[Shivetya]

Primitive? Really? Doesn't seem to affect usage rates does it? Its a myth really, one that is perpetuated simply because people think its correct and far too many who like the idea of it being correct don't want to know otherwise.

Maybe Berlin and Germany stand out amongst Europe, but with regards to passenger miles trains are less that seven percent of all travel within the EU [1]. High speed rail does two things, eats up a lot of money and takes riders of slower rail. Even Japan has seen this as when the amount of high speed rail made available increased overall ridership decreased.

there is a lot of romance about trains but in the end they cost more per mile to build, use, and maintain, that even flying, in many areas. Slower than flying except over short distances and less convenient and timely over that short distance compared to cars. Public light rail is a boon doggle in many US cities, the costs to implement are beyond any reasonable time table of recovery.

Freight is king of the rail in the US, even Europe envies its status here and that makes a far greater impact on the environment than moving people

[1] http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/documents/3217494/5711595/KS-DA...

[tormeh]

I think it's inner-city transport the parent is referring to. It really is fantastic in Berlin. Nothing beats a good metro for inner-city transport, and Berlin has it. Tokyo and New York is better, though, but then again those are vastly bigger cities.

And yeah, long-range train passenger transport generally sucks but it's not really relevant, as it's not inner-city.

Besides, train travel doesn't need to suck - Maglev may just go fast enough and be cheap enough to maintain to fix most of the problems. The train in the article will go for 40 minutes - that's far less than you need just to check in at the airport. And it will cover 330km - that's 4 hours by car. it would be foolish to pick any other means of transport between the two cities. It could go from SF to LA in 1h15m. Depending on how bad the airports are, it could even be competitive with air between NY and LA. But it won't become truly interesting until these trains go faster than planes (and I believe they will do so, eventually)

[Shivetya]

and I have no issues with inner city travel in Atlanta or Chicago. The issue at hand based on the original article is transport between cities. Hence the point I made is valid, the trope that Europe is some bastion of passenger transport by train simply isn't true, unless you count a few percentage points as an amazing number.

[raverbashing]

>Slower than flying except over short distances

Not really if you count door to door. 1h15 Paris to Brussels, city-center to city-center and less time wasted.

Same thing with London-Paris, even if you fly to LCY, you're still going at least to Orly.

> and less convenient and timely over that short distance compared to cars

But not everybody can have a car or can drive or even want to bother with that.

"Less convenient", sure, let me worry about where to park my rented car, how to drive in an unknown city (even with GPS), etc. In Europe this is really not worth it in some cities (even in cities like Toronto, you shouldn't bother if you're going to the city center, trains beat flying for nearby cities (Ottawa/Montreal)

[zimpenfish]

I would be happy with more reliable slower rail rather than high speed rail. If you know it's going to take 3 hours and you can get a seat, you can plan for that - it's when it might be anywhere between 1.5 and 5 hours, assuming your train isn't cancelled, and you might have to stand the whole way, that it becomes unpleasant.