Here in Canada we have more former abandoned rail then active rail lines. And around where I am people are fighting to stop the old rail lines being used as biking and walking trails. YAY
I live in Jersey, and we have tons of them. And fortunately they are turning some into pedestrian paths, rails-to-trails style, but we have literal (albeit old) infrastructure for rail lines between places that are only accessible via rail by going to Newark, changing, and hopping on a different line. We’re talking hours for a 30 mile ride.
I need me some eminent domain. There’s some major hubs west of Newark that you can only drive between.
But yeah, seeing them turned into trails is at least better than nothing. But I want moooorrreee.
There are some trail networks in the eastern provances that allow people to go snowmobiling for weeks at a time on groomed trails (former rail lines) and I have known people that is what they did for their vacation each year, stopping in at all the small towns on the way.
Everyone support Murkan Cowboy Capitalism, and get out there and drive big clumsy SUVs!
Wanna be even more upset, fellow Americans? Take a look at what we used to have:
It was so widespread that I’ve never been to a small town, in the region I grew up in, that didn’t have an old passenger rail station that was repurposed into something else. Your map starts well into the 1900s, my area started being built up hundreds of years before that. Shit my house is almost 100 years older, alone.
My current small town has THREE, ffs, but no, this rail can only be used for freight, because reasons
Metro Atlanta’s only passenger rail station that still exists, a tiny thing on Peachtree Road in Brookwood (just north of Midtown), was originally a commuter stop on the way to the big, beautiful stations downtown. They were all torn down decades ago.
I’ve just realized I don’t even know how many traditional train stations (including ancillary commuter ones, but not including streetcars or the modern subway system) the city/metro area even had. It’s gotta be dozens, at least.
Phoenix Arizona literally doesnt have a train station at all. You have to go 30 miles / 48km south to a suburb to catch a train and even then your destinations are heavily limited as you can only board a train from there 3 times a week.
Its a massive building downtown that just doesnt, supposedly because of failed union negotiations 3+ decades ago. Yeah we just let corporations get rid of everything for “efficiency” of cheap roads.
“Trains wouldn’t work in the US, we’re too spread out”
Meanwhile, we did have a near-ubiquitous rail network a century ago and destroyed it.
Meanwhile, the US road network is the single most economically expensive undertaking in human history and has achieved complete ubiquity in almost every lived location in the country, all of it costing more per mile than your average rail line, much of it literally poured over old rail line.
Meanwhile, Europe is the size of the US and achieves equivalent rail density with far less investment.
Meanwhile, China is larger than the US, has an order of magnitude more people, an even more dispersed population, and achieved high speed rail ubiquity in less than two decades.
Anyone who tells you ubiquitous rail cannot work in the US because of our size and density is either disingenuous, misled, or ignorant.
edit - Or they’re doing a bit!
Reminds me of my home city where people argued that there was no way to incorporate urban rail into the city, but luckily the town is crisscrossed by bike trails. The bike trails were literally the rail bed from our urban train system that got torn out in the 50s.
I love and use rails-to-trails myself, but I can’t shake the feeling that they’re essentially motornormative culture scapegoating cyclists to bury any possible hope of reviving rail networks. The carbrained planner says “No you can’t put the rails back in, you’d displace the cyclists!” While displacing cyclists every time they choose to exclude cycling infrastructure on streets.
I have similar feelings bit ido tell myself this: If nothing else rails to trails maintains the right of way. The carbrained city planner says you’ll displace the cyclists, but in 30 years that planner will be retired or dead. What would kill railroads forever would be carving up the ROW and selling it off.
They also feel like something designed by someone who hasn’t ridden a bike since they were 16.
I get it. “Might was well” use land where the right-of-way is already clear, etc. But a miles of straightaways followed by gentle curves designed for a train don’t make for a very engaging bike ride. I’m sure this could exist, but I haven’t been on any that would actually be useful as bicycle infrastructure. They mostly go from nowhere to nowhere and there are few options to get on or off the ‘trail’.
While I agree with the guilt of enjoying rail trails
- I no longer cycle on them: it’s not enjoyable because they’re so crowded
- we have some that are very useful for getting places, usually train stations
- the one across my town goes through neighborhoods, so I’m sure they’re happy it’s not trains
- there’s a plan to build my towns third train station, and one of the requirements is connecting the rail trails
- I realized just last summer that my favorite diner is only 1 mile walk if I take the new rail trail!
Occasionally, in my most cynical moments, I have the same thought.
My Uncle Jimmy assembles tires at the plant downtown. Why do you want to put him out of a job?!?!
for some reason i always thought that the US is much larger than europe, but no, they’re roughly equal size.
The biggest difference between the United States and Europe is their respective population densities. Trains are less of a convenience and more of necessity. If everyone had a vehicle, it would be nearly impossible just to drive down the road.
the only cool part is the cool place they all converge.
The funny thing is you look at the map and yeah it looks like we have less rail however overall we have more rail total.
US 136,729 miles
EU 124,895 miles
But I know neither one of these two also include light rail in here, narrow gauge rail, etc, which US does have quite extensively and it moves quite a few more people within the cities than cross the country.
The map only includes intercity passenger rail. Most of that 136,000 miles is freight rail that’s not on this map
People online claim we have a great freight rail network but I’m not convinced
- it’s heavily skewed toward bulk good like ore, that dont have a deadline or schedule, and very few shippers. Great efficiency numbers for spotty service
- we’re running on 100 year old infrastructure
- they’ve just let the rail rot, too often pulling up the second track or letting it get too rough for passenger rail
- they run ever larger trains, despite not building sidings big enough - cheaping out at the cost of delaying everyone else
Honestly this is why miles of rail is a pointless metric.
Number of people moved, how quickly, how far, how affordably, and distributed by population matter more.
I’ve lived in the US and Europe. Growing up in the US, the nearest public transit, a bus, was about 9 miles away. The roads did not have sidewalks for the vast majority of that and the roads were not designed for bikes. Essentially there was no available transit. If I somehow made it to this stop it would be another 1.5 hr bus ride with transfers to the nearest amtrak station. This wasn’t even the most rural part of the US. 8th most populous state in the country and about 20 miles from the 5th most populous city in that state.
I’ve yet to find anything like that anywhere in the country I’m currently in. Even going on hikes purposefully away from everything there’s still closer public transit than growing up.
I’ve been to plenty of places in the US where you wouldn’t find a bus stop for 50 miles.
And this isn’t even getting into how expensive and slow US rail is. That’s only talking about access.
Distance traveled is a huge thing. Also transit depends on where you live. In the city I live in there is a bus close to pretty much everywhere. They have last mile transit, light rail, and heavy rail as well,l. Servicing 1400 sq miles, 89 miles of light rail, 43 miles of heavy rail. That’s only one area here. I didn’t own a car for 9 years. In the 8 years since then the system has only gotten better, for example when I used to ride transit on Sundays there were only buses every hour and then they stopped after 5. That’s no longer the issue. Anyways. Honestly this argument of the US transit vs EU transit really doesn’t matter. They are far different places with far different needs. I can tell you that rail would work for some things, but definitely not every place.
Yes I’ve traveled to cities in the US as well, but that’s not what I’m saying at all.
These are not far different places with far different needs. Both people need transport. Both people need to get food, medicine, go to school, etc. However one group is significantly served while the other must rely on cars. If you lack the capital to access cars then you are destitute and practically locked into poverty. The percentage of the population with reasonable access to public transit ia significantly lower.
I’m not saying my old neighborhood need a rail connection per se, but it should have reliable transit that connects it to the major hub and provides rail access through that connection.
The US used to have this
Meanwhile in europe the TGV bombards at 320 kmh standard speed (or 350mph on fun days) while anemicans goes at 60…
Don’t compare dirt tracks to the autobahn!
Yeah, but we have Acela “high speed rail”
- meets the definition by traveling 150mph … for < 50 miles
- I think trip average Boston—>NYC is now up to 79mph
Is that US one real?
It’s worse than that, because it doesn’t show service level. The northeast corridor (Boston—>nyc—>dc) have great train frequency (even then they need to run more trains on holidays).
I believe the long distance routes are like one train per day. You’d have to be really dedicated or really desperate to deal with such slow unreliable trains which such low frequency. I do believe they’re there only to preserve track and collect votes rather than be useful. At this rate maybe in another century ….
For now yes, but the one from Oklahoma city to Fort Worth TX will be ending in 90 days.
The trains anywhere in the US except the Northeast are far too slow, infrequent, and unreliable to plan around. Delays frequently are measured in 10s of hours on Amtrak.
At best it’s inaccurate. I see several missing lines that I know exist because I lived near them.
Old map, perhaps?
I see several missing lines that I know exist because I lived near them.
It’s also missing every single rail line north of Copenhagen. The map is apparently a simplification on both continents.
Virginia, by any chance? I’m pretty there are state routes not on this Amtrak map
Or commuter rail? It’s hard to tell but I don’t see anything I recognize as commuter or metro rail. This looks like Amtrak intercity only.
All three state supported VA rail routes are on this map, along with the Cardinal, the Crescent, and the I-95 Amtrak routes. The S-Line isn’t, but it also doesn’t exist yet. Same with the Commonwealth Corridor. VRE shares tracks with Amtrak, so it is there, but does not have any visible effect on this map.
More likely a new map, and the lines you’re thinking of have been shut down since the last time you checked.
(Or you’re thinking of train tracks in general, not specifically ones carrying passenger service, which is what this is a map of.)
Not that old. Between when Katrina wiped out the New Orleans-Jacksonville route in 2005 and when they partially restored the route in 2025. The only missing line I see is the Atlantic City line, which was out of service for about a week after Hurricane Sandy in 2012 and about 8 months for signal modernization work in 2018-2019, so it is probably an accurate map of the available services in late 2018. It’s worth noting that most of the lines on the map have one train per day per direction or fewer also, so if anything this map undersells the difference between US rail service and European rail service
I think it’s only Amtrak, the main Intercity passenger rail service. There’s a ton more freight rail, and hundreds of smaller regional rail services.
It’s not just Amtrak, you can see Metra, LIRR, Metro North, and MBTA routes on the map around their respective cities. And I’m not convinced there are hundreds of regional rail services in America, maybe if you count heritage railroads, but even then I think you won’t be getting too far above 100 and those don’t actually take people from point A to point B generally, so it’s arguable that they count as passenger rail service
Overlaying the freight map over the passenger one is even more depressing
You have trains, a shitton, but “public transport isn’t profitable”
Wouldn’t air travel account for more transcontinental passenger traffic than cars or trains?
For sure. Few people will go the distance if they could fly. But think of all the connecting cities and towns. Rail can be faster and cheaper for a few hundred miles. Think of the long distance routes more as many segments of a few hundred miles, and a few crazies that go the distance
Opel corsa?
Yes, the most American of cars, a small German hatch that isn’t sold in the US
Europe is rife with trains because of war.
The train single handedly changed warfare in Europe and was one of the most influential reasons that standing armies became a thing.
That non-military people and goods can be carried on them is a happy accident.
The “relative” peace of the USA during the 1800s is one reason we have so few trains.
Clausewitz is a good start if you want more infos
The “relative” peace of the USA during the 1800s is one reason we have so few trains.
No it isn’t. The US was absolutely full of trains by the end of the 1800s. Our map looked a lot like Europe’s until after WWII, when we started ripping them out!
If only there was some kind of thing happening nonstop in Europe making their use more efficacious and strategically advantageous.
Lots of non-stop wars in Europe after WWII?
The US was built on railroads, we just ripped up and paved over most of our passenger service in favor of cars. A lot of highways going through cities use the land the old main rail line used. Basically every city over a few 10s of thousands of people had some kind of light rail service. And then we decided that every public service had to also be independently profitable. So instead of pooling transportation costs across a population we each have to buy and operate personal vehicles for everything, not just leisure or convenience.
If this isn’t trolling, you might want to read some U.S. history.
I’d encourage the same to you.
We had some war in the Americas but they were largely an extension of the wars in Europe.
Relative to what was happening in Europe between the major players the Americas were peaceful
California was connected to the east coast via rail to prevent secession, not for infrastructure purposes (beyond the general connection).
Okay, trolling, got it.
These gotcha statements you’re throwing around aren’t working.
If you have something you’d like to say that is counter to my take, by all means refute it.
I’m not going to bother, since the point of trolling is to waste my time. I’ve studied American history, so if you want to argue your alt-history, it’s up to you to prove that the U.S. wasn’t built by rail.
I didn’t claim the US wasn’t built by rail, you’re making that assertion on my behalf for some reason.
I’m speaking to European and US history here, you may be ignorant/uninformed about the slant I’m taking but that doesn’t make it less true and I’m unwilling to argue in bad faith with you.
I said that Europe has the rail it does because of the wars of the 18th and 19th century. I also asserted that if the USA was beset by the wars of Europe the same way that it would have developed a similar rail infrastructure.
The rail infrastructure of the US never matched Europes, and it had no reason to. If you have something to say about my claim that the wars of Europe drove the mass adoption of rail then I’m all ears.
I’m similarly not making any claims about the dismantling of the rail infrastructure we did have, but shockingly the pushing of roads wasn’t just “auto industry” there was genuine “roads > rail for national defense” belief even if it was/is misguided ( even if deliberately so circling back to the auto industry )
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Okay, now that is at least debatable. Maybe there was genuine belief that roads were better than rail for defense purposes, or maybe the Secretary of Defense was the ex-CEO of GM. In any case, the belief that the Interstate Highway System was intended for military purposes is an urban legend, not supported by the original proposal documents, nor by the public statements of people backing it.
But the idea that the U.S. just never developed a rail system like Europe has now is in the same level of ridiculousness as claiming that Julius Caesar was a small man who sold pizza, or that Napoleon invented dynamite. It’s just such common knowledge that rail was so ubiquitous that it shaped the nation, and the physical legacy still manifest everywhere.
Same with the highway or Autobahn, so what’s the excuse there?
I’m not making any excuses. I’m giving an explanation for the explosion of trains in Europe.
Yall can hate the truth for some weird reason.
That said … the logic of your response seems to highlight my point as opposed to refute it.
Roads supplanted trains as they are quicker to lay down, cost less (in initial investment) and the vehicles that can use it are more varied.
Which is why the autobahn was created.
Had the US been blasted by the wars of 18th/19th century Europe we would have trains too.
The civil war proved to the USA how valuable trains were BUT we didn’t have the same constant local wars with industrialized nations like Europe did driving many parties to build against each other.
Why the USA doesn’t invest in raid NOW is another story altogether.
Military use had the opposite effect particularly in the East where leaders were wary of railways being used to invade their area. This led to the late adoption of the technology there.
Europe is rife with trains because they were the fastest and most efficient way to move heavy cargo.
Cities in the US are simply too far apart. Do you really think you can maintain a train route that runs from the suburb of Houston to the suburb of Houston to the suburb of Houston to the suburb of Houston to the suburb of Austin to the suburb of Austin to the suburb of Austin to the suburb of Fort Worth to the suburb of Fort Worth to the suburb of Fort Worth to the suburb of Dallas to the suburb of Dallas to the suburb of Dallas to the suburb of Dallas?
It would never work.
At the risk of feeding a troll, they really aren’t. Sweet spot for high speed rail is generally considered two cities 300-500 miles apart. That covers most of the US population
Sweet spot for high speed rail is generally considered two cities 300-500 miles apart.
Sure. But you could improve commute times significantly with intra-urban commuter rail even before you’re looking at big inter-metro HSR. All these mid-sized suburbs strung out along the freeways would benefit enormously from park-and-ride depots that linked to a metro line that doesn’t need to fight traffic to get into downtown.
i can’t tell whether you’re sarcastic
Have you seen how empty Texas is? And how flat it is? It’s kinda ideal train territory. If Norway and Switzerland can set up train routes, the Great Plains certainly can.
Have you seen how empty Texas is?
I live in Texas and I can assure you it is anything but empty. The major metroplexes are so sprawled that they’ve started banging into one another. Austin and San Antonio are functionally one super-city at this point. Ft Worth and Dallas started mingling decades ago. Houston has fully consumed six other neighboring cities over the last 40 years and is - itself - surrounded by suburban echoes of itself in the Woodlands, Sugar Land, Clear Lake, and Katy. You can drive dozens of miles in any direction and never leave “the city”.
It’s kinda ideal train territory.
Absolutely. Or, at least, supplementing/replacing the big metro arteries (I-10, I-45, the various mega-loops) with rail would make a lot more sense than just stacking overpasses on top of one another.
Fair enough! Sorry to generalize about the geography of a state I don’t live in. I just drove through Amarillo a couple years back and it was so empty out there that it made a lasting impression 😅
I just drove through Amarillo a couple years back and it was so empty out there
No, that’s fair. Although I think Amarillo is really cursed by the smell of all that livestock. Once you get down out of the Panhandle, population density picks up quite a bit. The Big Three - Houston / Austin / Dallas - are enormous urban smears across the landscape.
Ehm i beg your pardon but Switzerland is packed with people.
And super inconvenient mountains that you have to route tracks above, around, and through.
Why not, if it’s the same distance?
You just don’t understand civil engineering!
The American physiognomy is incompatible with high speed tubes full of other commuters. You need to be physically separated by a large metal box. Unless, of course, you’re living in NYC, Chicago, Boston, or DC, for obvious reasons.
Cities in the US are far apart because of car-centric design, not the other way around. If we just invested more in other forms of transit, then our cities would not be so sprawling.
Cities in the US are far apart because of car-centric design
Okay, dropping the act here, that’s not actually true. Cities in the US aren’t far apart when you consider the population-dense coastal areas (where large portions of the historical rail network are concentrated). That was my intended joke. You’ve got numerous large, increasingly dense suburbs all concentrated along highway corridors that run through urban centers. Like, we have everything you need for a successful rail line. In some cases we even have the rail lines. We just don’t have terminals with commuter trains running on a schedule.
Oh, it was a bit. Yikes you had me triggered lol
Well, for context, I come from the Chicago area which does have commuter trains but is still a massive sprawling hellscape because everything - including the train stations - is designed for cars. So it’s true that everything is too far apart there, because the car-centric design itself makes it so.
I guess I should specify - everything in the US is too far apart to be a good environment for people, because we built it that way. It is not too far apart for public transport to be built, though. Building public transport (as well as walking and cycling infrastructure) and specifically building less car infrastructure is the way to make it less far apart and make it better for people.
I’m gonna be honest: you fooled me and I almost removed your initial comment as misinformation.
Cities in the US are spread apart because of car-centric zoning. It’s the laws governing land use that drive the infrastructure design, not the other way around.
(Note that I said “spread apart,” not “far apart,” by the way. I’m talking about travel within cities, not between them. Intercity travel has no excuse to not be rail regardless.)
This thread was started with a post on intercity rail. There are many parts of the US where highways have chronic congestion because they just can’t scale enough, nor could we afford to maintain them, where intercity rail would be a much better choice.
And effing Texas, are you really widening the Katy freeway again rather than consider a train?
There are many parts of the US where highways have chronic congestion because they just can’t scale enough, nor could we afford to maintain them, where intercity rail would be a much better choice.
The examples I can think of chronic congestion are pretty much all intracity (which I consider to include between the central city and its suburbs), not intercity (the long rural stretches between metro areas). Intercity rail is better than freeways (but more importantly, better than airplanes) for efficiency’s sake, but doesn’t necessarily have much to do with reducing congestion. Intracity rail (commuter rail, subways and streetcars) is what’s needed for reducing congestion.
The northeast corridor is an existing example of- both highways and airways are so over congested, you couldn’t get anywhere without train. Ever since Acela stared 20 years ago, I refuse to travel Bos—>nyc any other way. It’s too much hassle
There are compelling arguments for Colorado front range rail, although that’s closer to metro distance, and cascadia - Vancouver—>portland. Even Texas needs more than commuter rail: you have three major cities in. Nice triangle that would do better if you could connect their economies. And of course this where I claim California high speed rail is necessary at any price. Send all mY taxes there. Let’s make it so
Zoning and laws like parking minimums are part of it, but it’s also literally the government paying for car infrastructure because that is a routine and unquestioned part of government budgets while any spending on other forms of transit is heavily limited and it’s expected to turn a profit from fares, which roads never do. The spending on roads should be questioned, and spending on other forms of transit should be seen as an important public service.
