Posted on 06/14/2015 1:36:36 PM PDT by QT3.14
The May Amtrak derailment outside of Philadelphia put the sorry state of passenger rail in the United States briefly back on the public agenda, leaving many people wondering not just about the specifics of the crash but about the more general issue — how is it that a rich and powerful country that was a pioneer in railroad adoption in the 19th century has such terrible trains?
The United States is a big country, with lots of trains in it. So you can really think of this big generic question as composed of three separate questions with separate answers. One question, of urgent interest to media and political elites in New York and Washington, is why Northeast Corridor passenger rail service is so much slower than the first-rate systems found in France, Spain, China, and Japan. The second question, which will have bedeviled anyone who's ever been a tourist in Europe, is why passenger rail outside of the Northeast Corridor is so unimaginably awful. Last but by no means least, there's the question of why the richest and most powerful empire the world has ever known can't build itself a first-rate national, truly high-speed rail network along Chinese lines.
These questions are often lumped together under the hazy notion that American trains are bad.
(Excerpt) Read more at vox.com ...
What is with leftists and passenger trains?
Automobiles represent liberty and freedom. Not to mention living on a multi-acre lot of land instead of living like a sardine in the city.
Who wants to travel by train?
They decided to dump money into useless projects like “The Big Dig” in Boston.
China doesn't have railroad worker unions?
UNIONS, like Obama, destroy everything they touch.
Japanese trains ARE ALL PRIVATE. Japanese that too trains when JR was public said that service was horrible. JR service is still horrible in the country where there is no competition, but when there’s competition, like in the city, tickets are dirt cheap and service is awesome.
They want to effectively, and then directly, ban flying and personal driving except for the elite. As the substitute, they want buses and trains only, governed by TSA strip-searches at gunpoint in public.
We're in the introduction and acclimatization phase.
Oddly enough, they float the idea of privatising the NE Corridor....then jump into full beggar mode, in typical Communist style.
Trains work in Germany too. The US problem is that airlines and airports cut out the option of US travel by trains. Here in Frankfurt....they run the railway right into the airport and they work in a combined effort.
Trains are like “community” to leftards where we can all hold hands, diverse etc and all that liberal BS. I can see only one silver lining in city railways: downtown parking is an effing scam and rip off.
Too much money made on freight.
The left just wants us all to return to the European systems that we escaped from a few hundred years ago.
They actually hate them. Remember that the left was the first to push “free” roads on the public, and all of the big automakers were among the first crony “capitalists”; railroads represented free enterprise what with the private companies rather than the government owning all the infrastructure.
Maybe...just *maybe*...in the northeast (Boston to DC).But apart from Boston to DC trains are a stupid idea in a huge country that's as sparsely populated as is the US.
I was planning to take a train trip from Denver to Utah just for fun. Take the Wife and kids just for the experience.
Plus...
There’s a bar on the Zephyr trains.
Passenger trains take a second fiddle to that. Rail freight is the priority and such, throw in private ownership of rails and such other issues.
LOL at calling Red China’s HSR network “first rate”. Typical Vox.
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