[trinix912]

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.

[throw0101d]

> Probably because most cities are so spaced out […]

The US population is fairly concentrated around the 'edges'. About 40% of the population lives in a coastal county:

* https://ecowatch.noaa.gov/thematic/coastal-population

And two-thirds of the population with-in 100 miles (160 km) of the border:

* https://www.aclu.org/know-your-rights/border-zone

[shiroiushi]

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.

[zbshqoa]

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)

[trinix912]

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!)

[dagw]

it's faster to just fly 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.

[rsynnott]

> 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.

[mitthrowaway2]

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.

[shiroiushi]

There's huge differences between the US and Japan. When I travel from my home in Tokyo to Osaka or any other city by shinkansen, I take public transit (Tokyo Metro specifically) to get from my home to Tokyo station or Shinagawa, and then transfer to the shinkansen. At the destination city, I just get off and either walk to wherever I'm going, or transfer to another local rail or subway line.

You just can't do that in the US, outside some very select situations (like going from somewhere inside DC to Manhattan NYC). From SF to Seattle, how do you get to the station in SF? In Seattle, how do you get from the station to your destination? What do you do to get around in Seattle? Generally, you need a car, which means renting a car, which is really expensive. The US is set up to handle this at airports pretty well: you get off your plane and go to the Hertz counter and pick up a car (and then after your trip is over and you've returned the car, get arrested for auto theft when Hertz reports your car as stolen--don't use Hertz). I haven't tried trains on the west coast, but on the east coast, I've never seen train stations set up with rental car counters.