@@mickeygraeme2201 well many towns that were built on the TransCon in my home state of Nebraska have become important big cities for the states, such as Grand Island
@@mickeygraeme2201 don't forget the true purpose for why we build towns in the first place, they are simply there as a place to live, and as long as people live in it, it can keep live on and grow way past it's 'supposed' rason d'etre. Also, as we are heading into the messy world of 2020s, we see that a super efficient system is not a super resilient one, so efficiency in itself is not sustainable, hence, not the best approach to the system, thus, small towns still has a big role to play for the whole however useless, redundant, or surplus to the 'requirements' they may first appear, therefore, We should keep them.
@@mickeygraeme2201That's stupid. There is no logical reason almost anything is in one place other than that's where people started building. You're not going to knock down a city because they don't refill locomotives there anymore. What the fuck.
Car infrastructure is too expensive to maintain on the scale seen in North America. That's why it is all falling into disrepair because it cannot be afforded by taxpayers on top of everything else. Trains use much less land, energy and materials compared to cars. Even using diesel-electric locomotives is much better than hundreds or thousands of individual cars. I think cars have peaked because they are not as economically viable anymore. Trains are making a comeback because they are economically viable.
To rebuild cities to be more suitable for mass transportation and local walkability would be a more daunting task in the South and the West than the North/ Midwest, since most population growth in the United States since WWII and the automotive sprawl has been in the South/West. However, many Northeastern/Midwestern/older Southern cities (Savannah, New Orleans, Charleston, etc) had plenty of prewar growth and contain many walkable suburbs, many of which were built alongside streetcar expansion. Rail transportation would be easier to incorporate in those places, as often it has already happened anyway. I wish I saw more development like in Lancaster County, PA, where most people live in fairly clustered communities radiating out from the main city. It would be easy to connect the county with a system of interurbans, as many houses would be within walking distance from the station, and further out subdivisions of houses could be reached by bus or streetcar.
@@DiamondKingStudios Although present densities were created by excessive automotive use, rail-based public transit systems will introduce new, more efficient densities in urban areas, transforming former death camps with traffic lights into true, real cities supporting pedestrian activity.
@@DiamondKingStudios It's actually really simply to solve these problems. Prohibit the use of private vehicles in important locations. It doesn't cost billions.
@@JohnFromAccounting I’m sure a congestion pricing scheme would dissuade enough motorists to achieve the desired effect, but for certain dense streets to have a prohibition on most motor vehicles would be great also.
It's not too expensive. The reason is that politicians (as well as americans in general) rarely know how to handle money properly. Governments see money as an endless resource and when it finally runs out they scramble to save every single cent they can in the wrong places. There's also the issue of them not learning from history. They keep repeating the same mistakes over and over and they keep doing what they've always done again and again. They've simply settled with the bare minimum. For example, my country had a massive storm 20 years ago and 5 years later there wasn't a single powerline above ground. I still see states in the US struggle with restoring power for weeks after a massive storm due to downed powerlines, and ever single time I wonder "why haven't they simply put the powerlines in the ground like normal people?" Every single time it's like this. Every single storm, every single year, every single decade, over and over again. When it comes to road infrastructure they repair cracks in the road with filler and call it "maintenance". Like, why don't you simply cut out a section around the crack and fill it in with asphalt again? In my country, entire sections of road are completely replaced before cracks even appear. There's a best-before-date and the city sticks to it like clockwork. If you ever see a filled-in crack in a Swedish road it's surprising because it's not supposed to be there. You actually notice it.
"Profitability" is such a strange maguffin to bring up on the subject- passenger rail has never been profitable. Especially if we're talking about things like commuter rails rather than, say, a transcontinental trip. The entire reason companies started building street car networks- as an example- was because they knew that the stops were incredibly valuable real estate. Which was why they usually made the cost of a ticket as cheap- if not free!- as possible.
deleted my previous comment, I misread your comment💀💀💀💀💀 yes, you definitely have a point, the railways massively raise real estate values due to ease of access to said place, and so, it's economically beneficial to build them still, I was referring to people saying "but it's too expensive to build railways!!", completely ignoring the fact that building and maintaining roads are absolute money black holes
When people can get to work and for fun, it must be profitable when you look at it in bigger scale, but ofcoufse, it's probably not profitable for train company.
@@mskiptr Roads and planes are also not profitable for moving people around too. There is no form of pure human transportation that is profitable. Just varying levels of loss and sharing with profitable goods services
As addendum to the above the Great Central railway will be late next year or 2026 will be reconnected to a missing 500 metre section and be reconnected to the mainline
you didn't mention a very important reason for trains as opposed to cars: space. Car infrastructure takes up incredible amounts of space that could be used for housing or parks or whatever.
About "too small": The minimum for a new train station here in Germany is I think 3000 people in a 5 km radius, however there are a hand full of much larger places without trains - the biggest one close to 50.000. Those obviously have busses. Oh, and we aren't talking "one train/bus per day". Basically any place meeting the mentioned threshold has at least hourly service.
…today I visited the village of Echem, which has a train station despite itself being way below this threshold. However people arrive by bike at the station from the surrounding area - even from places with hourly bus service, because the train is way faster. So even a train at 9:18 am into the city has 7 people waiting (half of them taking their bike on the train; something you also can't do on a bus). There are actually even several cars parked from people doing "park and ride", because it's faster… The train needs 9 minutes to Lüneburg. With a car you need around 20 minutes (+congestion and parking), on a bike almost an hour.
@@kailahmann1823You hit the nail on the head with that last point. The train is faster than a car. In the US, it's typically the opposite, by a wide margin. Even in a dense city like Chicago or LA, with lots of awful traffic, the car is still often as fast as, if not much faster, than the train.
@@jamalgibson8139 Blame the automotive industry and energy corporations for the mess the USA is in; it wouldn’t have been that way if Eisenhower didn’t import Hitler’s autobahn and forcibly impose it onto the general public WITHOUT THEIR VOTE….
I have seen video about car free town of Switzerland. It’s very ironic that owning car was privilege of rich people, living in car free town is privilege of rich people now.
I've seen that too, it's about Zermatt, Switzerland, no? yeah, it's quite ironic that you hsve to be rich to avoid the noise and air pollution from cars..
Nice video. My town (in Spain) is small and we have a regional train stop, the train stop also has a bus stop that in turn connects to the surrounding towns. We consider ourselves lucky to have stops and regular trains (every ∼18 mins), the line connects with the capital and practically direct with the central hospital, and the capital's train station with the national high-speed network, so 10 minutes from my house on foot I can go to anywhere in the country without needing a car (I have a car but it would never occur to me to go to the city with it lol out of pure logic of convenience). By this I mean that my town and the surrounding towns are connected by public transportation to the rest of the country, it should never be 'too small' to not have a good connection by train/public transportation, those connections allow improve people's lives and keep regions alive. In France, Italy, Swiss, Germany, Holland, etc is the same case, the train is mainly convenient to communicate between towns and cities, that is how the railway network grew. ps: It is a shame that the train culture has been lost in the United States, as reflected in the films of the golden age, that literally the train is associated with romanticism and people.
I'm glad your region has this kind of rail coverage, and yes, I agree that it's a MASSIVE shame that the US, the country literally built on rail, completely shunned them in favor of cars..
> In France, Italy, Swiss, Germany, Holland, etc is the same case, the train is mainly convenient to communicate between towns and cities, that is how the railway network grew. Netherlands here. We do have smalltowns connected by rail, but not all of them. But if they don't, you can still use express bus services. We also have great cycling infrastructure. But despite all those alternatives, we tend to prefer our private automobiles. And as such, our country has the largest number of road vehicles per unit area worldwide (except city states).
I own no car, and I live in a city with no passenger rail and sub-par bus service. Even with these limits on our mass transit, I still benefit from going without a car. But it would far better to have adequate passenger rail and bus service here. And I salute your excellent video pointing out the superiority of supporting rail travel over the much promoted electric cars.
I also don't own a car, I do just fine with walking, public transport, and cycling, I like it like this. And yes, electric cars aren't here to save the environment, they're here to save the car industry
Great vid. Saved it to my “Train Foamer” playlist. Another good argument for rail transit, especially within and between metro areas, is that trains are a _way_ more efficient mode of moving masses of people than the mode where everyone just drives their own individual car. Congestion is very frustrating, induced demand is very real, and there’s only so far that you can widen an interstate or arterial road.
@@TheTramly Sadly many also have been already completely removed :( In my Region forexample are 4 dead railways 2 have been removed 15 years ago and will never be restored bc they are build over the other 2 however are currently reviewed in the LNVG Schienenreaktivierungsprogramm at the moment in Phase 2 results will be in december
@@SchwarzeSonne130 like Lüneburg-Buchholz being lost forever, because Wulfsen (a town of less than 1800 people) had to build houses right onto the rail corridor. On the other end: Lüneburg-Soltau is already in the making, Lüneburg-Bleckede seams to be a no-brainer as well and Winsen-Salzhausen is also on the list (those tracks continue on to join with the Soltau line, but only pass through very small villages on a very indirect route).
@@SchwarzeSonne130 A lot have been removed yeah, but something i also notice in Germany is a ton also have had their right of ways still intact, but is now used for a bike/multi purpose path. Which, ill admit, is a good use for a rail right of way. Only thing is that you have the problem of potential community opposition if you want to bring it back
Swiss guy here. Why trains? One word: Espresso. Or a book. Or… When I travel I am able to relax and listen to music, read, enjoy an espresso, or even a nice meal on certain routes. I've take the train all over Europe: London. Amsterdam. Paris. Berlin. Munich. Vienna. Milan. Rome. Palermo (yes-at the far western end of Sicily with only one change between Basel and Palermo in Milan). Yeah trains. Oh yeah, when there is a small delay, the Swiss network will usually holding the connecting leg (train, bus).
I think a lot of people think that a day of travel on a train is the same as a day of travel on an airplane and therefore they don't like it but those two modes of transport couldn't be anymore different. A day of travel on a train is basically part of your vacation, since you can sightsee out the window and just relax and enjoy something refeshing and you arrive at your destination well rested and ready for whatever you want to do. Meanwhile a day of travel on a plane would be hell on Earth, even a three hour flight leaves me so exhausted that I need the rest of the day to recover.
@@hedgehog3180 I spent 16 hours on a flight from Canada to Japan in 2019. It was absolutely terrible lol. If I could substitute that for 16 hours on a train, I would in a heart beat.
2 месяца назад+1
@@hedgehog3180 Air travel makes sense only in long-haul trips, or to circunvent mountains.
Something that also deserves mention is how cities back during the early days of railroading were way smaller, but that clearly didn’t stop railroad companies from starting train lines to and from those settlements with population levels that modern naysayers would claim are too small for trains.
and it definitely can be done now since there's already much better railroad technology, way larger rail networks to take advantage of, and higher populations overall compared to back then, meaning more potential passengers both to and from any given town due to more connections to the outside world not to mention that there's other means of transport for getting to the train stations now; you don't have to be within what was conventionally considered "walking distance" anymore since buses, trams, cars, bikes, etc. exist to make getting to the stations easier, so a single station can cover a much, much larger area than back then
@@TheTramly In many European countries it starts at 05:01. In Japan, by contrast, even a 1 minute delay is taken very seriously, with an apology from the train conductor. Passengers start showing signs of impatience if the train is even just seconds late. I recently had a 4 minute delay in Kyoto and I was really shocked: it was quite a big deal.
I believe even people in New York say my city is too small for trains. This is due to the laziness of Americans that they don't walk 1 km to the supermarket but use their car
90% of American objections to better urban design can be countered simply by saying “stop being a lazy pathetic whiner”, I have genuinely seen Americans use “but what if it rains” as an argument for continued car dependency. Like put on a fucking raincoat and bring an umbrella, you being scared to get wet is not a good justification for destroying municipal budgets and making cities less safe. It'd probably do you some good to actually experience nature irl.
In addition to Steam railways, a whole network of electrified intrurban lines has been built connecting small towns, Especially in the Midwest, with the center in Indianapolis.
You forgot one point of "why trains if I like driving?".. if you give choices to people, those who would rather that choice will choose it. Meaning if you like driving, suddenly there will be fewer drivers if you offer an alternative, making your driving more enjoyable even taking into account less car-accommodating future infrastructure. Additionally, if you *have* to drive (due to not being able to walk very far or living rurally or needing to carry large heavy loads or needing a vehicle for work offroad etc.), this will get more people who DON'T need to drive off of the roadway you rely on, making the downsides of driving - stress, traffic jams, idiot drivers - that much less prevalent. Don't get me wrong, especially where I live I don't think cars are going to be banned or disappear suddenly unless we're going Mennonitic and enforcing horse-&-wagon, there's just too many people who have built homes in the middle of nowhere or simply live an incredible distance from amenities. The car is incredibly useful. The scheduleless freedom of mobility, the capacity, the "last mile" transportation at all times. It's just that it's not a one-size-fits-all solution. It works best when paired with other options that can fit people's needs better. Building a society entirely dedicated to cars is a great way to make cars suck and diminish their benefits, and we need to rectify that.
Absolutely, I'm not advocating for the banning of cars, I just think that we need alternatives to driving, because then, the people who need to drive (or want to drive and are willing to pay for that choice), can have a smoother, faster, safer journey
@@TheTramlyyou’re not dealing with sound minded people with high levels of critical thinking, education, and intelligence however. They think that building a high speed rail line is like a globalist (aka j3weish) one world communist tyranny plot.
In the context of what you're saying I can agree however, this mostly applies to places east of the Mississippi (excluding most of the west coast). It's a shame you didn't bring up the interurban maps in the midwest as those served many small communities as that was a massive extensive network (almost all electrified as well).
A good example is the rhaetion railway that mainly in the canton of grisons in Switzerland. The canton of Grisons is the biggest canton by size in Switzerland, is in the mountains and has about 85% less inhabitants per square kilometre than the Swiss average. But still there is are about 100 train stations on a network lenght of about 380 km in the canton for 200 000 inhabitants. (To be fair, there are a lot of tourists on the trains and two of the lines are UNESCO world heritage sites)
I actually was in Switzerland, in that exact canton, and I took the Rhätische Bahn around the region, it was great! The trains were clean, on time, and spacious, overall, I sincerely recommend!
2 месяца назад
Also, there's the popularity of Heidi, the girl from the Alps. Especially among the Japanese visitors.
Where I live in North West Croatia, EU, they still keep 12 km long railway line that connect 4 small towns along the way (population of each is around 3.000). The line was built in 1914 and is used for the passenger service exclusively ever since. The line provides quick and easy access to the capital with connection with around 10 trains per weekday and with some limited weekend service too.
Great vid. Saved it to my “Train Foamer” playlist. I think heavily investing in public transit of any kind could single-handedly lift a significant percentage of Americans out of poverty. Unless you live in the downtown of a major U.S. city, which is probably too expensive for low-income people anyway, you probably have to rely on a car to just live your everyday life. And if you live below a certain income level, you are, in essence, forced to own a car that you can’t really afford in the first place.
In order for a small town to have a train connection there must be a larger train network to connect to. In America there are entire states without access to trains. South Dakota and Wyoming have zero passenger train lines. There are many states with minimal train routes. This places tens of thousands of small towns and communities hundreds of miles from the nearest train station. Then those trains in the middle of the country only run once or twice per day. There are even some pretty big cities with over 1 million people that don't have an inter-city train connection. For example: Las Vegas, Columbus Ohio, and Nashville. If you can't get trains to these big cities what chance do small towns have? Basically zero as far as America is concerned. Our country is just too big for rail. The distances involved make train travel impractical and unfeasible.
@@Novusodpardon me, but South Dakota isn’t *completely* devoid of passenger train service, although it is limited to a few tourist lines such as the Black Hills Central Railroad (which used to also be a branch line, but the main line that it connected to was abandoned).
I see your point, however even in the heyday of passenger train service in the USA local passenger trains could be very scarce indeed. Many towns counted themselves lucky to have a daily round trip and many branches only had mixed train service, whose schedule could be somewhat erratic, to say the least. That said the USA desperately needs transportation alternatives to driving or flying. Personally I believe that an integrated approach would work best, with trains for the long(er) hauls and buses on shorter/medium distance lines. And better schedules overall.
The "town" I grew up in was established by the Long Island Rail Road, and the railroad and the station are still there. The place I'm living now isn't too small for trains. It just has no place where they can be installed. However, there are communities nearby with a long standing railroad line that could be revived as a commuter railroad line.
@@TheTramly That's true. One problem with the buses in the place I'm at is a lack of connections to other public transit systems. This is part of the reason I also think it should merge with the bus system in a nearby county. As far as trains go, it wouldn't surprise me if the establishment of SunRail ten years ago may have helped a lot of other nearby bus systems. The same thing could happen here.
@@DTD110865 “No place where they can be installed”?! There’s GOT TO BE a rail line in the area; elevating it above the ground with a station shouldn’t be too much trouble….
Not mentioned is the for vast underused parking lots. Car infrastructure is inefficient in land use. Also car parks are a huge factor in flooding events.
Funny thing! In my country, my "small town" is one of two towns and a big city that have dedicated railway stations, and I mean a full on double tracked, 35mi railway.
I wish the US could be bold enough to reactivate passenger service on most of the remaining freight network. Through much of the Midwest, I'd say that most towns above 5,000 people have retained at least a minimal freight service, and many towns smaller than that lay along tracks leading to/through places of that size. We could get 70-80% of the population within 3-5 miles of a train station by just reviving what's already out there. Amtrak likes to say they serve a similar proportion of the country, but that's only because they use a radius of 40 miles from their stops.
Absolutely, I mean, it wouldn't be easy, nor cheap, nor instantaneous, but in my opinion car dependency costs the US economy way more than an investment in rail ever could
4th reason why automobile-based transit system doesn't work: Capacity. Small towns have no problem with accommodating 100% automobile-based traffic, but the other end of the network, the medium and large cities where the traffic from small towns converges, cannot fit these flows without heavy investment. So car ownership is not really just a hidden tax for the countryside and suburban residents, city dwellers pay it too.
9:15 This is a Certified Praha - Horní Počernice, 471 class EMU and line S2/S22 moment... (every morning, while going to school, with the train whirling away and speeding out of the train station, i hear "příští stanice Praha - Horní Počernice!", and five minutes after, "Praha - Horní Počernice!" - and the same announcements I hear when returning home in the afternoon) One stop away in the direction away from Prague from the station shown in the video is my hometow- village of Zeleneč, with a population of 3000 people... And guess what... A train to Prague departs every 30 minutes! ( in the transit spike a additional train to Benešov via Prague goes too ) And the trains go every half hour on the weekends too! (thank god for the Lysá - Milovice extension, that brought line S22, reducing the intervals) And we get hourly buses to Černý Most ( the nearest metro stop, east end of line B ), every 20 mins to Prague in the spike, every two hours on the weekends... (excellent for going to the mountains on cross country skis) And then yo average petrolhead in America saying it isn't possible...
@@TheTramly I'd still rather take a ČD train, than trying my luck on R23 (though the last time I took R23, it was ok)... And also, the ČD IT system and especially the Můj Vlak app is one of if not the best in the whole world!
One thing you skipped out on is the fact the US ships ALOT more frieght by rail than Europe does so we have less trucks clogging our highways than Europe does. The frieght companies dont want to electrify because it would make it difficult to run double stack intermodal container trains which are a major cash cow for them and also keep tons of trucks off the highways
That is true, however I'd say that the lack of electrification is because the obsession with short term profit - electrification would be a large upfront investment, which would pay for itself in a LONG time, and we all know that corporate America doesn't think in the long term
India runs double stack trains with CONVENTIONAL WAGONS (not specially built double stack trains) and long pantographs. It can be done, the issue is profit, as was already said.
i feel in my not that populous province in Canada, even Diesel Multiple Unit service trains can service the smaller cities and towns along the railway mainline. Context my city of 230k has a big sport stadium of 30k+ capacity, and has a railway line running infront of it. Eastwards it goes to downtown 1km away, and 1km westwards can possibly have a station switching to a bus to the airport. Though 67km eastwards and westwards is another town of 35k and a large suburb that some people commute from to the city for work or class. It used to have train service decades ago, but not anymore. It would be really competitive to the highway, and our Union station still exists, albeit as a Casino because of Heritage status. Easy enough to be reconfigured again for the platforms and tunnels leading to it still exists. The bus service has awkward timings due to the government run service was cut, and the private operators left as well. It’s funny to think 70 years ago the city had streetcars/trams, trolleybuses, regular intercity services when it had less than half of what the population it has now.
It's kinda depressing how the US and Canada has massive, well developed transit networks not even 100 years ago, and now, most cities have subpar, underfunded, and usually poor quality transit service...
Feel free to look at those old timetables, many aren't what they appear. And sure Regina used to have intercity service but now it has more flights than there used to be trains per day. And people can access more land in a shorter period of time because they aren't confined to linear corridors around streetcars and downtown conglomerations. Lastly to keep in mind about population is it used to be younger and denser. Very few over 70 and lots of young people and families living very dense lives compared to today so all those factors work against making rail viable even with a larger total population.
@@mickeygraeme2201 wouldn’t younger and denser population work in favour for intercity train service. More flights is debatable for years ago they had more flights to the US. Those flights are practically long distance for places in Canada are usually in the middle of nowhere. Intercity train service is best to be competitive to barely or non existent plane routes like to Saskatoon or Winnipeg. A few decades ago had Via Rail Dayliner services, almost each province did so.
@@TheRandCrews Flights are the least common type of trip though so their effect is less pronounced. Back then a young and dense population had almost no need to go to Vancouver for instance. They had a family to take care of. It is most valuable to get local transit working and intercity transit last. Look up most city pairs in flights and you will find many bus lines have greater ridership. In washington dc for example the single busiest bus route carries more people in a day than the entirety of reagan airport or the acela northeast corridor
another thing to take into account: trains paved way for their smaller counterparts, streetcars. Streetcars/trams were the norm along with long distance travel headed by regional or state wide rail which usually was steam trains. these streetcars grew to the point they were used to connect other places together in the form of "inter Urban rail", along with steam locomotive long distance passenger rail serving those towns. it is because of these, that lead to faster than average industrialization, and subsequently, Urbanization. you can see the effects these old streetcar networks and trains had on towns and developing cities, since many "streetcar suburbs" were swallowed by surrounding automobile sprawl. in my area, we used to have many inter urban railroads. I actually talked to someone who had family who operated the inter urban streetcars. it hurts a lot knowing what happened to them, as "progress" (more accurate, big oil and auto industry) destroyed many of them indirectly through the Automobile. fortunately, my area came back from this decline. DFW now has 93 mile of light rail built in the span of 30 years. the red line as of now extends along the original Texas electric railway up to Plano, with the rest up to McKinney being owned by DART if Allen, Fairview, and McKenny choose to eventually become members.
2 месяца назад+1
The name "Steam" for the video gaming platform/store is a homage to the Railway Boom that captured the hearts on both sides of the pond.
Great vid. Saved it to my “Train Foamer” playlist. The history of passenger rail in America is why I will never take seriously any Libertarian arguments for privatizing highways and roads. That’s absurd. The same thing will happen to rural roads as happened to rural rail lines. Ownership of highways will quickly become monopolized to just a handful of giant companies, who will agree not to compete with each other, just as the remaining freight railroad companies have currently agreed to not compete. Companies will quickly realize that it’s not profitable to maintain all those small, two-lane roads that lead to small, rural towns, and small towns will now be left with not only no rail connection to the outside world, but no road connection either. And at that point, I hope rural people learn how to ride horses again because that’s gonna be their only option for long distance transport anymore.
We ripped out most of our local railways in europe too, no need to only attack the U.S. Trains are expensive, its good to have them and they dont need to be profitable but we dont want money pits either. Around 15k residents is the bare minimum to have a rail line usually. Trains like the classic Czech motorak railcar vastly improve the economics of those lines, though those are being withdrawn and replaced by heavier vehicles. I found an interesting german concept called Monocab. They are small small, self driving vehicles that only go on 1 rail, so they can pass each other without any infrastructure. Designed to run on abandoned railways (most places had a railway at some point), and ordered like a taxi. These could likely provide rail service to small towns economically
Ah yes, the classic Czech motorák🥰 It's true that it would be economically and logistically unviable to run railways to every settlement in a country, but honestly, I'd argue that even smaller towns can host train stations. It definitely depends on more factors than just population size, it's definitely way more nuanced than what could possibly be fit in a 11 minute RUclips video.
"....but we don't want money pits either.".... Yet so-called "free" stuperhighways have ALWAYS been money pits, never paying for themselves, like rail lines do.
An excellent presentation with good, strong arguments, well made I live in a village called Coggeshall in Essex, England. Our village operates a 16-seater mini-bus service to our nearest mainline station, the Coggeshall Community Bus. We are in an area where there are many commuters to London so the railway station service runs for the morning and evening commuter times and the bus is well patronised, though driven by volunteers. During other hours, the bus provides a range of services for the community, so meeting the needs of the elderly and other groups as well as the commuters. The village does also have an hourly commercial bus service, though the patronage is poor, probably due to the unreliable service.
I live in the village of Spalt (around 5300 residents but still great density) in Germany and we once had a train connection. It was sadly abolished in 1995. I'm advocating for a reactivate, but nobody seems to care :(
I can see that it was a short branch and the former trackbed was nearly all took over by roads and buildings. It can be restored, but it looks quite complex... however, I also see that there are enough towns over the branch or around it to try...
Even if you will never ride the train yourself and you will always drive everywhere yourself, you should support public transit, because it means less stupid people driving.
We have train tracks in my small town that sparingly gets used by the military and cargo. The infrastructure is still there in a lot of American cities. Instead we drive and get road rage. My parents got my old car painted. It has been hit twice this year while parked on the street. I feel like the paint job was a giant waste of their money. Public transit barely exists here. The bus only goes to a big town twice a day, for commuters. Biking to the next town is not safe on the 55 MPH road that lacks a shoulder since farmers don't want to give up that land. We are forced to drive.
@@lopoa126 Read “Moving Millions” by Stanley I. Fischer, and “Beyond the Automobile” by Tabor R. Stone; both of these great books might provide a little insight into what went wrong in this country….
In Luxembourg there is a train station with an hourly service that only has 27 inhabitants. Belgium has multiple stations in the middle of nowhere, for leisure activities.
I live in Virginia, USA, one of the states that has a major partnership with Amtrak, the national passenger rail provider. Through this partnership, two commuter rail lines were created from the suburbs into Washington, DC, and rail service was expanded in other parts of the commonwealth. However, Virginia Beach, the state's largest city, lacks a train station, so Amtrak operates a bus service instead. My region hosts ten trains a day (five heading out and five coming in), with plans to increase this to twelve. There is also a push to establish another train station in Suffolk (think Mr. Peanut), which is surrounded by college towns and county seats. This makes it a strategic location for reaching under-served rural communities. We would love to be considered for the expanding high-speed rail in the US, but a short-sighted decision in the 1970s is a barrier. To save on maintenance and taxes, a rail executive removed half of the tracks, leaving us with long stretches of single track. New, expensive rails would need to be laid to make high-speed travel possible. Additionally, like much of the US, rail companies do a poor job of maintaining rail crossings and bridges, forcing the commonwealth to use public funds. This seems extremely unfair to other businesses.
It's a shame that short sighted car centric policies and cost cutting for that oh so important profit resulted in this.. hopefully it'll get better in the future
The German government's plan was to convert Deutsche Bahn into a stock corporation, which succeeded, and then to privatize it, which failed. The majority of the shares are held by the state. But Deutsche Bahn wanted to make short-term profits. In addition, the DB was supposed to carry out small repairs to the network itself, which it rarely did for reasons of profit. The state wanted to continue financing major repairs and new rail construction. That's why the DB was planning new construction projects that they didn't have to pay for. It would have been better to transfer the rail network to a state-controlled company and set long-term goals there. And the Deutsche Bahn should not have invested in truck traffic or other foreign investments.
Every European train company is a stock market company, it is required by eu regulations. Another thing required by eu regulations is to have different companies managing the train operation and railways operation. This is done so that different train companies can operate on the same railway infrastructure, as it is slowly happening throughout Europe, with a landscape more similar to air travel. This with the aim to reduce travel costs throughout completion. In Italy this worked out well with the hsr, with a train every ten minutes in each sense on the high speed line from Milan to Rome and with tickets as cheap as 10€ sometimes.
In fact the plan must be to subsidize the infraestructure, not the train operations, which isnt a bad thing per se. The issue is when there is no money for infraestructure.
Here's the program i see with Europe when it comes to trains... Your platforms! If I'm disabled and i need to travel to Studenka from Skotnice, I'm still f*cked, at least in terms of train
Switzerland has adopted an accessibility law in 2004, it has gotten a lot better since then. There's still train stations that haven't been renovated since then, but there's fewer and fewer of them. Same with the trains, there are some very old trains on very rural lines that still require help and a lift to board, but everything else has level boarding for wheelchair users.
@@hedgehog3180 The reason they can't fix it is because no one with a train company background has ever come close to become leader in government. And standards. You have a couple of fundamental issues at hand. There's no standard platform height or railcar corridor height. And if there is one, it changes once you cross a border, and cross border trains are a penny a baker's dozen. Whose standard will it be? The only people who seem to have figured it out are the Swiss and maybe the French, but are you going to follow not only with your stations but also your giant train fleet? You can't call it ableism if the people who can make the changes don't understand, as if they're not aware of their own illegitimate child. It's one thing if it's a hassle that the handicapped need help. It's another when everyone with luggage is holding up the train. And let's not mention the supply and meal cars going onboard. It just sucks that even with Leo Express's impressive 100% low floor trains at Praha HLN's low floor platforms, there's still a gap. I'm not railing on Prague on purpose. Spain, Italy, Germany, Austria, everyone's got the same issues. It's just that I was there last month.
I lived in Italy 15km from the swiss border, and went see some friends in some random village in Tessin. There is really easy train links and even though the first one was 15min late, making me miss my connection, i only had to wait a couple of minutes for another one (on a mainline with frequent trains) and 30min for the second connection (on a really niche line). This was all at 9-10 pm may i add, while my town in italy stops city busses at 8. I swear they live in the future
I live about 20 km from prague center in a village of about 1000 inhabitants and we still have a train station… I used to go by train to and out of school in Dobříš but they cancelled most of the connections and there’s only about 10 connections per day (most of them at night) in each direction
Trains are never profitable because they have to compete with highways system, a tax funded network. We always look at ticket price only and compare it to fuel cost only. we Never bother to include maintaince cost, purchase cost and relevent taxes, and subsidy to road infrastructure. We also forget that we have a lot of moving space and stress on train. Passanger railway can be profitable if it runs on time, and with same level of subsidy.
Areas where trains are often delayed and you show the Czech Railways - which have arrived on-time 90% of the time, compared to Switzerland's 92,5% which you consider reliable :D
My village only grew to be more then just a church, granary and a handful of farmhouses around them into a respectable village of about a thousand people due to being in the path of a small city and a minor city at a distance where it made sense to plop down a platform and call it a station. I wish it was still around, I'd have used it daily in my school days.
You can't win people for trains with such arguments. Try the following instead: - faster - more convenient - allows for bigger frequency than planes - you can work on the way - you don't have idiot drivers around you
What also about: -safer -more environmentally friendly -preserves, builds, and even REBUILDS urban areas----rebuilding those urban areas ruined and destroyed by decades of excessive automotive use -pays for itself over time with fare collection and other services
@@CraigFThompson The "you don't have idiot drivers around you" part was the euphemism for "safer", lol The other three things are just preaching to the choir. If somebody cares what is environmentally friendly, they are already for trains. If somebody understands urbanism, they are already for trains. If somebody knows how connectivity and freedom of movement boost the economy and thus the tax revenue too they are already for trains. This is my entire point: when you are selling the idea, you should not talk as if the person in front of you is you yourself. Or, even worse, try to shame them into it - and the environmental and urbanistic arguments very much border on shaming people for not using trains. You don't win hearts by telling people they are bad. Don't misunderstand me, I agree with these arguments - they are just a very bad choice for the sake of winning people over.
My small town (city actually) in Poland of around 20k people has 2 train stations with 2 separate lines operating them. (One of them operates all of them and the second only one. It means that you can, if you want to. It does not have to be profitable at all.
Especially in Czechia, they were train stations build far from city centres, witch made the service unattractive to a person that is able to afford a car.
I live in Taiwan with four types of rail: high speed connecting the largest cities, national connecting large and medium cities, and commuter rail connecting small towns to the larger networks. More than 95% of people live within a bus or taxi ride (or less) of a railway station.
A few of the country rail lines in Australia have been converted to cycleways either by ripping up the old lines or paving over the lines. A part of the Crookwell branch line has been ripped up in the 80s from the NSW main south line at Goulburn.
I would love better public transport but in my opinion there is more to good public transit then journey times and reliability, here in the Netherlands many trains are overcrowded and absolutely filthy (both on the outside aswell as the inside) which makes me not like it for a daily mode of transport, I have used it when I was still in school and it was decent on the quiet start and end of the lines I used but during my internship I had to take the train into the big city and busses in the big city and I found it kinda meh. But for an example my daily commute between home and work between car, bike and public transit: Car: 10 mins drive (normally doable in 7 mins with quiet roads and no roadworks) Bike: 20 mins ride (currently unsure about that time due to the aforementioned roadworks) Train and bus: I first need to walk 20 mins to my local train station (or a 5 mins bike ride but then my bike is at the station for the whole day at risk of being stolen or damaged) then I need to take a 10 mins train ride to the large city going past the place I work to then travel back on a 13 mins bus ride (and then a few mins walk), with this I end up at work 10 mins late due to this being the first connection of the day (gotta love 2 councils on the same between rivers area with you working in the other one from where you live)
@@Pidalin mostly in the big cities but also in smaller cities, nearly nothing in the villages tho but it's still good to think about where you leave stuff
@@vincentstuer I remember how my father once locked his old ugly bike in front of supermarket and then he realized that he doesn't have key, so he returned there tomorrow and he thought that bike is stolen. We found it like 2 weeks later just behind corner, it was not stolen, someone cutted off lock because it was blocking way there probably or something. Even when it's not worthy to steal, someone mostly at least damages it just for fun, it's a miracle that his bike was still ok.
@@CraigFThompson Do you realize how hard it is to remember all these illogical irregular words for no native speakers? Words like cut, put etc....don't have proper past tense form and it's super confusing for speakers of more advanced and superior languages, English is very primitive.
As a young civil engineer who is going to propose restarting tram-train service, change is coming! Hopefully I can convince them to at least consider the option. They just spent $400k+ on a bus rapid transit (BRT) feasibility study, but didn't get anywhere (it's currently on hold). I wish we could have used that funding to buy like half a tram
Great video overall! Although i'm preatty sure that even if your town isn't too small for trains you local administration (County,Province or region) might be too broke to subsidize local train services
there's a book by Christian Wolmar, "Are Trams Socialist?", where the argument is they're not because Switzerland shoves trams and electric trains everywhere and they trend strongly centre-right
@@RoamingAdhocrat At least ONE thing’s for sure: the automobile is FASCIST in its inherence. You own the car (or bus or truck), but the government tells you how to operate it and where. Sometimes that government even maintains the audacity to tell you what fuel to put in the tank!!
Most policies aren't inherently socialists, the right wing just lacks good arguments against them so they brand them as socialist in an attempt to poison the well.
Japan, Korea are also conservative, oligarchic and well to decently covered by train. Public transport or transport in general should not be a matter of partisanship. It’s frequently framed that way probably by lobbyists.
All towns in north America used to have a train line connection. But rather than nationalize the lines when the original rail companies when bankrupt the government often just bought the land and paved over them for car traffic.
Instead of spending a small ammount of public funding on maintaining railways the US decided to bankrupt itself spending public funding on building and making highways.
It was the fault of the government that we didn't deregulate the railroads and nearly caused them to collapse in the 60-70s. I don't trust the government to take them over either. Conrail ripped up most of the tracks in the East while owned by the government.
5:08 What about China? Or Japan? The problem is that a lot of countries gave up on trains because the lobbying of the car industry seemed more profitable. The title feels a little clickbaity though, as you do not mention the alternative modes of public transport, while you do note them in your conclusion. (9:36)
Whenever or if ever I make my own railway, I would want to start in my hometown of 9000 people. I shouldn't be relegated to car purgatory because i am not in a large city where it is already established.
and I'm not in the least pro car and anti-train, it's just that where I live in the UK rail travel is just too expensive to use on a whim. I'd love the trains to be much cheaper, and have a significantly better bus service with some cross-country routes rather than the broadly North-South routes we currently have.
Maybe if the automobile (car, BUS, and TRUCK) and those damned roads weren't oversubsidized with literal 55-gallon drumfuls of blank checks from all governmental levels, the rail service would have much lower fares!
@@TheTramly That "national transport policy decision" being made NOT by the general public, but by corporate interests and gullible, moronic politicians.
I mean you can blame Thatcher for that. Luckily the Labor government is planning to renationalize the railways so British rail travel might finally stop being the worst in Europe.
Switzerland has a dense railway network and service. The main reasons are: - high investment in the network - high subsidies of the railway, more than other countries in Europe - high taxes on cars and poor road connections, lack of parking spots and bike lanes so you are forced to use public transportation - the railway connections are dense but slow (the slowest in Europe) and only have an edge because they have slowed down everything else - the country is small and that allows for such a railway system. I agree with your general points, but Switzerland is an annoying example, that does not work in other countries.
Great Video. I would love to this topic go into another video but in Europe. Or maybe a video about cross border rail😀 and its dificultys. Btw I seams that your discord link its expired I would love to join it :D.
Cars are actually profitable, they generate way more tax than train tickets. I'm all for more and better train service, but it's important to be rational.
Cars probably generate more tax at the point of sale, but at least in the us, gas taxes are TINY, electric vehicles don't even pay taxes on their fuel, and maintenaning and building car infrastructure are absolute money black holes
You mean GOOD train infrastructure fare. In Canada, train fare is like airplane fare. Where I live, they converted almost all old railroads to bike paths.
The silver lining in that is that cycle path retains the corridor as having a transport service, and preserves it in case it again becomes economical to run trains through such a corridor
2 месяца назад
- The dismantling of entire rail networks, firstly in America and later the rest of the then-Free World. - The rise of the automobile as a symbol, first of status, lastly of hyperindividualism. - The ascent of rock and roll music (and later hip-hop) to the highest echeleons of popular music. - All the dumbing-down, irresponsbility, lack of accountability, laziness and promuscuity of the youths since the baby boomers' days to this date... All are part of a megaconspiracy against civility and decorum, against the greatness of the West.
Very good video. The big problem in the United States and perhaps elsewhere as well is that the railroads that pass through the small and medium sized communities have ZERO relationship to these towns. Back in the day not only passengers but goods of all sorts and sizes came and went by train. The train depot was literally the only link to the outside world. Tragically, inefficient and environmentally damaging trucks have supplanted train service, and consequently the tracks themselves have been torn up that once served innumerable small towns.
Plus, you forgot a few specific things - you don't need an expensive big train, especially if you live in a small village. Single (or multiple in some cases) unit(s) railcars will work. And there is a possibility to run trams on heavy rails, which also reduces the costs.
In my opinion, the problem isn't the size of a town or city, but the willingness of its inhabitants to use it as a regular mean of transport. NA is built car centric, meaning that if you wanted to make public transport something that people would actually use, you would need to redesign places to allow people to get to a train station by walking/cycling or using bus/tram networks (that also need a way to walk to the final destination again). A car is a very comfortable way of transport. You are free to use the whole road network in the directest path you want without having to do detours for coverage for other peoples. You are also not restricted by timetables. The only limitations you have is all other people that want to use the same road that you want to use and the available space at your destination to place your car. Deciding to take a train/any public transport would need to be more comfortable than driving there yourself. So it would need to save time, let you use the travel time (e.g. entertainment or work), be cheaper and or have a more personal benefit like not having to search a parking space, not being annoyed by traffic, being able to get drunk and etc. Also trains/public transport is expensive, tho if you manage to get enough people to use and pay for the service it's not that expensive anymore. Also a local government could decide to use tax money for public transport, if its community would wish to support that mode of transport as collective. With the price you also face the issue that most car related costs are not listed as clearly as the the price of the public transport fare. Insurance, maintenance, repairs and fuel add up, but somehow people only really care about the price of the fuel, probably cause it's the only cost you regularly see. TL;DR: Building train infrastructure in the US is possible, it's just fucking hard to achieve. It would need massive investments that bring changes. And most people don't like changes, they might accept it when they get to it in their own pace.
You've pointed out all the teleological reasons why cars are better than trains. And pointed out it can be expensive to run or at least the costs are accounted very differently. The key sticking point is there are technological hurdles that cars improved on from 1920-1960. Trains have still not quite caught up when they do significantly improve they will then again be competitive. Such as the Gravity Vacuum Transport New York City wanted to build in 1969.
PLEASE read "Moving Millions" by Stanley I. Fischler; sup'm MIGHT be learned from it.... And btw, have any of those oversubsidized, inefficient, wasteful, and environmentally disastrous STUPERHIGHWAYS been profitable at any time in their existence?! How about air travel since the jet age?!
@@CraigFThompson Yeah neither of those were profitable but neither were trains and they certainly aren't now. We just feel bad about telling people that thought they could afford to travel that they actually can't
On comparing costs. Part of the reason is that fuel (and tolls, parking, and partially maintenance) are the only expenses that actually vary on whether you choose to take your car or transit on any given trip. Insurance, registration, cost of purchasing the car itself are expenses you're locking into once you decided to have the car at all, whether you use it on this trip or not. And unless you're in a situation where transit can replace virtually all of your trips then the choice to have a car isn't really a choice.
@@mickeygraeme2201 At the VERY LEAST, railroads collected fares to provide service; stuperhighways are nothing but an example of providing welfare for the rich. Air travel is so heavily oversubsidized that if their governmental funding were suddenly cut, there’d be NO planes over the USA….
Even the places in America where we have a vaguely "European" rail experience (fully electrified lines, 100+mph speeds, frequent service), it's still nowhere near as useful. The Northeast Corridor is at maximum capacity, no one wants to pay to upgrade it, and as the demand for rail travel far outstrips supply, it can easily cost 10x what an equivalent European train ticket would cost, or more. And sometimes the ageing infrastructure has catastrophic meltdowns such as sagging catenaries in the heat because they were never upgraded to constant-tension technology. At least it turns such a killer profit that it's able to subsidize the rest of the Amtrak national network, because Amtrak was set up as a for-profit corporation for some reason and is expected to mainly try to make money, not provide as much service as possible. What little train service we do have outside the few Amtrak hubs (California, Chicago, and the Northeast) mostly exists to bribe red state senators into approving funding. Otherwise they'd axe it because it loses them gobs of money.
They sure's hell enjoy making all manner of excuses, don't they?! All that can be done is to reduce the excessive governmental oversubsidization dumped copiously onto stuperhighways and air travel by half, and there'd be enough for a nationwide HSR system.
@@Musicrafter12 Yet government at all levels wastes trillions of dollars oversubsidizing stuperhighways and air travel, and neither of those modes are either efficient, comfortable, or safe (even though people try to tell the world that air travel is the “safest mode of travel” which is a lie)….
I think it's good to pick a goal, like a train to every county. So, there would be a train to the biggest city in the county, and buses from all the other towns. Although, in the US (especially the west) counties are much bigger than in Europe, so in this case maybe a few cities should be connected by train, or the goal could be different like a train to every city over 20,000 people.
The UK is the only European country that uses counties as a division IIRC, and I'm pretty sure that Yorkshire is bigger than the vast majority of US counties. A US county is more similar to a European municipality if you're looking for a good comparison.
In summary. You dont get an excuse. Rails are a great option no matter where you go. You chose to drive everywhere in traffic and possibly die due to the invcrease danger and bleeding money from your own pockets and the citys, while also being stuck in a small town where if you want get to your neighborhood town you have to suffer more excruciating and expensive way to get there. Or use the safer more economic cheaper comfortable way to go not only to your neighborhood town but the city just a few stops away while also not suffering through any traffic all with just a few dollars by helping yourself and your community grow in the process. All for the small price of doing what we already did. Hey wait didt we literally allready did that only for us to shoot ourselves in the foot. Simple dont shoot yourself in the foot and we wouldt be in this situation.
One of the reasons why the development of rail infra and railway expansion is deliberately hampered in the US is due to road transport lobby. They are just too powerful of a force to be reckoned with.
The railroads in the US were better when private. The biggest corporation for railroad transportation in the US (Amtrak) is a state-owned conglomerate. So is the Deutsche Bahn AG as well btw. The US railroad, just as the UK railroad used to be the best railroads in the entire world before nationalization. Japan did privatize major railroads, and they have today the best railroad system in the world. So stop spewing nonsense.
ireland is getting less and less Trains and Buses are problematic to small communities A road network to support large Buses is very expensive so I think trains could really be better
Print out a map of your city, highlight everything that is car infrastructure one color, and everything else some other color. Now cut away half of the car infrastructure, and marvel at how much closer everything is and how you no longer would need a car for most trips because everything is so much closer together.
I agree with most everything here but children should never take public transportation without a parent present. I would never allow that. Even a school bus full of other kids is bad enough, now you want them on a train alone with god knows who else? Nah.
Let's not forget the many towns in the US Midwest were built as watering/fueling stations for the early steam railways
Don't forget if they were built for that reason then they are also now useless, redundant, and surplus to requirements.
@@mickeygraeme2201 well many towns that were built on the TransCon in my home state of Nebraska have become important big cities for the states, such as Grand Island
@@willy.william4582 They may have been but if it's raison d'etre is gone then it should disappear.
@@mickeygraeme2201 don't forget the true purpose for why we build towns in the first place, they are simply there as a place to live, and as long as people live in it, it can keep live on and grow way past it's 'supposed' rason d'etre.
Also, as we are heading into the messy world of 2020s, we see that a super efficient system is not a super resilient one, so efficiency in itself is not sustainable, hence, not the best approach to the system, thus, small towns still has a big role to play for the whole however useless, redundant, or surplus to the 'requirements' they may first appear, therefore, We should keep them.
@@mickeygraeme2201That's stupid. There is no logical reason almost anything is in one place other than that's where people started building. You're not going to knock down a city because they don't refill locomotives there anymore. What the fuck.
Cars have also never been profitable, they’re actual a huge cost on society
And since the jet age, so have airplanes.
US subsidizing cars 😊🎉
US subsidizing cheaper transit🤢🤮😶🌫️🫥
All forms of transportation should be eliminated !
Especially in small towns
@@stevenplyler6306 SMART, VERY SMART!
That’d mean cutting off your LEGS!!
Car infrastructure is too expensive to maintain on the scale seen in North America. That's why it is all falling into disrepair because it cannot be afforded by taxpayers on top of everything else. Trains use much less land, energy and materials compared to cars. Even using diesel-electric locomotives is much better than hundreds or thousands of individual cars. I think cars have peaked because they are not as economically viable anymore. Trains are making a comeback because they are economically viable.
To rebuild cities to be more suitable for mass transportation and local walkability would be a more daunting task in the South and the West than the North/ Midwest, since most population growth in the United States since WWII and the automotive sprawl has been in the South/West. However, many Northeastern/Midwestern/older Southern cities (Savannah, New Orleans, Charleston, etc) had plenty of prewar growth and contain many walkable suburbs, many of which were built alongside streetcar expansion. Rail transportation would be easier to incorporate in those places, as often it has already happened anyway.
I wish I saw more development like in Lancaster County, PA, where most people live in fairly clustered communities radiating out from the main city. It would be easy to connect the county with a system of interurbans, as many houses would be within walking distance from the station, and further out subdivisions of houses could be reached by bus or streetcar.
@@DiamondKingStudios Although present densities were created by excessive automotive use, rail-based public transit systems will introduce new, more efficient densities in urban areas, transforming former death camps with traffic lights into true, real cities supporting pedestrian activity.
@@DiamondKingStudios It's actually really simply to solve these problems. Prohibit the use of private vehicles in important locations. It doesn't cost billions.
@@JohnFromAccounting I’m sure a congestion pricing scheme would dissuade enough motorists to achieve the desired effect, but for certain dense streets to have a prohibition on most motor vehicles would be great also.
It's not too expensive. The reason is that politicians (as well as americans in general) rarely know how to handle money properly. Governments see money as an endless resource and when it finally runs out they scramble to save every single cent they can in the wrong places. There's also the issue of them not learning from history. They keep repeating the same mistakes over and over and they keep doing what they've always done again and again. They've simply settled with the bare minimum.
For example, my country had a massive storm 20 years ago and 5 years later there wasn't a single powerline above ground. I still see states in the US struggle with restoring power for weeks after a massive storm due to downed powerlines, and ever single time I wonder "why haven't they simply put the powerlines in the ground like normal people?" Every single time it's like this. Every single storm, every single year, every single decade, over and over again.
When it comes to road infrastructure they repair cracks in the road with filler and call it "maintenance". Like, why don't you simply cut out a section around the crack and fill it in with asphalt again? In my country, entire sections of road are completely replaced before cracks even appear. There's a best-before-date and the city sticks to it like clockwork. If you ever see a filled-in crack in a Swedish road it's surprising because it's not supposed to be there. You actually notice it.
"Profitability" is such a strange maguffin to bring up on the subject- passenger rail has never been profitable. Especially if we're talking about things like commuter rails rather than, say, a transcontinental trip. The entire reason companies started building street car networks- as an example- was because they knew that the stops were incredibly valuable real estate. Which was why they usually made the cost of a ticket as cheap- if not free!- as possible.
deleted my previous comment, I misread your comment💀💀💀💀💀
yes, you definitely have a point, the railways massively raise real estate values due to ease of access to said place, and so, it's economically beneficial to build them
still, I was referring to people saying "but it's too expensive to build railways!!", completely ignoring the fact that building and maintaining roads are absolute money black holes
When people can get to work and for fun, it must be profitable when you look at it in bigger scale, but ofcoufse, it's probably not profitable for train company.
Trains are not profitable entirely because roads are being built regardless of how useful they actually are
@@mskiptr Roads and planes are also not profitable for moving people around too. There is no form of pure human transportation that is profitable. Just varying levels of loss and sharing with profitable goods services
They were never profitable, even when streetcars and steam engines were all over the place.
Both England and Germany are rebuilding cross country lines because the mainlines can no longer carry the traffic
As addendum to the above the Great Central railway will be late next year or 2026 will be reconnected to a missing 500 metre section and be reconnected to the mainline
you didn't mention a very important reason for trains as opposed to cars: space. Car infrastructure takes up incredible amounts of space that could be used for housing or parks or whatever.
US: "Our town only has 7k people. It's way too small for a trainline"
Scotland: "Tyndrum has 170 people? Here, have two stations!"
In Japan you'll find rail stops in the middle of literal fields.
@@hedgehog3180The animals need transportation too
US: 7k people is not enough for a station
Denmark: Let Hulsig keep its station/rail halt, the 134 people (2024) there need their trains
About "too small": The minimum for a new train station here in Germany is I think 3000 people in a 5 km radius, however there are a hand full of much larger places without trains - the biggest one close to 50.000. Those obviously have busses.
Oh, and we aren't talking "one train/bus per day". Basically any place meeting the mentioned threshold has at least hourly service.
Gruß dich
…today I visited the village of Echem, which has a train station despite itself being way below this threshold. However people arrive by bike at the station from the surrounding area - even from places with hourly bus service, because the train is way faster. So even a train at 9:18 am into the city has 7 people waiting (half of them taking their bike on the train; something you also can't do on a bus). There are actually even several cars parked from people doing "park and ride", because it's faster…
The train needs 9 minutes to Lüneburg. With a car you need around 20 minutes (+congestion and parking), on a bike almost an hour.
@@kailahmann1823You hit the nail on the head with that last point. The train is faster than a car. In the US, it's typically the opposite, by a wide margin.
Even in a dense city like Chicago or LA, with lots of awful traffic, the car is still often as fast as, if not much faster, than the train.
@@jamalgibson8139 Blame the automotive industry and energy corporations for the mess the USA is in; it wouldn’t have been that way if Eisenhower didn’t import Hitler’s autobahn and forcibly impose it onto the general public WITHOUT THEIR VOTE….
I have seen video about car free town of Switzerland.
It’s very ironic that owning car was privilege of rich people, living in car free town is privilege of rich people now.
I've seen that too, it's about Zermatt, Switzerland, no?
yeah, it's quite ironic that you hsve to be rich to avoid the noise and air pollution from cars..
@@TheTramly there are other car free cities in Switzerland.
Well, too bad, just get your poor ass in your endless money pit that ensures you stay poor.
Nice video. My town (in Spain) is small and we have a regional train stop, the train stop also has a bus stop that in turn connects to the surrounding towns. We consider ourselves lucky to have stops and regular trains (every ∼18 mins), the line connects with the capital and practically direct with the central hospital, and the capital's train station with the national high-speed network, so 10 minutes from my house on foot I can go to anywhere in the country without needing a car (I have a car but it would never occur to me to go to the city with it lol out of pure logic of convenience).
By this I mean that my town and the surrounding towns are connected by public transportation to the rest of the country, it should never be 'too small' to not have a good connection by train/public transportation, those connections allow improve people's lives and keep regions alive.
In France, Italy, Swiss, Germany, Holland, etc is the same case, the train is mainly convenient to communicate between towns and cities, that is how the railway network grew.
ps: It is a shame that the train culture has been lost in the United States, as reflected in the films of the golden age, that literally the train is associated with romanticism and people.
I'm glad your region has this kind of rail coverage, and yes, I agree that it's a MASSIVE shame that the US, the country literally built on rail, completely shunned them in favor of cars..
Vive en la Comunidad de Madrid? No quiero parecer raro, me gustaría saber que núcleo de Cercanías usa. Un saludo.
> In France, Italy, Swiss, Germany, Holland, etc is the same case, the train is mainly convenient to communicate between towns and cities, that is how the railway network grew.
Netherlands here. We do have smalltowns connected by rail, but not all of them. But if they don't, you can still use express bus services. We also have great cycling infrastructure. But despite all those alternatives, we tend to prefer our private automobiles. And as such, our country has the largest number of road vehicles per unit area worldwide (except city states).
@@oscarvanschijndel4989I see that the American automotive industry has infected lands across the Atlantic….
Being wheelchair dependent, I thank heavens, that I have a tram stop outside my door. And local trains are 'mostly' accessible too.
I'm glad you have a viable transit method!
I own no car, and I live in a city with no passenger rail and sub-par bus service. Even with these limits on our mass transit, I still benefit from going without a car. But it would far better to have adequate passenger rail and bus service here. And I salute your excellent video pointing out the superiority of supporting rail travel over the much promoted electric cars.
I also don't own a car, I do just fine with walking, public transport, and cycling, I like it like this.
And yes, electric cars aren't here to save the environment, they're here to save the car industry
@@TheTramly Totally, agree. On both issues.
Great vid. Saved it to my “Train Foamer” playlist. Another good argument for rail transit, especially within and between metro areas, is that trains are a _way_ more efficient mode of moving masses of people than the mode where everyone just drives their own individual car. Congestion is very frustrating, induced demand is very real, and there’s only so far that you can widen an interstate or arterial road.
I think before building new regional railways in germany we first have to reactivate or currently unused railways which is luckily slowly happening
Absolutely, if there are old, disused lines, it makes economic and just planning-wise sense to restore those rather than build a new one
@@TheTramly Sadly many also have been already completely removed :(
In my Region forexample are 4 dead railways 2 have been removed 15 years ago and will never be restored bc they are build over the other 2 however are currently reviewed in the LNVG Schienenreaktivierungsprogramm at the moment in Phase 2 results will be in december
@@SchwarzeSonne130 like Lüneburg-Buchholz being lost forever, because Wulfsen (a town of less than 1800 people) had to build houses right onto the rail corridor. On the other end: Lüneburg-Soltau is already in the making, Lüneburg-Bleckede seams to be a no-brainer as well and Winsen-Salzhausen is also on the list (those tracks continue on to join with the Soltau line, but only pass through very small villages on a very indirect route).
@@SchwarzeSonne130 A lot have been removed yeah, but something i also notice in Germany is a ton also have had their right of ways still intact, but is now used for a bike/multi purpose path. Which, ill admit, is a good use for a rail right of way. Only thing is that you have the problem of potential community opposition if you want to bring it back
@@kailahmann1823 I know about the former OHE Kleinbahnen. they are all in stage 2 iirc
Swiss guy here. Why trains? One word: Espresso. Or a book. Or… When I travel I am able to relax and listen to music, read, enjoy an espresso, or even a nice meal on certain routes. I've take the train all over Europe: London. Amsterdam. Paris. Berlin. Munich. Vienna. Milan. Rome. Palermo (yes-at the far western end of Sicily with only one change between Basel and Palermo in Milan). Yeah trains. Oh yeah, when there is a small delay, the Swiss network will usually holding the connecting leg (train, bus).
I think a lot of people think that a day of travel on a train is the same as a day of travel on an airplane and therefore they don't like it but those two modes of transport couldn't be anymore different. A day of travel on a train is basically part of your vacation, since you can sightsee out the window and just relax and enjoy something refeshing and you arrive at your destination well rested and ready for whatever you want to do. Meanwhile a day of travel on a plane would be hell on Earth, even a three hour flight leaves me so exhausted that I need the rest of the day to recover.
@@hedgehog3180 Well said! Thanks! Yes, when traveling by train, the journey is (usually) a pleasant part of the holiday.
@@hedgehog3180 I spent 16 hours on a flight from Canada to Japan in 2019. It was absolutely terrible lol. If I could substitute that for 16 hours on a train, I would in a heart beat.
@@hedgehog3180 Air travel makes sense only in long-haul trips, or to circunvent mountains.
Something that also deserves mention is how cities back during the early days of railroading were way smaller, but that clearly didn’t stop railroad companies from starting train lines to and from those settlements with population levels that modern naysayers would claim are too small for trains.
Definitely, if it could be done in the 19th century, it can be done now
and it definitely can be done now since there's already much better railroad technology, way larger rail networks to take advantage of, and higher populations overall compared to back then, meaning more potential passengers both to and from any given town due to more connections to the outside world
not to mention that there's other means of transport for getting to the train stations now; you don't have to be within what was conventionally considered "walking distance" anymore since buses, trams, cars, bikes, etc. exist to make getting to the stations easier, so a single station can cover a much, much larger area than back then
In Switzerland a 3 minutes delay is considered “late”-in Germany it’s 6 minutes !
Here in Czechia it's 5 minutes
@@TheTramly 5 minutes is not delay for me as Czech, when it's more than 15 minutes, I am starting to worry about what's going on. 🙂
@@TheTramly In many European countries it starts at 05:01. In Japan, by contrast, even a 1 minute delay is taken very seriously, with an apology from the train conductor. Passengers start showing signs of impatience if the train is even just seconds late. I recently had a 4 minute delay in Kyoto and I was really shocked: it was quite a big deal.
In Sweden we aren't surprised if the train is half to an hour late
It’s not the question if you feel the train is late , it’s the official statistics .
In Japan every second count !
I believe even people in New York say my city is too small for trains.
This is due to the laziness of Americans that they don't walk 1 km to the supermarket but use their car
90% of American objections to better urban design can be countered simply by saying “stop being a lazy pathetic whiner”, I have genuinely seen Americans use “but what if it rains” as an argument for continued car dependency. Like put on a fucking raincoat and bring an umbrella, you being scared to get wet is not a good justification for destroying municipal budgets and making cities less safe. It'd probably do you some good to actually experience nature irl.
In addition to Steam railways, a whole network of electrified intrurban lines has been built connecting small towns, Especially in the Midwest, with the center in Indianapolis.
You forgot one point of "why trains if I like driving?".. if you give choices to people, those who would rather that choice will choose it. Meaning if you like driving, suddenly there will be fewer drivers if you offer an alternative, making your driving more enjoyable even taking into account less car-accommodating future infrastructure. Additionally, if you *have* to drive (due to not being able to walk very far or living rurally or needing to carry large heavy loads or needing a vehicle for work offroad etc.), this will get more people who DON'T need to drive off of the roadway you rely on, making the downsides of driving - stress, traffic jams, idiot drivers - that much less prevalent.
Don't get me wrong, especially where I live I don't think cars are going to be banned or disappear suddenly unless we're going Mennonitic and enforcing horse-&-wagon, there's just too many people who have built homes in the middle of nowhere or simply live an incredible distance from amenities. The car is incredibly useful. The scheduleless freedom of mobility, the capacity, the "last mile" transportation at all times. It's just that it's not a one-size-fits-all solution. It works best when paired with other options that can fit people's needs better. Building a society entirely dedicated to cars is a great way to make cars suck and diminish their benefits, and we need to rectify that.
Absolutely, I'm not advocating for the banning of cars, I just think that we need alternatives to driving, because then, the people who need to drive (or want to drive and are willing to pay for that choice), can have a smoother, faster, safer journey
I agree. I love driving, but I hate commuting by car.
@@TheTramlyyou’re not dealing with sound minded people with high levels of critical thinking, education, and intelligence however. They think that building a high speed rail line is like a globalist (aka j3weish) one world communist tyranny plot.
There are professional racing drivers who don't drive in their daily lives because it sucks so much.
Once the populace started to own its automoblies, it started to lose its value.
In the context of what you're saying I can agree however, this mostly applies to places east of the Mississippi (excluding most of the west coast). It's a shame you didn't bring up the interurban maps in the midwest as those served many small communities as that was a massive extensive network (almost all electrified as well).
A good example is the rhaetion railway that mainly in the canton of grisons in Switzerland. The canton of Grisons is the biggest canton by size in Switzerland, is in the mountains and has about 85% less inhabitants per square kilometre than the Swiss average. But still there is are about 100 train stations on a network lenght of about 380 km in the canton for 200 000 inhabitants. (To be fair, there are a lot of tourists on the trains and two of the lines are UNESCO world heritage sites)
I actually was in Switzerland, in that exact canton, and I took the Rhätische Bahn around the region, it was great! The trains were clean, on time, and spacious, overall, I sincerely recommend!
Also, there's the popularity of Heidi, the girl from the Alps. Especially among the Japanese visitors.
Where I live in North West Croatia, EU, they still keep 12 km long railway line that connect 4 small towns along the way (population of each is around 3.000). The line was built in 1914 and is used for the passenger service exclusively ever since. The line provides quick and easy access to the capital with connection with around 10 trains per weekday and with some limited weekend service too.
Great vid. Saved it to my “Train Foamer” playlist. I think heavily investing in public transit of any kind could single-handedly lift a significant percentage of Americans out of poverty. Unless you live in the downtown of a major U.S. city, which is probably too expensive for low-income people anyway, you probably have to rely on a car to just live your everyday life. And if you live below a certain income level, you are, in essence, forced to own a car that you can’t really afford in the first place.
FINALLY SOMEONE SAID IT!!!
YES🗣️‼️
In order for a small town to have a train connection there must be a larger train network to connect to. In America there are entire states without access to trains. South Dakota and Wyoming have zero passenger train lines. There are many states with minimal train routes. This places tens of thousands of small towns and communities hundreds of miles from the nearest train station. Then those trains in the middle of the country only run once or twice per day. There are even some pretty big cities with over 1 million people that don't have an inter-city train connection. For example: Las Vegas, Columbus Ohio, and Nashville. If you can't get trains to these big cities what chance do small towns have? Basically zero as far as America is concerned. Our country is just too big for rail. The distances involved make train travel impractical and unfeasible.
@@Novusodpardon me, but South Dakota isn’t *completely* devoid of passenger train service, although it is limited to a few tourist lines such as the Black Hills Central Railroad (which used to also be a branch line, but the main line that it connected to was abandoned).
I see your point, however even in the heyday of passenger train service in the USA local passenger trains could be very scarce indeed. Many towns counted themselves lucky to have a daily round trip and many branches only had mixed train service, whose schedule could be somewhat erratic, to say the least.
That said the USA desperately needs transportation alternatives to driving or flying. Personally I believe that an integrated approach would work best, with trains for the long(er) hauls and buses on shorter/medium distance lines. And better schedules overall.
If people were willing to put the money into it, I’d rather see the return of interurbans than buses. Wouldn’t be stuck in traffic as much that way.
@@DiamondKingStudios Government at all levels needs to stop oversubsidizing both stuperhighways and air travel first!
I used to read a lot more books when I used to be able to commute by train to work.
The "town" I grew up in was established by the Long Island Rail Road, and the railroad and the station are still there.
The place I'm living now isn't too small for trains. It just has no place where they can be installed. However, there are communities nearby with a long standing railroad line that could be revived as a commuter railroad line.
That could be a good opportunity, and something like feeder bus lines could be established from your town to the train stations
@@TheTramly That's true. One problem with the buses in the place I'm at is a lack of connections to other public transit systems. This is part of the reason I also think it should merge with the bus system in a nearby county. As far as trains go, it wouldn't surprise me if the establishment of SunRail ten years ago may have helped a lot of other nearby bus systems. The same thing could happen here.
@@DTD110865 “No place where they can be installed”?!
There’s GOT TO BE a rail line in the area; elevating it above the ground with a station shouldn’t be too much trouble….
@@CraigFThompson The nearest rail line is east of where I live. A hypothetical station wouldn't be that hard to reach, but they're not within my town.
@@CraigFThompson As long as it has rubber tires. Standing underneath steel wheels on steel rails make a noise I wouldn't wish on Donald Trump.
As someone working for the Swiss federal railways, I'm always happy when we are used as a good example :3 nice video!
Thank you! I'm glad you liked the video!
Not mentioned is the for vast underused parking lots. Car infrastructure is inefficient in land use. Also car parks are a huge factor in flooding events.
@@MiaHerssens And even vertical parking structures are inherently space-wasting as well. Plus, in earthquake zones, they’re really unsafe
They also worsen the Urban heat island effect enormously and are completely unproductive.
Funny thing! In my country, my "small town" is one of two towns and a big city that have dedicated railway stations, and I mean a full on double tracked, 35mi railway.
I wish the US could be bold enough to reactivate passenger service on most of the remaining freight network. Through much of the Midwest, I'd say that most towns above 5,000 people have retained at least a minimal freight service, and many towns smaller than that lay along tracks leading to/through places of that size. We could get 70-80% of the population within 3-5 miles of a train station by just reviving what's already out there. Amtrak likes to say they serve a similar proportion of the country, but that's only because they use a radius of 40 miles from their stops.
Absolutely, I mean, it wouldn't be easy, nor cheap, nor instantaneous, but in my opinion car dependency costs the US economy way more than an investment in rail ever could
4th reason why automobile-based transit system doesn't work: Capacity. Small towns have no problem with accommodating 100% automobile-based traffic, but the other end of the network, the medium and large cities where the traffic from small towns converges, cannot fit these flows without heavy investment. So car ownership is not really just a hidden tax for the countryside and suburban residents, city dwellers pay it too.
Absolutely, cities are just not capable to everyone driving cars all of the time, there simply isn't enough space
9:15 This is a Certified Praha - Horní Počernice, 471 class EMU and line S2/S22 moment...
(every morning, while going to school, with the train whirling away and speeding out of the train station, i hear "příští stanice Praha - Horní Počernice!", and five minutes after, "Praha - Horní Počernice!" - and the same announcements I hear when returning home in the afternoon)
One stop away in the direction away from Prague from the station shown in the video is my hometow- village of Zeleneč, with a population of 3000 people...
And guess what... A train to Prague departs every 30 minutes! ( in the transit spike a additional train to Benešov via Prague goes too )
And the trains go every half hour on the weekends too! (thank god for the Lysá - Milovice extension, that brought line S22, reducing the intervals)
And we get hourly buses to Černý Most ( the nearest metro stop, east end of line B ), every 20 mins to Prague in the spike, every two hours on the weekends... (excellent for going to the mountains on cross country skis)
And then yo average petrolhead in America saying it isn't possible...
REAL‼️‼️‼️🗣️🗣️🗣️
(even through the delays and stuff, we still stan ČD🥹🙏)
@@TheTramly I'd still rather take a ČD train, than trying my luck on R23 (though the last time I took R23, it was ok)...
And also, the ČD IT system and especially the Můj Vlak app is one of if not the best in the whole world!
One thing you skipped out on is the fact the US ships ALOT more frieght by rail than Europe does so we have less trucks clogging our highways than Europe does. The frieght companies dont want to electrify because it would make it difficult to run double stack intermodal container trains which are a major cash cow for them and also keep tons of trucks off the highways
That is true, however I'd say that the lack of electrification is because the obsession with short term profit - electrification would be a large upfront investment, which would pay for itself in a LONG time, and we all know that corporate America doesn't think in the long term
They can do it in India! A generous loading gauge helps, and very long pantographs
Tbf that's only if you look at all of Europe combined, if you look at individual countries like Germany they do significantly better than the US.
India runs double stack trains with CONVENTIONAL WAGONS (not specially built double stack trains) and long pantographs. It can be done, the issue is profit, as was already said.
@@AndreiTupolev and with conventional wagons, not double stack ones!
i feel in my not that populous province in Canada, even Diesel Multiple Unit service trains can service the smaller cities and towns along the railway mainline.
Context my city of 230k has a big sport stadium of 30k+ capacity, and has a railway line running infront of it. Eastwards it goes to downtown 1km away, and 1km westwards can possibly have a station switching to a bus to the airport. Though 67km eastwards and westwards is another town of 35k and a large suburb that some people commute from to the city for work or class.
It used to have train service decades ago, but not anymore. It would be really competitive to the highway, and our Union station still exists, albeit as a Casino because of Heritage status. Easy enough to be reconfigured again for the platforms and tunnels leading to it still exists. The bus service has awkward timings due to the government run service was cut, and the private operators left as well.
It’s funny to think 70 years ago the city had streetcars/trams, trolleybuses, regular intercity services when it had less than half of what the population it has now.
It's kinda depressing how the US and Canada has massive, well developed transit networks not even 100 years ago, and now, most cities have subpar, underfunded, and usually poor quality transit service...
Feel free to look at those old timetables, many aren't what they appear. And sure Regina used to have intercity service but now it has more flights than there used to be trains per day. And people can access more land in a shorter period of time because they aren't confined to linear corridors around streetcars and downtown conglomerations. Lastly to keep in mind about population is it used to be younger and denser. Very few over 70 and lots of young people and families living very dense lives compared to today so all those factors work against making rail viable even with a larger total population.
@@mickeygraeme2201
wouldn’t younger and denser population work in favour for intercity train service. More flights is debatable for years ago they had more flights to the US. Those flights are practically long distance for places in Canada are usually in the middle of nowhere.
Intercity train service is best to be competitive to barely or non existent plane routes like to Saskatoon or Winnipeg. A few decades ago had Via Rail Dayliner services, almost each province did so.
@@TheRandCrews Flights are the least common type of trip though so their effect is less pronounced.
Back then a young and dense population had almost no need to go to Vancouver for instance. They had a family to take care of. It is most valuable to get local transit working and intercity transit last. Look up most city pairs in flights and you will find many bus lines have greater ridership. In washington dc for example the single busiest bus route carries more people in a day than the entirety of reagan airport or the acela northeast corridor
The truth is that towns are too small to not have trains. Added towns give more profit-to-cost ratio due to more passengers.
Except trains are a public service. And if a line passes by a small town, why wouldn't it stop ?
another thing to take into account: trains paved way for their smaller counterparts, streetcars. Streetcars/trams were the norm along with long distance travel headed by regional or state wide rail which usually was steam trains.
these streetcars grew to the point they were used to connect other places together in the form of "inter Urban rail", along with steam locomotive long distance passenger rail serving those towns. it is because of these, that lead to faster than average industrialization, and subsequently, Urbanization. you can see the effects these old streetcar networks and trains had on towns and developing cities, since many "streetcar suburbs" were swallowed by surrounding automobile sprawl. in my area, we used to have many inter urban railroads. I actually talked to someone who had family who operated the inter urban streetcars. it hurts a lot knowing what happened to them, as "progress" (more accurate, big oil and auto industry) destroyed many of them indirectly through the Automobile. fortunately, my area came back from this decline. DFW now has 93 mile of light rail built in the span of 30 years. the red line as of now extends along the original Texas electric railway up to Plano, with the rest up to McKinney being owned by DART if Allen, Fairview, and McKenny choose to eventually become members.
The name "Steam" for the video gaming platform/store is a homage to the Railway Boom that captured the hearts on both sides of the pond.
Great vid. Saved it to my “Train Foamer” playlist. The history of passenger rail in America is why I will never take seriously any Libertarian arguments for privatizing highways and roads. That’s absurd. The same thing will happen to rural roads as happened to rural rail lines. Ownership of highways will quickly become monopolized to just a handful of giant companies, who will agree not to compete with each other, just as the remaining freight railroad companies have currently agreed to not compete. Companies will quickly realize that it’s not profitable to maintain all those small, two-lane roads that lead to small, rural towns, and small towns will now be left with not only no rail connection to the outside world, but no road connection either. And at that point, I hope rural people learn how to ride horses again because that’s gonna be their only option for long distance transport anymore.
We ripped out most of our local railways in europe too, no need to only attack the U.S.
Trains are expensive, its good to have them and they dont need to be profitable but we dont want money pits either.
Around 15k residents is the bare minimum to have a rail line usually.
Trains like the classic Czech motorak railcar vastly improve the economics of those lines, though those are being withdrawn and replaced by heavier vehicles.
I found an interesting german concept called Monocab. They are small small, self driving vehicles that only go on 1 rail, so they can pass each other without any infrastructure. Designed to run on abandoned railways (most places had a railway at some point), and ordered like a taxi. These could likely provide rail service to small towns economically
Ah yes, the classic Czech motorák🥰
It's true that it would be economically and logistically unviable to run railways to every settlement in a country, but honestly, I'd argue that even smaller towns can host train stations.
It definitely depends on more factors than just population size, it's definitely way more nuanced than what could possibly be fit in a 11 minute RUclips video.
@@TheTramly obviously even villages can have stations but lines that go mainly to them and not really anywhere bigger, probably not
but we didn't go down to "three trains per week" for cities of several 100.000 people…
@@szymex22 The train goes between two more or less big cities or towns, but still stops on every village.
"....but we don't want money pits either."....
Yet so-called "free" stuperhighways have ALWAYS been money pits, never paying for themselves, like rail lines do.
An excellent presentation with good, strong arguments, well made
I live in a village called Coggeshall in Essex, England. Our village operates a 16-seater mini-bus service to our nearest mainline station, the Coggeshall Community Bus. We are in an area where there are many commuters to London so the railway station service runs for the morning and evening commuter times and the bus is well patronised, though driven by volunteers. During other hours, the bus provides a range of services for the community, so meeting the needs of the elderly and other groups as well as the commuters.
The village does also have an hourly commercial bus service, though the patronage is poor, probably due to the unreliable service.
5:58 "lets look at switzerland". Procedes to show a picture of swiss railway stock on german rails😅
I live in the village of Spalt (around 5300 residents but still great density) in Germany and we once had a train connection. It was sadly abolished in 1995.
I'm advocating for a reactivate, but nobody seems to care :(
I can see that it was a short branch and the former trackbed was nearly all took over by roads and buildings. It can be restored, but it looks quite complex... however, I also see that there are enough towns over the branch or around it to try...
Not only are 92.5% of trains on time, but 99% of connecting trains are reached by the passengers.
Even if you will never ride the train yourself and you will always drive everywhere yourself, you should support public transit, because it means less stupid people driving.
We have train tracks in my small town that sparingly gets used by the military and cargo. The infrastructure is still there in a lot of American cities. Instead we drive and get road rage.
My parents got my old car painted. It has been hit twice this year while parked on the street. I feel like the paint job was a giant waste of their money. Public transit barely exists here. The bus only goes to a big town twice a day, for commuters. Biking to the next town is not safe on the 55 MPH road that lacks a shoulder since farmers don't want to give up that land. We are forced to drive.
Yeah, it's a damn shame, the US was pretty much built k railways, and now, they are disused, underinvested in, or straight up abandoned
@@lopoa126 Read “Moving Millions” by Stanley I. Fischer, and “Beyond the Automobile” by Tabor R. Stone; both of these great books might provide a little insight into what went wrong in this country….
In Luxembourg there is a train station with an hourly service that only has 27 inhabitants. Belgium has multiple stations in the middle of nowhere, for leisure activities.
They show that it definitely can be done!
I live in Virginia, USA, one of the states that has a major partnership with Amtrak, the national passenger rail provider. Through this partnership, two commuter rail lines were created from the suburbs into Washington, DC, and rail service was expanded in other parts of the commonwealth. However, Virginia Beach, the state's largest city, lacks a train station, so Amtrak operates a bus service instead.
My region hosts ten trains a day (five heading out and five coming in), with plans to increase this to twelve. There is also a push to establish another train station in Suffolk (think Mr. Peanut), which is surrounded by college towns and county seats. This makes it a strategic location for reaching under-served rural communities.
We would love to be considered for the expanding high-speed rail in the US, but a short-sighted decision in the 1970s is a barrier. To save on maintenance and taxes, a rail executive removed half of the tracks, leaving us with long stretches of single track. New, expensive rails would need to be laid to make high-speed travel possible. Additionally, like much of the US, rail companies do a poor job of maintaining rail crossings and bridges, forcing the commonwealth to use public funds. This seems extremely unfair to other businesses.
It's a shame that short sighted car centric policies and cost cutting for that oh so important profit resulted in this..
hopefully it'll get better in the future
The German government's plan was to convert Deutsche Bahn into a stock corporation, which succeeded, and then to privatize it, which failed. The majority of the shares are held by the state. But Deutsche Bahn wanted to make short-term profits. In addition, the DB was supposed to carry out small repairs to the network itself, which it rarely did for reasons of profit. The state wanted to continue financing major repairs and new rail construction. That's why the DB was planning new construction projects that they didn't have to pay for.
It would have been better to transfer the rail network to a state-controlled company and set long-term goals there.
And the Deutsche Bahn should not have invested in truck traffic or other foreign investments.
Every European train company is a stock market company, it is required by eu regulations. Another thing required by eu regulations is to have different companies managing the train operation and railways operation. This is done so that different train companies can operate on the same railway infrastructure, as it is slowly happening throughout Europe, with a landscape more similar to air travel. This with the aim to reduce travel costs throughout completion. In Italy this worked out well with the hsr, with a train every ten minutes in each sense on the high speed line from Milan to Rome and with tickets as cheap as 10€ sometimes.
In fact the plan must be to subsidize the infraestructure, not the train operations, which isnt a bad thing per se. The issue is when there is no money for infraestructure.
Here's the program i see with Europe when it comes to trains... Your platforms! If I'm disabled and i need to travel to Studenka from Skotnice, I'm still f*cked, at least in terms of train
That's true, some platforms are WOEFULLY under equipped to serve disabled people, unfortunately
thankfully, it's slowly getting better
Switzerland has adopted an accessibility law in 2004, it has gotten a lot better since then. There's still train stations that haven't been renovated since then, but there's fewer and fewer of them. Same with the trains, there are some very old trains on very rural lines that still require help and a lift to board, but everything else has level boarding for wheelchair users.
I mean that's a very easy issue to fix, the only reason it hasn't been fixed is because of ableism.
@@hedgehog3180 The reason they can't fix it is because no one with a train company background has ever come close to become leader in government. And standards.
You have a couple of fundamental issues at hand. There's no standard platform height or railcar corridor height. And if there is one, it changes once you cross a border, and cross border trains are a penny a baker's dozen. Whose standard will it be? The only people who seem to have figured it out are the Swiss and maybe the French, but are you going to follow not only with your stations but also your giant train fleet?
You can't call it ableism if the people who can make the changes don't understand, as if they're not aware of their own illegitimate child. It's one thing if it's a hassle that the handicapped need help. It's another when everyone with luggage is holding up the train. And let's not mention the supply and meal cars going onboard.
It just sucks that even with Leo Express's impressive 100% low floor trains at Praha HLN's low floor platforms, there's still a gap. I'm not railing on Prague on purpose. Spain, Italy, Germany, Austria, everyone's got the same issues. It's just that I was there last month.
I lived in Italy 15km from the swiss border, and went see some friends in some random village in Tessin. There is really easy train links and even though the first one was 15min late, making me miss my connection, i only had to wait a couple of minutes for another one (on a mainline with frequent trains) and 30min for the second connection (on a really niche line). This was all at 9-10 pm may i add, while my town in italy stops city busses at 8. I swear they live in the future
They absolutely do! They definitely have their priorities straight
I live about 20 km from prague center in a village of about 1000 inhabitants and we still have a train station… I used to go by train to and out of school in Dobříš but they cancelled most of the connections and there’s only about 10 connections per day (most of them at night) in each direction
cuts to service.. that's a shame
Trains are never profitable because they have to compete with highways system, a tax funded network. We always look at ticket price only and compare it to fuel cost only. we Never bother to include maintaince cost, purchase cost and relevent taxes, and subsidy to road infrastructure. We also forget that we have a lot of moving space and stress on train. Passanger railway can be profitable if it runs on time, and with same level of subsidy.
Areas where trains are often delayed and you show the Czech Railways - which have arrived on-time 90% of the time, compared to Switzerland's 92,5% which you consider reliable :D
haha, guess it's a little bit of bias, cause delays in Czech trains almost prevented me from graduating💀
@@TheTramly Late for the proverbial EXAM….
My village only grew to be more then just a church, granary and a handful of farmhouses around them into a respectable village of about a thousand people due to being in the path of a small city and a minor city at a distance where it made sense to plop down a platform and call it a station. I wish it was still around, I'd have used it daily in my school days.
You can't win people for trains with such arguments.
Try the following instead:
- faster
- more convenient
- allows for bigger frequency than planes
- you can work on the way
- you don't have idiot drivers around you
What also about:
-safer
-more environmentally friendly
-preserves, builds, and even REBUILDS urban areas----rebuilding those urban areas ruined and destroyed by decades of excessive automotive use
-pays for itself over time with fare collection and other services
You might have idiot drivers around you. But as they are not driving 😅
@@CraigFThompson The "you don't have idiot drivers around you" part was the euphemism for "safer", lol
The other three things are just preaching to the choir. If somebody cares what is environmentally friendly, they are already for trains. If somebody understands urbanism, they are already for trains. If somebody knows how connectivity and freedom of movement boost the economy and thus the tax revenue too they are already for trains. This is my entire point: when you are selling the idea, you should not talk as if the person in front of you is you yourself. Or, even worse, try to shame them into it - and the environmental and urbanistic arguments very much border on shaming people for not using trains. You don't win hearts by telling people they are bad. Don't misunderstand me, I agree with these arguments - they are just a very bad choice for the sake of winning people over.
@@tryangle-by-steve True, I stand corrected wwwwwww
@@erejnion He directed his “attack” towards me, not you….
My small town (city actually) in Poland of around 20k people has 2 train stations with 2 separate lines operating them. (One of them operates all of them and the second only one. It means that you can, if you want to. It does not have to be profitable at all.
Definitely, trains don't have to be profitable, they're more of a public service (and a very important one!)
@@TheTramly Yeah
Ry, Laven and Vemb are all "small" towns, that have keep their connection and show you don't need a lot of people
Exactly!
Especially in Czechia, they were train stations build far from city centres, witch made the service unattractive to a person that is able to afford a car.
I certainly agree with your opinions expressed in this video.
I'm glad you liked the video!
My city has freight connections but not Amtrak,guess mine is too big for amtrak,even though its a city
I live in Taiwan with four types of rail: high speed connecting the largest cities, national connecting large and medium cities, and commuter rail connecting small towns to the larger networks. More than 95% of people live within a bus or taxi ride (or less) of a railway station.
That's great! It's good that it disincentivizes people from driving and incentivizes people to use transit
You forgot that in Switzerland if you miss your connection with the bus instead you could be stuck for hours if you were to take a infrequent bus.
A few of the country rail lines in Australia have been converted to cycleways either by ripping up the old lines or paving over the lines. A part of the Crookwell branch line has been ripped up in the 80s from the NSW main south line at Goulburn.
I would love better public transport but in my opinion there is more to good public transit then journey times and reliability, here in the Netherlands many trains are overcrowded and absolutely filthy (both on the outside aswell as the inside) which makes me not like it for a daily mode of transport, I have used it when I was still in school and it was decent on the quiet start and end of the lines I used but during my internship I had to take the train into the big city and busses in the big city and I found it kinda meh. But for an example my daily commute between home and work between car, bike and public transit:
Car: 10 mins drive (normally doable in 7 mins with quiet roads and no roadworks)
Bike: 20 mins ride (currently unsure about that time due to the aforementioned roadworks)
Train and bus: I first need to walk 20 mins to my local train station (or a 5 mins bike ride but then my bike is at the station for the whole day at risk of being stolen or damaged) then I need to take a 10 mins train ride to the large city going past the place I work to then travel back on a 13 mins bus ride (and then a few mins walk), with this I end up at work 10 mins late due to this being the first connection of the day (gotta love 2 councils on the same between rivers area with you working in the other one from where you live)
"risk of being stolen or damaged" People steal in Netherlands? We live in lies here! 😀
@@Pidalin mostly in the big cities but also in smaller cities, nearly nothing in the villages tho but it's still good to think about where you leave stuff
@@vincentstuer I remember how my father once locked his old ugly bike in front of supermarket and then he realized that he doesn't have key, so he returned there tomorrow and he thought that bike is stolen. We found it like 2 weeks later just behind corner, it was not stolen, someone cutted off lock because it was blocking way there probably or something. Even when it's not worthy to steal, someone mostly at least damages it just for fun, it's a miracle that his bike was still ok.
@@Pidalin “Cutted”?!
@@CraigFThompson Do you realize how hard it is to remember all these illogical irregular words for no native speakers? Words like cut, put etc....don't have proper past tense form and it's super confusing for speakers of more advanced and superior languages, English is very primitive.
0:38 There were boats, rickshaws, carriages, etc. Even land yachts. You did have enough variants.
Tolik narážek na ČD v anglicky dabovaným videu jsem ještě neviděl. Like a odběr...
As a young civil engineer who is going to propose restarting tram-train service, change is coming! Hopefully I can convince them to at least consider the option. They just spent $400k+ on a bus rapid transit (BRT) feasibility study, but didn't get anywhere (it's currently on hold). I wish we could have used that funding to buy like half a tram
Great video overall! Although i'm preatty sure that even if your town isn't too small for trains you local administration (County,Province or region) might be too broke to subsidize local train services
there's a book by Christian Wolmar, "Are Trams Socialist?", where the argument is they're not because Switzerland shoves trams and electric trains everywhere and they trend strongly centre-right
I agree, they're not socialist in my opinion, it's just a matter of national transportation policy
@@RoamingAdhocrat At least ONE thing’s for sure: the automobile is FASCIST in its inherence. You own the car (or bus or truck), but the government tells you how to operate it and where. Sometimes that government even maintains the audacity to tell you what fuel to put in the tank!!
Most policies aren't inherently socialists, the right wing just lacks good arguments against them so they brand them as socialist in an attempt to poison the well.
Japan, Korea are also conservative, oligarchic and well to decently covered by train. Public transport or transport in general should not be a matter of partisanship. It’s frequently framed that way probably by lobbyists.
All towns in north America used to have a train line connection. But rather than nationalize the lines when the original rail companies when bankrupt the government often just bought the land and paved over them for car traffic.
Instead of spending a small ammount of public funding on maintaining railways the US decided to bankrupt itself spending public funding on building and making highways.
It was the fault of the government that we didn't deregulate the railroads and nearly caused them to collapse in the 60-70s. I don't trust the government to take them over either. Conrail ripped up most of the tracks in the East while owned by the government.
Is lying fun?
3:49 Ride the past this exit all the time shout out fort wayne lmao thankful i can bike 90% of the time because of the trail system! trains next
5:08 What about China? Or Japan?
The problem is that a lot of countries gave up on trains because the lobbying of the car industry seemed more profitable.
The title feels a little clickbaity though, as you do not mention the alternative modes of public transport, while you do note them in your conclusion. (9:36)
Whenever or if ever I make my own railway, I would want to start in my hometown of 9000 people. I shouldn't be relegated to car purgatory because i am not in a large city where it is already established.
Absolutely, 9000 people is in my opinion plenty people to support a train line (if your town isn't located in bum fuck nowhere Montana💀)
I would like to point out, that technically, switzerland‘s train operator, sbb, is a private company, that has to be profitable.
I mean, yes, but all SBB CFF FFS shares are still owned by the government
@@TheTramly still, the business is supposed to finance itself. People who argue, that rail can only work if it's funded by taxes are incorrect.
and I'm not in the least pro car and anti-train, it's just that where I live in the UK rail travel is just too expensive to use on a whim. I'd love the trains to be much cheaper, and have a significantly better bus service with some cross-country routes rather than the broadly North-South routes we currently have.
Maybe if the automobile (car, BUS, and TRUCK) and those damned roads weren't oversubsidized with literal 55-gallon drumfuls of blank checks from all governmental levels, the rail service would have much lower fares!
Agreed, like I said in the video, underinvestment in rail is a national transport policy decision, not an economic decision
@@TheTramly That "national transport policy decision" being made NOT by the general public, but by corporate interests and gullible, moronic politicians.
I mean you can blame Thatcher for that. Luckily the Labor government is planning to renationalize the railways so British rail travel might finally stop being the worst in Europe.
Switzerland has a dense railway network and service. The main reasons are:
- high investment in the network
- high subsidies of the railway, more than other countries in Europe
- high taxes on cars and poor road connections, lack of parking spots and bike lanes so you are forced to use public transportation
- the railway connections are dense but slow (the slowest in Europe) and only have an edge because they have slowed down everything else
- the country is small and that allows for such a railway system.
I agree with your general points, but Switzerland is an annoying example, that does not work in other countries.
My town is to weirdly shaped for trains.
My town isn't "too small". My town is just "too brazilian".
😭😭
Great Video.
I would love to this topic go into another video but in Europe.
Or maybe a video about cross border rail😀 and its dificultys.
Btw I seams that your discord link its expired I would love to join it :D.
Thank you!
About the discord link, my bad💀💀
gonna fix it soon
Did you know the Swiss SBB stopped all DB trains at the border- because the trains are rarely on time and broke the Swiss timetable ?
Well done
Cars are actually profitable, they generate way more tax than train tickets.
I'm all for more and better train service, but it's important to be rational.
Cars probably generate more tax at the point of sale, but at least in the us, gas taxes are TINY, electric vehicles don't even pay taxes on their fuel, and maintenaning and building car infrastructure are absolute money black holes
You mean GOOD train infrastructure fare. In Canada, train fare is like airplane fare. Where I live, they converted almost all old railroads to bike paths.
The silver lining in that is that cycle path retains the corridor as having a transport service, and preserves it in case it again becomes economical to run trains through such a corridor
- The dismantling of entire rail networks, firstly in America and later the rest of the then-Free World.
- The rise of the automobile as a symbol, first of status, lastly of hyperindividualism.
- The ascent of rock and roll music (and later hip-hop) to the highest echeleons of popular music.
- All the dumbing-down, irresponsbility, lack of accountability, laziness and promuscuity of the youths since the baby boomers' days to this date...
All are part of a megaconspiracy against civility and decorum, against the greatness of the West.
❤
Nice video
the last AAA was funny
Very good video. The big problem in the United States and perhaps elsewhere as well is that the railroads that pass through the small and medium sized communities have ZERO relationship to these towns. Back in the day not only passengers but goods of all sorts and sizes came and went by train. The train depot was literally the only link to the outside world. Tragically, inefficient and environmentally damaging trucks have supplanted train service, and consequently the tracks themselves have been torn up that once served innumerable small towns.
Plus, you forgot a few specific things - you don't need an expensive big train, especially if you live in a small village. Single (or multiple in some cases) unit(s) railcars will work. And there is a possibility to run trams on heavy rails, which also reduces the costs.
Belen, New Mexico comes to mind
In my opinion, the problem isn't the size of a town or city, but the willingness of its inhabitants to use it as a regular mean of transport.
NA is built car centric, meaning that if you wanted to make public transport something that people would actually use, you would need to redesign places to allow people to get to a train station by walking/cycling or using bus/tram networks (that also need a way to walk to the final destination again).
A car is a very comfortable way of transport. You are free to use the whole road network in the directest path you want without having to do detours for coverage for other peoples. You are also not restricted by timetables. The only limitations you have is all other people that want to use the same road that you want to use and the available space at your destination to place your car.
Deciding to take a train/any public transport would need to be more comfortable than driving there yourself. So it would need to save time, let you use the travel time (e.g. entertainment or work), be cheaper and or have a more personal benefit like not having to search a parking space, not being annoyed by traffic, being able to get drunk and etc.
Also trains/public transport is expensive, tho if you manage to get enough people to use and pay for the service it's not that expensive anymore. Also a local government could decide to use tax money for public transport, if its community would wish to support that mode of transport as collective.
With the price you also face the issue that most car related costs are not listed as clearly as the the price of the public transport fare. Insurance, maintenance, repairs and fuel add up, but somehow people only really care about the price of the fuel, probably cause it's the only cost you regularly see.
TL;DR:
Building train infrastructure in the US is possible, it's just fucking hard to achieve. It would need massive investments that bring changes. And most people don't like changes, they might accept it when they get to it in their own pace.
You've pointed out all the teleological reasons why cars are better than trains. And pointed out it can be expensive to run or at least the costs are accounted very differently. The key sticking point is there are technological hurdles that cars improved on from 1920-1960. Trains have still not quite caught up when they do significantly improve they will then again be competitive. Such as the Gravity Vacuum Transport New York City wanted to build in 1969.
PLEASE read "Moving Millions" by Stanley I. Fischler; sup'm MIGHT be learned from it....
And btw, have any of those oversubsidized, inefficient, wasteful, and environmentally disastrous STUPERHIGHWAYS been profitable at any time in their existence?! How about air travel since the jet age?!
@@CraigFThompson Yeah neither of those were profitable but neither were trains and they certainly aren't now. We just feel bad about telling people that thought they could afford to travel that they actually can't
On comparing costs. Part of the reason is that fuel (and tolls, parking, and partially maintenance) are the only expenses that actually vary on whether you choose to take your car or transit on any given trip. Insurance, registration, cost of purchasing the car itself are expenses you're locking into once you decided to have the car at all, whether you use it on this trip or not. And unless you're in a situation where transit can replace virtually all of your trips then the choice to have a car isn't really a choice.
@@mickeygraeme2201 At the VERY LEAST, railroads collected fares to provide service; stuperhighways are nothing but an example of providing welfare for the rich.
Air travel is so heavily oversubsidized that if their governmental funding were suddenly cut, there’d be NO planes over the USA….
Trains are big, bulky and cost a lot more than a bus. That's why.
Even the places in America where we have a vaguely "European" rail experience (fully electrified lines, 100+mph speeds, frequent service), it's still nowhere near as useful. The Northeast Corridor is at maximum capacity, no one wants to pay to upgrade it, and as the demand for rail travel far outstrips supply, it can easily cost 10x what an equivalent European train ticket would cost, or more. And sometimes the ageing infrastructure has catastrophic meltdowns such as sagging catenaries in the heat because they were never upgraded to constant-tension technology. At least it turns such a killer profit that it's able to subsidize the rest of the Amtrak national network, because Amtrak was set up as a for-profit corporation for some reason and is expected to mainly try to make money, not provide as much service as possible. What little train service we do have outside the few Amtrak hubs (California, Chicago, and the Northeast) mostly exists to bribe red state senators into approving funding. Otherwise they'd axe it because it loses them gobs of money.
They sure's hell enjoy making all manner of excuses, don't they?! All that can be done is to reduce the excessive governmental oversubsidization dumped copiously onto stuperhighways and air travel by half, and there'd be enough for a nationwide HSR system.
@@Musicrafter12 Yet government at all levels wastes trillions of dollars oversubsidizing stuperhighways and air travel, and neither of those modes are either efficient, comfortable, or safe (even though people try to tell the world that air travel is the “safest mode of travel” which is a lie)….
I think it's good to pick a goal, like a train to every county. So, there would be a train to the biggest city in the county, and buses from all the other towns. Although, in the US (especially the west) counties are much bigger than in Europe, so in this case maybe a few cities should be connected by train, or the goal could be different like a train to every city over 20,000 people.
Size is no excuse, whether large or small.
@@CraigFThompson Oh yeah you're right, if only there were a video about it haha
@@wojwesoly China says: “HOLD MY BEER!”
The UK is the only European country that uses counties as a division IIRC, and I'm pretty sure that Yorkshire is bigger than the vast majority of US counties. A US county is more similar to a European municipality if you're looking for a good comparison.
In summary. You dont get an excuse. Rails are a great option no matter where you go. You chose to drive everywhere in traffic and possibly die due to the invcrease danger and bleeding money from your own pockets and the citys, while also being stuck in a small town where if you want get to your neighborhood town you have to suffer more excruciating and expensive way to get there. Or use the safer more economic cheaper comfortable way to go not only to your neighborhood town but the city just a few stops away while also not suffering through any traffic all with just a few dollars by helping yourself and your community grow in the process. All for the small price of doing what we already did. Hey wait didt we literally allready did that only for us to shoot ourselves in the foot. Simple dont shoot yourself in the foot and we wouldt be in this situation.
One of the reasons why the development of rail infra and railway expansion is deliberately hampered in the US is due to road transport lobby. They are just too powerful of a force to be reckoned with.
The railroads in the US were better when private. The biggest corporation for railroad transportation in the US (Amtrak) is a state-owned conglomerate. So is the Deutsche Bahn AG as well btw. The US railroad, just as the UK railroad used to be the best railroads in the entire world before nationalization.
Japan did privatize major railroads, and they have today the best railroad system in the world. So stop spewing nonsense.
ireland is getting less and less Trains and Buses are problematic to small communities A road network to support large Buses is very expensive so I think trains could really be better
Come to Japan. We'll show you how it's done.
Print out a map of your city, highlight everything that is car infrastructure one color, and everything else some other color. Now cut away half of the car infrastructure, and marvel at how much closer everything is and how you no longer would need a car for most trips because everything is so much closer together.
Bravo 👏👏💯
Thank you!
I agree with most everything here but children should never take public transportation without a parent present. I would never allow that. Even a school bus full of other kids is bad enough, now you want them on a train alone with god knows who else? Nah.
I think this video answers a lot of your concerns: ruclips.net/video/oHlpmxLTxpw/видео.htmlsi=EHPt9q1qM6-LPMpc