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this post was submitted on 01 Jul 2025
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I want trains so people can have cross country road trips on the weekend and not have to stay in their small hometown for the rest of their lives
I lived in Connecticut. I used to live in a city outside the capital, with transport available all the time. Then I moved to the sticks, 50 miles away. Same state, just the most rural part.
In a group I did, they showed a woman being a success story from the program. In the video, she was using our bus systems in rhe cities. 4/5 people chirped up and aggreed, "hey we don't have busses in Connecticut this video is fake". I was like, no yeah, we have busses, just not here.
So many people I met in that area, are born, live, work, retire, and die, without ever stepping foot out of their county.
It's sad.
to be fair, public transit doesn't cover even close to the majority of any non-east coast state
It's not sad. It's called right to self-determination, and it means that people are free to live a boring life.
somebody never leaving the place where they were born is not evidence for or against self-determination.
If anything it's evidence there is absence of social mobility and opportunity in those areas.
No you're right, it's not sad a person doesn't get to travel. I myself have never left New England, but I've been all over it. What's sad is they don't know other cultures or way of life, then become fearful of them, then hateful, and dismissive.
It's a pathway to ignorance of you aren't a learning seeking person. Those people in rhe class didn't know our state had public transport, and actively thought it was fake, the video no longer resonated with them, as it didn't represent them. That's whats sad.
If you have access and the ability to do something and choose not to, that's self-determination. If you don't have the choice then it isn't.
yeah, fair.
No, sorry, only cities can have trains, because traditional wisdom™©®¹ says the physics of trains literally stop working outside cities.
If you tried to do something like that, youvwoukd risk damaging the fundamental laws of reality! Imagine if, like, the weak force or gravity or the ability for oxygen to form ionic bonds just got suddenly 30% weaker. You train people are such blind mad zealots, that you would risk this.
¹a Chrysler brand!
This is even funnier to me because where I'm from, trains in cities aren't really a big thing, but trains BETWEEN cities very much are.
This map is outdated as the Lelle-Pärnu route isn't currently serviced, and missing some stops, but this is our railway map:
Tartu has 2 stations as far as I know, Tallinn has multiple, the other places the train stops are all small enough that only one station exists. Entire point of it is to get people into and out of the cities. In the cities we have buses and (only in Tallinn) trams, used to also have trolleys. But only the capital, Tallinn, is a place where you would take a train from one station to another within the city itself.
Most of these places are villages and small towns. The population of Puka is like 500. Orava is around 200.
Now we just need the Tartu-Viljandi-Pärnu route and maybe a Narva-Tartu route, as both would be used by a lot of students (Tartu is a university city), but unfortunately geography doesn't favour my idea, there's protected wetlands between Pärnu and Viljandi as well as between Tartu and Viljandi
That's just not reasonably possible in the U.S. If I wanted to go Orlando to Detroit on a train that averaged 100mph without stopping it would take 12-13 hours, not including the trips to and from the train stations boarding etc. To California you'd have to throw another 1,000 miles on to that, so an extra 10 hours. 26-44 hours of travel on a weekend trip sounds horrible. If I were going for a week, sure. (Also a train without stops is hypothetical, it would take longer even if the train could go 150mph)
150mph is pretty slow for a decent cross country high speed rail service. For example the Chinese HSR hits Max speeds of 240mph with the single longest bit of track covering just over 1800 miles so not only is it possible its already been done.
OP means It’s impossible for Americans because we’re just so dumb.
China's high speed rail loses enormous amounts of money. Even when you consider the secondary and tertiary economic effects. Even the Chinese government has more or less given up on it.
All public transit doesn't make money. Even the United States interstate system hasn't made a single penny in profit.
Public transit shouldn't need to make a profit. It's cool if it does, but it inherently shouldn't need to.
The benefits of making people travel for jobs and places to spend money generates more tax revenue and more money for businesses than if they were stuck at home otherwise.
Precisely this. "Hey you need to make money" is what's effectively killed Amtrak, and it killed passenger rail in much of the US (what wasn't torn up by highway building).
What do you mean given up? They're still laying more rails and running more trains than ever. Even running dozens of trains a day, like 95% of the time the trains are fully booked, or it's just soft sleepers and maybe standing available if you try to book the day of, or even a few days in advance for longer routes.
Emotionally dumb. Self gimped in ever way. It's all quite performative of us to collectively fail to accomplish anything as a nation.
So leave Saturday morning say 8, take a train at 9, get there around 9pm, get to your hotel by 10pm go to bed by 11pm get up at 6. Go have your breakfast meeting, leave for the train station around 8 to leave by 9am to get back by 9pm to get home, get ready for bed and go to work in the morning.
That is not a weekend trip to me. That's a sitting in transportation for an entire weekend and not doing much of anything.
Sounds about the same as flying. Took 12 hrs to get from Cleveland OH to Venice FL. Took a redeye to Chicago, had a layover then took a flight from there to Sarasota FL. Left around 2AM and got in around 2PM.
Airplanes travel faster, but the whole system moves slower. Can't say whether a train system would be better though...
Update: for shits and giggles, I looked at getting a ticket to Chicago on our rail system. The fastest route was 10HRs and it involves driving to Indianapolis and taking the shortest direct train from there. To put that in comparison, my drive to Chicago is ~5.5hrs. Greyhound Bus gets me there in 9 hrs.
So no, it's not even close. That's how bad the rail network is here. If you want to get somewhere, you need almost 3x the time to drive, you'd still need to drive for hours, and the cheapest ticket is 55 bucks one way.
Jeez not sure why that was so rough Today's flights
Like why would anyone take that third flight with the stop? Just show up slightly later for cheaper... "I left 8 hours later and got their 20 mins later". Airlines are crazy sometimes
The airlines are just showing your all the options. There's a plane going to Denver and a plane leaving from Denver to your destination. The system is not doing anything to determine if that's a good idea or not, it's just showing you there are connected dots there. It's not a planned itinerary that someone decided on.
They said average speed. Those max speeds are only reachable along certain parts of the track, sometimes straight up unachievable between some stops. Mostly they travel well below their max speeds. I would not be surprised if the average speed is not that far from 150 for most of the lines they service, though I don't have any numbers on hand.
I don't think they literally meant journeys from one end of the country to the other, but rather travelling distances of 100-500 km. Maybe even up to 1000 km would be preferable by rail, especially with night trains.
I do agree that if you for some reason specifically want to travel from Orlando to Detroit, plane is by far the superior option. But Orlando to Miami? Or Orlando to Atlanta? High speed rail would be perfect.
The train from to Miami has been quoted and attempted over and over since I was about 7 growing up in the greater Orlando area. 28 years later and it's still in talks. They tried to connect Tampa to Daytona through Orlando. (All they needed to do was follow I4 as the road already goes there.). This is as far as that has gotten: (15 years on that alone)
Yeah, and the problem isn't the trains, it's the politics, and ultimately the voters.
The train would make things better, and we could build it, but the will to do so isn't there.
High speed rail. Japan's is 200mph.
Musk's hyper loop was a scam but various others tests were 288 mph. Could go higher.
Japan is smaller than California, with several times the population density.
Reframe your thoughts as: taxpayers per mile of track. Then begin to understand.
Japan still runs trains to areas where there's 1 village every 15-20 miles. Single track, that splits at the odd unmanned platform so people can board and trains can pass each other, and they have a train like every 10-15 minutes.
The USSR didn't even bother with the platforms sometimes, just had a guy driving a locomotive by a bunch of villages every few hours, stopping any time he saw a farmer who had to take some cows to market or whatever.
Roads are expensive to build and maintain, cars are expensive to build and maintain. Every trip taken on a train or bike instead of a car saves the tax payers money.
Japan finds solutions, America finds excuses.
You have enough taxpayers to build 26 lane highways in California, but you're telling me you don't have enough money to build a 2 lane HSR?
Sorry, I'm not American. Looking at it from the outside. There are a lot of things America can do better.
But from a purely math perspective, it's a good metric to explain why Japan has what it has.
They have it because they spent more money on rail and less on highways compared to the US. They chose the better infrastructure.
If you tax billionaires more you can pay for the high speed rail
Or healthcare. Or whatever else. Yes.
But you've already lost the war against the capital class and are left dreaming.
Sure thing bub
It's not like everyone in the country needs to ride it daily. The US has plenty of people. You connect population centers. And if you can build on flat land rather than Japan's mountains, you're on easy mode. Really you're the one that needs to reframe things.
Asian high speed rail says otherwise. Check out chinas glow up from 2008 to 2022
So about 14 hours each way plus traveling to the form the trainstation to your final destination. So I would assume ~30 hours of travel on a weekend. Nope, still rediculous. Also that's a couple hundred miles shorter than Orlando to Denver. Cross country weekend trip just isn't practical without taking a plane.
The G75 says 11 HRs. These stations are in the center of town with walk on service (takes me north of an hour to get to any airport in the states, plus another hour through security).
The flight from Orlando to Denver is certainly faster at closer to 5 HR (plus airport travel), as its a direct flight overland. But it's five hours in a tiny seat versus 11 hours in a sleeper car.
You're also moving far fewer people - between 140 and 230 two to three times a day - compared to the thousands of people you can move on an active train line round the clock.
On what planet is a five hour flight each way practical for a weekend getaway?
The airline solution reduced comfort, increased individual costs, drastically increased pollution, and still didn't achieve the stated goal.
I never said the plane was practical for a weekend getaway either. My response was that this "I want trains so people can have cross country road trips on the weekend" just wasnt practical to the majority of cases. A lot of people are saying HSR would be good for interstate trips, and yes they would. Even next state over.
But right now it's set up horrible so it is more expensive and takes longer for most even semi long trips. Like this
Cheapest and fastest route is to drive. Once you factor in everything it'll take to get into an airport and out, and you have a vehicle while your there. So most Americans compare prices to that and say it's better to just drive. It'd be nice if there was a 3 hour train that covered that for $50. Trips like that Id love
You deliberately selected a pair of destinations with one of the longest possible lines, then complained that said travel was "too long".
The US has a policy of de-prioritizing passenger rail in favor of commercial shipping. If you're a lump of coal or a box of Amazon merch, you make the Orlando to Charleston run significantly faster.
This is a result of domestic policy, not material efficiency. You can make the Beijing to Shanghai route - 819 mi - in around 5.5 hrs, the same time it would take you to cover the 380 mi car ride from Orlando to Charleston. Twice as fast as an American bus over less than half the distance.
That's because the state and municipal governments decided to build a major HSR artery between these two cities. A deliberate policy choice.
As another counterpoint, the Amtrak route from DC to NYC (238 mi) is a 3HR train ride that takes you straight into the center of Manhattan. The Lincoln Tunnel and the Washington Bridge alone can take north of an hour to get through on rush hour. Nevermind riding a car up from Virginia.
Why does DC/NYC have a high speed artery while Orland/Charleston not? It certainly isn't because people don't want to travel up and down the Atlantic Coast in large numbers, particularly during tourist season. But the "quality" of the passengers - working class schmucks, rather than Wall Street business goons and DC politicians - is significantly different.
You’re trying to be right about trains. I’m trying to get sheltered people to see the world.