlinden7 That's correct. The high speeds won't allow for the dips, joints and imperfections freight can tolerate due to their slow speeds.
Maybe you said it, as I have been chopping vegetables, but the big problem with rail is once you get to a city by train, the cities rarely have decent public infrastructure. So driving yourself is cheaper than renting a car
What? Who drives across the country? I'm in San Jose. If I want to pop up to Seattle for a fan convention, I fly. The ground takes forever. They have decent public transit, as do most major cities. I have taken the Coast Starlight a few times, but for the scenic route, not for normal transportation. 🙂
@ it’s talking about commuting, not cross country travel, like having to go to la from Albuquerque to get to Denver.. and if I (Denver) could take a train to Albuquerque neither place has any infrastructure for public transportation. And what little is available are full of crime.
The US needs corridor services, meaning having an area that has a long distance rail connection supplemented by regional services based out of a particular city.
An example would be Atlanta having long distance services and then having multiple regional services to say cities in TN and other heavily trafficked routes where the car is the only option.
We have those. For example the Pacific Surfliner is a corridor train.
Florida would be great for that. Brightline currently has 32 trains per day between Orlando and Miami, but they go no further.
Amtrak provides service all the way from Jacksonville to Miami but only two trains per day. The one in the morning goes south, and the one in the evening goes north.
Yeah. It sucks.
@@gregory596
"amtrak provides service all the way from Jacksonville to Miami "
That's far...that's comparable to San Jose to Los Angeles. That's a flight. The train probably takes like ten hours right? That's a flight, right there.
If Florida were a blue state, they would probably fund something more frequent Jacksonville to Orlando to connect with Brightline. Not HSR, though. imho HSR is just too expensive for public transit in North America and Australia. Higher Speed Rail , yes. But not per se HSR. 🙂
This is literally how the passenger services used to work back in the day.
@@neutrino78x I truly believe that high-speed rail is a detrimental to the development of passenger rail in the US. I don't think setting a goal of building the most expensive public transit solution does public transit any good.
Florida had been selected by the Obama administration to receive federal funding to build a high-speed rail connection from Orlando to Tampa. That's 80 miles. Governor Rick Scott canceled that project in 2011 and the funds were given to California. With every update of the CA HSR project, I become a little more convinced that Governor Scott made the right call.
Florida does need Brightline service to be extended to Tampa. The local politicians in Orlando and Osceola County need to get off their butts and get the right-of-way from the airport to the attractions established. I don't care how fast the train goes. I care how long it takes for the train to go. It does nobody any good to spend 20 years building a high-speed rail connection if they could have spent five years to build a highly useful, regional rail connection.
I take Amtrak every day for work and I always found it strange the California line ends in Oakland and not further down the bay but I always enjoy your videos
@@Vanavandamn: Which California line are you talking about?
@chengliu872 The San Joaquins Line is the only line that has a terminus in Oakland. The Capitol Corridor serves other places in the East Bay though, so I'm not sure what she's writing about.
@@chengliu872 The Zephyr I found it interesting it just ends in Emeryville rather than say San Jose it’s quite a peculiar place lol
@@Vanavandamn It's meant to be a connection to San Francisco. Before the bridge, there were crossbay ferries right by the train terminus.
Geoff: You got the Union Pacific and Central Pacific backwards on your map (1:31). The UP built from Omaha, and the CP started in Sacramento
Oklahoma City to Nashville would be fair
Amtrak... I've taken a dozen cross country trips, and have had about a 10% on-time arrival. The worst trip I had, started 2 hours late in Los Angeles, and arrived in Chicago 9 hours late. I almost missed the last commuter train home. BNSF delayed us every step of the way, with perhaps the worst delay coming somewhere in Missouri when BNSF halted our train for an hour, then told us if we wanted to move in the next 4 hours, we'd throw it in reverse, and go pick up some stranded rail workers. So, we reversed at 15mph for an hour, picked up 3 guys, drove down the wrong tracks for an hour, dropped them, then backed out to the track we should have been on, and were able to start moving again.
Solution to this problem is for Amtrak to just build their own rails down the middle of every interstate in the country. Government already has rite of way, interstates already go where people go, and the median on a rural interstate is 100 to 500 foot wide, giving plenty of room to run a pair of rail lines.
I actually like this idea.
Geoff, you left out an important fact about China's high speed rail network. the reason why they were able to build it so fast is that the Chinese government owns everything there. They were able to say "we a building a high speed rail network where we want it, and if you don't like that we are going through your land, farm, or building, too bad." They also don't have to deal with issues like unions and other regulations.
@@stuartaaron613 And don’t forget the “tofu building.” That’s their term. Means just what it sounds like. Built infrastructure crumbles like tofu. So many YT channels expose the truth about China yet people still accept China’s data and their descriptions as truth. They lie. On top of that the graft, bribery, and all forms of financial mayhem are an intrinsic part of everything they build. Remember the train tunnel not extremely long ago in which the trains were trapped in a flood and hundreds drowned? Horrific-no way out of those drainless tunnels. We can’t even find out how many died, or how many train cars were submerged. What would happen in the US if someone confused the infrastructure of a long vehicle tunnel with that of a long waste water tunnel? And hundreds drowned. Think there’d be marching to some state capitol? Video makers need to stop comparing us to China. There’s *no* comparison, not apples and oranges, not apples and ants, none.
He did mention that
It's amazing how y'all will just invent things to justify your positions.
America has imminent domain, and you really should look up how those rail companies gained that land in the US
@@IbrahimNgeno It is called "eminent" domain, and it stems from a complicated body of law. The U.S. government cannot just come in and take someone's property, which is a constitutional right. There are both federal and state statutes and case law that must be applied, property owners have a right to object and challenge a taking in court, and even if the government "wins," it must pay the property owner full market value for the land that is being taken. The U.S. also has strong environmental protection laws which would be applied to any development applications involving these lands. Most people don't have a "position" on this. They're neither "for" nor "against" trains. Smart, informed people understand the significant legal and financial challenges in building out a government-owned rail system, and can debate its feasibility. (And can we stop with "y'all?" It makes our society sound as if we can't speak proper English.)
that's also why there's a famous house in the middle of a freeway
I took an Amtrak from San Jose, California to Chicago, Illinois. It was quite the experience. One thing I’ve learned about Amtrak is that arrival times are always delayed by hours.
For the long distance routes the delays are the case. For more regional trips delays are much less common
I hope one day we'll be able to at least catch a train to a major city and not have to worry about fighting traffic. For example, my sister lives in Southwest Michigan where you can catch a train to Chicago and spend a day there, I would love to do that sometime, because that sounds like a pretty nice time
Brightline West found the solution...interstate medians. It's planned route runs between the lanes of I-15. This bypasses the entire property ownership issue. The terrain is already neatly graded. The Interstate Highway System standards require 50ft-60ft of medians in areas not considered mountainous or urbanized, which covers the vast majority of the country. And much of what isn't can most likely be rebuilt with that space in mind. Mountainous areas will require more efforts to cut through, but would avoid protracted property fights, and urban areas can link up to existing local transit options. The key is to think of the National Highway System not simply as a highway, but as an intermodal transportation system, supporting both road and rail, if not others. You can fit multiple lines in that allotted space, including local cargo distribution, high speed intercity pedestrian delivery, and transcontinental traveler delivery. That last one is currently Amtrak's niche, but as discussed, it's not particularly self-sustainable. The only route outside of the Northeast Corridor that makes any money is the Autotrain from Virginia to Florida, because it allows people to take their cars and travel beyond the train station. If nothing else, they could upgrade several of their existing long distance routes with similar Autoracks and be flush with cash. Bonus points if they upgrade to some of those LeShuttle cars used to transport private vehicles through the Chunnel.
Medians in the eastern US don't usually have enough space for rail, and the western US is too mountainous/low density for rail to make sense outside of a few select corridors. But yes, Amtrak should focus on upgrading and expanding their services that people actually want to ride and pay for.
The I-95 center toll lanes being constructed north of Baltimore would make a very constructible rail route... but the expansion is quite pricey (most definitely nowhere close to valuable enough to pay off the construction bonds, though I am sure they gave lying their butts off their best shot when selling the project) because it involves wedging into an operating highway for years on end.
Apart from areas where there are unavoidable traffic conflicts... and one bottleneck can go a long way to ruining efficiency of an entire route... the train right-of-way that we have already is better fit to most purposes than would be lines to be constructed new. Existing train lines run through city centers. Most interstate alignments are deliberately isolated from local development patterns, and would need entirely new transit systems along with the trunk line.
I would love to see an Autotrain that went across the country.
This is the solution they used for the Rail Runner on the Albuquerque-to-Santa Fe route. It's the easiest way to route a line through our rugged terrain out west.
Building rail lines in freeway medians is as old as freeway medians themselves... it's not something Brightline just discovered lol. But it can't be done everywhere and it comes with its own drawbacks.
My general view of Amtrak is it's a far less stressful experience. Except when you're coming home from somewhere and you have a painful deadline and the train has to stop frequently on a side rail to let freight pass by.
And this was a real experience, coming out of Chicago Union Station to the tiny/dinky Detroit stop.
One dream is for Amtrak to adopt the auto train on the east west routes like the California zephyr. Would save so many miles on my car to move across the states.
I LOVE Amtrak! I've been riding with them for decades!
I just took a train from Cleveland to Chicago this past weekend.
I felt the direct impact of the cargo freight trains interrupting a journey when I went from Bloomington IL back to Chicago. We were delayed twice. Thanks Waŕren! 😂
I don't think that the "buying" of proprieties would be a problem, look at what the us did with the highways, eminent domain is really powerful.
Yes you can force someone to sell their property if some condittions are in place
They buy and improve them in a better way, which is better than what they are now
You have obviously never been involved in eminent domain litigation. ;)
But it takes years and millions if not billions. Amtrak doesn't have any $$$.
@@PostinGames they only need the patch with the rail line through maybe if they offered the landowners some sort of property tax break or a yearly commission check. Agreements can be made.
There are a lot of reasons why Amtrak will never work well. The first, it doesn't need to. Amtrak is a for profit but federally subsidized company. Politicians in Congress actively advocate to keep service to towns in the literal middle of nowhere, just to say to their constituents that they are doing their job to stay in Congress. Amtrak makes a profit on two routes, the first is the NEC, and the second is the Keystone corridor. If amtrak were a fully profit based company it would have cut 90% of its routes. Thankfully, Amtrak doesn't own the rails outside of the NEC, so it doesn't have to pay for the infrastructure maintenance. However, if Amtrak were to increase its rail speeds it should simply lay dedicated track within the right of way for interstates where possible. This is what Brightline West was talking about.
If we look at Cali HSR as the poster child for how HSR will get built in the US; Massively overbudget, massively overtime, and underfunded. California has the economy to afford the full cost of construction of the line, yet it appealed to the federal gov't to fund parts of the project to the tune of billions of wasted tax money.
Further on Cali HSR, it relies entirely on business travelers to subsidize the costs. So let me ask you a question, in the world of zoom for business, why would a business traveler go from LA to SF? That's right, they wouldn't.
Simply put, there's no incentive for Amtrak to be efficient, so it isn't.
You could make the same argument for most European rail operators. Most of them are either state owned, or state owned through one or two layers of subsidiary companies.
Yet those don't have the same problems as amtrak, so the problem seems to lie somewhere else.
I wouldn't use fiscal profit for the company as a measure for network efficiency. It also leaves out societal dividends that aren't measured in dollars in amtraks bank account.
New ways of railways were made such as regional trains and rapid transits for metropolitan areas. Chicago is America's transportation hub and is very well connected.
In Japan, they have the shinkansen from Hokkaido in the North island to Kagoshima in the southern island. However it is still much cheaper (and faster) to fly to & from most city centres instead (aka tokyo to Hiroshima, etc).
High speed rail works for high density corridors (such as US East or West coast) but would be too expensive for a larger trans-Continental corridor
Nobody is asking for trans continental stop bringing it up
I think it would be really neat to take a vacation cross country on Amtrak with the nicer cabins. It's a slow trip though so I'd probably have to be retired. Where I live Amtrak is over an hour away and it's VERY limited in where you can go which doesn't help ridership. The ambitious plan sounds great and I hope it can happen.
The Denver-to-El Paso route via Albuquerque seems to be the most obvious missing link in our rail network.
I've ridden many of the long haul Amtrak routes.... Empire Builder, Coast Starlight, California Zephyr, Southwest Chief, and Acela. Mostly for leisure as it's slow AF.
I do wish that there was a few more north south routes. I live in Washington state and I’d like to be able to take the train to Colorado, but I have to take the long way around instead of basically straight down. That’s the problem.
@@nogames8982: depending on where in WA you lived, you would most likely have to go in an "L" shape, first south to Sacramento, CA and then to Colorado.
I live in Topeka, Kansas, but my alma mater is in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, a distance of 350 miles each way; I always divide the trip into 2 days (200 miles from Topeka to my parents’ house in Fremont, Nebraska, then 150 miles from Fremont to Sioux Falls), but the first time I made the trip in 2006, my arms & shoulders were SO SORE when I got home. So, the next time in 2011, I investigated taking a train or bus instead of driving myself; that’s when I discovered that there’s NO passenger train service going North & South. I ended up taking a whole week off work in 2011, so I could spend a whole day in Fremont between the two parts of the drive.
You can go south on the Coast Starlight and then get on the California Zephyr to go east to Colorado.
Yeah trying to book east central Illinois to Florida on the website, they used to route me north to Chicago, East to DC, then down the coast. Slow and expensive (I never rode that). Nowadays they have their own bus line connecting some routes so I could drive to Indy take a train to a bus connection, connect to a local train many miles south, take a short trip east to connect with the east coast lines on a much shorter route. But that's still long, and a lot of connections which are as likely to be late as not. I wish they had something like the Autotrain on more routes across the country.
Also if freight goes down on a line, the operator might close the line-which is why Phoenix got cut off (at least directly) from the network
What killed rail passenger service was the postal service pulled US Mail contracts and gave them to the airlines and trucking companies. This was a de facto subsidy that pushed rail passenger service over the edge.
If we had approached passenger rail with the same enthusiasm and financial support as we did the Interstate Highway system, we'd have great passenger services!
Bingo! Now was that so hard? The government has to declare we' going to build a high speed interstate rail system. They can even sell bonds to support it. Besides, unlike the inerstate, half the work is already done from 150 years ago.
I once tried taking the train from LA to Sacramento. It was a nightmare, dirtier, slower and less convenient than either a plane or car trip, especially when halfway along the train just...stopped. Can't remember the reason, but they forced all of us on the train to disembark in the middle of nowhere and we were told we had to find a way to get to our respective destinations on our own. No reimbursement, no compensation, not even an apology. As a New Yorker, it shocked me and definitely helped me understand WHY the West hasn't re-embraced train travel.
I used to take Amtrak from Syracuse NY to S of Washington DC to meet a snowbird getting off the Autotrain. I thoroughly enjoyed the relaxing ride on the rails, even though it took me 8 hrs to reach my destination.
Was on the Autotrain coming north that was running very late. We had to pull on sidings a few times and explained by the crew that the freight trains had priority during the day.
Greg, another problem Amtrak has as cited in your map is between their hub in Chicago directly extending into the Southeastern states of FL, GA. By having to connect in DC adds expense and lost time going in either direction. Given the growth in the areas of FL & GA as well as the flat land not found in the west should be a golden opportunity for Amtrak to build a connection. Cheers!
Thanks for showing that there are no easy answers. Living in the western city with an Amtrak station, I would most like to see routes going north and south where now going ease and west is the only option, as you mentioned.
I like the history background and visuals! Great content, great topics, educational... ...there is nothing bad about this content 👏
I'm increasingly convinced that, over the long run, though subject to cost-overruns, a high speed rail corridor would be cheaper than repeated automotive and airplane bailouts.
A front range rail line so I could get from Fort Collins to Denver without having to drive on I-25 would be a god send.
As an Italian (living in Italy), I too think what the US needs is shorter, locally useful railways. In a world that prioritizes speed and convenience, cross-country trains will never outcompete air travel, imo. And they probably wouldn't be profitable either due to the US's sparse population.
I don't get why certain people want to connect NYC and LA at all costs. It will never be sustainable with the almost non-existent daily ridership it'd get. On the other hand, linking Dallas and Houston, or Nashville and Memphis, would make way more sense.
NJB even made a projection highlighting when train travel is actually better than air travel, and when it stops making sense.
In Italy, domestic train travel is always the better choice unless you're going to Sicily or Sardinia, because we're a pretty small and narrow country. And most daily riders, like me, use regional trains (the non-high speed ones) anyway.
Complaining about there being mountains is just an excuse though. Just look at Italy and France! We've even run tunnels through the Alps to connect Milan to Paris.
It gets expensive, so it's not always doable, but I guess the US shouldn't have budget problems.
I have a bittersweet example of this "limitation" in Italy. Rieti (45k) is a town that lies east of the Appenines in Central Italy, which inevitably separate it from Rome, the capital. Because Rieti (and its province) is so small, nobody saw it as profitable to punch a hole through the Appenines for direct trains to connect it to Rome, and so nowadays you can only get there by bus. I know this because a friend of mine lives there.
Rieti does have other trains going to either L'Aquila or Terni, but this railway line is exactly perpendicular to the one that would've existed if it hadn't been for human greed, so there's no interconnectivity.
Which railway line would have existed if not for human greed? One in a tunnel southwest of Rieti connecting to the Tiber River Valley? Was a tunnel near Rieti considered instead of (or in addition to) the tunnel southwest of Narni?
@@Paul-StudioK I'm not sure, but I know the original project, known as Ferrovia Salaria or Ferrovia dei Due Mari (the Railway of the Two Seas) was actually supposed to connect the Adriatic coast with the Tyrrhenian one, with a direct train from San Benedetto del Tronto (in the Marche Region) to Rome, passing through Ascoli Piceno, Amatrice, Antrodoco, Rieti and Fara Sabina.
Sadly nowadays this railway is divided in three segments: from SBT the furthest you can reach is Ascoli Piceno, whereas from Rome it's Fara Sabina. Rieti is on the Terni-L'Aquila line as I said earlier.
Still, the ride from Terni to L'Aquila is very scenic, so I highly recommend it.
There are, thankfully, a few other ways the two seas are interconnected (e.g. Rome-Ancona railway, Rome-Pescara railway, etc.).
@gabriele1695: Grazie, Gabriele.
A domani (when I'll try to respond to the first part of your comment, from the perspective of someone living in a sparsely populated region of the United States).
Amtrak is NOT a transportation system; it is a congressional playtoy since the beginning. Once you realize that, you'll know why it is in the state it's in.
A very expensive playtoy! 💰💰
A super-deluxe Lionel set for every Representative, Senator, and all the Congressional staffers combined would cost much less.
Imagine a high speed rail from Miami to NY at 200+ mph. Would take around 7 hours, alleviate a lot of traffic ( less accidents too ) and it helps in efficiency.
The video shows that compared to other issues, world geography is only a minor obstacle to expanding and improving Amtrak.
yeah, population. the areas where Amtrak isn't are very mountainous + sparsely populated
Even if there are more efficient and faster routes available you still end up in cities where you can't take city trains or walk to where you want to go (in many cases). Bottom line is that the US isn't built to be pedestrian friendly short of some parts of some cities.
Which came first the chicken or the egg? That's because there's no train service there.
@@lk29392 how do people fly from one city to another, last I checked people don’t carry their cars in their luggage.
Fun Fact: Legally, Amtrak Passenger Trains are supposed to be given priority by the freight companies. However, due to Freight Rail Infrastructure divestment & PSR Shenanigans, that law is largely rendered irrelevant & ignored.
Keep an eye on Brightline in Florida to see how high speed rail can succeed in the US
by sinking underwater?
The California Zypher is a great adventure if you have the time. Key word: time
Lots and lots and LOTS of time...
I mean, the distance is between major cities and city clusters. Isn’t that different from Europe Los Angeles has seven cities with high speed rail connections
You are correct about hte reasons for the decline of passenger rail service.
It's a shame really because the rails are a much more climate friendly mode of transportation than either individual cars or airplanes.
More fun than sitting in traffic too.
@@huemann7637 Important to note that trains have bathrooms. But if you're stuck in traffic and need to pee, get ready to have a bad time.
ANY transportation mode is environmentally friendly if EVERY seat is occupied. You have to compare efficiency by seat-miles to seat-miles or else your assertion is unfounded.
@ Even with all seats filled, cars still tend to come out behind trains, even diesel ones. Especially given the externalities of congestion that trains mitigate. Of course, like you say, with average car occupancy, it only gets worse for them.
The ideal is something like BART: fully electrified heavy rail that gets all of its power from renewables. But as long as Bay Area land use looks the way it does, that’s going to be up in the air a bit.
@ Yes, the problem with cars isn't any "innate inefficiency" as much as their typical usage patterns. Short trips with 1.5 people per (household) vehicle yield utterly pathetic efficiency numbers. Oddly, vans yield better numbers with 2.1 ppv.
All we need to do is just overlay the Lower 48 with continental Europe. Note it just about covers most of Europe minus the Scandinavian countries. That's why some people's dreams of a national 300 km/h (186 mph) network are out of the question.
A better solution is highly-regionalized 200 km/h networks connecting major cities with nearby towns, using modified Stadler KISS train sets (KISS 200) on mostly dedicated routes. I can cite two possible routes: Brigham city to Spanish Fork on the I-15 corridor in Utah and Fort Collins to Pueblo on the I-25 corridor in Colorado. These two potential routes would connect the largest cities in Utah and Colorado and would already have potentially large ridership available.
Pocatello to Vegas and Cheyenne to El Paso is a better pitch. It gets more Representatives and Senators on board (pun intended).
@@colormedubious4747 It's also too expensive to build. What I suggested is much less expensive and has more immediate economic benefits.
@ The track already exists on both of those alignments. Just add a few stations with through tracks and voila! Passenger rail service ready.
@ I'm talking *MUCH* faster train service in the 200 km/h (124 mph) range. Current trackage can't handle that type of speed.
@ I'm talking about something we can do NOW to improve and expand intercity rail service AND convince more taxpayers to vote for HSR once they've seen conventional rail become functional. 90mph is fast enough if the trains are FREQUENT and don't have to stop at every damned one-traffic-light town on the route!
Because it runs on rails owned by UP and BN and they will simply negate Amtrak schedules when they need to
Also, BNSF. The Rail Runner Express owns its own tracks, however, so freight can only run on it in the dead of night.
The only reason I could see riding a train would be for a long cross-country trip. Even then I would rather just drive as I did on my solo road trip from Indiana to Yellowstone a few years back. To ride a train means to give up my ability to go where I want whenever I want.
Thinking of the geography a big fact in the US is also that there are very few people between the Mississippi and the West Coast. Back when the initial rail lines were built we made the Gadsden purchase specifically to get a route trains could run easily as that is the flatest route. Outside of that on the east coast there are very few valleys you can run through easily. In the northeast there is the corridor up the Hudson to where the Erie canal used to run and the Cumberland Gap. After that you have some variation on the route I-10 & I-95 currently run but it would be running through areas with few cities and most of the cities available are best served by going up river valleys that don't necessarily easily connect.
Growing up I was fortunate enough to ride the Sunset Limited from Los Angeles all the way to Atmore, AL and back again. Now it's a headache.
I went from Memphis to Chicago back in like 2002, and let me tell you what. TRAIN IS THE BEST WAY TO TRAVEL.
So much fun .
There’s a good use case for rail in the northeast corridor, California, and the Puget Sound area. Anyone talking about nationwide high speed rail might as well be taking about boiling the ocean.
My hometown in Western Pennsylvania had a rail line run through it until the 70s. You could have got on a train in my town and depending on which way you went just hours later you’re in NYC
Now it’s a trail behind my parents’ house
If anybody wanted to take up the Portland-Astoria rail, and convert into a high speed monorail passenger and cargo transport system, one could regain the Port of Astoria as a shipping port and then transport the cargo containers up to Portland/Vancouver and then any north to Seattle or south to ??? for cargo distribution. If one continues the Portland into Boise corridor, one can also expedite cargo from the interior to the coast, with less ship transport up via the Columbia and Snake river dams.
For me personally, logistically the issue is the train doesn’t get me exactly where I need to be most times, so why not just take a car or plane and rent a car? The hassle just isn’t worth it. Most Midwest cities don’t have a good enough rail or bus system to supplement
The Albuquerque/Denver thing is crazy😮😂.
It's clear that you support rail travel and believe it's essential, which is great, but try to ignore the excuses indented in too many Americans through the years by interest groups that fear real competition by rail.
1. Geography has nothing to do with lack of connectivity, as it never prevented road infrastructure from being built. If Europe, Chine and Japan can build and maintain passenger rail tracks, build long tunnels through huge mountain ranges and under the sea (as long as ~36 mi) than you can do it too. You did this with the highway system.
2. If the much slower highway system has a nationwide connected system there is no reason why a much faster rail system should not exist. Sure, currently a direct train between the east and west coast is less viable for most people, just like most do not drive every day coast to coast, but there are plenty of connections that can be done by connecting the network so a connection between Denver and Albuquerque is possible. Speeds will rise, and even in the current situation a high speed coast to coast night train is possible. Speed will improve. China has a new train (regular high speed, not Maglev) that can reach 250 mi/h.
3. For some reason you still expect rail transport to be directly profitable even though air travel and highways are not profitable.
Transport infrastructure is not profitable and even the few private rail ones makes money from real estate and still get plenty of help from the government. Even the current rail network, that was built by private companies was actually funded and subsidized by the federal government and states. Car and the road they use are heavily subsidized. The very low fuel tax you only funds a fraction of the maintenance costs, and definitely not new construction and you still do it. Airlines payment for use of airports funds only a fraction of the costs of building and maintaining airports and air traffic control. Apart from that the fuel used by cars and planes is heavily subsidized. in 2022 alone oil companies received $757 billion in subsidies.
4. As for private land use. In many cases building new rail lines, roads, airports and other infrastructure projects requires use of privately owned land. I don't know the exact situation in China, and I doubt you know it, but it's safe to say that it's easier to get land needed for such projects but even in other countries, including in Europe, Japan and the US, there are lows that enable such use, even without the consent of the owner, when it done for the good of the general public. The US has eminent domain laws that allow taking land without consent with monetary compensation and it's used all the time to build and expand roads but, for some reason, it's not OK for rail, that uses less land and moves far more people with far less, to no, air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions.
5. As for Amtrak, it does what it can with the restricted budget and the law. Be aware that Amtrak cannot operate a regional line (up to a length of 750 mi) without the consent and financing from the states. Many of the very long routs, like the California Zephyr, are used to provide local connections to small towns along the rout thus providing an important local service where states refuse to participate in local services.
6. Private companies are not an option and will not provide good public transport. Brightline Florida was built with the aid of public funds (from a government loan in excellent conditions, to tax exemptions, grants and maintenance that will partly be done by local governments with taxpayer money while receiving nothing in return. The result is unreliable service. Sure, they currently provide an OK, but expensive, service but during Covid19, when any other real public transit agency continued to provide service under difficult conditions Brightline closed shop for 18 months, and they will do the same the moment they use up all the real estate development options.
The same goes to Brightline West, which is a half baked low quality “high speed line”. This line will be electrified and operate real high speed train sets but for most of the rout it will not reach top speeds ad they chose the cheap option of alignment with I-15 resulting with an average speed of 99 mi/h, and that’s only if they’ll provide the promised 2h10 (with Brightline Florida they promised 2h59 and in reality it’s 3h25 - 3h30) and they do not reach LA, nor Las Vegas (although there it’s closer to the touristic area, but still a bit further out from the airport) so the added time will take it to over 4h.
7. What you need is a nationwide network, like you have for cars and planes. It is true that such network should start by connecting urban areas and then grow outward until the network is complete but that’s how it always works all over the world.
For that you will need to actually provide financing, like you did for highways and air travel and commit to it. You also need to nationalize the existing rail network. This is what happened all over the world, and you did it twice. And before someone comments on the poor freight companies, the original network was built buy the private companies but they received for this free rights of way, land grants (with a total of ~200 million acres), military protection, government loans and more so they got far more than they invested during the last 170+ years and it's time for them to give it back to the public that funded most of it. Once nationalized all companies, freight and passenger, will be able to use the network for payment, as airlines and vehicles while the federal and local governments maintain and build the system. This will allow free competition all over the network, as it’s currently done in the EU, where freight and passenger rail companies only need to maintain their fleet, not the railways themselves.
thank you for such a comprehensive reply to those putting up sham arguments for why we cannot have amtrak be a viable national hsr system. hearing the same old excuses as to why hsr won't work in this country, whole being untrue is endlessly frustrating.
The problem with Amtrak's disconnection out west is historical. Basically all the original track layers were more interested in moving people west and goods, especially food, east. What the Rockies need is a train from Casper to El Paso, preferably high speed.
Unfortunately the best / most easily developed routes are already dominated by interstates and to a lesser extent existing freight lines. So ... 🤷🏽♀️
I love Amtrak, I've been through most states via Amtrak, but I feel long ago the United States chose air travel over trains.
Start off with regional rail networks, then over time, simply connect the networks as they expand out towards each other. Now you have a coast to coast high speed rail network, just build in stages.
Love a train ride but think by the time high speed rails would be completed we will all have "jetson" planes?
My town (Brattleboro) has the Vermonter line going through it. I always assumed almost every city was directly connected to one another, but the situation with Albuquerque and Denver😂...
We are an automobile crazed country. Always have been, always will be. We love our independence and individuality…
there is one thing to consider though, such a rail is quite expensive to maintain, just look at china, most of their hsr lines end up spending more than the income, making it a blackhole for the government to pour money in to it
Thanks for making a video about HSR in the USA (or lack thereof) that is substantially objective and not the typical 'bash fest' that is seen most everywhere. In my opinion, there are 2 main drivers to create need for HSR; density and demand. You gotta have both. China, India, and Europe have it (with populations of 1B+, 1B+, and 750M), but it's only regional at best in the US. And with US population remaining stagnant for the next couple of decades due to lower birth rates (longer term) and deportations (immediate term), I don't see the need for HSR other than where it already exists or is currently in the process of being built.
Amtrak train travel won't be reliable throughout until it has exclusive use of tracks. Except for the NE Corridor, it's pretty much good for leisure travel only.
I'd love to see a high speed rail system in the USA. But Amtrak is a dumpster fire...I took it from Flagstaff, AZ to LA and it was a terrible ride. The train left over 4 hours late, arrived an additional 2 hours late, and the car was digustingly dirty and understaffed.
That's what he said. They're using freight tracks.
People make a big deal about the future HSR that will connect LA to San Francisco, but we could just improve service on the pre-existing Amtrack that (just about) goes that same route. Of course, ridership is down now that it's an all-day trip that costs twice as much as flying! Figure out how to make the train cost competitive, give commuter trains track priority, and people will be just fine taking the slower, scenic route.
Amtrak doesn't really need to expand it's rail service since the motorcoach connections expands Amtrak coverage and also solves the last mile problem
Another issue to consider is lack of adequate PTO or vacation time in the US, compared to European countries. If you have less vacation time, then by necessity you will choose faster modes of travel. Why travel 3 days by train when you could get there in 1 day by airplane? We need more work/life balance in the US, along with more hybrid work options. That would give people the opportunity to use rail more often without fear of losing precious vacation time or personal time. 👍
From a spatial planning perspective, land use patterns and political will are much more relevant than geography. But also use cases. Super long distance travel isnt what gets europe its ridership, its medium and short distance regional rail which is basicallt not present in the us outside of isolated networks and the northeast corridor.
This correlates to land use patterns: there has to be a certain density friendly to mass transit to unlock its potential, which isnt present in much of the us. The abandonement of rail helped lead to sparse populations, but the inverse is also true: if a (massively subsidised) comprehensive regionsl rail system was built, it would shift land use long term snd become less and less reliant on subsidies.
In additition: being able to get around on transit when i exit the regional train is just as, arguably more important than the train going there. If i cant reach my everyday destinations, isolated transit options are worth squat to most people.
Great Video! I loved the animation. I live in Columbus. The largest city in the US without Amtrak service.
@@NealCMH I was wondering about that.
I'm from Cleveland and wondered why Amtrak didn't go there.
We've used the Autotrain from
Lorton, VA outside Wash. DC
to Sanford, FL, near Orlando. 😊
80% of the USA’s population lives in the eastern half of the country, and major cities are dotted all over the place. A vast HSR network in the eastern half of the country could make a lot of money since cities are close enough together to make rail travel competitive with driving and flying.
Half of Canada's populace lives on the Windsor to Quebec City corridor which 1s 1,050 kms. Still no high speed rail. We should also connect to New York and Chicago.
Great video, thanks for discussing such an important topic!
Meanwhile in Japan (which is 80% mountain)...
I get that geography is a barrier for long-distance rail, but there are plenty of medium distance corridors that would work.
Japan has a high population density, too. If there are profitable opportunities an entrepreneur will exploit them. Don't ASSERT that it could be profitable, PROVE it by doing it.
That sounds like an incredible mix of relaxing train travel and a wild story from that passenger! Taking the train between Chicago, Toronto, and Montreal makes a lot of sense, especially when avoiding the hassle of airports. And those long-haul train rides, like Chicago to Seattle, must have been an amazing way to see the country.
That guy’s story about the derailment is intense, though! A landslide knocking a train into a canyon? That sounds terrifying. Did he mention how he got out of that situation?
I'm largely in agreement with the stance that coast-to-coast HSR doesn't make a ton of sense, but this does still fall into the same trap that "America is too big for public transit" people fall into: ignoring how localized density can actually be, even within a very large country. I'm surprised Geography Geoff of all people didn't acknowledge that when mentioning that a fifth of the country lives west of the Rockies, because sure they do, but the vast majority of them live in like six West Coast metro regions that are arranged in more or less a straight line. The Midwest even has its own massive hub in Chicago. Ray Delahanty's "56 High Speed Rail Links We Should've Built Already" builds out a pretty robust HSR network in the east using some interesting mathematical analysis of US population centers. Strong recommend for anyone who hasn't seen it.
Cross country HSR doesn't make sense? Since when would a connection between New York and LA or Washington not make sense?
One on the east coast now you have the vertical routes to take you from NY to Miami. The same for the west coast: San Francisco, Seattle and Vancouver. One more in the middle and we're more than halfway there.
Not only are half as many cars on the road, but we're no longer dependent on one system. And all the rest just go a whole lot less congested. A snow storm can ground all the planes, but a train can still operate.
@@krane15nobody is going to take a train from NYC to LA, they are way to far apart, most people will fly. That being said a trans continental route could still serve people in between like people traveling between SLC and Las Vegas or Denver, but it wouldn’t have the ridership to be worth funding such a massive project. HSR, at least for now, should be limited to regional routes such as the NE corridor or the CAHSR.
@@krane15 people have limited time. The vast majority of travelers are business travelers who will take the fastest option regardless of cost. There's no way for LA to NYC to be faster on a train than by air.
@@greasher926
Except for Raymond in the movie “Rain Man”, & anyone else who is afraid to fly. At the beginning of that movie, Raymond refused to get on a plane to LA with Charlie (they ended up driving), & at the end, Raymond & Dr. Bruner returned to Cincinnati from LA on a train.
@@krane15: Snow storms have stopped trains.
Even though most of the tracks Amtrak uses are owned by freight carriers, the law requires freight trains to yield to passenger service. But the freight companies haven’t been following the rules, and Amtrak is finally starting to take legal action. Hopefully, that helps sort out some of these issues. Why they haven’t pushed harder on this before is beyond me.
It's because the literal enforcement of the passenger priority law is difficult and would be an unreasonable burden to railways in the central and western states, where there are many miles of single-track lines without the switching capabilities or sidetracks long enough for trains to pass. It's difficult to coordinate.
There is another angle to this that people often forget. European and Chinese cities are more "livable" than urban centers in the U.S. Sure, millions of people live in the Philadelphia area, but they are dispersed throughout suburbs in three different states (PA, NJ, DE). American cities have had most of their middle class residents flee the crime and blight, seeking safe and better-managed suburban towns. These are the people who would most likely use rail - and they are not city dwellers. All of these people would still have to take cars to the rail station, which could well be an hour away (or more). From there, they would connect to another inner city area where they would need to find more transportation to where they ACTUALLY want to go. It isn't just about cars and planes - it's about cities. With a few exceptions, American cities are generally dysfunctional, dangerous and begin emptying out after workdays end at 5 p.m.
You need to touch grass. Cities are still safer in the U.S. than developing countries and there is absolutely no culture in suburbia. 💯
@ "Safer than developing countries" is not a valid metric. Yes, I know Philadelphia is safer than Kinshasa, but that's not saying much. As far as "no culture in suburbia," that's fine if that's your opinion, but suburbia is where the millions of potential HSI customers live in the United States. You're not going to convince them to move to the inner cities just so they can take a train. I live in Miami, so I'm not even saying this as a suburbanite, but just a realistic person.
@VisibilityFoggy : Good points.
Many Americans live in major cities, but many don't. For about 25 years, I lived in small towns and cities within walking distance of a passenger train station. For the very slow and frequently delayed Amtrak trains, there were two departures daily: one west-bound and one east-bound. If I drove somewhere, I could leave from home at any time of the day or night, stop for rests and meals when I wanted, and end my drive within a few feet of my ultimate destination, not at a train station which might be many miles from where I wanted to go.
Using Amtrak was a hassle, usually. During a pandemic, for safety reasons, I would definitely choose a small vehicle instead of an Amtrak train, even if the train was more convenient and faster.
Japan is testing a true maglev train that can run at speeds of 500 kmph (311 mph). Since we've built basically no high speed rail infrastructure (grade separation, large radius curves), I feel like we might as well skip passenger rail and go right to passenger maglev. At that speed the trip from Atlanta to Orlando that's so popular by plane would take only 90 minutes by train. That is basically the same as flying but without the security line and (most) baggage claim, and it's much easier to put those stations downtown instead of our on the perimeter.
Amtrak's system got trimmed in 1979 thanks to Jimmy Carter.
Large swaths of the country do not need rail options. Large swathes of the country are basically uninhabited😂
cross country amtrak trip, and then in depth on amtrak - Geoff, you're just getting better and better! :D
The two routes that are below 100K riders only run 3 times a week. So imagine how much their ridership would match the national average if those lines were upgraded to at least daily service.
In Europe, topspeed is 198 mph (320 kmh) in France
Great video, Geoff! I think there's a bit more nuance with the US-China differences. While China is 4x as dense as the US, the Chinese population is projected to peak in 5 years before it goes into steady decline over the next 50-100 years, while the US population is set to grow steadily throughout he 21st Century. Additionally, while 1/5 of the US population is west of the Rockies, Amtrak isn't obliged to link the entire country coast-to-coast, but create high speed rail clusters, loosely focusing on the several megalopoles around the country, which is happening, as you mentioned with private companies like Brightline. Except the Federal Govt should be funding Amtrak to do, rather than letting private companies have a future monopoly on what should be public services at prices accessible to all. Thanks for the vid!
Idk if the CaHSR is a good example here. The construction time and cost has ballooned to astronomical levels, I wouldn't be surprised if I am eligible for a senior discount by the time it is complete.
Amtrak needs to focus on high density corridors with high speed rail. Cross country services aren't viable compared to flying but distances of about 150-500 kms is good for high speed rail. These distances are a hassle to drive but also short enough not to need a flight. It's a similar situation here in Australia. The focus needs to go to shorter more viable routes
Agreed with some other folks in this chat. I mapped out what i thought was a super cool Amtrak ski trip from DC to a host of ski resorts in Vermont. It seemed cool but when i added in ubers to get to each resort from their closest station and saw the cost for even one way, i could save money and time flying to Denver or even Vancouver.