I spent ten years in the trenches of American urban design policy. The best we could do was lose very slightly less quickly. It's not changing. Trains are great, we should build more, and we probably should replace a lot of bus routes by subsidizing rides on Waymo and its ilk. It'll be cheaper and provide better service.
Not like the US didn't try. California spent 15yrs trying to build a high speed train and failed. Canada has been talking about building trains forever too and it usually goes nowhere because the budgets explode like every major infrastructure project these days.
I wonder what's different between these English speaking countries you mention failing to build out rail transit, and places like Japan and China that have built fabulous rail networks.
Japan is a fairly unique case, and probably does not share much with China aside from being in the same region. Japan is geographically well suited to serving a large portion of the population with one long line with a few branches. That's a convenient advantage.
China just doesn't have to worry about environmentalists or anyone else locally trying to stand in the way, they just bulldoze them and build.
China also has much lower labor costs, and even Japan is a good bit cheaper (than the US, at the least)
Most of the rail has get around mountainous, uneven terrain subject to earthquakes, strong winds, and heavy rain. California should be able to build rail parallel to the I-5, a long, flat terrain without extreme weather or strong earthquakes. The problem seems to be a political one, not an engineering one. In fact, if the Interstate Highway System did not already exist, I doubt the U.S. today would be able to accept and complete it.
> one long line with a few branches
I currently live in Japan, and that does not really match what I've observed. There are three distinct railway companies in my area (JR, Tokyu, Yokohama Municipal Subway), each with their own dedicated rail, trains, power supply, etc.
The situation is more like "a disjoint union of graphs, where some of the graphs are connected".
LA proper seems to have a density of 3000/km^2 according to Wikipedia
A perhaps more interesting use case is the utsunomiya light rail. Utsunomiya has a density of around 1200/km^2.
What they ended up doing was building a new tram with exactly one line. The main thing they did was make sure the tram comes frequently, including off peak.
End result is people rely on the tram line and the tram is making good money, being operationally profitable (still gotta pay back construction costs of course).
Utsunomiya is obviously not exactly greater LA, but Utsunomiya has on average 2.25 cars per household[0]. It has traffic issues and people feel the need to own a car. And yet the tram line is finding success because transportation is a local issue, not a global one!
You can solve for transportation issues in crowded areas. Few reasonable people are lamenting that you don't have a train between madison, WI and Chicago every 15 minutes. Many are simply lamenting that even at a local level PT in many places is leaving a lot on the table despite there being chances of success!
Smaller focused PT has proven itself to work time and time again, and compounds on other PT projects in the area.
California high speed rail isn't running now but it is improving lots of things along the way. For example one of the most dangerous crossings in the state is now grade separated with the Rosecrans/Marquardt Grade Separation Project.
I wonder if California high speed rail will ever surpass quadcopter personal vehicles in passenger miles per year. I know which way I'd bet for the year 2040.
Ha, even using the UK as a counterpoint, they do pretty well. I enjoy taking the LNER, and appreciate that it is a 'slow' train that happens to run 50% faster than the top speed of Amtrak in all but a very limited set of tracks in the NEC. And maybe I've just had unusually good luck, but LNER has almost always been punctual.
OTOH, on my visits to Europe I am simultaneously impressed with the prevalence of passenger train options, but disheartened by the price. If Europe struggles to provide really affordable trains, there isn't much hope for the US. Aside from regional train options in the densest areas, we just have too much distance to cover. Infrastructure costs would kill the plan. At this point maybe we should just be trying harder to produce renewable fuels for planes.
As a tourist or outsider, the cost of trains in Europe is going to be much more expensive. In the Netherlands for example, the price of a train ticket without a subscription (such as for tourists) is very high; the price of a monthly subscription for free train rides outside rush hour is €130/month, which is way less than monthly cost of car use.
Bus Rapid Transit is another option that could be amazing (while being much cheaper to implement), but it falls short for the same reason as trains: they require dedicated infrastructure that complicates driving, and complicating driving is political suicide.
One of the things I found when advocating for transit was that BRT cost savings in the US almost always come from reducing quality at stations, which loses public support faster than you save money. I found that voters are usually willing to spend far more on trains than on BRT, in excess of any savings.
BRT is mostly "you get what you pay for" - cheaper at a cost of lower capacity. Given relatively low density of US cities - that might be the right tool tho.
One thing you have to be careful about with things like this is induced demand. In Dublin in the early 90s, there was a debate about what to do with the right of way of an old commuter rail line, which had been closed in the 60s when closing rail lines was fashionable. Irish Rail wanted to reinstate the commuter rail line, Dublin Bus wanted to build a BRT system. In the early noughties, the transport authority split the difference and put in a tram system (green line Luas).
A BRT system would have had a capacity of, very optimistically, 6,000 people per hour per direction (a 100 person bus arriving every minute), but in practice probably less (that is difficult to maintain without delays). At the time, there was some doubt that even this capacity was required. The original tram setup also had a capacity of about 6,000 people per hour. Within years, the trams were full to overcrowding, and the line was expanded to 10,000 people per hour. Now it's at capacity again, with some of the longest trams in the world arriving every three minutes at peak. The only realistic option to further increase capacity is to turn it into a metro line (which, fortunately, was in principle planned for from the start, and _is_ possible, albeit with some disruption).
If they'd gone with a BRT, they'd now be looking at ripping up the whole thing and having nothing for years while they laid tracks.
None. Why would you think that? My guess is you're an American living nowhere near an urban rail system but I thought most people here would at least be passing familiar with modern trains. Even some American cities have them.
I've lived and travelled in a ton of places. Trains in low density cities are simply not working well enough. I now prefer to live in exurb and drive everywhere. It's so good.
Muse this - train is a tool, just like a car, bus, bike, plane, drone or rollerblades.
Repeating "trains" in every transport context is unproductive. Each mode of transport requires certain density. Most US cities just don't have it. It's that simple.
It's not at all that simple. One of the neat things about trains is their permanence - once you've built one, you can fight for allowing increased density repeatedly until you win. That's what we've been doing in Seattle!
Only that they are worthy of noting. If there is a modern system, but it happens to suck for some reason, you don't have to mention that one. So feel free to strike that "notable". Which American cities have modern train systems?
Also just like... looking at a train and noticing it can carry a ton more people than a car, has no concept of traffic, and can theoretically go as fast as possible.
People generally don't want to use it because we design everything exclusively for cars, so cars are more convenient. At the cost of increased risk of death, increased travel time, increased land cost, etc.
A huge amount, most self-proclaimed supporters of "public transportation" are primarily train enthusiasts (which is a fine hobby!). Any concern for safe, clean, effective transportation is incidental and is immediately abandoned if it ever means less trains.
What makes you say that? I'd only propose them in very high density corridors (or in corridors where building a train would be paired with allowing high density).
A lot of it probably has to do with train advocates seeming like audiophiles extoling the virtues of phonograph records and the like. It seems like they are nostalgic for an 1880s utopia. That's just the vibe I get. I wonder what people in this thread think about The Line.
I think there is also a couple of other factors at play with the online train / mass transit advocates on places like HN. It could just be my imagination, but I think there is trains-are-a-good-solution-for-other-people (but not necessarily for me) contingent. And there is a trains-are-good-for-you transportation method, that you have to put up with for the "greater good". A bitter pill to swallow, not something you actually want. Kind of the opposite for say, electric vehicles, where they currently are a much superior alternative to and internal combustion engine vehicle for almost ever use case (acceleration, $/mile, maintenance, general hassle). That's why I think EVs will inevitably win, even in the U.S.. Maybe someone could come up with a luxury light rail that people would actually want to use? I mentioned it up-thread in the context of California high speed rail, but now I'm going to broaden it. When will personal (flying) quadcopter vehicles have more annual passenger miles than every passenger rail combined (subways/light rail/Amtrak) in the U.S.? I'm could see it happening within my lifetime. Maybe this has some bearing on why I see trains as antiquated?
Also, reading through the whole thread make me think there should be a meme about this.
Normal Person: I heard about shellfish, but it turns out I don't like to eat it, because it tastes bad.
Seafood Advocate 1: You are wrong, shellfish is highly nutritious. And one of the most calorie dense foods.
Seafood Advocate 2: Everyone knows you need to eat shellfish between the hours of 11AM and 1PM. If you learn to eat at the proper time, you would like shellfish.
Seafood Advocate 3: People in Japan eat shellfish, so it is highly likely that you like shellfish as well.
Seafood Advocate 4: The only reason someone could say they dislike shellfish is because of the anti-seafood conspiracy.
Normal Person: I thought this was originally a thread about chicken pasta recipes?Continues to not eat shellfish.
And am I the only one who thinks the concept of a "transit advocate" is a bit odd? I mean, yes, there are people whose career is to make transportation work/better. And they should continue to do so. Were there non-Bell-Telephone-employees that were telephone advocates back in the 1940s? Airline advocates convincing people to fly? Car phone/cell phone brick/flip phone/smart phone advocates?
Were there man-on-the-street grass roots 1950s advocates that were instrumental for getting the interstate highway system built? Suburban expansion advocates? Do you really only need an advocate to convince people to like something that they otherwise currently dislike?
