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Los Angeles has more track with higher average speeds.
If you compare the U.S. to the U.K., even scaled for population difference, I think you'll find the U.S. crushes them with combined LRT/HRT coverage.
What???? I’ve done a ton of business in the UK. Mass transit in the UK is a couple orders of magnitude better than the US. Half the country lives inside the circle from London that extends to Birmingham. That’s ~ 100 miles. The rail service inside that circle is extremely comprehensive. I’ve had lots of business trips where I stayed in London and took trains to various cities for meetings as a day trip. Plus Eurostar service to Europe. I’d never dream of flying from London to Paris. It takes at least twice as long to fly. Kings Cross/St Pancras and Gare Du Nord are centrally located with great subway systems to get there. Ditto Brussels and Amsterdam. It’s significantly better than NYC and that’s easily the #1 mass transit system in the United States.
What???? I’ve done a ton of business in the UK. Mass transit in the UK is a couple orders of magnitude better than the US. Half the country lives inside the circle from London that extends to Birmingham. That’s ~ 100 miles. The rail service inside that circle is extremely comprehensive. I’ve had lots of business trips where I stayed in London and took trains to various cities for meetings as a day trip. Plus Eurostar service to Europe. I’d never dream of flying from London to Paris. It takes at least twice as long to fly. Kings Cross/St Pancras and Gare Du Nord are centrally located with great subway systems to get there. Ditto Brussels and Amsterdam. It’s significantly better than NYC and that’s easily the #1 mass transit system in the United States.
I guess, the big question for me is, why are they and many other nations able to do so much better at transit than we are?
I guess, the big question for me is, why are they and many other nations able to do so much better at transit than we are?
Population density is a big factor. England is slightly smaller than NY State, but you'd have to add the entire population of California to NY to get the same population density as England. That makes driving long distances more feasible in the US than it is in England and more importantly, it makes running trains in all directions much less feasible.
So we have a less densely populated country, with much longer distances between population centers. This means that we'd have to build much more rail than they would to achieve the same service levels. On a per person basis it's much more costly. The only country as large as ours to do it is China and they have over 3 times as many people. Plus they are likely going to struggle mightily with infrastructure in just a few years because maintaining is harder than building and China isn't known for good maintenance.
Population density is a big factor. England is slightly smaller than NY State, but you'd have to add the entire population of California to NY to get the same population density as England. That makes driving long distances more feasible in the US than it is in England and more importantly, it makes running trains in all directions much less feasible.
So we have a less densely populated country, with much longer distances between population centers. This means that we'd have to build much more rail than they would to achieve the same service levels. On a per person basis it's much more costly. The only country as large as ours to do it is China and they have over 3 times as many people. Plus they are likely going to struggle mightily with infrastructure in just a few years because maintaining is harder than building and China isn't known for good maintenance.
Wealth. While Americans were buying houses and cars in the late 40s thru 60s most Europeans lived in social housing because WWII was much much worse in Europe. Thus those countries were wealthy enough to embark on big infrastructure projects but not wealthy enough for most to be able to afford a car. So they built/maintained transit. Even today median income in the UK is roughly equal to West Virginia. Spain is very poor by American standards.
China right now is in a similar boat where they have the resources to build big projects but the average Chinese can not afford a car.
What???? I’ve done a ton of business in the UK. Mass transit in the UK is a couple orders of magnitude better than the US. Half the country lives inside the circle from London that extends to Birmingham. That’s ~ 100 miles. The rail service inside that circle is extremely comprehensive. I’ve had lots of business trips where I stayed in London and took trains to various cities for meetings as a day trip. Plus Eurostar service to Europe. I’d never dream of flying from London to Paris. It takes at least twice as long to fly. Kings Cross/St Pancras and Gare Du Nord are centrally located with great subway systems to get there. Ditto Brussels and Amsterdam. It’s significantly better than NYC and that’s easily the #1 mass transit system in the United States.
Yeah Intercity trains in Europe are great.
But this thread is about interurban rail systems.
Which Birmingham loses to places like Phoenix and Charlotte.
Population density is a big factor. England is slightly smaller than NY State, but you'd have to add the entire population of California to NY to get the same population density as England. That makes driving long distances more feasible in the US than it is in England and more importantly, it makes running trains in all directions much less feasible.
So we have a less densely populated country, with much longer distances between population centers. This means that we'd have to build much more rail than they would to achieve the same service levels. On a per person basis it's much more costly. The only country as large as ours to do it is China and they have over 3 times as many people. Plus they are likely going to struggle mightily with infrastructure in just a few years because maintaining is harder than building and China isn't known for good maintenance.
A while back I remember a "AMERICA SHOULD BE EMBARRASSED" themed social media post that pointed out two Chinese cities that were the same distance apart as Chicago and NYC and of course how many more train departures there were, etc.
I get that if you want to look smart and cosmopolitan on the internet, you are supposed to make dramatic proclamations like this. Saying things like "wow San Diego has a pretty good transit system for a metro of its size" isn't winning you any sophistication points.
However, one must ask themselves-if Europe had hundreds of miles of vast deserts, territories similar to Montana, Wyoming, Minnesota, Colorado, Utah, etc., would they have even bothered connecting the whole continent by rail (like the United States did at a relatively early point in history when any kind of travel through these areas was tedious and even dangerous)?
What???? I’ve done a ton of business in the UK. Mass transit in the UK is a couple orders of magnitude better than the US. Half the country lives inside the circle from London that extends to Birmingham. That’s ~ 100 miles. The rail service inside that circle is extremely comprehensive. I’ve had lots of business trips where I stayed in London and took trains to various cities for meetings as a day trip. Plus Eurostar service to Europe. I’d never dream of flying from London to Paris. It takes at least twice as long to fly. Kings Cross/St Pancras and Gare Du Nord are centrally located with great subway systems to get there. Ditto Brussels and Amsterdam. It’s significantly better than NYC and that’s easily the #1 mass transit system in the United States.
Mass transit in the UK is overpriced relative to its European and American peers. It's a big topic in the British newspapers, especially rail fares. I think the NYC Metro Area ranks pretty well compared to global peers with transit usage - the US does deserve some credit here.
Of course Seattle's rail system is small. I say that all the time.
Commute stats are a stand-in for the total-ridership numbers we don't have. They're the only apples-to-apples comparison, and the only one that's scientifically per-capita. They factor a margin of error. I acknowledge that commute usage doesn't totally correspond to non-commute usage.
APTA ridership stats are done to different standards by different agencies, using very different methods (tickets, door triggers, various ways of counting transfers, etc.). System boundaries are different from normal geographic boundaries. They're useful only to a point.
For 2019, APTA had a 2:1 ratio for total transit ridership in Seattle's metro area, despite SD not being much smaller (including Oceanside for SD, and a handful systems in the Seattle metro). For commutes, the Census ACS had Seattle's metro at 10.7% and SD at 2.8%.
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