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Oh no! I have taken that route many times and it is usually full. That route services many areas in Montana, North Dakota where travel options are few other than driving. Those towns such as Malta and Rugby would go away. It also brings folks to Glacier National Park.
Yes, totally agree. As I said rural areas would lose here. The train is indeed full most of the year, but mid-winter becomes more a rural-stop train.
Instead of DB, we should hire the Slovak rail operator ZSSK (and pay it its subsidy). Slow but frequent trains, connecting basically all towns that in USA would have a Walmart (down to a deeper level classification than often even have tracks anymore in USA), several times a day, with buses filling the gaps. The population density of Slovakia is less than Pennsylvania's, but mobility for all ages much higher.
Amtrak has been generally been a disaster since its government inception in 1970-71. While they have kept certain trains running, they continue to run at a deficit. The recent plans to serve major areas only is only to reduce costs. It currently serves many rural residents on their long distance lines, but this plan will eliminate that. The Amtrak budget is very tiny to the entire US government transportation budget, but seems to be the loser on the budget line. Too bad.
The "problem" with most trains is they go from City Center to City Center. Most travelers don't start "in the city" or want to end "in the city".
Like most things in transit, we have the Last mile problem. You take the train, then you need to travel 1-2 hours "away" from the train station (at least) to get to where you really want to go. So you wind up renting a car. Car Rental (if they are available) in the city are more costly.
As most airport are outside the city some, Its just move convenient to fly and get a car (also on long distance it many hours shorter).
On Short Inter Urban trips, if you are going suburb to suburb location its often faster/easier/cheaper to drive.
The "last mile" problem occurs due to sprawl in the US. Although, one way to remedy this is to have an intermediary stop before the terminal station to drop passengers off just outside the city. For example, on the Eurostar route between London and Paris, the train sometimes make a stop in Ebbsfleet station, which is basically just a huge car park beside the A2 motorway. Rome has the Roma Tiburtina station, which is located right beside a motorway. I'm sure other cities in Europe have them as well.
The German railroad company, Deutsche Bahn, has closed 5% of all its stations since 2001, almost of all them in rural areas. The trend all over the world has gone toward trains connecting bigger cities and bypassing smaller towns and communities. Sometimes entire regional train services get culled, other times they just remove them as stops.
They get removed as stops because they don't get frequented enough to justify the loss of time a stop there represents. Why? Because time is rail's big disadvantage vs aviation and even driving. Every time you stop to let 2 people off at a stop and pick up 2 new people up is time the guy driving down the highway is gaining on you.
But it's even more pronounced with aviation. Trains are accepted between NYC and D.C. because the train ride of 3 to 3 1/2 hours doesn't seem more any worse than the hoopla involved in a flight from LGA or JFK to DCA. Add distance and that equation shifts because the plane is at its best once it's at cruising altitude. All the time on the ground is the problem, but that's a fixed time. In the air the plane becomes more attractive with every added mile.
And no-one's going to invest billions in rail, so people can take the train once or twice a year. Those things need to be paid off by frequent users and frequent users will make utilitarian calculations.
Amtrak is doing a non stop DC-NYC run thats a shade over 2 1/2 hours upon the arrival of the new Avelia Liberty train-sets end of '19.
The new trains can do 186mph or 220mph (if the tilting system is deactivated) but like we are all aware the lines they run on simply aren't built for those speeds without complete rebuilding
The Great Lakes megapolis is about 60 million (and climbing) and northeast (BosWash) is about 50 million.
Chicago should be the busiest train station in the country. Chicago-NYC, Chicago-Atlanta, Chicago-Los Angeles have all been reduced to novelty trips, throwing a few crumbs here and there to rail enthusiasts.
Chinese intercity rail has dozens of departures daily between similar distances.
If someone could find intercity rail stats from 1950 that would be interesting.
Except the Great Lakes Megapolis isn't a densely populated region. It's a ridiculously massive segment of two countries, and it goes as far north as Montreal, as far south as Louisville, and as far west as Kansas City. These cities are not interconnected in the same way as the BosWash corridor, nor regionally speaking would anyone consider metro areas that are hundreds of miles away from the Great Lakes to be a Great Lakes city.
Historically speaking, cities like Chicago and St. Louis used to have the busiest train stations in the country, but Amtrak travel is frankly not efficient in terms of time. It takes longer to take the train from Chicago to St. Louis than it takes to drive at this point. Even with the "higher speed rail" that's being implemented on the line, all it's doing is matching a non-delayed car trip. Amtrak wins on its price point and that's about it these days.
Had America bothered to invest in its rail system decades ago, then we wouldn't be seeing this decline. Instead the focus has been on the car, and it's almost too little too late at this point. At least outside of the most densely connected corridors. Going back to the this idea of a Great Lakes Megapolis, Amtrak doesn't even run service between all the major cities in this megaregion. The ship has sailed in the area.
The new trains can do 186mph or 220mph (if the tilting system is deactivated) but like we are all aware the lines they run on simply aren't built for those speeds without complete rebuilding
We can have the fastest trains on earth but unless the track is modernized and dedicated to passenger rail instead of freight we will continue to creep at a snail's pace.
Our rail system now is crazy -- like going from Paris to Marseilles by train routed through Zagreb -- because the routes are so screwed up. From ABQ, I can take a night train to LA -- get on board around 5, have dinner, go to sleep, wake up and have breakfast in LA. Not bad. But God help me if I want to take a train to Denver or El Paso, I have to go to Chicago first...takes most of a week. I can't get to Phoenix at all. No wonder people don't use Amtrak.
We can have the fastest trains on earth but unless the track is modernized and dedicated to passenger rail instead of freight we will continue to creep at a snail's pace.
My mom sat on the side track for almost 2 hrs last Saturday while higher priority trains went by. Turned a 1.5 hr car/train ride between Chicago and Milwaukee into an almost 4 hour trip.
Amtrak's woes are made worse by the fact that so much of their track-miles aren't even theirs. They're at the mercy of whatever freight railroad owns and maintains them. And a lot of the distance is covered with just a single set of tracks, so that when trains approach each other from opposite directions, one of them needs to pull over and wait. (And if it's a freight train and an Amtrak train that are heading towards each other, guess which one the freight company is going to make wait?)
High speed rail is all well and good, but it requires nearly straight tracks and grade separation. Thus, it's very expensive. But just building reasonably straight tracks, with two sets next to each other, would make the service far more punctual (no more having to pull over and wait for the opposite-direction train to pass you) and speed it up enough to make it at least somewhat more competitive than it is now.
I'd like to see a national system be constructed such that its routes would generally parallel the "major" interstates, i.e. the ones whose route numbers end in 0 (east-west) or 5 (north-south). There would be 10 north-south routes and 8 east-west routes, and such a network would serve nearly every major city (and a bunch of non-major ones as well) in the country.
I'm in the Northeast Corridor. I look at lightly used service like the Vermonter, Ethan Allen, and the DownEaster and wonder why it exists. What's needed is high-ish speed rail in the corridor. The infrastructure in Connecticut and on to NY Penn is horrible. Boston to NY Penn should be two hours so nobody would dream of driving or flying. NY Penn to DC is much better but even that needs a very big investment.
There are limited places in the United States with that kind of population density. California, obviously. Elsewhere, rail should be commuter rail, not long haul rail.
Old Wealthy New Englanders who arent in a rush.
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