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.

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.

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".

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.).

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

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

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.

Doesn't Europe have an extensive passenger train network?

Also, I recently rode on Amtrak for a long trip from Columbia, SC to Baltimore, MD. This was my first time on any kind of train other than a subway or metro line. It had its drawbacks (incredibly long travel time and delays), but I always felt safe, and I had a lot more room than I would have had on any flight. The major drawbacks where the seats were somewhat uncomfortable and things like that are largely due to the fact that the cars were pretty old, and not inherent to train travel if it was properly maintained. The cost was much less, and the free parking was such a great bonus.

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

The only national passenger train service I know of is Amtrak, which shares its tracks with freight carriers. So the current infrastructure isn't designed for high-speed rail and freight carriers usually get priority.

Also, The US is really big, so everything isn't a short train ride away from everything else. If I wanted to visit the Grand Canyon from where I live, it's over 2,000 miles away. That's 30 hours of driving just by car.

tickets are cheaper? if you want to travel the same distance it is far from cheap to travel by train, in Europe at least

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.

Train infrastructure is so underfunded (thx oil) that you can still get the fingering at most train stations for a really reasonable fee.