[parshimers]

I always hear a lot of grousing about DB, but I took it a lot the two times I visited, and I liked it. Even when there was a horrible windstorm that blew trees all over the tracks and stopped the ICE from coming down to Ingolstadt, I was able to hop onto regional alternates to where the ICE was, and get back to Berlin without too much insanity. The trains are pleasant and clean, and the stations are massive and have lots of nice convenience stores.

Contrast this with Metrolink or Amtrak, and it's night and day. If your train gets cancelled, at least in SoCal, you're likely hosed. You will wait hours upon hours, and some stations that are in the middle of the biggest metro area in the US get 2 trains a day. You can't just hop on something going the right way. Furthermore they are often isolated and have no stores near them.

I also really disagree with the article's implicit assumption that passenger railways somehow, have to make a profit. At least here in the US, that's often implied too, yet the interstates are completely free and funded by the state and no one bats an eye. Why?