[jnxx]

As an aside, I used Amtrak to travel from Rochester, NY to NYC and it was totally weird when I asked people in Rochester (which has a population of about 200,000) for the train station. Most people literally didn't know where the train station of their city was! And it turned out to be as small as a regional rail or European sub-urb S-train stop. Only two platforms with no people on it.

[fishtoaster]

Rochester Native here, and yep: I've never been to the rail station. Probably because the frequent, short flights to NYC are relatively cheap. Checking amtrak vs delta for a random date in january, your options are a 7-9 hour train ride for $54 in coach, or a 1hour flight for $64 in economy basic.]

[estaseuropano]

For context: medium sized European city will have anything from 12-30 platforms - and often several main train stations and several dozen local ones in the city. E.g. Brussels, Paris or Berlin have several huge stations.

[matkoniecz]

12-30 is a bit overkill.

Kraków, Poland with 780k inhabitants has "only" 10

https://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=18/50.06881/19.94768&laye...

[the8472]

A terminus needs at least double the amount of platforms to sustain the throughput of a regular station.