HN Theater @HNTheaterMonth

Trains in the US are widely prevalent! It's just that they're used for freight rather than passenger travel. The main driver behind this is the population density of the USA, cities are spaced too far apart to make passenger travel by train viable. Not coincidentally, the only area that does have significant passenger rail networks, the DC - Boston corridor, has population density similar to Western Europe.

An interesting video on this topic: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mbEfzuCLoAQ

I might be wrong but this seems like a very US-centric idea. For most of the developed world trains fill this need very well, while the US has had problems with their rail network for reasons partially based on geography, partially based on population density, and partially based on their own fault. I think this explains it pretty well: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mbEfzuCLoAQ

The solution is not aircraft, the solution is more and better trains. Or perhaps autonomous buses/trucks depending on how far out you look.

⬐ projectileboy

Tough to say how the pandemic will affect this, but EasyJet and the like were absolutely changing the game in Europe up to this spring for medium-length trips. Flying from Nice to Rome is way faster and way cheaper than any of the train options.

⬐ muzani

I thought it would be more appealing in cities with horrid traffic jams like Jakarta. Public transport exists, but can never be as good as it could be in a place without city planning. We've had staff from there work remote, because commuting to the office would take half a day (one-way). We've literally flown them to an office in another country to get access to the hardware they were working on because it was easier than getting into the main office.

⬐ wtracy

IDK, high-speed rail doesn't seem to be taking off outside of Europe and a handful of Asian countries.

That leaves most of Asia outside India/China/Korea/Japan, and pretty much all of Australia/Oceania, Africa, the Middle East, and the entire New World.

I would love to see high-speed rail take over the world, but there's a lot of sparsely-populated places out there, and it makes sense to investigate technologies to support them.

⬐ SahAssar

Sparsely-populated places are the cheapest places to build rail, both because of land prices and also the cost of labour. I think that for any volume of passengers over shorter distances that would be large enough to mandate a regular airway it would be cheaper to build high-speed rail. At least over the long term the economics of scale should take over and besides that a rail network is more useful for shipping of goods than a airport would be.

In the US it'd require similar effort/cost as the Interstate Highway System did, but would probably yield equal economic benefit.

⬐ psadri

The problem is that train routes are fixed So it only makes sense to connect regions with high populations. Aircraft can go anywhere, including places with small populations.

⬐ SahAssar

Sure, they could, but they don't. Aircraft require airports, ATC, large land areas for landing/takeoff and so on.

In general aircraft for passenger or cargo routes take a few routes and don't shift much.

⬐ barnabee

I'm not from the US, and I think this is valid basically anywhere, although the lack of rail infrastructure in the states makes this perhaps particularly appealing.

The basic logic is two-fold:

First, it's much faster, cheaper, and less contentious to create new routes, and capacity can quickly be switched (even seasonally or in response to events) thanks to neither needing to pay for nor lay tracks.

Secondly, it shortens a lot of journeys. Even in countries with pretty extensive rail infrastructure it is common to combine two or more trips via "hub" cities in order to complete a journey. This adds time because you travel further and have to change trains and wait around. The difference could be particularly extreme given that only longer distance intercity trains tend to be high speed, and electric planes will eventually be faster even than high speed rail.

A similar change happened with long haul air travel: as twin engine planes have been able to fly further over water due to safety improvements, the traiditional hub model has lost out as many more point-to-point international routes were created.

While I think they might re-shape regional transport in some pretty important ways, electric planes won't replace high speed rail (and kerosene burning jets) on more popular routes, at least not for a while (and perhaps, debatably, never). Trains are incredibly efficient and hard to beat when you need to regularly move a lot of people, and electric aircraft, while they're about to become useful, are going to remain relatively small and range limited for quite a while.

https://youtu.be/mbEfzuCLoAQ

Wendover did a video on this a couple years ago. Basically saying why trains suck in America. And the reason is the same: freight gets priority because Amtrak does not own the track, freight companies do. https://youtu.be/mbEfzuCLoAQ

⬐ bobthepanda

It’s the law that passenger trains should get priority, but actual enforcement of this law is nonexistent, and Amtrak does not have as much money to spend on counsel.

This is worth your 8 minutes of time. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mbEfzuCLoAQ I love trains, but the economics of rail travel in the USA can't be overcome. Until robot trains.

⬐ munk-a

I have seen that and agree that country-wide train service is indeed expensive, but there really should be better offerings on the east coast that could compete against bus service. Being on a train with plenty of room has a huge quality advantage over buses and the scaling of their carrying capacity means that companies can be more free in allowing luggage and seating space than the economics of planning the layout of a bus.

⬐ ghaff

Train service in the US Northeast is pretty good at least for the cities it services. It's not price-competitive with Megabus but is train anywhere competitive pricewise with discount buses?

⬐ inferiorhuman

at least for the cities it services

And that's the catch. I've been told that years ago it was better, but try to catch a train to a secondary city in New England and you'll often find that the only offering is an occasional Amtrak branded bus.

⬐ ghaff

Fair enough. It's mostly the coastal corridor that's good with a couple on inland spurs from NY/New Haven up to St. Albans and Montreal that aren't terrible. But otherwise, there's something of a gap between commuter rail systems (which are pretty hub and spoke in any case) and what Amtrak covers.

⬐ inferiorhuman

New Haven? Ugh. Connecticut fucks with Amtrak relentlessly. Take a look at how Acela slows to a crawl out there.

⬐ munk-a

As a former vermonter... The St. Albans service is terrible, trains go into Essex Junction (basically, Burlington) once a day and the train leaves NYC at 11:33 am and gets in at 8:18 pm, eight hours for what is a five hour drive with a single train a day.

I don't disagree that some other services might be alright, but that's clearly not one of them.

⬐ ghaff

I haven't kept up on those services. I know they've come and gone over the years but I was being charitable. I used to semi-regularly take the train from White River Junction to Philadelphia but I pretty much only use the Acela/Northeast Regional these days and that's really the "good-ish" part of the service I'm aware of. (Where good-ish is defined as preferable to driving, the bus, and plane--so long as not doing the whole length.)

This YouTube video is the best I’ve seen in explaining why things are the way they are in the US - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mbEfzuCLoAQ

⬐ ronnier

Really good video, thanks for posting.

⬐ stochastic_monk

I liked it but wish I could read for the information instead of waiting 8 minutes for it to be explained.

⬐ ofcrpls

Unrelated - Are you teejsound?

⬐ teej

Nope!

⬐ hexane360

Note that that video specifically mentions the Northeast corridor and the Acela as an exception. The Northeast is definitely dense enough to support rail.

> This alone tells me you've never lived in a rural area in the US or relied on Amtrak.

ad hominem

You know absolutely nothing about me. I have lived in rural areas. I've never relied on Amtrak, but I've used it quite a bit. Most of what I was saying comes from facts out of people like Wenover Productions:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mbEfzuCLoAQ

This video doesn't go into the rural -> plane connection; can't find that one at the moment. But he has another video on it. But yes, people do use Amtrak for connecting to major airports from rural areas.

> I'm sure it does. Now shift your gaze westwards, to North Dakota, Wyoming, eastern Montana ....

I was not addressing any of those areas. At all. You built some argument I wasn't making. I never said trains would be good for those regions. I think if we did build good rails, those areas would get some service eventually.

Australia has a similar situation (a region I have lived in btw). They only over 30M ~ 40M people. I have taken trains intercity and they are very touristy and not meant for general transport. But each capital city: Adelaide, Perth, Melbourne, Sydney ... they have train systems that would make any US capital be ashamed of itself. The only capitals without any rail are Hobart, ACT and Darwin.

Australia has the infrastructure to accommodate high-speed intercity if they ever got around to implementing it. The United States does not and it has a much higher population density and much larger cities.

American cities, CITIES (which I've been saying a lot) need real transportation. If we built that, the rest would start to naturally follow into place. We'd see rural rail as a byproduct. We use to have it in the US and it's gone now thanks to GM/Ford/big auto buying rail and bus lines and then killing them.

I'm looking back over my comment just to make sure I'm talking about cities. I really feel like your anti-rail stance goes to the hart of the problem. American hate rail and public transport for some fucked up nonsensical reason and it doesn't make any sense to me at all.

I lived without a car for five years in three different countries and I simply think American cities shouldn't require cars to be livable. I don't think that's unreasonable.

⬐ msla

I'm talking about the whole country, not just the cities. Why are you only talking about the cities?

What I'm really talking about is all old Americans, all across the country. I'm not focusing on any subset.

> American hate rail and public transport for some fucked up nonsensical reason

Nonsense. This is simply wrong, as talking to an American would tell you.

Wendover Productions has a good video that explains this and many other reasons why trains suck in the US

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mbEfzuCLoAQ

Spoiler: freight companies own most of the track

"Why Trains Suck in America" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mbEfzuCLoAQ

They have trains but all track is owned by freight train providers.

Here's a good overview why.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=mbEfzuCLoAQ

'Why Trains Suck in America' : https://youtu.be/mbEfzuCLoAQ

High speed passenger rail doesn't work in the US because freight is prioritized over moving people. That's the short version at least. I found this video to be a pretty good walkthrough - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mbEfzuCLoAQ

Why Trains Suck in America https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mbEfzuCLoAQ

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mbEfzuCLoAQ

⬐ djsumdog

This is a really incredible explanation. It'd be amazing if the United States had truly great rail options.

⬐ mindslight

AFAIK, freight companies are currently supposed to give Amtrak trains priority. I've taken the Southwest Chief (westbound) twice, and both times the worst of the delay came around ABQ where we were blocked on commuter traffic. Presumably there is no such priority vs other passenger traffic, and Amtrak had missed its time slot.

It's not so much that cities are unwalkable (he shows maps of Boston and NYC, two of the rare cities that one doesn't actually need a car). It's that most travelers aren't going to the city proper, and are going to want an automobile at the destination. It would be lunacy to tie yourself to the train's schedule, only to then have to rent a car at your destination.

⬐ djsumdog

The last mile is a huge problem. Every city I've lived in use to have trams (street cars). There were tons of them. Then GM convinced everyone they should have their own personal cars. US cities ditches trams. Hell Australian cities ditched trams (except for Melbourne who had city planners who weren't short sighted morons -- now they have the largest trams network in the world).

The use needs really good city rail. If you had that, intercity rail would be a non-brainer.

In Germany, the city of Jena has ~100k people. It has three intercity trains stations (one that has an ICE - high speed line), and .. I think three of four trams lines. That's for 100k people.

America is spread out, but that's hardly an excuse. The auto industry has a lot of blame in this.

⬐ mindslight

Calling it the "last mile" is a bit of a mischaracterization though. It isn't a need to just reach a single endpoint, but the ongoing transportation requirements in the visited destination.

Similarly, light rail is personally advantageous not because the trip itself is better than driving (likely it's not), but because it allows one to not be burdened with a car at their destination.