OpenTube

Where Are America's Trains?

Climate Town

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Creator/Host: Rollie Williams
Writers: Rollie Williams, Matt Nelsen & Irene Plagianos
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20 Comments

@ClimateTown Creator 4 months ago Pinned

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@rosiethered5677 4 months ago

Amtrak should be seen as proof that the people yearn for trains. No other service would be this popular with so many downsides.

@IanZainea1990 4 months ago (edited)

The tracks should be nationalized in a heart beat. Roads are not privately owned, why should the tracks be? it's nuts.

Edit: conrail was a freight operation. That's not what I'm suggesting.

Edit edit: I'm suggesting the physical tracks be owned by the government. Union Pacific and the rest can still exist. They just lease the tracks from the government. Currently, they don't upgrade the tracks, they just run slow. The government has incentive for things to move fast, and would be incentivized to improve the tracks.

@atlasreturns1793 4 months ago

As a German you know the Situation is dire when Deutsche Bahn is presented as a positive example.

@lopzag 3 months ago

No one ever asks if roads turn a profit.

@luipaardprint 4 months ago

No no see, America is too big for trains, it would never work. Instead you drive that same distance!

@Im_lizard_s 4 months ago

people love bringing up railroads profitability and ignore fact that all "driving car" related taxes are not enough to sustain highways

@beefiron 4 months ago

Making a profit shouldn't be the measure of success for a public freaking service. It's hard to argue that America is a country rather than a business.

@adamwishneusky 3 months ago

The thing that sucks about America is if you could take fast reliable trains somewhere, you’ll need a car when you’re there if you’re not in one of like 4 cities 😖

@CHEFPKR 4 months ago

After staying in Japan for 30 days and using public transit then coming back to our suburb where I have to drive everyone I quickly realized... This ain't it.

@BokBarber 4 months ago

I've been shouting at people for years that NYC is called "The Big Apple" because it's where the Adam's Apple would be if America were a giant horse with tiny legs and a commanding ass, but all I get are weird stares from the other people in the Denny's parking lot.

@Jennifer-Jean-Musings 4 months ago (edited)

English person here! This tracks (pardon the pun) - I travelled to Boston last year for my brother’s wedding, he’s married to an American, and his in‑laws think he’s incredibly intrepid for using the rail system. They even told us that neither of them had taken the train in 30 years, despite living close to a station. They spoke about my brother using the railway like he was an explorer going into the wild!

Me and my husband did venture from the wider Boston area into the city, and when the train arrived it was so old I genuinely thought we’d accidentally booked a vintage locomotive experience. I’m not joking - we live not far from a Railway Museum in the UK, and some of the heritage carriages there are more up‑to‑date than the ones we rode.

No shade to the rail staff, who were friendly, helpful, and clearly working incredibly hard. Interestingly, we also took the train from Boston to Salem and it was packed, which tells me that despite the condition of the trains and the infrastructure, there’s clearly huge need and appetite for rail travel in parts of the US!

[Edit:] Thank you to everyone who pointed out that the train I took was the MBTA Commuter Rail, not Amtrak, my apologies. My point still stands, however. This was clearly a vital line, heavily used and supported by dedicated, attentive staff. Yet, as a European, I was genuinely surprised by the experience: wooden interiors, long leather bench seats, paper ticket stubs, and an entirely unmanned station. As charming and nostalgic as some of those details were, I couldn't help but leave with the feeling that the people who rely on this service deserve better.

@rehzahlbegrenzer 3 weeks ago

The "America is too big for trains" is my favorite argument. I am German, we are a small and very crowded country. The problem is, that the intervals between the stops are so small, that high-speed trains don't really pay off here. As soon as the train reaches 250 or 300km/h, it already has to brake again, because the next station is already there. In a densely populated country with an evenly distributed population like Germany, high-speed trains are basically useless. France is better suited for this. It's bigger (not that much bigger, but still bigger), less densely populated and the population is concentrated in a handful of cities and their metropolitan areas, like Paris, Marseille or Lyon. Those are reasonably far apart, so the TGV can go 320km/h for hours without having to stop.
The US is orders of magnitude bigger than France and even less densely populated. A high-speed train would save so many hours compared to the car, it's ridiculous. So the massive size of the US is acutally an argument FOR high-speed trains, not against them.

@Olivia-nr9qp 3 months ago

Imagine being on a train and you can hear the guy sitting behind you filming a mini-documentary about how much the train sucks

@Luzgar 4 months ago

It's the very same problem as with internet providers.

You need a publicly owned network backbone, to actually serve everyone with a decent service.

@hairypotter259 4 months ago (edited)

What a beautiful country we would be with proper public transit investment, imagine if it had those monstrous highway budgets

@AdamasOldblade 3 months ago

It’s because quite a while ago car companies lobbied against rail. They smothered the market with “freedom” as the ultimate means by car.

And it worked, because today? God… you can literally watch millions of people feeling, “free” to sit in traffic, angry and distracted for hours, all while thinking, “at least I’m not on a train, a bike, a bus, or anything else” as they literally just sit in traffic.

@Tinmad29 4 months ago

Things Americans don't even realize they are missing out on: Group train travel. I've seen so many Europeans book large sections of trains so they can travel together. It's like the experience of a school bus with all your friends, but you're adults and allowed to drink in public.

@martinbruhn5274 4 months ago

But when have highways ever made a profit? I guess that means, all investment in highways has to be stopped immediately, and the entire highways system be dismantled