The US has actually pretty good train infrastructure, it's just almost entirely dedicated to freight. The US moves far more goods by rail, farther and cheaper than just about any other country in the world.
We did, and then when airplanes came around, it turned out that people/other interests found air travel better than train travel for most intercity travel.
Even on the East Coast, there used to be way more rail lines that took passengers -- if this were a hundred years ago, I could have walked a mile or two to a spur which would take me to one of the mid-sized cities connected to The Big City by commuter rail; now they're mostly rail trails.
The railroads deliberately killed the passenger business because it has worse operating ratios and needs more capex. Investors and execs believed (and still believe) railroads are in long-term managed decline so capex and labor costs must be avoided wherever possible.
To give an example: Caltrain used to run all the way to LA. It was a profitable line the day Southern Pacific killed it. They used shills to buy up all the tickets for phantom riders then used the low passenger boarding numbers to justify to the US Railroad Commission that they should be allowed to close the route.
This strategy or variations of it were used all across the USA to deliberately kill profitable passenger service because it made the company financials look better: no need to buy or refurbish passenger cars nor pay stewards and conductors. Operating ratio looks better? Mission accomplished! Making less money doesn't make sense but profit is almost irrelevant if you think the whole business is in long-term decline. Better to kill anything that might require future capex or labor and instead optimize to get the most juice with the least squeeze of existing fruits.
Much like the shutdown of public transit across the USA. Who Framed Roger Rabbit is a semi-documentary for which the real-life villain General Motors was convicted of monopoly action in federal court! But the judge only fined them $1 because all the movers and shakers thought cars and airplanes were the future so who gives a crap about public transit, trains or the lot?
Passenger train service and public transit were systematically dismantled on purpose by elites who thought they knew better.
Unlike in Europe, where rail maintenance is heavily subsidised by the government, in the US it is paid for by the private rail operators to a much greater extent. Thus the rail operators have much more say over how the rail is used and obviously priorities the more profitable traffic, which in the US is cargo.
So if the US government would wanted to build out cross country passenger rail they would either have to build new tracks, or use eminent domain to take back control of the existing tracks. Both options would be very expensive and wildly unpopular.
Which Europe are you talking about? Europe is a collection of independent counties and what you just mention is all wrong.
Most of the European railway companies have been privatized and there are companies that run the rail network and companies that run the train. Subsidies are not a thing in many of the European countries
If you look at the UK for example, the physical network is publicly owned and maintained by National Rail, whilst the ToCs are (currently) mostly private. That said the ToCs are also going to switch to publicly owned over the next few years.
It was, but then all the Class-Ⅰ rail carriers merged until we were left with a west-coast duopoly (UP and BNSF) and an east-coast duopoly (CSX and NS) and they closed all the “redundant” lines they could.
Probably because most cities are so spaced out you'd still need a car to get from home to the train station and from the train station to your office when taking the train to work, for example. So it's easier to just drive there.
You're ignoring how non-dense everything actually is in those places. Americans no longer live in walkable cities and towns like in the early 20th century before cars became popular. After WWII, with the rise of the automobile, the inner cities emptied out and everyone who could afford to moved out to the suburbs. So now, even in a "city" in America (unless it's Manhattan), you absolutely need a car to get anywhere, because nothing is walkable.
It's not like 1905 when you could just walk from your home in Smalltown USA to the local train station, buy a ticket, and get a ride to the nearest city, and get out and walk from that station to interesting places.
Any train trip, even if you look only at the eastern states, is likely to require a car ride on one or both ends to get to/from your source/destination to/from the station. If you have to drive an hour just to get to a train station, and another hour to get from the destination station to your final station, it's probably faster and easier and much cheaper to just drive the whole way. Don't forget dealing with parking, car rental, etc.; you'd probably have to take taxis, and those are quite expensive.
The fundamental problem here is density. America doesn't have it any more.
So it's easier to drive to San Francisco from Seattle instead of parking your car at the train station in Seattle, take a train and then do your business on downtown SF, come back to Seattle and take your car back home?
(It's a figurative example I'm not sure there's a train from Seattle to SF)
Of course not, but even with state of art train technology (let's say 250mph), that would still be an over 3 hour commute each way (just the railway part!). If it's just for a business trip every now in a while, it's faster to just fly there.
I'm just saying, this is such a rare use case that it's not as high of a priority as expanding the roads that 80% or more of the residents in a city use daily. Whereas for freight it makes a ton of sense.
(fun fact, there actually is a train route there!)
As some who used to travel for meetings quite a lot to a city 3 hours away by high speed rail, it really isn't. Once you take into account that you can show up for your train 5 mins before it leaves, plus the fact that the train station is almost always much closer to where you want to be, the difference in time between trains and planes pretty much disappears for shorter trips.
Plus the train is just so much nicer and more comfortable. It's quieter. Your seats are much bigger and have more legroom than even the nicest business class seats. You can get up and walk around if you want. You often have a restaurant car where you can sit and grab a drink or something to eat. Train travel is just so much more relaxing compared to flying.
> that would still be an over 3 hour commute each way (just the railway part!). If it's just for a business trip every now in a while, it's faster to just fly there.
Even for flights which take 45 minutes in the air, I’d never expect to get to the airport, through security, through all the boarding and unboarding nonsense, and from the destination airport to where I was actually going, in 3 hours.
IIRC last time I was in Seattle airport, after I got off the plane (which was late, of course), I spent half an hour just walking through airport and to the rather inconveniently located light rail. Everything involving flying takes forever.
3 hours is about Osaka to Tokyo, a route that sees a massive volume of business travel on the bullet train in Japan, arguably far more than flying. SF to Seattle would be about 1300 km which is more like Hiroshima to Morioka, around 6.5 hours by train including a connection; I think at that point there'd be a split in favour of flying, but around a third of travellers would probably still opt for the train due to its comfort and convenience.
Relative to the current situation or in absolute terms? If there was a Shinkansen style trains between LA and SF with the same quality and timetable as the Shinkansen between Tokyo and Osaka, do you not think Americans would flock to it?
A train might make that hour up by not needing to get in and out of SFO/LAX/etc.
In Tokyo, they’re fast partly because you don’t need to trek to the airport (yes, even Haneda) and deal with security etc. You just… get on the train and bam are downtown in the next place.
Sadly, with commercial air travel the time a passenger spends on the plane between say SF and LA represents only a small portion of their total travel time. This is commonly overlooked or not understood by people unfamiliar with traveling by train.
We have derailments monthly due to poor track conditions... We have terrible pay and conditions for operators who are exploited by both the companies and then the government. We do not have pretty good infrastructure.