Greentext

To be honest, I haven’t seen anyone else mention the real reason: America allowed private companies to buy and own the lands under the rails in the 1800s in order to deal with the massive distances across the US to connect the West and East. 150 years later and just a few companies own almost all the track and rail across America. Almost all private, not public land. Public citizens and communities have very little control over the railways going through their communities. These companies lobby against and make it difficult to introduce new, public rail lines for a multitude of reasons. This is one of very many examples of how corporations abuse law, monopolistic practices, and media to lessen the power of American citizens.

Yeah why doesn't Europe have trains?

Europe definitely doesn't have trains already.

Americans can't do trains because it requires public infrastructure (rails), which apparently we are allergic to.

I was in Switzerland and the trains there are incredible. Even the tiniest village in buttfucksburg, nowhere has a train connecting it to the rest of the country.

Americans can't do high speed rail because we have aircraft, automobile, and petroleum industries who don't want us to.

If high speed rail becomes popular, all that stands between the current freedom and ID-required tickets and fingering by agents is one terrorist attack, staged or not.

I’m a huge train and transit advocate and I try to take Amtrak every chance I get. But “tickets are cheaper” does not feel like a blanket statement we can make. Maybe on very specific, usually short legs, like Chicago to Milwaukee. Someone correct me if I’m wrong or there’s more nuance but once a trip goes past 3 or 5+ hour mark, the price seems to skyrocket past airfare.

Meanwhile, right wing parties in Quebec are fighting against a tramway project in Quebec city, that the entire country agreed to pay for, for which we have already invested half a billion, build stations, etc. They call it "War on cars".

Honestly I think it's just sticker shock. I would say that as soon as we get some people would be more willing to get more, but no, because people are hesitant to expand existing rail. MARTA please expand, I beg you. Oh great spirits of public transit, I pray that you soften the NIMBYs' hearts.

It's so upsetting that every small town in my state has an old historic train stop but none of them are actually passenger train stops anymore. Once you see it you can't unsee it. I am 15 minutes from my town's historic train stop which is a steak house now. My parents are about the same distance from theirs, probably even closer, but it's a museum or something. Can I just take a walk to the train, ride down, and see them? Nope. Gotta deal with the hellscape that is metro Atlanta traffic.

This again? The answer is no one knows. We heard legends about it but the prophecy says line go up!

As someone who boycotted the TSA for like 5 years and only took Amtrak, the tickets are not always cheaper. I mean sure, you can get across the country for like $100.

Even when I was doing Boston-Baltimore on the Acela, it was routinely slightly cheaper to fly.

Trains not planes is a much more reasonable and practical way to get people behind building more railways than planes not cars. We can talk planes not cars once some of the initial infrastructure is in place, but I think focusing on replacing something people hate (flying) rather than replacing something they like (driving) is probably a good place to start.

I recently went on a holiday using high speed rail in Europe (1100km). Flying was cheaper and faster. Sadly I have feeling of empathy and principles so I went with the train anyway. Wasn't too bad though just did a lot of reading.

The monkey paw grants your wish but all the trains are built by Boeing.

Cheaper? come to the UK, where flying can be less expensive than rail

The US public transportation, especially the passenger rail network is fucking pathetic.

And for one more added bonus we wouldn’t have to fix the problems with air traffic control

Is there any parody porn about TSA? I want to masturbate to it. As long as it's not too noncon (like TSA in real life), I don't really care about the details (I'm ok with any gender, large insertions/fisting, etc.).

I really really wish I wasn't American

Why would Americans care about trains when they're gonna be a billionaire any day now and have their own private jet?

/s

Yeah i got used to TSA sexually assulting me just to get to the to my plane

Not to shit on your perfectly reasonable parade, but in Germany there is high speed rail through the whole . takes about 6 hours from top to bottom.

Now look at the scale of the US versus Germany and then the density of people living there. High speed rail makes alot of sense where it's difficult to build (bosnywash) and does not scale well in terms of time spent traveling.

Its better than car, but won't replace air travel anytime soon. Sadly.