It isn’t universally awful in the US. Washington, DC’s system is great and should be the cornerstone of any revitalization that isn’t so reliant on the federal government.
DC's system is OK. It suffers from being both a commuter rail system and a city transit system mashed together. It needs more tracks so that maintenance can be performed without massive delays and so express trains can be run. Coverage is lacking. It's good if you're going places it serves, but there are a lot of places it doesn't go, like Georgetown. And the hub-and-spoke model makes it quite painful for a relatively decentralized city. Going between, say, Bethesda and Tysons is physically possible but takes ages because you have to go all the way downtown first.
It gets a lot of things right and is great if it has a good route for the trips you want to make when you want to make it, but mostly it shines because the situation is so much worse in any other American city that's not New York and maybe Chicago.
Trains are not an efficient use of time for travel within the US.
The US is huge. If you were take a 300mph (nearing 500kph) train (which would make it the fastest train in the world), it would be OVER an 8 hour trip from New York to LA. (Again, about 2500 miles or 4000k)
Even in some of the densest areas, the trip times end up being pretty long due to distances: dc to New York? 600 kilometers or almost 400 miles.
People aren't taking trains from Madrid to Tallinn, either.
The proper point of comparison here is more medium length trips. There's no reason not to have a high speed train for Portland - Seattle - Vancouver, for example.
This is irrelevant, though, since the size of the country isn’t what determines where people go. It’s not like trains got less practical when Alaska got admitted to the union.
Sprawling, low density, single use zoning, combined with parking minimums, have much more to do with it.
The question was what the train network is like outside the cities. And the answer is we don’t use trains because it is not efficient for the scale of the country. This is correct.
Most people ARE interested in coast to coast travel. It is called flyover country for a reason.
There are a few exceptions like the Baltimore corridor, or the San Francisco peninsula, and these are in fact serviced by good trains.
Train travel from LA to NY wouldn't be efficient, but there are plenty of population poles like LA to SF where train travel would make sense and a network of those could make cross country travel feasible if not in a hurry. But as the GP pointed out, it is not that useful if you can arrive to LA by train, if then when you arrive you need to rent a car before you've even left the station.
It is always shocking to me when I land at an airport in the US and there no public transport available.
It is common for conversations about good local public transport to have a retort in some sub-thread about how big the US is, as if the feasibility of long distance travel affected the feasibility of other modes of local travel.
You mention the SF peninsula. When I first moved there, I lived in the westside of SF and had friends living in Sunnyvale. On a weekend, it took 4 hs to get to Mountain View (~40miles, at the time, checking now it seems like Caltrain weekend service might have improved, so the same trip would take about 2hs), and then had to be picked up by car to finish the rest of the trip. It was faster (~3:30hs, if more expensive) to go from Paris to Amsterdam (>300miles) by train.
I see your point, but consider this: getting to and through a major airport is a huge pain the ass. Trains also tend to take you to city centers more often than airports, which almost always need to be a significant distance from anything interesting due to the noise.
Let's take a hypothetical scenario:
- 5 hours flight time (average for NY and LA), 2 hours on each side to get to and from the airport to the actual city. Total is 9 hours.
- 10 hours train time and 1 hour on each end (which is generous given the proximity of train stations to city centers), 12 hours.
The difference is not that much, and a train ride is so much less faff than a flight that it's not even funny. Little to no security theater, you don't get fondled by security agents, you don't have to stand hours in line with silly passport controls and luggage checkins/pickups. And the list goes on.
A good train infrastructure can be vastly more pleasant than a good air infrastructure. Where air wins out is intercontinental flights where trains are truly not an option anymore.
Eh, you're overselling it. Even in a hypothetical world with a 12 hour train trip, it still loses to an 8 hour plane trip.
You're losing an entire day on the train. You still have to deal with luggage pains, now you're eating on the transportation which will be inferior, and will have similar problems with last mile transportation.
Flying is currently not a great 8 hour experience, but it beats losing an entire day. I can do LA to NY for a weekend trip. (I personally wouldn't but there are some that would for sure)
Trains can and do make sense even in the US, and we do ourselves great harm by underinvesting in them, but there will always be a place for plane travel.
How long would it take from New York to Philadelphia, or Boston to DC? How long would it take between San Diego and SF? What about a train between Chicago and Detroit?
We're building a fast train from Toronto to Quebec city in Canada. It's going to be a lot more comfortable and way faster than driving. A MP in my family takes the train from Montreal to Ottawa very frequently, they don't want to bother with parking in the capital and they can work on the train.
I 100% agree trains might be underfunded in the US. The LA to NY flight will stay preferred to a hypothetical high speed train due to time. It is unlikely ever to be less than 10 hours.
For train rides under 4 hours, and if you can get trains running smoothly (less stops), the time spent on the train and the overall integration of trains is a lot better as a mode of transportation.
NY to Philadelphia is relatively fast. There was a faster train on that route even before Acela (Metroliner). Boston to DC is a fairly long day by train and, while I've done it, no business person who is really on a schedule is going to vs. taking a pretty short flight. (And, if you're really going city to city, both cities have close-in airport options.)
The suburban rail in Boston is very much commuter rail. I live about 50 miles west (pretty near a station though I have to drive) and I'll absolutely take it for a 9-5ish urban event. But it's completely useless for anything in the evening.
Different cities. Different transport situations. I'm not convinced I would take commuter rail in and out of where I live to Boston even if it ran more frequently. Chicken and egg and all that but it's empty in the evening as it is.
Even the reverse commute in the evening is annoying but then it's quite straightforward to go home. There are usually reasonable parking options. Personally, not sure I'd use it outside of rush-hour in and back.
Its good in NYC for american standards. For european standards the NYC subway is abominable. The smells, the grime, the homeless, its honestly like visiting the 6th ring of hell. Source: I am a european living in NYC.
