Hacker News Reader

Comment by sva_ | Hacker News Reader

> Welcome. Welcome to city 17

Honestly, as a European going to the us, it was shocking how bad the train system is. But I get it, places in the us are too far spread apart, so that it is more difficult to connect them.

If there are airport like security checks, even less people will use it. Good for the freight trains though, since they'll have the tracks to themselves.

I can't really comment on the article, since it bans EU visitors, but judging by comments here, I'm afraid the system will only get worse.

View on HN

US trains were majorly useful and common way to travel before the 1960s. (Only a few miles dropped after WW2.) But in the early 1950s, a plan to build 41,000 miles of Interstate freeways appeared. And Eisenhower selected the Chairman of General Motors to be his Secretary of Defense. The plan was signed into law in 1956, and construction began. It was quite a boon to the auto industry.

By 1967 passenger train ridership had plummeted. Most people and a whole lot of freight shifted to the freeways and/or jetliners. Railroads could not compete. In 1952 there were 370 thousand miles of track. By 1992 that had dropped to 190 thousand miles.[0] Much track steel was recycled, and many rural railbeds became 'trailways'.

[0]https://www.railserve.com/stats_records/railroad_route_miles...

The thing is, a lot of this stuff happened in Europe too, at least qualitatively. Train operators were already unprofitable after WWI and were nationalized, and after WWII, funding and infrastructure were lacking and cars were seen as flexible, democratic and increasingly cheap. For example in the UK the famous name is the Beeching Axe (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beeching_Axe).

I'd be very interested to see a comparative study of the US and Western (and Eastern) European countries' transport infrastructure in this period, but I've never found one.

> Good for the freight trains though, since they'll have the tracks to themselves.

Most of the tracks (in the west at least) are already owned by freight companies and Amtrak just squeezes in usage at their behest. It’s part of why Amtrak sucks as much as it does (no priority).

Reply on news.ycombinator.com