As a European used to efficient train travel, it was kind of surreal that not only was the passenger train very slow (maybe 1/3 of the speed I’m used to), but it also made long stops to make way for cargo traffic.
It felt like a bit of Wild West time travel to spend days on a train in the amazing landscapes. The food in the dining car was surprisingly good, but got boring by the third day.
It is one of the most amazing train trips in the world, and tbh the article doesn´t really do it justice. The day the train spends slowly going up and down the rockies, are just incredible, the scenery is amazing, and you get to know other passengers and the conductors along the way. Had some great card games in the scenery car.
I wonder how that worked out for them. Hopefully well!
You need to go significantly higher in the nearby mountains to actually feel the effects of elevation on your breathing, fatigue and brain.
It's not actually unknown to get altitude sickness in Denver, it is one of the things the city warns about - going skiing at higher altitudes as well of course - but poor health, and just the speed which you change to that altitude, even on a train, are issues.
This is a huge issue. Cargo trains legally have to yield to passenger trains, but in recent decades cargo trains have been made longer and longer, so they no longer physically fit into the passing sidings (which usually are built for 75 cars). It's a mess.
Sometimes because the passenger equipment breaks, or wasn't available. (One way that can work is, if the train is hours late arriving at the endpoint, that equipment isn't available to become the next train in the opposite direction.)
Sometimes because a passenger becomes ill, or even dies, or (as ars said) becomes unruly enough to need arresting.
Sometimes because some driver wasn't paying attention, and ran into the train (or into the freight train ahead of the passenger train).
Sometimes because of weather. (Two feet of snow since the last train passed can slow down a train significantly. Either too much heat or too much cold lowers the safe operating speed. Too much rain can cause problems, too.)
And so on, and so on. Sure, a lot of the time it's the fault of the freight railroad. A lot of the time it's not, too.
It turned a 9-hour trip into a 15-hour trip.
https://www.govexec.com/management/2024/08/justice-departmen...
https://www.amtrak.com/on-time-performance
> For over 50 years, freight railroads have been required by law to provide Amtrak with “preference” to run passenger trains ahead of freight trains.
This entire page is an attempt by Amtrak to explain why the trains are always waiting for freight traffic. I've taken the train many times, and they yield to freight traffic for hours every trip.
Amtrak is a joke either way. The train I took from Chicago to Las Vegas was over 24 hours late, hit a car, flattened the wheels in the emergency braking so they could only go about 20mph to the next station where they had to change out the entire train, then had a mechanical breakdown, and when we finally arrived they had lost our luggage.
You are used to train journeys of more than 2800 km (more than the distance from Lisbon to Warsaw) with an average speed of over 170 km/h? Where can I find such an itinerary in Europe?
To travel 3000 km on a high-speed train, Japan and China certainly offer the opportunity. Beijing-Guangzhou is 2230 km and operates at 350 km/h.
They have no incentive to add more sleepers, which would be a pain in the cock to procure, for a service that loses money. Amtrak should not be required to really care about that last part, but they are.
As an European myself, try to do a train trip in south of Italy and then discover if it's efficient enough
The trains ran on thyme.
In the South you have thoughts and prayers. A trip Bari<>Milano (900km) is mostly around 8-9 hours, going further south elongates the journey incredibly.
I suspect that the most upset and vocal users of the Deutsche Bahn are the commuters who need to be at work at a specific time yet still travel ~100km or more on hourly RE/IC trains. In that situation it's frustrating to have to catch the train a whole hour earlier to be safe.
Here in Munich the S-Bahn trains typically go every 20 mins during the day and sometimes every 40 very early or late. So that's already a problem if you want to arrive for work and can't just start 30min earlier, the regional trains often go every hour as you mentioned.
So yeah, if you live where there's a subway or a bus then the 10min thing works, but just a tiny bit on the outskirts with only the S-Bahn it often sucks. I was very glad when I moved from "need to take S-Bahn or bus to work, or to the subway" to "walk or bus to subway" neighborhood, even if it's roughly the same distance to the city center, and both decidedly IN the city, not the outskirts.
To Amtrak's credit - we complained and they refunded our entire journey.
See recent video "I Spent Over 12 Hours on an Amtrak Train (on purpose)":
This simply not true. Federal Laws says that Passenger trains have priority but the law is never enforced. Freight traffic is suppose to take by-passes to let passenger traffic through and freight traffic is never suppose to block the line. However, again, the laws and rail rules are never enforced. Think about it, why would cargo have a higher priority than human traffic? Is cargo getting there an few hours later or earlier going to impact anything? With humans, it will totally impact their schedule and how often trains are used.
If the Department of Transportation wanted people to start taking trains again, they would come down hard of rail companies that slow down passenger traffic.
Freight in the US optimizes for minimal crew hours. That means longer consists that no longer fit in sidings. Expanding sidings costs money and is thus verboten.
Even if the freight takes 3x as long to get somewhere they can have each crew take a leg then leave the train unattended. The railroad doesn't need to pay for overnight stays or overtime and only one or two crews are "active" in a given segment ever. Or to put it another way the limit is "we are paying for one crew on this segment of the line". Freight lines up on either side as that limit of 1xCrew shuttles whatever they can back and forth within that segment. Then you make the consists longer and longer to "buffer" the bottleneck.
I assume part of the "enforcement" issue is US DOT would need to order the railroad to back trains up or do other nonsensical things that would only create more chaos and delays because as I mentioned most consists can't fit on existing sidings anymore and AFAIK the law has no provision to order the railroads to extend the sidings nor order them to do the physically impossible.
> Think about it, why would cargo have a higher priority than human traffic?
My understanding was essentially it came down to who owned the tracks. More money in freight, more of it, hence priority given by private enterprise. The speculation is moot though.
My understanding is that most rail lines are privately owned. Is that incorrect as well?
Passenger trains between major cities in Europe are in the 200-280 km/h range.
The problem isn’t the big country, it’s the slow trains (that even get deprioritized after cargo, to add insult to the injury).
Edit
Rare = majority of tourists in Europe go to specific cities and countries. There are trips between countries but it is rare to go around ALL Europe by train. Trains are significantly more expensive that flights.
Oslo
to Stockholm
to Copenhagen
to Hamburg
to Amsterdam
to Brussels
to Luxembourg
to Paris
to Nice
to Monte-Carlo
to Milan
Unless you actually want to travel around ALL of Europe (or even all around a few countries in Europe), in which case trains get cheaper again, thanks to things like the interrail ticket.
I'd like to add a perspective on the contrast between Europe and the U.S. in this context. Having partially lived in both regions (across various European countries, though my main base is Buenos Aires, Argentina), one of the things that bothers me most about the U.S. is the car-centric culture. It feels almost artificial in 2024, as if it’s been taken to an extreme (I say this with a grain of salt). I don’t intend to start a flame war, but it’s surprising to me that in many areas where a 45-minute walk would be natural, there are no pedestrian paths. I’m not suggesting that cities like Los Angeles should be entirely pedestrian-friendly, but there are places where basic walkability is neglected, despite the infrastructure being suitable.
What I want to convey is that it's difficult to compare both regions' approaches to moving, and say that the article is amazing!
I took GP to mean the last of these, which I think is uncommon, even in cities (I mean, public transport is right there, right?)
[1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/487572/leading-european-....
1980 called and wants your attitude back.
I don't know which country exactly you mean, I live in central Europe (Slovenia) and no train goes over 200 km/h, most go 60-80 km/h.
Also, every time I'm at the train station in Ljubljana (Slovenia's capital), there's an announcement about the train from Budapest being ~40min late. And it's a way shittier looking train than the local commute ones going 60.
When I was visiting France some years back and took the TER train on the way from Paris to Strasbourg (300mi / 500km), and that crawled. On the way back, we took the TGV, which flew.
If you look at booking tickets on SNCF's website, the difference is stark: about 5 hours via the TER, versus a little under 2 hours via the TGV. (From that perspective, it's a little funny to describe the TER as crawling, seeing as that's not meaningfully different from driving that distance.)
There are some portions of Amtrak that have comparable max speeds (notably, the Acela) but even then, the average speeds on those routes are nowhere near 200km/h.
There are of course many benefits to taking even the TER over driving the equivalent distance: you don't have to be laser-focused on driving (especially in a foreign country where you might not speak / read the language or necessarily know the rules of the road), you don't have variation in travel times due to traffic (which, by driving, you would only contribute to), reduced per-passenger emissions, and so forth.
The distance between Paris and Strasbourg is >400km, so even the "slow" connection has an average speed of ~200 km/h. The actual regional train connection (TER) takes nearly 5 hours with plenty of stops in between. Slightly faster non-regional but non-TGV connections only exist on lines that are not served by TGVs.
One took maybe 6 hours. The other 12+ or some such. The 12+ hour took almost the same route, but stopped at every. single. town.
Woe to the person wanting to go from Ottawa to Toronto, and buying the wrong ticket. This is pre-Internet so research was less common and easy, and if you have no idea it could matter...
I recall this being named the "milk run".
Much of Western Europe has yellow, orange, red and purple lines, i.e. lines over 200km/h.
Parts of Central and Eastern Europe do not, as you say.
A 19 hour plane trip from New York gets you to Singapore.
Fast trains are great for journeys up to about 600km. For crossing continents, planes win, whether rail enthusiasts like it or not, and a future of transport that involves “just don’t fly” as the only solution to climate change is an absolute nonstarter in most of the world.
“just don’t fly” as the only solution to climate change.
It's a daunting task and one that may be impossible to achieve.
You see a lot of “just take the train” in centrist and left-leaning British media (example provided below).
Easy to imagine in the UK. Not so easy from, say, Perth, Western Australia.
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20200218-climate-change-h...
Or do you expect that fast trains would unlock a lot of travel between Chicago and Seattle?
Used to be, decades ago, just show up and go to the plane like it was a bus. Some dude would take your luggage and throw it into the cargo hold.
You'd be boarded and gone in 15.
When landed, they'd open then cargo hold and hand out luggage.
I had this experience in a transfer to a prop plane in Mexico. Fast, easy, quick.
What's most stupid about security for rail passengers is that the original fear from 9/11 doesn't even apply - you can't hijack a train and crash it into a skyscraper!
London had terrorist attacks from the IRA long before 9/11, including attacks on the transport network. There were 13 in 1991, of which 4 were on trains or at stations.
The new delays are for the passport checks. What used to be ~10 seconds for each EU citizen — is the passport/ID card valid and does the face match? — is now 60+ seconds for British people entering the EU, as the official must check they haven't stayed more than 90 days in the last 180 etc.
Hint when they ran a BART feeder to SFO the first thing the TSA did was start patrolling BART with drug dogs and arresting people for having pot.
To go back to the first example, Seattle to Chicago is a 4 hour (scheduled, which already includes taxi time at both ends and a buffer for late departures) plane ride. Even a TGV running continuously at top speed (320km/h), with no stops, would take 8.5 hours to complete the same journey. Wikipedia tells me that the fastest start-to-end scheduled speed of a TGV is only 280 km/h, which would take over 10 hours.
You can get from London to Paris by train in less time than it takes to go from Manhattan to boarding a plane at JFK.
It's BS. In existing cities, train stations are just as hard to build in the city center as airports -- neither happens. You do not in fact need to get to airports hours in advance, and security theater in airports is still excruciating, but you can get PreCheck or Clear and cut the time way down. There is some time advantage to boarding trains, but it's on the order of 20-40 minutes, not hours.
Paris and London are only 213 miles apart! It's about 2/3rds the distance that SF is from LA, much less say SF to Seattle or NYC to Chicago. Rail travel works great in Europe because distances are small, density is high, and the cities grew up centered around rail infrastructure.
only in countries where they neglected building train stations before the cities grew to todays sizes. but even then it's not true. US cities are less dense, so it should be easier to find space. train stations are also much much smaller than airports and trains don't make as much noise as airplanes. there are many more reasons not to build airports in the middle of a city, none of which apply to trains.
the main problem for trains is finding a route for the track into the city. that can be and is solved with tunnels though. or the chinese approach where the high speed trainstations are sometimes built away from the center of the city and instead the center is connected by a dense network of subway lines. a process that started less than 20 years ago but now puts many chinese cities at the top of the list of the largest subway networks in the world.
If you want to build a transit hub outside the city center and link it via subway, that's no easier or more convenient for a train station than for an airport.
London Bridge, a major station, was rebuilt.
Euston Station has a planned large expansion.
It's impossible to build an airport in a city centre.
Just driving to the airport in Denver is nearly an hour for most of the city. It'll take a half hour to get from Uptown Dallas or Frisco or Saginaw to DFW. It's like a half hour to get from Orlando International to any of the Disney resorts. About 20 minutes from downtown KC to MCI. All of this is without any time parking or going through security and assuming traffic doesn't get bad.
Dallas has a train station downtown. Same with Fort Worth. Kansas City Union Station is downtown. Manhattan has several train stations. A lot of cities have a big train station downtown, as many cities were built around the train station. A decently sized train station uses considerably less space than a busy airport.
Which of these seem easier for the people in the city to actually get to and use?
Dallas Union Station: https://maps.app.goo.gl/aMwyguz98hptWPNo6
DFW Airport: https://maps.app.goo.gl/5iUpUoqvUkhJr1D98
Penn Station: https://maps.app.goo.gl/JysFmwFhc3cwqHLC6
JFK Airport: https://maps.app.goo.gl/MHWe4UM4wCk9iL1F7
Don't get me wrong, I agree even door to door air travel will usually be faster when talking about the kinds of distances a lot of US travelers go at and often people act like a train is 0 minutes of time getting to/from the station, but arguing the whole travel time getting to/from the airport and dealing with more security is only 20 minutes is a massive stretch for a ton of Americans. Most people should budget probably an hour before their scheduled boarding time to deal with the about half hour drive, the time navigating the airport, and the time dealing with security. Plus add another half hour after landing to actually get someplace interesting.
My point is if you have a substantial sized city that does not already have a large train station in its center, you aren't building a train station in its center, in the same way that if your city doesn't have an airport that you've built up around, you aren't going to build it. We're all at the mercy of history here, unless you're going to try to build a new planned community where there currently is only light population.
LAX, sure, it is mostly surrounded by the city on three sides, but the sprawl there means the vast majority of the city sees 30+min traffic. Meanwhile Union Station there is right downtown and far more central.
https://maps.app.goo.gl/iKfLwgvCpapoCA6R8
It's incredible how your first two examples are such massive swings and misses at naming cities which have airports more convenient for their city than their train stations. In both the train station is more central to the actual city with a lot of people having a shorter walk to the station than most would have as a drive to the airport. About the first city in that list where the airport is actually more conveniently located is Las Vegas but largely because Amtrack just doesn't serve Vegas by train at all. Sounds like you didn't bother actually researching the list at all and just put down some cities that came to mind. Did you bother actually looking where the train stations were in comparison to the airport?
Another example, New Orleans. It is a half hour drive to/from the French Quarter. It is like a half hour walk from the train station to the French Quarter. Assuming the train and the plane arrived at the same time one could walk there from the train station before you even left the parking lot of the rental car agency.
> My point is if you have a substantial sized city that does not already have a large train station in its center
Just continuing to ignore most historic US cites (and the vast majority of the large ones) do have train stations in the middle of the city
> in the same way that if your city doesn't have an airport that you've built up around, you aren't going to build it
Just continuing to ignore the massive difference in land use requirements for even a medium airport compared to a train station. Just look at those Maps links I shared earlier. Look at how much space Penn Station in Manhattan uses. Think we can build an airport like JFK or even La Guardia in that same footprint? How would they even take off/land? Its way easier for a city to build a train station in its core than to put a whole airport with multiple runways and taxiways and tons of hangars large enough to hold a 737. It's incredible you think they're on the same level of scale to build in terms of land use.
Like, this is pure fantasy. It's just people who have some kind of weird identity built up out of "liking trains" ignoring the actual world.
I said, "there's about a 20-40 minute advantage to train stations" and you're like trying to go to bat for the idea that an intracity commuter station which is 12 minutes from the airport somehow disproves that.
What we need are high speed trains between nearby city pairs. Short-haul flights both waste fuel, don't get up to speed, and have their travel times doubled by TSA security theater and airline boarding nonsense. A Shinkansen-spec high speed train (320kph/200mph) would beat the plane on 200-400 mile trips, both in terms of convenience, carbon emissions, and luxury.
The 2,785 road miles between NY and LA would be 14 rail hours compared to the six a plane takes. Not competitive in the slightest, and not a serious mode of travel, but I'd consider it. The three days the train currently takes sounds like the worst of a road trip combined with the worst of a plane trip.