[KennyBlanken]

How dare you argue against the "electrification is too expensive to do in the US!" crowd with facts like "most of the rest of the world does it"!

In the US, the east coast line is electrified from Boston to DC (possibly further? Can't remember.)

[Manuel_D]

In total less than 2,000 miles of track are electrified out of 140,000 miles of track [1]. Boston to DC is electrified only on a specific passenger rail line (along with one route to Philadelphia). The only other electric rail lines are short coal-haulers moving coal from mines to coal power plants.

Europe's lines are economical to electrify because of greater density. Electrifying a rail line costs the same regardless of how many trains use it, so it breaks even in dense and frequently traveled routes but not on sparse lines. Guess which is more common in a less densely populated continent like North America?

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Railroad_electrification_in_th....

[mcv]

Yet even Russia has 51% of its rail network electrified.