I never said intercity rail in the US only makes sense in the Northeast Corridor. I think it makes the most sense there but there might be other viable routes. I even mentioned Brightline as another example.
Intercity rail makes sense in a lot more places. If Amtrak was as competent as other operators around the world most of the US east of the Mississippi is similar density as Europe and could have great intercity trail.
Rail across the US doesn't not make sense. Even North South the US is too big for rail to make sense. However there are a lot of shorter trips that would make sense via rail if the network existed and had competent operations. That Amtrak only makes money on the Boston-DC routes (or so they claim) more about their bad management and decades of bad decisions to not invest in making anything else worth using.
I think the difference is -- the Interstate is heavily used, so it makes a good government subsidy (that is, you don't have a large number of people paying for a very small number of users). But passenger trains would end up being the opposite -- large number of people paying, and a small number benefiting.
Now you can have some routes (such as the Buffalo to NYC one that you mentioned), but again if it is paid for federally, then unless there are similar situations that the majority of the country could take advantage of, it doesn't make sense.
Rail travel shouldn't compete with air travel. It should be a fast, comfortable alternative to intercity car and bus travel between major destinations.
This model already works well along the Northeast corridor. Even the slow, delay-ridden Empire Service (thank CSX for that) ran full trains between New York and Albany(before Covid). Not to mention the main DC to Boston route.
The failure of intercity rail does not seem all that distinct from the general failure to invest in infrastructure in the US, and the enormous costs when the investment is attempted.
Yes, if we had not invested heavily in both highways and airports, we may have invested more in trains (there were other problems with the railroads at the time). But that was over 70 years ago. It's not an "excuse" to explain that things are the way they are, and that it makes no sense today to fund renewed railroad investment.
There's a reason we're flush with self-driving car companies and not railroad companies.
If only local roads existed: Trains would have continued to serve most locations cheaply. The federal highway system did great damage to the far more efferent but far less subsidized train network. Trans take less land, less capital, fewer workers, less fuel, and cause fewer deaths.
The main problem with the US interstate train system is that it's run on freight train lines. Amtrak and Acela do not actually own the railway they use and they can only go a certain speed due to the grade of the track.
I don't think you would be willing to pay the amount of taxes you would need to, to completely redo the railways haha.
Anyways Amtrak are barely turning a profit as it is and while it would be great to have Euro quality train lines, the economics aren't there. Even in Europe they're having a hard time competing with flixbus.
We destroyed our world’s best rail infrastructure on purpose to serve industrialist automotive companies. You could get anywhere by train in 1925, with so much frequency it is a daunting task to even count up the schedules.
Despite now having 3x the population of that time period, our rail service is basically non-existent in comparison. This isn’t the case in less wealthy and less dense countries.
What is the cost of the interstate highway system? How much of it could have reduced lanes or not exist if there were trains? How much productivity and GDP is wasted on people operating vehicles on the highway when trains can travel over 3x faster and facilitate continued work?
Amtrak trains could run on precise schedules--while probably slowing down cargo--and long routes would still be underutilized because most people don't want a more expensive days long train trip rather than a few hour flight.
Intercity rail in the US was destroyed by an Iron Triangle. At present the passenger rail infrastructure is pitiful, since it hasn't had significant investment since about the 1950s. For example, back in 1999 Amtrak tried to resume passenger service between Louisville and Indianapolis by running freight and passenger cars on the same train. But since the track was so old, the trains were limited to 30 mph. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kentucky_Cardinal
Try to imagine what the market is like for intercity transportation that is more expensive than driving or taking a Greyhound and yet more than twice as slow, and doesn't connect you to an effective intracity transportation network once you arrive. There weren't many passengers.
Rail transportation is very important in the US, but it's all for freight, which takes up a similar proportion of rail as passenger does in other countries.
Amtrak does run some profitable passenger rail lines in the US, including some places you wouldn't expect, like the Oklahoma City-Dallas line IIRC. There is an interstate connecting those cities, and the population density isn't exactly really high there so IDK.
The problem in US infrastructure is that money is spent for its show value as opposed to effectiveness.
If we were spending money effectively, it would be many years before any rail infrastructure funds would go to any network outside the NorthEast corridor. Almost every project there will provide tons more value than anything in the rest of the US.
And once the corridor is fully operational in an effective manner (there is no reason, for example, that flights between Boston and NYC, and DC and NYC, should even exist…Amtrak should be able to wipe them out by running 15 minute trains and eliminating some of the unnecessary slowness you’ve described), it can provide a working model to the rest of the nation, which is the point at which we can start spending rail infrastructure funds elsewhere.
If only the US would make major investments in regional rail like this, instead of either doing nothing or harrumphing that commuter rail should be run the way it has been run for the past 100 years.
That one Oly to Seattle Amtrak that went too fast around the corner makes me sure you're right about our RRs.
Looking back (I'm not much of a rail historian, but) from what I do know, the US rail system was built-out to serve resource exploitation (including populating the mid-continent), not passengers. So personal autos got a leg up on them, in the mid-20s, before they could afford better passenger routes (outside of major inter-city corridors).
I'd guess that if it wasn't for WW2, US passenger rail would have croaked much sooner than it did. The Interstate system didn't help either. AND THEN they were allowed to rip up the old tracks. Ay yay. So clearly some interests were aligned against the RR's. And our atmosphere has and is paying the price.
I've ridden Amtrak a few times on different routes, TX to CA as a child, midwest to DC as a student, and northeast to southeast (NE corridor +) with a pregnant wife.
The main issue with train travel in the US is that many passengers are going to need a car when they reach their destination.
If I could pick one major rail investment for the US it would be to follow I-95 from Florida to New England. There is a lot of commute and vacation traffic along that interstate (I-95) that can be stressful and people would probably happily move over to Amtrak if the service guarantees are good.
Intercity passenger rail makes little sense over most of the USA, outside the existing northeast corridor.
In a sane world Amtrak would shut down most of the long-distance routes, fix the northeast corridor, and focus on gradually expanding that, but the politics of that are unattractive so it bumbles on with trains that only train nerds would ever consider actually riding on.
The actual problem was the federal Interstate Commerce Commission regulated routes and ticket prices and wouldn't give passenger rail companies the flexibility needed to compete with cars and growing air travel. Central planning failed and completely destroyed U.S. passenger rail.
The US has extensive rail coverage, where geographically feasible, and has had such since the 1800s. Perhaps the system grew before the present US was entirely assembled, therefore, and could use a rethinking?
It's hard to say. Trains have been chronically underfunded in the US for so long that I don't think the US even knows what decent train infrastructure is like. Amtrak hasn't had a guaranteed budget until the recent infrastructure bill passed and was originally designed to just be a publicly-funded holding company to sell off its rolling stock and lines.
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