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I am inundated on Facebook with suggestions about people touting the virtues of rail transportation and the lack of it in the US compared to Europe.
So I did some research.
It costs about $300 on a low-cost carrier to get from Tampa to Los Angeles and takes about 5 hours.
AmTrak will run about the same price and will take four days. You spend as much time in Chicago changing trains as you would in the cattle car with wings.
When it takes ten times as long to get there, it needs to either be cheaper or a lot more comfortable.
The AmTrak seat looks a little more comfortable, but not a LOT more.
And that is why we don't have a lot of passenger rail in the USA. Simple economics.
Rail is cheaper than trucks and trucks are cheaper than air for cargo... This is because of the relative speed of the methods.
Rail not being cheaper than air is primarily because the passenger trains don't own a foot of track outside a couple commuter routes. The freight carriers own the track and their stock takes priority over the AmTrak trains.
For the record:
It'd take me three days to drive it and more than $350 in gas to get to LA from here. Plus two places to sleep. Taking my car is a LOT more comfortable and fun than either a plane or train. Plus, no TSA in my car.
remember germany, going to the field on the trains, and having to wait hours stopped while the other trains had priority...panzer guy
ReplyDeleteYeah the two biggest obstacles to passenger rail in the US are distance and population density. Rail only pencils out in compact densely populated areas like Europe, or the Boston to DC metroplex. People forget how all fired huge the continental US is and how much has single digit population density.
ReplyDelete^That, right there.
DeleteNo one in Eurostan takes Eurorail from Lisbon to Moscow, or London to Baghdad, which would be the exact functional equivalent of LA-NYFC.
Their trips are like NYFC to Philly.
Which, hereabouts, isn't even as far as most people's daily drive in So Cal just to get to work every morning.
Amtrak is just a Greyhound with steel wheels and a kitchen. They stop in every third town. A fella can walk around, gawk at the scenery and not worry about the water pump and tires, and Not get the TSA Bullschitt. If it's cross country, I'd do it. But there isn't anything Over There that I need to tend to, so I'm staying home.
ReplyDeleteI use Amtrak regularly to get to California (if you'll pardon my mentioning the Accursed State) to see my brother. I use it because it's cheaper than the alternatives, I don't have to drive the damn thing, and unlike certain things with wings, it deposits me right in the middle of Riverside, a few blocks from my brother's house. That said, I understand fully why rail travel's not a real thing in the US outside of the northeastern corridor. Not enough people who want to use it. The railroad companies were delighted to get rid of it in favor of freight---freight doesn't mind being parked on a siding for a few hours or days, nor does freight demand that its feet be warm and its martinis cold. The people who whine for more RR travel in this country have spent too much time (IMO) in Europe or Japan.
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