Yesh go to literally any other industrialized part of the world and see how ** backwards the US is on trains

I’ve become quite radicalized on trains after visiting Japan and Switzerland myself.

Not like the US didn't try. California spent 15yrs trying to build a high speed train and failed. Canada has been talking about building trains forever too and it usually goes nowhere because the budgets explode like every major infrastructure project these days.

UK spent $100M just to deal with bats in a single train tunnel, which is representative of the issue https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c9wryxyljglo

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skyyler 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

I wonder what's different between these English speaking countries you mention failing to build out rail transit, and places like Japan and China that have built fabulous rail networks.

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rootusrootus 3 hours ago | parent [-]

Japan is a fairly unique case, and probably does not share much with China aside from being in the same region. Japan is geographically well suited to serving a large portion of the population with one long line with a few branches. That's a convenient advantage.

China just doesn't have to worry about environmentalists or anyone else locally trying to stand in the way, they just bulldoze them and build.

China also has much lower labor costs, and even Japan is a good bit cheaper (than the US, at the least)

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dgacmu 3 hours ago | parent [-]

Yes, but also:

The metro area density of Tokyo is 3,000 / km^2

The metro area density of Beijing is 1,747 / km^2

Greater Los Angeles: 208 / km^2

	▲	rtpg an hour ago \| parent [-]
		LA proper seems to have a density of 3000/km^2 according to Wikipedia A perhaps more interesting use case is the utsunomiya light rail. Utsunomiya has a density of around 1200/km^2. What they ended up doing was building a new tram with exactly one line. The main thing they did was make sure the tram comes frequently, including off peak. End result is people rely on the tram line and the tram is making good money, being operationally profitable (still gotta pay back construction costs of course). Utsunomiya is obviously not exactly greater LA, but Utsunomiya has on average 2.25 cars per household[0]. It has traffic issues and people feel the need to own a car. And yet the tram line is finding success because transportation is a local issue, not a global one! You can solve for transportation issues in crowded areas. Few reasonable people are lamenting that you don't have a train between madison, WI and Chicago every 15 minutes. Many are simply lamenting that even at a local level PT in many places is leaving a lot on the table despite there being chances of success! Smaller focused PT has proven itself to work time and time again, and compounds on other PT projects in the area. [0]: https://www.pref.tochigi.lg.jp/english/intro/overview.html

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rtpg an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

> California spent 15yrs trying to build a high speed train and failed.

It has to be said: even in Japan train projects are multi decade projects.

Is Cali HSR stopped? I can imagine it being slow but I wonder if it's 10x slower or "merely" 3x slower.

	▲	Jblx2 an hour ago \| parent [-]
		I wonder if California high speed rail will ever surpass quadcopter personal vehicles in passenger miles per year. I know which way I'd bet for the year 2040.

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tormeh 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Those are two unusually competent countries when it comes to trains. Try Germany or the UK for a more average outcome.

	▲	rootusrootus 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Ha, even using the UK as a counterpoint, they do pretty well. I enjoy taking the LNER, and appreciate that it is a 'slow' train that happens to run 50% faster than the top speed of Amtrak in all but a very limited set of tracks in the NEC. And maybe I've just had unusually good luck, but LNER has almost always been punctual.

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rootusrootus 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

OTOH, on my visits to Europe I am simultaneously impressed with the prevalence of passenger train options, but disheartened by the price. If Europe struggles to provide really affordable trains, there isn't much hope for the US. Aside from regional train options in the densest areas, we just have too much distance to cover. Infrastructure costs would kill the plan. At this point maybe we should just be trying harder to produce renewable fuels for planes.