Actually, the trains aren't moving faster. I don't think there's a single significant span of passenger rail rated for more than 60mph in the US.

It really is crazy how bad the US rail system is.

It's also crazy to think that at some point in history, it used to be one of the best in the world. And then it got screwed by oil barons.

As far as I know, Amtrak doesn't own any of its own rails. It leases access from freight hauling railroads. Because of this relationship, the freight lines always prioritize their own trains over Amtrak. So Amtrak will always suffer until this changes.

As bad as it is, when it does work out, it's way, way better than flying.

Took a trip to Minneapolis on Amtrak from Columbus, WI (closest station to my house in Madison). Everything is so much more low key than air travel. Seats are fairly comfy, and have legroom that might even beat first class air travel. Food is . . . no worse than airlines.

Most of all, I didn't feel tired at the end of the trip. Air travel always makes me want to spend the rest of the day in bed.

We'd probably go out of Wisconsin Dells next time. It takes the train an hour to go between the Dells and Columbus, and the extra drive time is less than that. But we also found this wonderful pizzeria not far from the station in Columbus, so idk.

I'm about to board a 12 hour Amtrak ride from Boston to Richmond. It's a miserable trip (I've done it once before) but for two people round trip it cost us $300 less than any flights we could find when we were looking for tickets a month ago.

Who Framed Roger Rabbit was a documentary. Not the toon town stuff. The part about the judge buying the trolley so he could shut it down to build a highway. We used to have a better rail system than anywhere else. Then the car and oil companies bought the tracks and paved over them in the 1920s to 1950s

Actually, every American town founded before 1950 had a train line going through it. Aside from people living on homesteads, and maybe some small antebellum towns, everybody lived in close distance to a train station before they were shut down and torn up.

Worth noting that this map is for passenger rail only. The cargo rail network is much bigger. Basically, this map shows whereever Amtrak runs, where as before the introduction of massively subsidized interstates in the US in 1956, every cargo rail company also ran profitable passenger rail traffic on a massive network that became today's cargo lines.

The cargo companies dumped their traffic onto the federal government in the 70s and have also ran massive cost cutting programs since, tearing up hundreds of thousands of miles of rail.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_rail_transportation_in_the_United_States

that’s part of it, but also the continental US is massive and divided by two pretty impactful mountain ranges. Not defending our lack of train infrastructure but we came of age pretty much in line with the rise of the Jet era along with our culture of individualism and the massive expansion of public interstate hiways due to one specific president’s expierence as them being useful tools for self powered land based military vehicles so obviously that was prioritized over investing in new rail infrastructure in the interceding years.

Point being, there’s a lot of spinning plates involved with why we are where we are in regards our national rail network—would be nice to hop on an hourly train and zoop from Boston to LA in 6 hrs for like $50 but we also just elected Trump again for incomprehensible reasons so in all likelihood there will be a nuclear wasteland in between those two cities, which will need additional plates to be spun up to deal with.

at that point, might as well take greyhound.

I've seen an Amtrak passenger train on the rails where I live once. It was like seeing a unicorn. Can see freight trains pretty much every day (most of the rails here are through granaries and other farm shit where they load the cars).

Spain has the second largest high speed rail network in the world. They're doing alright.

They make up for what they don't have in volume by having crazy cheap and fast trains instead.

They also build them remarkably cheap as well. We should all be envious of Spain.

Portugal not included on account of being an Eastern European country

???

You know the difference? I don't have to actually drive when I take the train. I can do literally anything else, especially if wireless is available.

It's like people who say, "I don't need a dishwasher, I can wash them in half the time!". Yeah, sure, but I don't have to fucking wash them. Not to mention the environmental and health benefits which, incidentally, works for trains too.