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Comment by Mithaldu | Hacker News Reader

Amtrak must go really slow. In Europe, with a considerably higher population density, and thus more stops, 800 miles can be traversed in 10-11 hours. That train apparently takes somewhere close to 20.

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Amtrak's running on a lot of very old track, which limits the top speed the trains can go on most routes. They don't have the power to upgrade the tracks because they don't own them, and the freight companies who do own the track don't have much incentive to upgrade it.

Also Amtrak can be forced to stop if a particularly heavy freight train or traffic has gone through. Heavy freight can heat up the rails enough that Amtrak has to wait for them to cool, the only time I've ever used Amtrak that happened and it took forever.

Amtrak uses freight lines (which aren't very smooth most of the time), and the maximum train speed is 80 mph.

Also, a train going between Chicago and New York is traveling through Indiana, over CSX-owned tracks, and they are notoriously terrible about prioritizing freight over passenger rail. Expect to spend an extra 1-3 hours stopped waiting for a freight train!

The Lake Shore Limited (NYC <-> Chicago) runs through Albany and Buffalo, so it's closer to 950 miles, instead of the 800 miles you'd expect taking I-80 straight through. So the train does average closer to 50 than 40, which is better but still not great.

Depends on where in Europe... the long-distance trains from Copenhagen (mainly CityNightLine) are closer to Amtrak speeds. For example Copenhagen to Basel is ~700 miles, 16 1/2 hours; Copenhagen to Amsterdam is ~500 miles, 15 hours.

They do go slow, but that's not often the point, and that's what this campaign is trying to help. They are trying to point out a different way of looking at it. They are pointing out the romantic-relax-enjoy side of trains rather than the hurry-up-and-move-move side.

I think the area between Chicago and New York has a considerably higher population density than most of Europe.

But yes, Amtrak does go very slow, at least the one time I used it it did :)

Not really, no, at least if you concentrate on Central/Western Europe, where most of the high-speed railways are located:

US: http://jaymans.files.wordpress.com/2012/09/71789-050-459169a...

EU: http://education.randmcnally.com/images/edpub/Europe_Populat... (note the very different colour schemes).

Bad tracks and diesel locomotives are more likely to be the culprit here.

My impression is that EU passenger railways are less likely to have at-grade crossings, which also would contribute (in terms of safety at a given speed).

High speed rail (typically considered 200km/h+, i.e., ~124mph) is almost always built with no at-grade crossings; on existing track upgraded for 200km/h line-speed it's normal to have lower speed limits around at-grade crossings.

It's perfectly feasible to have far quicker diesel trains than is common in the US (see the British High Speed Train, from the 1970s, with a top speed in service of 125mph, or the ICE-TD from a decade ago, again 125mph). Of course, you then need to have signalling for that line-speed and have pathings that allow it.

US trains are terribly slow. Much slower than those in Europe or Asia. (I've ridden trains in the US, China, Mongolia, and Europe)

In addition to the points made by the other comments, I'd also add that "thus more stops" doesn't necessarily follow. Amtrak tends to be the subject of a lot of stupid politics, with the routes and stops determined more by what wins votes than what makes sense. As a result, a lot of Amtrak routes stop extremely frequently in pretty small towns.

As an example, the Amtrak train that runs between Washington DC and Boston (serving NYC along the way, and continuing on to Norfolk, VA) stops not only at DC's main train station, but also at New Carrollton, MD and Alexandria, VA, which are not only quite close to DC, but actually on the DC Metro system, making these stops almost completely redundant.

I count no less than thirty two stops between Boston and DC. The trip is about 9.5 hours long, so that's an average of one stop every 18 minutes.

The NYC->Chicago trip isn't quite as bad, but still has 19 stops in between. Along the way, it stops in such bustling metropolises as Elkhart, IN (population 51,152) and Sandusky, OH (population 25,493).

An even better example is the Acela, which makes fewer stops than the regular Northeast Regional trains, but stops in Wilmington, Delaware (pop. 70,000 and a 30 minute drive from Philadelphia). Joe Biden, now Vice President and formerly Senator from Delaware, used to commute on the Acela every day, and was a strong advocate for Amtrak funding.

It is in fact the Joseph R. Biden Jr. Railroad Station that Amtrak trains arrive in.

As soon as the Southeast Highspeed Rail project looked like it was going to be viable, the mayors of all the small towns along the route started lobbying for it to stop in their burg.

Most of those stops between Boston and D.C. only have one train service per day.

The typical Northeast Regional between D.C. and NYC is: New York City, Newark, Metropark, Trenton, Philadelphia, Wilmington, Baltimore, BWI, New Carrolton, D.C. That's 8 intermediate stops over 3.5 hours, or one per 26 minutes. The Acela Express doesn't stop at Metropark, Trenton, BWI, or New Carrolton.

Why does even the Acela pass through Wilmington? The city only has 70,000 people, but is also a hub of corporate law firms and credit card companies. Wilmington boards about 800k passengers per yer, versus Baltimore's 1m, despite the latter being about 10x as big.

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