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Comment by kibwen | Hacker News Reader

> especially in small Europe

What's small about the scale of Europe in this context? Even taking the extremely conservative measurement of Madrid to Berlin, that's 1200 miles/2000 km, which is comparable to the entire length of the Japanese isles, or the distance from Beijing to the South China Sea, or the distance from Boston to Minneapolis and/or Miami. Speaking as an American, I'd be over the moon if our passenger rail was half as nice as Europe's, and we can't even use the scale of the country as an excuse.

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The scale of the country is an excuse in many cases. There are densely populated areas in many parts of the USA, but nearly all of Europe is densely populated. The EU has an average density of 112 people per square km compared to 36 in the USA.

The USA still can and should do better, but there are important geographical differences to the EU.

And as an aside, I don't think many Europeans are taking the train from Madrid to Berlin ;-) most people still prefer to fly rather than take a multi-day journey on the train. Maybe that will change if more sleeper carriages are introduced.

> The EU has an average density of 112 people per square km compared to 36 in the USA.

Isn't that a misleading statistic, though? It's not like the USA is an evenly spread wasteland in comparison to Continental Europe. It's more like pockets of high population density throughout, which trains can handle perfectly well. Russia and Ukraine are similar in that they're pockets of cities separated by miles of steppe. Both are known for heavily using rail travel.

Hell, wasn't the USA built on the back of continental rail travel during its industrial revolution?

Yep, it's misleading. The America is big argument fails to hold water once you actually take a look at a map. Take Columbus for example where we're within just a couple hours by train (could be less if we had any sort of seriousness about our country) away from:

  Chicago
  Detroit
  Cleveland
  Cincinnati 
  Indianapolis
  Pittsburgh

and maybe just a few hours away from other cities like Toronto, Buffalo, Louisville, and more.

The US has the largest rail network in the world (for now). It’s hugely dominated by freight.

It’s not for lack of rail lines we don’t have good passenger service it’s a priority and preference issue.

If you got a fast train between Indianapolis and Cleveland what would you do with it? Neither has reasonable public transit and aren’t dense cities that are good for walking. They also are only 4.5 hours away from each other by car, something residents of both largely own.

Chicken-egg problem with the density. But we know that things can change and it's always surprising when we're always very open to changing things when it comes to technology, but other areas we're not so open to it. Amsterdam is a canonical example [1] or how you can fix infrastructure.

Example: I am not the biggest soccer fan in the world, but I might take a train down to Cincinnati and get dinner, stay the night, and watch Columbus play Cincinnati. I'm not doing that with a car because of parking and it being a big hassle. If I can take a train down there, I'm way more likely to go. Once I get there the very first time I'll just arrive in the downtown area, plenty to walk around to see and do. The same is true for the reverse trip. Someone coming from Cincinnati can arrive in the Short North in Columbus and walk anywhere they want from German Village to Downtown to Ohio State's campus.

I'm not entirely sure about Cleveland (haven't been in a while) or Indianapolis (haven't been maybe ever?) w.r.t to walking around, but in the example I gave you can see there is plenty to do with a train that gets you from one of the example cities to another and it only improves as more and more people use the service.

Funny actually. What you were saying kind of applies to cars too. You'd just drive through or around Indianapolis. After all once you park there's nothing to do and nowhere to go.

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2015/may/05/amsterdam-bic...

I'm shocked to learn that only a 1%, yes, ONE percent of American rail network is electrified. At least according to wikipediahttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_rail_tran...

> They also are only 4.5 hours away from each other by car, something residents of both largely own.

Not to sound too flippant but this is the most American thing I've read that doesn't involve guns. Being in the UK, the idea of "only" being 4.5 hours away by car is unreal. This is exactly the kind of thing getting the train should be perfect for.

For context: that's longer than Manchester to London, essentially opposite ends of England!

Indiana has “constitutional carry” which means that you need no licensing to carry a firearm, concealed or otherwise.

It's only misleading if you disregard the rest of my comment :-)

You have identified a part of the USA with a decent density of cities - nice! That is exactly what I think. There are pockets where rail makes sense, and should be built up. But even this area is not nearly as dense as Germany, England, Belgium, Italy, etc, so I fail to see why it makes sense to compare this to the EU.

There are lots of pockets in Europe that aren't that dense, they still have good public transport, as least compared to the US.

It always really funny when American point at some place, and say 'look how not dense' and then there is like a city of 200+ people there. Sure maybe not close to other cities. But any city that size should have its own S-Bahn system at least.

Right, but that's where the vast majority of the population is too. It's not that there are pockets where rail makes sense, rail just makes sense and should be built up.

> But even this area is not nearly as dense as Germany, England, Belgium, Italy, etc, so I fail to see why it makes sense to compare this to the EU.

Why would you compare America to the EU anyway then?

-edit-

Sorry I also wasn't trying to disregard your comment, I just thought it wasn't a great argument (you're a great person though I'm sure! :) )

There are other factors to trains not being viable in the states: cost to build. Every project they try, it’s almost always a financial disaster.

Sure but I was commenting on the "too big" argument which I think we can say is just factually incorrect at this point.

To address your points I think it's a much more nuanced conversation. I'd argue that car-only infrastructure is actually a gigantic financial disaster as well but it requires additional examination.

I think trains amd especially the rails mostly are funded through other ways (government/ taxes) something which americans are not too fond of.

It's an average, so of course it says nothing about the distribution. I don't find that to be misleading, or at least I did not intend to insinuate that the USA is a perfectly distributed wasteland! It shows that while the EU and US kind of look similar in size, actually their population density on average is wildly different. Just look at a population density map of both continents side by side. It's fine to talk about certain parts of the USA being dense and able to support passenger rail. But when we talk about country-scale rail systems, that's where I have a bone to pick.

As I said, there are areas of the USA that are perfectly suitable to rail, and there should be more.

My criticism is the notion of "you can technically take a train from Madrid to Berlin, so you should also be able to take a train from Boston to Minneapolis". Trains in Europe go long distances, but most importantly they connect a lot of medium-sized cities along the way.

Boston to minneapolis could pass through:

MA: Springfield

NY: Albany, Buffalo,Rochester

Oh: Sandusky, Cleavland, Toledo,

IN: Fort wayne

IL: Chicago, Rockford,

WI: Madison, LaCrosse, Eu Claire, Milwaukee

With some fairly minor deviations on the path. (Assuming a fairly straight path that stays in the US, going south of the lakes). Depending on your tolerance for minor deviations from the straightest possible path it could be all or a subset, but not none of those. They are all medium sized or larger cities.

There are ton of small cities too, but the train doesnt have to stop in each one - there's lots of through trains in Europe to that skip towns/cities they pass.

I don't know why we're still stuck on the Berlin <-> Madrid topic, but I'll bite :-)

I added up the population of all those cities: 6.13 million. The population of Berlin and Madrid alone is 6.86 million, and our theoretical journey would take us through several cities of 1m+ along the way: Cologne, Brussels, Paris... The dense parts of Europe have 500k+ cities basically overlapping.

As someone who grew up in the Midwest, I would absolutely love this theoretical train, but I'm not surprised it doesn't exist (yet)!

It's a bit misleading to claim: "The dense parts of Europe have 500k+ cities basically overlapping.", while pretending that Chicago doesn't have 6M+ additional people in its immediate suburbs who would also be able to use this hypothetical train. The US and EU structure administrative units a bit differently, so using the Urban or Metro populations for both is a better metric for population served.

I agree that Europe is more densly populated than US, so there would be longer stretches without a stop in the US. But that's OK - the long-distance trains in the EU don't stop at every station along the way anyway, it would just be a different structure of "locals" and "through trains" to service the poulations.

I disagree however that population density is even all that relevant. All the cities in the US that I've mentioned have rail through them already. It's used profitably for freight all the time. I think the US doesn't have good passenger rail service because of a heck of a lot of other factors - subsidies favoring cars and planes over rail for transit, infrastructure having been created around getting everyone an automobile, a huge amount of FUD from various lobbies against rail (including arguments about population density), and a dozen others probably have more actual impact than "people per square mile is different on average".

Sure, all mega cities have even larger metro areas. I'm not pretending Chicago doesn't have a huge metro area. But my point stands: the European route has much higher catchment than your proposed USA route, even if you include metro areas. Population density is not the only argument, although I think it's pretty clear why the US and EU are not comparable: https://luminocity3d.org/WorldPopDen/#4/38.51/-51.06 Most of the US looks more like Spain and less like Central Europe.

There needs to be local public transportation infrastructure. This is where the US should be focusing efforts, no long-distance high-speed trains. It works in Europe because there are huge catchment areas (see population density) that funnel riders to regional hubs that are then connected with high speed trains. I don't think the first step to making rail work in the US is connecting metropolises with high-speed trains. Until there's a better local public transportation story, it's expensive and impractical once you arrive at your destination.

The US has like 6 Super-Metro complexes that are all perfect for trains.

- Great Lakes

- North East

- Texas Triangle

- Florida Super City

- Bay Area

- Southern Cali

And of those the Lakes and the North East are perfect to connection. In all of them trains are massively underused.

Frankly some of these couldn't be more perfectly placed for trains.

But I do agree with your point. You need good local public transport. Or in more general terms, land use. Infill development, bikes and reliable bus system that is not designed to serve only poor people that don't have other options.

I think this is the core of the issue. People are getting hung up on Madrid -> Berlin and coming up with things like New York -> San Francisco as a comparison. I don't know how many people regularly need to go 6 states across a vast continent...

Really, what it seems the discussion should focus on is those shorter (but still quite long!) journeys that people would likely want to do. Train lines in California seem to make a lot of sense. A quick look on Google Maps suggests there's no train between San Francisco and Los Angeles which seems insane to me!

In terms of a sane transpiration policy, what you should actually do is have a priority list of focus or a reverse pyramid.

1. Walking (including wheel chair and friends)

2. Biking (including some slow electric stuff)

3. Rail based transport (trains, metros, trams as appropriate)

4. Buses

5. Private vehicles

> all mega cities have even larger metro areas

But that not the point. Many of these borders are arbitrary e.g. it's like saying that Paris has a lower population Berlin even though such a claim would make no sense at all.

> Most of the US looks more like Spain and less like Central Europe.

Spain has spent a decade building out its high speed rail network.

> I added up the population of all those cities: 6.13 million.

Well just Boston (where it would presumably start) is over 4 million (and whole Massachusetts is almost as dense as Belgium). Minneapolis is another ~3 million. Chicago is over 8 million. I didn't even look up the other cities... yeah it's lower but really not as much as you're implying.

Oh if we're talking about metro area population, then the EU route is also significantly higher (for example, Paris goes from 2 million to 13 million). I was just looking at city limits in both cases.

Honestly I agree with your sentiment. We should connect all these urban areas with passenger rail. But I don't think that this is the first step. Most American cities have atrocious public transit, which needs to be fixed first. No one will take a train from Chicago to Minneapolis if they just have to rent a car once they get there anyway. It would be a shame to invest billions in connecting cities with high speed rail, only to have low ridership because it still doesn't compete with flying/driving.

> Oh if we're talking about metro area population

I was just looking at the urban area. The official population of many cities in the US is almost entirely meaningless in this context.

> so you should also be able to take a train from Boston to Minneapolis

Maybe I'm reading this wrong, but you can take a train from Boston to Minneapolis, with either one, two, or three connections.

Yes, it's not population density that's important but the distribution of said population, and USA is more urbanized and clumped up than many European countries with much better train system than USA.

The problem in USA is that the people making the decisions don't live in the cities.

As a child, at about 11 to 12, so about 1981/82 I took the train from Bonn am Rhein to Madrid, and back to Bonn from Aguilas or Alicante. Alone!

Europe mostly speaks a different language in every country, so the actual scale of Europe isn't the whole continent (or whole EU), but a single country. Sure you can travel to other countries, but there is a language barrier (though English is common enough to get by most places).

Note that GP was talking about Germany with seeming no awareness that the situation is different in Switzerland, France, England and Spain. (of the 5 countries I named there are significant differences that are unique to each - Swiss trains run ontime, French trains are fast...) God help you if you are trying to cross a border by train in Europe - it is possible, but often much harder than it should be.

There is daily trains between all the countries you named (at least those that share a border) most of them are no different than any other border crossing with exception of the trains going to and from England as you have to go through security for that one. I don't remember ever having a bad experience crossing a border when I was on InterRail some years back.

Really. Crossing borders within the Schengen-zone is trivial and goes unnoticed for most travellers. You can even cross multiple borders in your sleep on the night trains.

The problems crossing the border in Europe have nothing to do with the physical crossing. the Schengen zone is nice for that, but only solves one problem.

Often there is no border crossing at all where there should be one. Often nobody knows how to sell you a ticket for a trip that should be possible (or they will only do it with stupid restrictions). If you can find a train it may be a slow speed train despite this being trips where high speed is most useful. The trains may not be on time and you miss a connection.

there is a lot to improve about trains in Europe.

This is true. And sadly the big state monopolies have been lobbying against the airline like system of bookings. They don't want to be responsable for connection like airlines are. And they don't want to compete on a level bases either. They don't want open ticketing information.

The EU approach to rail improvement is incredibly flawed.

And all the different monopolies have their own dumb as opinion about things. French system is run by a bunch of airline manager idiots. German can't make their IT work for shit. And so on.

It's so seamless that I was racing someone through Belgium and only realised I'd entered the Netherlands when I got a text telling me I was on a Dutch phone network!

By car you'd notice, but that's mostly because suddenly the car goes quiet upon crossing over onto the smooth asphalt of the Dutch snelwegen. (Despite being neighbouring countries, the contrasts are often interesting.)

I noticed the massive reduction in cobbled roads on leaving Belgium!

I don't have experience with InterRail, but the bad experience often starts with buying a ticket.

The amount of "we cannot sell you that ticket, we can't even tell you the price" I have gotten when checking international connections is wild. It is slowly improving (I just checked a particularly absurd example where Deutsche Bahn was unable to sell a ticket to switzerland through if it wasn't bought a long time in advance - seems at least they fixed that), but still... it's absurd if your train trip starts with "figure out how to get a ticket, because the train company won't tell you."

Oh that's nothing. 5 years ago DB couldn't sell you all tickets within Germany (if you didn't cross a Verkehrsverbund boundary the local train company could refuse to license that right to DB). So yeah. Improving ;)

I am pretty sure that is still the case in some areas. DB Navigator never covered all local tariffs.

The trains exist, but they are not as useful as in country trains. Just getting a ticket can be tricky as not everyone will sell them. Most train systems assume you are going to the major city in their country, (Paris) and so the routes do not always make sense for other trips. One train per day (or less) is not good service. Cross border makes it much more likely you have to transfer to a different train and the poor on-time performance of some nations becomes a problem.

There are not border controls which is nice. However there are a lot of other things that can go wrong. Some routes work much better than others. Europe is a big place with lots of different trains systems if you only went on the good routes you won't have a problem, but there are a lot of routes that are not as good - and many more routes that should exist but do not at all.

As a Czech person I have never npticed language barriers reducing travel (or business), if anything they increase it by making it more exciting.

It is a mixed bag, but definitely improving. Some experiences: From Holland, It was impossible to do an online booking a ticket to Italy. Only possible via phone, or as separate legs. For long journeys with changeovers watch out that you don’t get stuck halfway due to a missed connection. From NL, London, France, Germany is easily reachable, as well as Barcelona. I took a sleeper train to Stockholm last Christmas, we had delays, but made it in time. In general if you have a long distance leg, it’s best to have it at the start of your journey so you don’t miss it.

Railways do have single points of failure. A single disruption on a key piece of track can disrupt service for hours, even days. This is less of an issue with air travel, there’s usually other airlines, and alternative routes.

This is not really true. There are high speed trains operated by Italy that start in the center of Germany (Frankfurt) and end in Milano – crossing Switzerland. There are also trains that start in Germany end end in south France (Mannheim - Marseille). Super easy to purchase tickets.

Not only does English get you by in most big cities, a fair amount of European citizens are multilingual and often it’s the neighbouring countries that people speak the language of.

You'll bet by in English as a tourist, but you probably aren't getting a job with just English, and you're definitely not holding down a full social life either. Despite the EU's efforts at integration, Europe is still effectively separated by languages and cultures way beyond anything in North America.

French trains are fast if they aren’t striking.

French train speed is fast but velocity can be slow if you’re not going toward or away from Paris.

If you’re going from the northwest to the southwest, it can be faster to drive than the high speed train that will dogleg through Paris.

(It’s getting better though)

I had zero trouble visiting my german friends by train last november, departing from Paris. I didn't even have to leave my seat. I have no idea what you are trying to say.

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