My numbers were wrong. Givewell has ACTUALLY directed over $2 billion in funding from over 125,000 donors now. Seriously, it's a great option for this giving season, and you can get $100 matched using my code. Just go to www.givewell.org/ and select “UA-cam” and “CityNerd” at checkout. Thanks!
Please focus on the need for a rail system directly from Chicago to Atlanta. There's no reason I should have to take a ride to DC to om a trip fr I m Chicago to Savannah
We had one until the late 1950s, and then the only Chicago-Florida lines went through Birmingham, Montgomery, and Valdosta or Birmingham, Columbus (GA), and Albany. Any return of a proper Chicago-Florida line must go through Louisville, Nashville, Chattanooga, Atlanta, and Macon.
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There are apparently 100,000 people that commute between Dallas and Houston multiple times a week, 24,300 people fly. Yet, there are still people that argue against HSR between the two cities. Oil companies headquartered in Houston and American Airlines headquartered in Fort Worth certainly doesn’t help. Edit: the 24,300 refers to how many people fly between Dallas and Houston every day on average.
The only problem with using only rail to get from A to B in Texas is once you're at the destination you still have to drive to get anywhere. Obviously same issue with flying. But Texans also have that midwest driving stamina, so the drive from Dallas to Houston really isn't much of a deterrent. Personally, my airport does not have direct flights to San Antonio or Austin. I would much rather fly in to Dallas and take HSR to my destination than wait an extra 2 hr in the airport for a 45 minute flight.
Connecting the Dallas-Houston-Austin/SA triangle seems like the number one priority by far for HSR. All are in that perfect “too close to fly, too far to drive” range, the land is flat and relatively cheap, and they are all distinct, huge, and growing metro areas.
@ There is so much demand that such issues wouldn’t be a significant detriment to implementing HSR. An important issue would be to have stations in an appropriate location within the city based on an analysis of travel patterns, and projected patterns.
Columbus is one of the biggest cities in the world with absolutely no passenger rail service. Ohioans have called for a passenger rail connecting Cincy, Columbus, and Cleveland, for at least my whole life. Really hope it happens at some point.
No passenger rail service in our Columbus either (GA), but we’re only moderately-sized and out of the way from any obvious corridors save maybe Birmingham-Macon/Albany. Here to Atlanta would be nice… But Columbus, OH deserves much more immediate regular passenger service, just for being the core of Ohio.
@@pcongre yeah I just meant it's on the top 10 list for biggest cities with no rail transport of any kind. I think it's number 10 but it's the only American city in the top top.
@@LSMusic614 can't find the source for that top 10, but according to demographia there are at least 24 larger cities for which I can't find any rail at all (not a lack of service, mind you - as in there is not a single meter of tracks in those cities)
In the UK, we call 1 train a day a "parliamentary service" - a service that exists just to tick a box to say they are running a service with no expectation that anyone will every ride on it. I have 14 trains per *hour* between my fairly large metro area and nearby much larger metro area. 10 trains per day is for rural branch lines.
To be fair to the US, which I am very rarely, the massive distances and sheer quantity of "fairly large" and large metros in the US are much greater than every country besides China, which obviously has no political hurdles to jump through, or land acquisition to worry about. The UK and most European countries have *most* of their population within a relatively small distance compared with the US, and have much more density, so your train situation may be the exact same as say Washington D.C. to Alexandria, which is about every 4 minutes, but may not be for every single fairly large to large metro corridor.
@@shuss-pi3mecomparing density region by region between the US and Europe, it truly looks like we only *just* settled the east coast (and the rest of the country is still the wild Wild West) We can easily fit a billion people, but have 1/3 of that
yes but have a tiny amount of freight, and its only on major corriodrs whereas you can send a freight from some random middle of npowehere town to just about anywhere between Prince Rupert in Canada (its a major port) and Mexico city especially after the Canadian Pacifc and Kansas City Southern Merger
Cincinnati is brutally underserved by rail. There's basically 1 train every other day at ~1:40am to Chicago and the same but at ~3:30 am going the other way. To be honest there should be a line between Cincinnati and Louisville or continuing the 3c+d route down through Lexington to Nashville. It's mind boggling that Louisville and Nashville don't have any sort of service, especially since there historically was with the LN line.
I saw a video recently about the abandoned subway/metro projects over the years, and I can see why rail directly into downtown might be an issue in terms of the topography, but yeah the city needs to be connected somehow.
As someone from Louisville, YES! I wish that we had any rail service that went to Cincy or down to Nashville. I just hope that the proposed line from Indy to Louisville actually happens.
EVERY city with more than 100K where you measure trains "by day" and not "per hour" is brutally underserved. I live in a rural state of Germany. The 2 biggest cities are just above 200K and a bit more than 50 miles from each other. There is a direct local train at least once per hour, with additional regional trains. And you could also use 2 more lines to go there, in a triangle route. Those side lines go only to villages or towns that generally are 20K-30K. And also have a hourly train per direction. Oh and there is also another direct connection between the 2 big cities, but that is not electrified and only served by a very slow train every 2 hours. Government tries to shut it down about once every 5 years because only 500 people use it daily, but that always gets hot reaction, because for those people it's an essential connection from village to big town. Without it they would need to use a car.
@@steemlenn8797 "...only served by a very slow train EVERY 2 HOURS." If only such a schedule could be in place in the larger populated area of the USA!
I happened by chance to meet David Gunn, who later became Amtrak's president. We were seat mates on a plane -- in coach--where Gunn (a cost-conscious man) expressed great interest in how I used and felt about Washington DC's metro system that he then managed. I was very impressed with him. He tried hard in both jobs to improve services while cutting waste, and resisted efforts to carve out the most profitable sections of Amtrak (short runs) for private investors. He refused to sell out the publlc interest and it cost him his job
As someone who lives in Bakersfield. That gap you spoke of drives me INSANE. instead of taking a train I had to take a bus to Lancaster and hop on Metrolink. While on the bus guess what I passed by, TRAINS!! The tracks are there. Amtrak just has to buy the rights to use them. It kills me
Regarding Denver to COS, there was supposed to be a ballot measure regarding funding the Front Range service this election, but it got pushed back to 2026. At this point, since it's going to be a state-supported Amtrak service, the most important thing is getting the population to agree to fund it. Since Colorado has become reliably progressive, I think the odds of it passing are high.
I’ve been following Colorado High Speed rail since I was in middle school… now I’m 31… so maybe in my son’s lifetime he can ride a train to Denver. I don’t want that to be the case. I commuted between COS and Centennial then to downtown Denver for a few years and I absolutely hated it.
I've been actively talking up Front Range Passenger Rail to as many other Denverites as I can. This passing would've been a life changer when I was commuting to FC
All but one of the new RTD board members seem poised to do wonders for RTD’s public “Reason to Drive” reputation, with them talking about improving safety and frequency which are two of the main issues people I talk to have with their services. If the can engender a little more trust in public transit it would help.
The best way to get Amtrak trains to arrive on time is to require that they carry "some" US Mail aboard. The primary rail carriers (BNSF, Norfolk Southern, Union Pacific, CSX) must then prioritize Amtrak movements over freight traffic...
They already legally have to give way to amtrak trains. They just get around the legal requirement by running trains so long they physically cannot fit within the sidings and thus force the Amtrak trains to give way.
“It’s an analytical exercise who’s main purpose is to generate results that I can be mad about” would be the best description of my job as an engineer 😂
I know Nashville was only on the thumbnail, but I think a Nashville-Chattanooga-Atlanta, or Nashville-Louisville-Indy, or Nashville-Louisville-Cincinnati lines would all be great candidates
If you want to turn your rage into action, join us at All Aboard Ohio! We have chapter meetings across the state, plus you can become a member, donate, or check out our awesome store there!
I'll nominate you Ray, for Sec. Trans. :D. Seriously, I'm a native Ohioan who took a 24 year detour to be a railroader in the NEC, both Amtrak and freight. I had friends in OARP/AAO who spent just about their entire adult lives in the fight for some kind of rail passenger service in the 3C corridor, to no avail. We have a corrupt state government that is in the pocket of highway interests. I don't know how else you could characterize it when the former ODOT Sec. of the previous Republican Governor came to there from being a lobbyist for the asphalt paving industry - no kidding. He forbade officially mentioning the term intrastate rail passenger service while he was in office. It's partly why Ohio is 7th in U. S. population but 47th in transit funding, and I don't know how to change that anytime soon? And yes it's a total disgrace that Columbus has no rail passenger service of any kind, and they moved the intercity bus station to out by the interstate, and Cleveland is getting ready to do the same thing. Much respect for the channel.
Sarasota native here: we used to have the Tampa southern that went from Tampa through Bradenton and Sarasota to a junction just south of Arcadia. There it would link up with another branch of the Atlantic Coast Line Railroad and would go down to the terminus in Naples, passing through Punta Gorda and Fort Myers. There hasn’t been intercity service in over 50 years
Sarasota was the winter home of the Ringling Circus. Back when "the train came to town", it many times included "lions, and tigers, and bears". Oh, my. [Speaking of Florida, there used to be train service between New Orleans and Jacksonville. In theory, there is going to be a train between New Orleans and Mobile re-opened one-of-these-days.]
@@JoyClinton-i8g Jacksonville here for the shout out! We would LOVE to be connected to Brightline. Or to be able to get an Amtrak headed north to Atlanta that didn't pick up at 2am. Yep- that's the only service that we get!
Geez, so many of these intercity connections would make so much sense! No wonder they haven't been done! 🤣When I was in tech school, wayyyyyy back when in the 1980s, I had a PT job in the school and we had this very old boss (had to be 80s) and he had a lot of great stories. He mentioned that after WWII, the US had a decision to make, a country-wide interconnect railway system, or, highway system. And we can see which won out. Wonder what could have been...
What's funny is that the US already had a fantastic interstate highway system. Look at route 66 for example. We honestly didn't need the interstate highway system that was built; it was purely an infrastructure project to benefit the car industry. A few bypasses to get cars routed around cities is really all that was warranted. Yes it did help build the suburbs, but in my opinion the suburbs that we built after the 1950s have been a net negative for the country in almost every way.
@@jamalgibson8139 Indeed! Ostensibly, the highway system was built for the military to get troops and material moved faster, etc., with a side benefit to the car industry. Suburbia and car culture are overall colossal detriments. Sure, cars had/have their place, but not to the extent we have it.
Love your channel, CN. One gripe, though: Often you flip visuals from city to city, around (round?) the world, as you narrate some topic or other, and I get confused…now where are we? I wish every scene was labeled, especially any from My City, if I had one, which I don’t. Congratulations on a fascinating body of work (oeuvre?).
I'm from Calgary and in the years since becoming a train nerd I've been getting a kick out of saying "X town has better train service than Calgary". The Pas, Manitoba has better train service than Calgary White River, Ontario has better train service than Calgary Burns Lake, BC has better train service than Calgary Moosonee, Ontario has better train service than Calgary Senneterre, Quebec has better train service than Calgary Watrous, Saskatchewan has better train service than Calgary Viking, Alberta has better train service than Calgary
As an East Tennessean, I know why there isn’t good commuter rail in my state. I think a line from Memphis-Nashville-Knoxville-Asheville-Charlotte would make a lot of sense.
Bias against urban areas is even more of a cause. Nobody wants to do infrastructural improvements like mass transit because they know well who is going to be using it, which is seen as wasting money by everyone else.
@@starventure which is stupid, because outlying communities would have access to better jobs in the city while retaining their autonomy, and could even experience decent growth from people looking for semi-rural housing.
"This is all just a long way saying that if you go to the state of Ohio expecting anything to make any rational sense at all, you're going to be disappointed." As an Ohioan: Yes, that's about it in a nutshell. Animaniacs had it right years ago: "All is strange and vague." "Are we dead?" "Or is this Ohio?"
There's been a passenger train station directly across the Shoreway from the general area of Browns Stadium for over 100 years now, and still no connection to Detroit, Chicago, Indy, Pittsburgh, Cincinnati or Buffalo on game days... but they want to build a new stadium less than a mile from the airport? Haha, yeah, okay, whatever.
@@taxirob2248 And $13.00 per day at Northpoint Garage for public parking, then nearly one-half mile walk to Amtrak-Cleveland platform at 2:30AM? Discouragement; what could be worse? Oh, unannounced, the train is late. And does the upcoming generation wonder WHY that old "Terminal Tower" building in the center of town was built with tracks underneath it?
@@michaelsmith9590 actually Terminal Tower is serving its intended purpose. Intercity service was supposed to connect where Amtrak is now. The plan was to have a huge passenger terminal on Lakeside, a Grand Central Station type of thing. Needless to say, it never got built.
@@michaelsmith9590 look online for pics of the original downtown Cleveland plan, it was very much a "Germania" flavored neo-classic type of thing. Terminal Tower at the south end, and the actual train station at the north end.
The truly absurd thing about the Delaware and Lehigh Valleys in PA is that those rail links existed 100 years ago. The Reading Railroad was one of Philadelphia's major railroads, and between the Reading, Lehigh Valley, and Pennsylvania Railroads, the entire region was easily accessible by rail.
Allentown/Bethlehem to Philadelphia until about 1980 when service ended, ostensibly because diesels weren’t permitted in the then-new center city commuter tunnel. Real reason is that the two counties never joined SEPTA, preferring to operate their own TA. Phillipsburg (across the bridge from Easton) had NJT service to New York until mid 1980s, I think. Please come to visit. Hint: our metro planning agency dislikes adding a third lane to our freeways in the distribution center capital of the NE *and* claims poverty on doing anything at all about passenger rail. Director of the TA, Owen O’Neil, is a stand-up guy.
As a former Lehigh valley resident, Philadelphia resident and frequent traveler to New York City I am so thrilled so see this. I know so many people who car commute to both locations from the valley and it blows my mind that we don’t have better transportation available.
I can explain the issue with Bakersfield to LA. The mountains suck. If you notice from the high speed rail design plans, they have to go all the way around the Grape Vine rather than how cars go which is basically straight through. There's also issues of just finding the right spot you can build that doesn't have too high a grade of land. With how expensive it's going to be in that area, it's put lower on the list as a priority. (Also, I'm still super annoyed at how slow the building of the rail is. I'd really like some damn rail to get to SF from Fresno).
With just about everything having been approved and cleared at this point, there is just one limitation: Money. Fortunately there is enough in the pot for the next four years. By then you should have rail, catenary and trains in test mode. And the last bits into Merced and Bakersfield should be under construction. The standard rail extensions to Merced for cross platform transfers should be in process too.
I've lived in the Lehigh Valley most of my life and the idea of restoring passenger rail to NYC and Philly comes up every few years. I think for many it's hard to justify the cost when bus services currently serve the area. That and sharing the NYC line with fright plus the old tracks being removed on the Philly line for a rail trail. So who knows, maybe someday it'll come back.
It's so painful to think about how US train service should be so much better. There is so much potential, and it would reduce traffic on our roads significantly if the service was even half decent.
2:18 taipei to kaohsiung having 90+ hsr trains per day in EACH direction is crazy, thats like what 10 min headway unless its running into the night more frequency than most cities metro
Japan main Shinkansen has one nozomi (the fastest one with few stops) between Tokyo and Osaka every 10 mins and one other type in about the same time, so afaik it's about the same every day. It is really crazy having so much service available and a fair bit of them are full during peak season/ hours.
The fact that Texas has no high speed rail is absurd to me. Plenty of people commute from San Antonio to Austin daily. Some people commute even farther weekly between cities like Houston and Dallas. For reference, the train from Dallas to San Antonio is scheduled to take 10.5 hours. Driving is about 5 hours. IIRC a large reason we dont have high speed rail is that a lot of the small towns the lines were proposed to go through are opposing any development if the trains dont stop there, which defeats the purpose of high speed rail.
I think the trick is you build lines that can do high speed (doesn't need to be ultra fast, even 150 miles an hour will beat cars by a huge margin and still be competitive for medium distances with air) and run slower (like 80 miles per hour) trains on them too to stop in a bunch of cities. Or do like the Japanese shinkansen where you have slow trains that stop at every station and fast ones that stop at one fourth of the stations.
With respect to towns blocking development, this is partly what slowed California high speed rail. Palmdale specifically was a totally unnecessary stop for the system that may actually doom it because of the weird routing it causes, but it was forced because the official there demanded a station. It's possible he did that because he wanted to kill the project, but that's just speculation. Anyways, it's still possible to have hourly service that bypasses all the small towns and have 15 minute service to various towns along the route. Frankly, you could have 10 minute express service and all other service hits the smaller towns, but American transit planners don't seem to understand that frequency is more important than station density.
@@jamalgibson8139 Absolutely. I really like the Japanese style of getting around this. Multiple Shinkansen lines - some like the nozomi stop only at the major stations and are the fastest. Other ones that stop at each station that are slightly slower, but enhance connectivity. Sometimes it's easier to take the fast line to a major station, then backtrack depending on where your start and end stations are. But I think that a lot of these small town officials think that their towns will die if every possible train doesn't stop there.
@@denelson83 Houston having massive oil companies and Dallas having the headquarters of two of the biggest airlines in America. Coincidence that we don't have a high speed link between these two obviously great candidates for it?
The lack of a high-speed line between Toronto and Montreal is absolutely absurd. A downright stupid number of flights make that pair, and a bunch of people forced to drive or bus it. I've rode VIA from Montreal to Toronto and that is barely a legitimate option.
Flagstaff to Phoenix is one corridor I really want because I live on the southwest chief line and I have family in Phoenix so it would be very convenient
The Houston Dallas corridor not having rail is insane. For a while we had a tourist train from Houston to Galveston back in the 90's. Yet somehow we had the Galveston Interurban in the 40's and 50's.
I grew up in Sarasota FL in the 90s. At some point there was a year 2020 master plan making the rounds that would have had a high speed rail from Tampa to at least Sarasota, maybe beyond, by the year 2020. I no longer live there and had forgotten about that until now. So that rail line could have been almost 5 years old at this point had it not been shot down. As a kid I remember thinking how cool it would be to hop on a train to Tampa even if it seemed like a distant dream at the time. Apparently it's still a distant dream.
I’m from Fort Myers and have been saying the same thing! There’s no reason why we can’t make the brightline a loop that connects the entirety of central and southern Florida!
Re: "...no reason why WE (As taxpayers?) can't make the brightline.....connects.....Florida! (1) Brightline is a for-profit corporation. Its owners seek the highest-populated possible city pairs for its revenue. Southwest Florida communities south of Tampa Bay likely do not make their list. Nevertheless, as stated elsewhere as an evacuation option, PUBLICALLY-OPERATED passenger rail service on the Gulf Coast of Florida makes very good sense when one's life is in the balance: to escape or to endure a major storm and its aftermath of electric power loss, fuel and food shortages. Interesting to hear arguments about transport privatization when BILLIONS of dollars continue to fund major PUBLICALLY-OWNED tollroad expansion and extension projects.
The people of New Mexico still think the Albuquerque/Santa Fe link is a waste of money. It was a fight to get it, it is a fight to keep it, and rail options seem to be continual fights because it is not most people's first option. Our brains are now wired to desire to rent a car at $100/day and pay for parking at $30/day than take a train for a $20 round trip per person to do the same exact thing in the same exact area.
Yes. A phx to tuc train would be amazing. Honestly take that line all the way to Mexico There are so many tourists from Mexico into Arizona and up to Las Vegas. This would be similar to Vancouver to Portland.
Correction: You said Winston-Salem and Greensboro are separate metros, but they are both part of the Piedmont Triad Metro, which is a single metro area and a single CSA that is comprised of High Point, Winston-Salem, and Greensboro. Many rely on both WS and Greensboro who live within either for business, work, living, community as they are truly one metro region.
Lehigh Valley - Philadelphia service was once provided by SEPTA. Service was dropped when they abandoned their unnelectrified tracks. Sadly, the tracks between Quakertown and Bethlehem have since been removed, making any attempt at reinstating service…circuitous.
I'm a fan of the North Carolina videos! I lived there for many years. I hope you can rationalize going back someday. We need proper urbanism there, not the Charlotte car-centered mess that is the default.
Thanks Ray for promoting Allentown to New York and Allentown to Philly. I live in Allentown and there is a decent bus from Allentown to New York, but that’s about it. Rail seems to be so far away from happening. It’s sad. And it would be so perfect. A huge boon for the Lehigh Valley too
I don't know if the people there really commute to New York City that much. They are more the local types. Or they were when I used to live around there.
Kudos to our local TA for colocating the major bus station to NYC at the airport, offering free daily parking for commuters. Still service to city centers, but this is real convenient.
@@saratemp790 they probably were in the past but post Covid and remote work, I’ve seen a lot of New York transplants on this edge of the state because it’s only an hour and 45 back to New York City by car.
I wonder how Detroit-Lansing-Grand Rapids stacks up? That seems like a gap that is quite glaring to us in Michigan. Also, Detroit-Indianapolis seems like another candidate, though perhaps less likely to ever get any service due to Indiana not wanting to pay for passenger rail beyond the South Shore Line. Also, though not entirely in the US, it seems like Chicago-Detroit-Toronto deserves some attention, as the actual gap in service is only a few miles long (Detroit to Windsor). I do know this is on Amtrak’s actual list of corridors (and it is being studied), so maybe there’s a chance that gets service..
Would it be feasible to take the Tunnel Bus between the train stations in Detroit and Windsor to work around that gap? (I haven’t tried the Tunnel Bus yet. One time, I drove my car from home in Ann Arbor to the Windsor train station, then I took Via to Niagara Falls.)
@@hulltim2 I live in Ann Arbor, my son is in Lansing, and my mother in law is in Grand Rapids. It's nice that all 3 of us can take Amtrak to meet in Chicago, but it sure would be better for us if your proposed Det-Lan-GR service could also stop in AA!
Years ago I lived in La Junta CO and was able to take AmTrack to LA and from LA to Sacramento. I could then take AmTrack from Sacramento to Denver. BUT I had to take Greyhound from Denver down to Pueblo and then drive to La Junta.
I'm not surprised to see NYC to Allentown top this list. Last summer I spent a couple months taking the bus from NYC to Hazleton PA every Monday and back every Friday. A train would have made my life so much easier, so I was really glad to see that one included in corridor ID. Allentown is way larger and closer to both New York and Philly than Scranton/Wilkes-Barre/Hazleton though, so it is kinda baffling that it isn't connected by rail already!
Very happy and also sad to see the Lehigh Valley show up finally! Our whole region has exploded over the past decade and our infrastructure can't keep up. Our bus network is WAY underfunded. So many people in the region want to see rail service to Philly and New York.
I live in the Lehigh Valley in Pennsylvania. I would love train service to both New York and Philadelphia. But I've heard of plans for a train to New York for the past 30 years and nothing has happened.
Lehigh Valley, What could be... There is a line (ex-Jersey Central RR) parallel to the current freight (ex-Lehigh Valley RR) line all the way to Allentown. There was passenger service to Philipsburg, NJ on the Pa border until 1981 or so. Sadly, all of it has been torn up in Pa. now an incomplete bike path. In Nj, I 78 was built on top of the ROW without a bridge. The problem on the east end is the bottle neck from Aldene to the vicinity of Newark airport. All of Norfolk Southern's freight traffic and NJT's Raritan Valley Line use this stretch of track.
I’d love for you, or one of the other urbanist UA-camrs, to do a video on the MBTA Communities law. So many suburbs are screwing the law up by placing their zoning for apartments over existing apartments/multi family housing, and others are shooting it down completely. Only a handful are truly embracing the law, and it’s a law that other metros (SF, NYC) should take note on
Especially when you consider that Amtrak literally used to service Louisville and Nashville back in the 70s through the Floridian route... Unfortunately, it was discontinued due to being plagued with issues (like poor track condition, poor service) which weren't exactly a priority to fix in those times 🙃
How can Amtrak or any other train service serve the Southeast region of the US? Like Nashville, Memphis, Chatanooga, Knoxville, Roanoke, Bristol, VA/TN, Atlanta, Macon, Birmingham, Mobile, Jacksonville, Savannah, Charleston, and Charlotte, NC.
Nashville - Atlanta - Macon - Savannah. Atlanta - Macon - Columbus, GA - Montgomery, AL - Mobile, AL. New Orleans - Mobile, AL - Tallahassee, FL - Jacksonville, FL. Chicago - Memphis, TN - Birmingham, AL - Columbus, GA - Waycross, GA - Jacksonville, FL.
I’d love to see the ROI comparison between expanding highways between these city pairs & rail. We do a terrible job quantifying the cost of a perceived free service has a high entry cost but low use fee vs one that has a lower entry cost and low use fee.
Make sure that ROI takes into account trucks using the highways. It's something the anti-car people never factor in. Good luck getting your produce from farms to your urban supermarket without highways. I suppose farmers could deliver by train? 🤭
@ the awesome thing about the current interstate system BETWEEN cities & urban areas is that it’s VERY suited for truck traffic as it is, & no new interstate within a metro area will ever come close to the cost-to-benefit from the original interstate system. We could spend a fraction of the money for maintenance & non-expansion plans with better ROI than new interstates. The inverse would be true for passenger rail as we exterminated the passenger rail system to fund the highways, so the money that would go to new rail would likely have returns looking like 1950’s highways.
As I am living in High Point, going to school in Greensbor, and working in Winston-Salem I would love a train of some kind that would be able to take me to Winston from either city. The traffic is usually awful going between the three
I wish there was a greater focus on connecting many of the massive holes between metros of the upper South and Midwest, the fact that St. Louis doesn’t connect to the existing lines in Carbondale and Indianapolis without going through Chicago first is ridiculous. Other lines like a north/south line connecting Atlanta with Tennessee and Kentucky, or a line connecting KC and Omaha, would be huge and life changing for millions in multiple regions of the US.
The country is split at Chicago and New Orleans. You cannot go from one side to the other without going to one of these two places first. Which of course is ridiculous.
I'm 53 and I remember when the EU became a thing. What interested me most as an outsider was the mobility it offered to labor, since the passenger rail service was already pretty awesome compared to the US at the time. And it's only gotten better since. I hate that so many powerful people in the US shoot this kind of stuff down just to keep everyone else miserable.
I live in Carbondale and go to school in St. Louis. The fact that I can't just take a train is the most infuriating thing And the thumbnail shows STL-Carbondale-Nashville-Atlanta, which is a line I've been thinking about for at least a year now
As someone who travels about 40 miles each way on trains every day for education, I'm extremely thankful this rail link exists because I would not do this if I had to drive or rent in the other city. The town where I live now loves building big apartment buildings and as a result, house prizes here are still very reasonable. That's right, more apartment buildings make houses cheaper too! The trip takes just 40 minutes and there are direct trains every 30 minutes. Paying 50$ per month for the train is way better than 500$ per month and the hassle of renting student accommodation.
Not to defend Colorado’s lack of connectivity, but we do have a state run coach service called Bustang that runs fairly frequent busses between each of those cities and Denver in pretty good time. I would still love to see FRPR go through and would love to see better connectivity between CO cities but at least we don’t have nothing
I consider that the South has three "capital cities" - Atlanta, Charlotte and Nashville, and there should be trains connecting all these city pairs. Atlanta to Nashville should have service, which should eventually be part of a direct Chicago to Florida train (as opposed to the new Floridian, which is really a stopgap train).
@@jonathanstensberg this exactly. St.Louis is a perfectly centered hub for rail expansion and the fact it doesn’t connect to major cities in every direction is a massive crime.
Your B roll of Seattle still shows the 99 viaduct. ;P I loved the Cascades train between PDX and Seattle proper, especially when it was $25. And a $5 upgrade to the business car. Triple that now, but still better than the wretched bus on i5.
Even the airlines don't want to put planes on the Allentown to New York route; if you book ABE-EWR on United, you'll actually travel that route by bus. Also, the Lehigh Valley in general needs much better public transit to support longer distance trains. If they were to put to a train station in Allentown, there'd be no easy way to get to or from Bethlehem or Easton from it.
Bethlehem borders Allentown. Like, a bump in a road and street signs change. Also, an existing station. Easton is on the way to NY. You have to go through Easton to get to NYPenn.
As a person who has spent the past 35 years in Columbus, I have no concept of train service, so I'm not being dismissive by asking this, but is there really pent up demand for transit between Cincy, CLB, and Cleveland? Columbus is really tough to navigate without a car, given its woeful bus service and routes, so I don't know how travelers from the other cities would overcome that. ...
So how does one now travel beyond the terminal, having arrived at Columbus, OH by aircraft? Rent a vehicle or take a bus? Such options would follow travellers to a new passenger rail service.
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Pete only became secretary as a political favor for dropping his popular primary campaign before super Tuesday to help prop up a senile unpopular racist man who basically singlehandedly got Trump reelected.
I know the focus is on US routes (further enhanced by Buttigieg’s presence) but I just did some quick search for Calgary/Edmonton = (1680000x1418118)/(186.411^2) ~68.5mil The main factor driving that score down is likely the distance (eyeball test suggests it is farther than the longest Ohio corridor) but no rail whatsoever between 3rd and 5th largest cities in Canada doesn’t sound good. You can also make a stop by the Edmonton airport for such a route. I assume Toronto/Ottawa/Montreal has some rail; Saskatoon and Regina metro areas are both below 500k.
One big transport gap in Illinois is Chicago to Peoria - no direct interstate link, let alone rail. Peoria residents who want to take a train to Chicago have to go to Normal to catch the Amtrak Lincoln Service or Texas Eagle.
One thing to consider when saying "air travel has an advantage"... LAX-PHX is a classic example. 373 miles - 5 hours by train at Amtrak's standard 79mph. An hour and a half gate-to-gate in the air... BUT, consider AT LEAST two hours in LAX's TSA debacle PLUS getting down there (remember, no public transit to LAX until at least 2026, and I doubt it's going to make a lot of difference)... the time at this distance is gonna be a wash, and I'd much rather spend that time in a nice train seat than most of it in a queue or in an airport or airplane seat... bump the train (new build, after all) to 250kph and there's no question.
I think they should put the train stations into airports. That way when people get to an airport, they can make the decision, do I want to fly or do I want to take the train? And hopefully a lot of them will take the train. Then there could be a separate line going to the downtown. I just think an airport would have all the space for the parking and all the other infrastructure etc.
@charlienyc1 I don't know if they have a choice, because I believe the government puts in the airport. I don't think it would cut into the airplane business too much. There's enough people for both!
Regarding LA-Phoenix, you don't really need high speed in order for it to be competitive. For comparison, Stockholm-Malmö here in Sweden (much smaller cities) is slightly longer at 613 km, yet it only takes 4.5 hours with the X2000 which is only capable of 200 kph. I take this route frequently and the trains are almost always full despite the trains being hourly from morning til night and a few slightly slower trains are also on the same route.
@@radishpineapple74 Right but my point is that you don't even need full high-speed to be competitive on a route like that, 200 kph can easily be achieved with a few upgrades to existing rail.
@@dijikstra8 There are segments on the pre-existing rail, planned for future Amtrak service to my city (Madison, WI), which have a speed limit of 16 kph. I just want you to fully appreciate the dilapidated state of this country. No investment has occurred for countless decades, so the hole to dig ourselves out of is a greater chasm than many understand.
Many, MANY years ago when I was just a humble observer of the business I used to hang out at the train station in Ocala, Florida (when we ACTUALLY had train service). People walking in would ask if there were trains to a) Orlando and b) Atlanta. There was no through service then and there is zero train service now out of OCA. We, the State of Florida, now the #3 state by population for those just tuning in, have seen our interstate train options dwindle since 1980. We've lost our service to the Midwest. We've lost our service to New Orleans and LA. What trains that do still run have car counts about half from 30 years ago. But we do have Brightline...which is NOT Amtrak. So, why do we need Amtrak?
@ In our business we loose about 10% of our customers every year due to moving, mortality or other factors. As such there is always a fight to find new customers for rail travel. Narrowing the options you offer is counter to the goal of ridership sustainability let alone growth.
One of the biggest disappointments in rail travel in this country, and there are many, is that there is no rail travel between anywhere in Florida (and much of the South, for that matter) and points west. Say you live in Jacksonville for some reason and. you want to visit New Orleans. You can either fly, or, if you want to take a train, you would have to travel clear. up to at least Raleigh, NC, then make a connections to Greensboro which then connects to New Orleans. It's too stupid to believe, but it's true. There isn't even service between Atlanta and Jacksonville. There is no way to take a train west from Florida without first traveling the 500 miles north to Raleigh first. I realize that is beyond the distances you were looking at in this video, but it's just one of those things that is so absurd, so unbelievable, that it needs to be stated. To add to this absurdity that leaves Tallahassee (the state capital), Pensacola, and Mobile, AL and, really, a decent chunk of the gulf coast without rail travel. Just bonkers.
Louisville, my home city, has two Ford truck plants and a Toyota Camry plant not far away. The city also has elected officials who sit on the laps of corporations and move their lips to what the corporations say. So Amtrak hasn’t forgotten Louisville. Louisville hides from Amtrak.
@@meberg500 Louisville extended its 1950s transportation system into the 21st Century, extending two expressways and building two new bridges in the '90s and 2000s without the then mayor even expressing an opinion on a proposal for light rail. Since then, Louisville's bus system has deteriorated and will be cut back next month. Very few of the metro council members care.
@@brianarbenz1329like many cities the Ponzi scheme of developers building roads to exurbia and racial segregation have really destroyed any hope of good and connected public transit
My numbers were wrong. Givewell has ACTUALLY directed over $2 billion in funding from over 125,000 donors now. Seriously, it's a great option for this giving season, and you can get $100 matched using my code. Just go to www.givewell.org/ and select “UA-cam” and “CityNerd” at checkout. Thanks!
Please focus on the need for a rail system directly from Chicago to Atlanta. There's no reason I should have to take a ride to DC to om a trip fr I m Chicago to Savannah
We had one until the late 1950s, and then the only Chicago-Florida lines went through Birmingham, Montgomery, and Valdosta or Birmingham, Columbus (GA), and Albany. Any return of a proper Chicago-Florida line must go through Louisville, Nashville, Chattanooga, Atlanta, and Macon.
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QUINCY TO ST. LOUIS IS A MISSING LINK
Thank GOD Trump Won! Clean sweep too
There are apparently 100,000 people that commute between Dallas and Houston multiple times a week, 24,300 people fly. Yet, there are still people that argue against HSR between the two cities. Oil companies headquartered in Houston and American Airlines headquartered in Fort Worth certainly doesn’t help.
Edit: the 24,300 refers to how many people fly between Dallas and Houston every day on average.
Absolutely insane and yet so believable
And Southwest headquartered in Dallas (at Love Field).
The only problem with using only rail to get from A to B in Texas is once you're at the destination you still have to drive to get anywhere. Obviously same issue with flying. But Texans also have that midwest driving stamina, so the drive from Dallas to Houston really isn't much of a deterrent. Personally, my airport does not have direct flights to San Antonio or Austin. I would much rather fly in to Dallas and take HSR to my destination than wait an extra 2 hr in the airport for a 45 minute flight.
Connecting the Dallas-Houston-Austin/SA triangle seems like the number one priority by far for HSR. All are in that perfect “too close to fly, too far to drive” range, the land is flat and relatively cheap, and they are all distinct, huge, and growing metro areas.
@ There is so much demand that such issues wouldn’t be a significant detriment to implementing HSR. An important issue would be to have stations in an appropriate location within the city based on an analysis of travel patterns, and projected patterns.
Columbus is one of the biggest cities in the world with absolutely no passenger rail service. Ohioans have called for a passenger rail connecting Cincy, Columbus, and Cleveland, for at least my whole life. Really hope it happens at some point.
No passenger rail service in our Columbus either (GA), but we’re only moderately-sized and out of the way from any obvious corridors save maybe Birmingham-Macon/Albany. Here to Atlanta would be nice…
But Columbus, OH deserves much more immediate regular passenger service, just for being the core of Ohio.
"in the world"
@@pcongre yeah I just meant it's on the top 10 list for biggest cities with no rail transport of any kind. I think it's number 10 but it's the only American city in the top top.
@@LSMusic614 can't find the source for that top 10, but according to demographia there are at least 24 larger cities for which I can't find any rail at all (not a lack of service, mind you - as in there is not a single meter of tracks in those cities)
OMG! i found another musician who watches geography and urban planning videos. Whats going on @LSMusic614 ???
In the UK, we call 1 train a day a "parliamentary service" - a service that exists just to tick a box to say they are running a service with no expectation that anyone will every ride on it. I have 14 trains per *hour* between my fairly large metro area and nearby much larger metro area. 10 trains per day is for rural branch lines.
You’re lucky to get trains every four minutes in a city on a subway in the United States. That’s insane.
To be fair to the US, which I am very rarely, the massive distances and sheer quantity of "fairly large" and large metros in the US are much greater than every country besides China, which obviously has no political hurdles to jump through, or land acquisition to worry about.
The UK and most European countries have *most* of their population within a relatively small distance compared with the US, and have much more density, so your train situation may be the exact same as say Washington D.C. to Alexandria, which is about every 4 minutes, but may not be for every single fairly large to large metro corridor.
Good luck telling a murican that
@@shuss-pi3mecomparing density region by region between the US and Europe, it truly looks like we only *just* settled the east coast (and the rest of the country is still the wild Wild West)
We can easily fit a billion people, but have 1/3 of that
yes but have a tiny amount of freight, and its only on major corriodrs whereas you can send a freight from some random middle of npowehere town to just about anywhere between Prince Rupert in Canada (its a major port) and Mexico city especially after the Canadian Pacifc and Kansas City Southern Merger
Cincinnati is brutally underserved by rail. There's basically 1 train every other day at ~1:40am to Chicago and the same but at ~3:30 am going the other way. To be honest there should be a line between Cincinnati and Louisville or continuing the 3c+d route down through Lexington to Nashville. It's mind boggling that Louisville and Nashville don't have any sort of service, especially since there historically was with the LN line.
It's *still* more service than Columbus, though, with its 0 trains per week from anywhere.
I saw a video recently about the abandoned subway/metro projects over the years, and I can see why rail directly into downtown might be an issue in terms of the topography, but yeah the city needs to be connected somehow.
As someone from Louisville, YES! I wish that we had any rail service that went to Cincy or down to Nashville. I just hope that the proposed line from Indy to Louisville actually happens.
EVERY city with more than 100K where you measure trains "by day" and not "per hour" is brutally underserved.
I live in a rural state of Germany. The 2 biggest cities are just above 200K and a bit more than 50 miles from each other.
There is a direct local train at least once per hour, with additional regional trains. And you could also use 2 more lines to go there, in a triangle route. Those side lines go only to villages or towns that generally are 20K-30K. And also have a hourly train per direction.
Oh and there is also another direct connection between the 2 big cities, but that is not electrified and only served by a very slow train every 2 hours. Government tries to shut it down about once every 5 years because only 500 people use it daily, but that always gets hot reaction, because for those people it's an essential connection from village to big town. Without it they would need to use a car.
@@steemlenn8797 "...only served by a very slow train EVERY 2 HOURS." If only such a schedule could be in place in the larger populated area of the USA!
I happened by chance to meet David Gunn, who later became Amtrak's president. We were seat mates on a plane -- in coach--where Gunn (a cost-conscious man) expressed great interest in how I used and felt about Washington DC's metro system that he then managed. I was very impressed with him. He tried hard in both jobs to improve services while cutting waste, and resisted efforts to carve out the most profitable sections of Amtrak (short runs) for private investors. He refused to sell out the publlc interest and it cost him his job
As someone who lives in Bakersfield. That gap you spoke of drives me INSANE. instead of taking a train I had to take a bus to Lancaster and hop on Metrolink. While on the bus guess what I passed by, TRAINS!! The tracks are there. Amtrak just has to buy the rights to use them. It kills me
Regarding Denver to COS, there was supposed to be a ballot measure regarding funding the Front Range service this election, but it got pushed back to 2026. At this point, since it's going to be a state-supported Amtrak service, the most important thing is getting the population to agree to fund it. Since Colorado has become reliably progressive, I think the odds of it passing are high.
That'd be a start, but we really need passenger service between Cheyenne and El Paso.
I have doubts but fast tracks failure to deliver is going to complicate this
I’ve been following Colorado High Speed rail since I was in middle school… now I’m 31… so maybe in my son’s lifetime he can ride a train to Denver. I don’t want that to be the case. I commuted between COS and Centennial then to downtown Denver for a few years and I absolutely hated it.
I've been actively talking up Front Range Passenger Rail to as many other Denverites as I can. This passing would've been a life changer when I was commuting to FC
All but one of the new RTD board members seem poised to do wonders for RTD’s public “Reason to Drive” reputation, with them talking about improving safety and frequency which are two of the main issues people I talk to have with their services. If the can engender a little more trust in public transit it would help.
The best way to get Amtrak trains to arrive on time is to require that they carry "some" US Mail aboard. The primary rail carriers (BNSF, Norfolk Southern, Union Pacific, CSX) must then prioritize Amtrak movements over freight traffic...
People need to pressure Congress to get the Post Office to bring back the railroad post office car.
They already legally have to give way to amtrak trains.
They just get around the legal requirement by running trains so long they physically cannot fit within the sidings and thus force the Amtrak trains to give way.
“It’s an analytical exercise who’s main purpose is to generate results that I can be mad about” would be the best description of my job as an engineer 😂
Fun fact, the corridor study between San Antonio Austin and Dallas did not make the federal funding list because TxDOT screwed up the application
oh no
By ineptitude or design, such an outcome was a given.
Dang it, I'm proud to be a member of "Train Dork UA-cam!" 😂
Unironically I would vote for anyone who pledged to name Ray as SOT
Trump 😂
he'd be better at HUD imo
@@jag4109Lucid Stew as head of DOT and City Nerds as head of HUD
I know Nashville was only on the thumbnail, but I think a Nashville-Chattanooga-Atlanta, or Nashville-Louisville-Indy, or Nashville-Louisville-Cincinnati lines would all be great candidates
The fact that there isn’t a Cincinnati-Louisville-Nashville-Atlanta Amtrak line is insane to me.
I live near Nashville so I’m pretty mad about it.
I would love KC to STL to Nashville to Chattanooga to ATL. That would be wonderful for my family..ha. only Greyhound and not even Megabus!
If you want to turn your rage into action, join us at All Aboard Ohio!
We have chapter meetings across the state, plus you can become a member, donate, or check out our awesome store there!
Do you like the Frans?
I'll nominate you Ray, for Sec. Trans. :D. Seriously, I'm a native Ohioan who took a 24 year detour to be a railroader in the NEC, both Amtrak and freight. I had friends in OARP/AAO who spent just about their entire adult lives in the fight for some kind of rail passenger service in the 3C corridor, to no avail. We have a corrupt state government that is in the pocket of highway interests. I don't know how else you could characterize it when the former ODOT Sec. of the previous Republican Governor came to there from being a lobbyist for the asphalt paving industry - no kidding. He forbade officially mentioning the term intrastate rail passenger service while he was in office. It's partly why Ohio is 7th in U. S. population but 47th in transit funding, and I don't know how to change that anytime soon? And yes it's a total disgrace that Columbus has no rail passenger service of any kind, and they moved the intercity bus station to out by the interstate, and Cleveland is getting ready to do the same thing. Much respect for the channel.
Sarasota native here: we used to have the Tampa southern that went from Tampa through Bradenton and Sarasota to a junction just south of Arcadia. There it would link up with another branch of the Atlantic Coast Line Railroad and would go down to the terminus in Naples, passing through Punta Gorda and Fort Myers. There hasn’t been intercity service in over 50 years
Everything on this list USED to have service at some point. It's so sad
Sarasota was the winter home of the Ringling Circus. Back when "the train came to town", it many times included "lions, and tigers, and bears". Oh, my. [Speaking of Florida, there used to be train service between New Orleans and Jacksonville. In theory, there is going to be a train between New Orleans and Mobile re-opened one-of-these-days.]
@@JoyClinton-i8g Jacksonville here for the shout out! We would LOVE to be connected to Brightline. Or to be able to get an Amtrak headed north to Atlanta that didn't pick up at 2am. Yep- that's the only service that we get!
Geez, so many of these intercity connections would make so much sense! No wonder they haven't been done! 🤣When I was in tech school, wayyyyyy back when in the 1980s, I had a PT job in the school and we had this very old boss (had to be 80s) and he had a lot of great stories. He mentioned that after WWII, the US had a decision to make, a country-wide interconnect railway system, or, highway system. And we can see which won out. Wonder what could have been...
We had a country wide rail system in WWII and what we have is a fraction of what we had then .
What's funny is that the US already had a fantastic interstate highway system. Look at route 66 for example. We honestly didn't need the interstate highway system that was built; it was purely an infrastructure project to benefit the car industry. A few bypasses to get cars routed around cities is really all that was warranted.
Yes it did help build the suburbs, but in my opinion the suburbs that we built after the 1950s have been a net negative for the country in almost every way.
@@jamalgibson8139 Indeed! Ostensibly, the highway system was built for the military to get troops and material moved faster, etc., with a side benefit to the car industry.
Suburbia and car culture are overall colossal detriments. Sure, cars had/have their place, but not to the extent we have it.
@@josephpadula2283 Yep, largely forgotten.
@@ph5915 I truly wonder how different the US would be had we dropped 500 billion into interstate/high speed rail in 1955, rather than into highways...
Love your channel, CN. One gripe, though: Often you flip visuals from city to city, around (round?) the world, as you narrate some topic or other, and I get confused…now where are we? I wish every scene was labeled, especially any from My City, if I had one, which I don’t. Congratulations on a fascinating body of work (oeuvre?).
Edmonton-Calgary is definitely Canada's biggest gap.
lol lol IS it cold maybe Grampops stoped Jitering eh
@ Are you alright?
I'm from Calgary and in the years since becoming a train nerd I've been getting a kick out of saying "X town has better train service than Calgary".
The Pas, Manitoba has better train service than Calgary
White River, Ontario has better train service than Calgary
Burns Lake, BC has better train service than Calgary
Moosonee, Ontario has better train service than Calgary
Senneterre, Quebec has better train service than Calgary
Watrous, Saskatchewan has better train service than Calgary
Viking, Alberta has better train service than Calgary
@@dozenthdragon But do they have the Ctrain and good bus system?
@@HIDLad001i wouldn’t say Calgary Transit has good bus service will not as frequent as should be and leaving people behind at stops occasionally
City Pairs sounds like a dating app for urban enthusiasts.
I need a car free dating app
As an East Tennessean, I know why there isn’t good commuter rail in my state. I think a line from Memphis-Nashville-Knoxville-Asheville-Charlotte would make a lot of sense.
Especially if you have smaller lines going towards other metro areas in TN
Is that where the Chattanooga Choo Choo used to go,?
Automotive industry + oil industry + airline industry and even environmental groups on occasion is a *tough* hill to climb
Bias against urban areas is even more of a cause. Nobody wants to do infrastructural improvements like mass transit because they know well who is going to be using it, which is seen as wasting money by everyone else.
@@starventure which is stupid, because outlying communities would have access to better jobs in the city while retaining their autonomy, and could even experience decent growth from people looking for semi-rural housing.
Hello there new channel name. Very professional.
Too bad we cant paint them gold
like pld scool myspace glitter
"This is all just a long way saying that if you go to the state of Ohio expecting anything to make any rational sense at all, you're going to be disappointed." As an Ohioan: Yes, that's about it in a nutshell. Animaniacs had it right years ago: "All is strange and vague." "Are we dead?" "Or is this Ohio?"
There's been a passenger train station directly across the Shoreway from the general area of Browns Stadium for over 100 years now, and still no connection to Detroit, Chicago, Indy, Pittsburgh, Cincinnati or Buffalo on game days... but they want to build a new stadium less than a mile from the airport? Haha, yeah, okay, whatever.
@@taxirob2248 And $13.00 per day at Northpoint Garage for public parking, then nearly one-half mile walk to Amtrak-Cleveland platform at 2:30AM? Discouragement; what could be worse? Oh, unannounced, the train is late.
And does the upcoming generation wonder WHY that old "Terminal Tower" building in the center of town was built with tracks underneath it?
@@michaelsmith9590 actually Terminal Tower is serving its intended purpose. Intercity service was supposed to connect where Amtrak is now. The plan was to have a huge passenger terminal on Lakeside, a Grand Central Station type of thing. Needless to say, it never got built.
@@michaelsmith9590 look online for pics of the original downtown Cleveland plan, it was very much a "Germania" flavored neo-classic type of thing. Terminal Tower at the south end, and the actual train station at the north end.
The truly absurd thing about the Delaware and Lehigh Valleys in PA is that those rail links existed 100 years ago. The Reading Railroad was one of Philadelphia's major railroads, and between the Reading, Lehigh Valley, and Pennsylvania Railroads, the entire region was easily accessible by rail.
Allentown/Bethlehem to Philadelphia until about 1980 when service ended, ostensibly because diesels weren’t permitted in the then-new center city commuter tunnel. Real reason is that the two counties never joined SEPTA, preferring to operate their own TA. Phillipsburg (across the bridge from Easton) had NJT service to New York until mid 1980s, I think. Please come to visit. Hint: our metro planning agency dislikes adding a third lane to our freeways in the distribution center capital of the NE *and* claims poverty on doing anything at all about passenger rail. Director of the TA, Owen O’Neil, is a stand-up guy.
As a former Lehigh valley resident, Philadelphia resident and frequent traveler to New York City I am so thrilled so see this. I know so many people who car commute to both locations from the valley and it blows my mind that we don’t have better transportation available.
0:46 “derailed,” very nice
I can explain the issue with Bakersfield to LA. The mountains suck. If you notice from the high speed rail design plans, they have to go all the way around the Grape Vine rather than how cars go which is basically straight through. There's also issues of just finding the right spot you can build that doesn't have too high a grade of land. With how expensive it's going to be in that area, it's put lower on the list as a priority. (Also, I'm still super annoyed at how slow the building of the rail is. I'd really like some damn rail to get to SF from Fresno).
With just about everything having been approved and cleared at this point, there is just one limitation: Money. Fortunately there is enough in the pot for the next four years. By then you should have rail, catenary and trains in test mode. And the last bits into Merced and Bakersfield should be under construction. The standard rail extensions to Merced for cross platform transfers should be in process too.
Bro I live in the Caribbean I don’t know why I like watching your videos
I've lived in the Lehigh Valley most of my life and the idea of restoring passenger rail to NYC and Philly comes up every few years. I think for many it's hard to justify the cost when bus services currently serve the area. That and sharing the NYC line with fright plus the old tracks being removed on the Philly line for a rail trail. So who knows, maybe someday it'll come back.
I suspect the JeBran family, owners of the bus company, prefer the status quo.
It's so painful to think about how US train service should be so much better. There is so much potential, and it would reduce traffic on our roads significantly if the service was even half decent.
2:18 taipei to kaohsiung having 90+ hsr trains per day in EACH direction is crazy, thats like what 10 min headway unless its running into the night
more frequency than most cities metro
Japan main Shinkansen has one nozomi (the fastest one with few stops) between Tokyo and Osaka every 10 mins and one other type in about the same time, so afaik it's about the same every day. It is really crazy having so much service available and a fair bit of them are full during peak season/ hours.
The fact that Texas has no high speed rail is absurd to me. Plenty of people commute from San Antonio to Austin daily. Some people commute even farther weekly between cities like Houston and Dallas. For reference, the train from Dallas to San Antonio is scheduled to take 10.5 hours. Driving is about 5 hours.
IIRC a large reason we dont have high speed rail is that a lot of the small towns the lines were proposed to go through are opposing any development if the trains dont stop there, which defeats the purpose of high speed rail.
It is the auto industry that is suppressing high-speed rail in the US, along with the airlines.
I think the trick is you build lines that can do high speed (doesn't need to be ultra fast, even 150 miles an hour will beat cars by a huge margin and still be competitive for medium distances with air) and run slower (like 80 miles per hour) trains on them too to stop in a bunch of cities. Or do like the Japanese shinkansen where you have slow trains that stop at every station and fast ones that stop at one fourth of the stations.
With respect to towns blocking development, this is partly what slowed California high speed rail. Palmdale specifically was a totally unnecessary stop for the system that may actually doom it because of the weird routing it causes, but it was forced because the official there demanded a station. It's possible he did that because he wanted to kill the project, but that's just speculation.
Anyways, it's still possible to have hourly service that bypasses all the small towns and have 15 minute service to various towns along the route. Frankly, you could have 10 minute express service and all other service hits the smaller towns, but American transit planners don't seem to understand that frequency is more important than station density.
@@jamalgibson8139 Absolutely. I really like the Japanese style of getting around this. Multiple Shinkansen lines - some like the nozomi stop only at the major stations and are the fastest. Other ones that stop at each station that are slightly slower, but enhance connectivity. Sometimes it's easier to take the fast line to a major station, then backtrack depending on where your start and end stations are. But I think that a lot of these small town officials think that their towns will die if every possible train doesn't stop there.
@@denelson83 Houston having massive oil companies and Dallas having the headquarters of two of the biggest airlines in America. Coincidence that we don't have a high speed link between these two obviously great candidates for it?
Not limited to the US obviously but I’m dying for international rail that gets you to Montréal from a major US city in fewer than 12 hours.
The lack of a high-speed line between Toronto and Montreal is absolutely absurd. A downright stupid number of flights make that pair, and a bunch of people forced to drive or bus it. I've rode VIA from Montreal to Toronto and that is barely a legitimate option.
And the crazy thing, the tracks already exist between the pairs you mentioned, so service could be installed if one would actually want to
Flagstaff to Phoenix is one corridor I really want because I live on the southwest chief line and I have family in Phoenix so it would be very convenient
The Houston Dallas corridor not having rail is insane. For a while we had a tourist train from Houston to Galveston back in the 90's. Yet somehow we had the Galveston Interurban in the 40's and 50's.
I grew up in Sarasota FL in the 90s. At some point there was a year 2020 master plan making the rounds that would have had a high speed rail from Tampa to at least Sarasota, maybe beyond, by the year 2020. I no longer live there and had forgotten about that until now. So that rail line could have been almost 5 years old at this point had it not been shot down. As a kid I remember thinking how cool it would be to hop on a train to Tampa even if it seemed like a distant dream at the time. Apparently it's still a distant dream.
I’m still waiting for my top ten European fortresses ray
Congrats on the new channel name, you've joined the big leagues!! 🎊🎉🥂
I’m from Fort Myers and have been saying the same thing! There’s no reason why we can’t make the brightline a loop that connects the entirety of central and southern Florida!
Re: "...no reason why WE (As taxpayers?) can't make the brightline.....connects.....Florida! (1) Brightline is a for-profit corporation. Its owners seek the highest-populated possible city pairs for its revenue. Southwest Florida communities south of Tampa Bay likely do not make their list.
Nevertheless, as stated elsewhere as an evacuation option, PUBLICALLY-OPERATED passenger rail service on the Gulf Coast of Florida makes very good sense when one's life is in the balance: to escape or to endure a major storm and its aftermath of electric power loss, fuel and food shortages.
Interesting to hear arguments about transport privatization when BILLIONS of dollars continue to fund major PUBLICALLY-OWNED tollroad expansion and extension projects.
The people of New Mexico still think the Albuquerque/Santa Fe link is a waste of money. It was a fight to get it, it is a fight to keep it, and rail options seem to be continual fights because it is not most people's first option.
Our brains are now wired to desire to rent a car at $100/day and pay for parking at $30/day than take a train for a $20 round trip per person to do the same exact thing in the same exact area.
Yes. A phx to tuc train would be amazing. Honestly take that line all the way to Mexico There are so many tourists from Mexico into Arizona and up to Las Vegas. This would be similar to Vancouver to Portland.
Correction: You said Winston-Salem and Greensboro are separate metros, but they are both part of the Piedmont Triad Metro, which is a single metro area and a single CSA that is comprised of High Point, Winston-Salem, and Greensboro. Many rely on both WS and Greensboro who live within either for business, work, living, community as they are truly one metro region.
Lehigh Valley - Philadelphia service was once provided by SEPTA. Service was dropped when they abandoned their unnelectrified tracks. Sadly, the tracks between Quakertown and Bethlehem have since been removed, making any attempt at reinstating service…circuitous.
But we got a lovely rail trail with two disconnected sections out of it. /s
I love your weekly uploading. Noticed your channel rebranding and just want to say I'll be sticking around. I am inspired by your progression.
I'm a fan of the North Carolina videos! I lived there for many years. I hope you can rationalize going back someday. We need proper urbanism there, not the Charlotte car-centered mess that is the default.
Thanks Ray for promoting Allentown to New York and Allentown to Philly. I live in Allentown and there is a decent bus from Allentown to New York, but that’s about it. Rail seems to be so far away from happening. It’s sad. And it would be so perfect. A huge boon for the Lehigh Valley too
Does anyone commute from that airport?
I don't know if the people there really commute to New York City that much. They are more the local types. Or they were when I used to live around there.
Kudos to our local TA for colocating the major bus station to NYC at the airport, offering free daily parking for commuters. Still service to city centers, but this is real convenient.
@@saratemp790 they probably were in the past but post Covid and remote work, I’ve seen a lot of New York transplants on this edge of the state because it’s only an hour and 45 back to New York City by car.
I wonder how Detroit-Lansing-Grand Rapids stacks up? That seems like a gap that is quite glaring to us in Michigan. Also, Detroit-Indianapolis seems like another candidate, though perhaps less likely to ever get any service due to Indiana not wanting to pay for passenger rail beyond the South Shore Line.
Also, though not entirely in the US, it seems like Chicago-Detroit-Toronto deserves some attention, as the actual gap in service is only a few miles long (Detroit to Windsor). I do know this is on Amtrak’s actual list of corridors (and it is being studied), so maybe there’s a chance that gets service..
@ If you’re talking about the International, that went through Port Huron, not Detroit.
@@hulltim2 my mistake, then.
Frankly I’d want to have both, but Detroit makes more sense for population density.
Would it be feasible to take the Tunnel Bus between the train stations in Detroit and Windsor to work around that gap?
(I haven’t tried the Tunnel Bus yet. One time, I drove my car from home in Ann Arbor to the Windsor train station, then I took Via to Niagara Falls.)
@ Yes, it can be done - however, it requires two transfers (one on the Detroit side to the Tunnel Bus, and one on the Windsor side to VIA).
@@hulltim2 I live in Ann Arbor, my son is in Lansing, and my mother in law is in Grand Rapids. It's nice that all 3 of us can take Amtrak to meet in Chicago, but it sure would be better for us if your proposed Det-Lan-GR service could also stop in AA!
Ray, here's the elephant in the room question: When are you going to run for President?
really excited to hear your thoughts on this topic
Relax, it's not that big a deal. Dont need all this fake optimism
Years ago I lived in La Junta CO and was able to take AmTrack to LA and from LA to Sacramento. I could then take AmTrack from Sacramento to Denver. BUT I had to take Greyhound from Denver down to Pueblo and then drive to La Junta.
“What’s wrong with a bus?” Spoken like someone who isn’t 6’1”
I'm not surprised to see NYC to Allentown top this list. Last summer I spent a couple months taking the bus from NYC to Hazleton PA every Monday and back every Friday. A train would have made my life so much easier, so I was really glad to see that one included in corridor ID. Allentown is way larger and closer to both New York and Philly than Scranton/Wilkes-Barre/Hazleton though, so it is kinda baffling that it isn't connected by rail already!
I went there last year and I was pleasantly surprised by Allentown.
A fervent desire to keep more outsiders outside. Nativism.
Madison-Milwaukee, plus Madison on the St. Paul-to-Chicago route. It’s a criminal cluster cluster.
ATL to Athens desperately needs rail or even consistent bus service
Looking internationally, I imagine São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro would rank highly
Sure, the video was good, but I'm reserving 90% of my thumbs up for the cat.
Very happy and also sad to see the Lehigh Valley show up finally! Our whole region has exploded over the past decade and our infrastructure can't keep up. Our bus network is WAY underfunded. So many people in the region want to see rail service to Philly and New York.
But the family which owns the bus company doesn’t, especially with a round trip fare of nearly $100 for an 80-mile trip.
I live in the Lehigh Valley in Pennsylvania. I would love train service to both New York and Philadelphia. But I've heard of plans for a train to New York for the past 30 years and nothing has happened.
Lehigh Valley, What could be... There is a line (ex-Jersey Central RR) parallel to the current freight (ex-Lehigh Valley RR) line all the way to Allentown. There was passenger service to Philipsburg, NJ on the Pa border until 1981 or so. Sadly, all of it has been torn up in Pa. now an incomplete bike path. In Nj, I 78 was built on top of the ROW without a bridge. The problem on the east end is the bottle neck from Aldene to the vicinity of Newark airport. All of Norfolk Southern's freight traffic and NJT's Raritan Valley Line use this stretch of track.
I’d love for you, or one of the other urbanist UA-camrs, to do a video on the MBTA Communities law. So many suburbs are screwing the law up by placing their zoning for apartments over existing apartments/multi family housing, and others are shooting it down completely. Only a handful are truly embracing the law, and it’s a law that other metros (SF, NYC) should take note on
Louisville to Nashville definitely needs to be brought to DoT’s attention
Especially when you consider that Amtrak literally used to service Louisville and Nashville back in the 70s through the Floridian route...
Unfortunately, it was discontinued due to being plagued with issues (like poor track condition, poor service) which weren't exactly a priority to fix in those times 🙃
I came here to watch you roast my hometown of Nashville for its barren lack of rail, based on the thumbnail and now I’m sad. 😂
How can Amtrak or any other train service serve the Southeast region of the US? Like Nashville, Memphis, Chatanooga, Knoxville, Roanoke, Bristol, VA/TN, Atlanta, Macon, Birmingham, Mobile, Jacksonville, Savannah, Charleston, and Charlotte, NC.
Nashville - Atlanta - Macon - Savannah. Atlanta - Macon - Columbus, GA - Montgomery, AL - Mobile, AL. New Orleans - Mobile, AL - Tallahassee, FL - Jacksonville, FL. Chicago - Memphis, TN - Birmingham, AL - Columbus, GA - Waycross, GA - Jacksonville, FL.
I’d love to see the ROI comparison between expanding highways between these city pairs & rail. We do a terrible job quantifying the cost of a perceived free service has a high entry cost but low use fee vs one that has a lower entry cost and low use fee.
Make sure that ROI takes into account trucks using the highways. It's something the anti-car people never factor in. Good luck getting your produce from farms to your urban supermarket without highways. I suppose farmers could deliver by train? 🤭
@ the awesome thing about the current interstate system BETWEEN cities & urban areas is that it’s VERY suited for truck traffic as it is, & no new interstate within a metro area will ever come close to the cost-to-benefit from the original interstate system. We could spend a fraction of the money for maintenance & non-expansion plans with better ROI than new interstates. The inverse would be true for passenger rail as we exterminated the passenger rail system to fund the highways, so the money that would go to new rail would likely have returns looking like 1950’s highways.
As I am living in High Point, going to school in Greensbor, and working in Winston-Salem I would love a train of some kind that would be able to take me to Winston from either city. The traffic is usually awful going between the three
don't forget Nashville to Memphis or the fact that Nashville has no Amtrak station at all
I wish there was a greater focus on connecting many of the massive holes between metros of the upper South and Midwest, the fact that St. Louis doesn’t connect to the existing lines in Carbondale and Indianapolis without going through Chicago first is ridiculous.
Other lines like a north/south line connecting Atlanta with Tennessee and Kentucky, or a line connecting KC and Omaha, would be huge and life changing for millions in multiple regions of the US.
The country is split at Chicago and New Orleans. You cannot go from one side to the other without going to one of these two places first. Which of course is ridiculous.
I'm 53 and I remember when the EU became a thing. What interested me most as an outsider was the mobility it offered to labor, since the passenger rail service was already pretty awesome compared to the US at the time. And it's only gotten better since. I hate that so many powerful people in the US shoot this kind of stuff down just to keep everyone else miserable.
I live in Carbondale and go to school in St. Louis. The fact that I can't just take a train is the most infuriating thing
And the thumbnail shows STL-Carbondale-Nashville-Atlanta, which is a line I've been thinking about for at least a year now
As someone who travels about 40 miles each way on trains every day for education, I'm extremely thankful this rail link exists because I would not do this if I had to drive or rent in the other city. The town where I live now loves building big apartment buildings and as a result, house prizes here are still very reasonable. That's right, more apartment buildings make houses cheaper too! The trip takes just 40 minutes and there are direct trains every 30 minutes. Paying 50$ per month for the train is way better than 500$ per month and the hassle of renting student accommodation.
Not to defend Colorado’s lack of connectivity, but we do have a state run coach service called Bustang that runs fairly frequent busses between each of those cities and Denver in pretty good time. I would still love to see FRPR go through and would love to see better connectivity between CO cities but at least we don’t have nothing
they should electrify it and call it Busla
I consider that the South has three "capital cities" - Atlanta, Charlotte and Nashville, and there should be trains connecting all these city pairs. Atlanta to Nashville should have service, which should eventually be part of a direct Chicago to Florida train (as opposed to the new Floridian, which is really a stopgap train).
St Louis - Des Moines
St Louis - Indianapolis
St Louis - Louisville
St Louis - Nashville
St Louis - Memphis
St Louis - Tulsa/OKC
@@jonathanstensberg this exactly. St.Louis is a perfectly centered hub for rail expansion and the fact it doesn’t connect to major cities in every direction is a massive crime.
St Louis to Tulsa/OKC would be great. I know my area is small but a spur from Joplin down to Fayetteville AR would be really useful.
Saint Louis was once a big passenger Hub prior to 1971...
Can you please take a video to roast Nashville? We really need the shame.
I would not be surprised if no new lines get agreed over the next four years.
Your B roll of Seattle still shows the 99 viaduct. ;P
I loved the Cascades train between PDX and Seattle proper, especially when it was $25. And a $5 upgrade to the business car. Triple that now, but still better than the wretched bus on i5.
Make Florida Brightline a loop. Going back through the Everglades along Alligator Alley back to Miami.
As a resident of Nashville, that thumbnail speaks to me
Even the airlines don't want to put planes on the Allentown to New York route; if you book ABE-EWR on United, you'll actually travel that route by bus. Also, the Lehigh Valley in general needs much better public transit to support longer distance trains. If they were to put to a train station in Allentown, there'd be no easy way to get to or from Bethlehem or Easton from it.
Bethlehem borders Allentown. Like, a bump in a road and street signs change. Also, an existing station. Easton is on the way to NY. You have to go through Easton to get to NYPenn.
As a person who has spent the past 35 years in Columbus, I have no concept of train service, so I'm not being dismissive by asking this, but is there really pent up demand for transit between Cincy, CLB, and Cleveland? Columbus is really tough to navigate without a car, given its woeful bus service and routes, so I don't know how travelers from the other cities would overcome that. ...
So how does one now travel beyond the terminal, having arrived at Columbus, OH by aircraft? Rent a vehicle or take a bus? Such options would follow travellers to a new passenger rail service.
Pete for President // Ray for DOT Director
Pete in jail for participating in two illegal wars // Ray apologizing to his audience for fraternizing with that garbage human being.
AHH YES President Buuty
Yes!
YOOOOO Trump WON hahahaha, isn't that WILD!! He won the Presidency, the Senate, the House, the popular vote and the Governorship for the Republicans!! LOLLL You and your friends are an unpopular minority in this country. K BYE!!!
Pete only became secretary as a political favor for dropping his popular primary campaign before super Tuesday to help prop up a senile unpopular racist man who basically singlehandedly got Trump reelected.
I live near Nashville and clicked on this video because of the thumbnail. But that area wasn’t talked about at all. 😐
I went to school at Lehigh university and it was so frustrating any time I had to go to NYC as a carless student!
I know the focus is on US routes (further enhanced by Buttigieg’s presence) but I just did some quick search for Calgary/Edmonton = (1680000x1418118)/(186.411^2) ~68.5mil
The main factor driving that score down is likely the distance (eyeball test suggests it is farther than the longest Ohio corridor) but no rail whatsoever between 3rd and 5th largest cities in Canada doesn’t sound good. You can also make a stop by the Edmonton airport for such a route. I assume Toronto/Ottawa/Montreal has some rail; Saskatoon and Regina metro areas are both below 500k.
One big transport gap in Illinois is Chicago to Peoria - no direct interstate link, let alone rail. Peoria residents who want to take a train to Chicago have to go to Normal to catch the Amtrak Lincoln Service or Texas Eagle.
One thing to consider when saying "air travel has an advantage"... LAX-PHX is a classic example. 373 miles - 5 hours by train at Amtrak's standard 79mph. An hour and a half gate-to-gate in the air... BUT, consider AT LEAST two hours in LAX's TSA debacle PLUS getting down there (remember, no public transit to LAX until at least 2026, and I doubt it's going to make a lot of difference)... the time at this distance is gonna be a wash, and I'd much rather spend that time in a nice train seat than most of it in a queue or in an airport or airplane seat... bump the train (new build, after all) to 250kph and there's no question.
I think they should put the train stations into airports. That way when people get to an airport, they can make the decision, do I want to fly or do I want to take the train? And hopefully a lot of them will take the train. Then there could be a separate line going to the downtown. I just think an airport would have all the space for the parking and all the other infrastructure etc.
This is not a bad idea. Wouldn't the airlines fight it, though?
@charlienyc1 I don't know if they have a choice, because I believe the government puts in the airport. I don't think it would cut into the airplane business too much. There's enough people for both!
@@saratemp790 Well, fingers crossed. There are certainly advantages to having multi-mode connections.
Regarding LA-Phoenix, you don't really need high speed in order for it to be competitive. For comparison, Stockholm-Malmö here in Sweden (much smaller cities) is slightly longer at 613 km, yet it only takes 4.5 hours with the X2000 which is only capable of 200 kph. I take this route frequently and the trains are almost always full despite the trains being hourly from morning til night and a few slightly slower trains are also on the same route.
"Only capable of 200 kph". You don't understand. Trains here have average speeds of 88 kph. That's the best we get here.
@@radishpineapple74 Right but my point is that you don't even need full high-speed to be competitive on a route like that, 200 kph can easily be achieved with a few upgrades to existing rail.
@@dijikstra8 There are segments on the pre-existing rail, planned for future Amtrak service to my city (Madison, WI), which have a speed limit of 16 kph. I just want you to fully appreciate the dilapidated state of this country. No investment has occurred for countless decades, so the hole to dig ourselves out of is a greater chasm than many understand.
@@radishpineapple74 *16* kph? That is truly mind-blowing...
As the former HQ for the L&N Railroad, Louisville's lack of passenger rail is insulting. We used to be so connected!
I think you are sleeping on my home time, New Orleans, Baton Rouge, Gulfport almost 3 million residents
Many, MANY years ago when I was just a humble observer of the business I used to hang out at the train station in Ocala, Florida (when we ACTUALLY had train service). People walking in would ask if there were trains to a) Orlando and b) Atlanta. There was no through service then and there is zero train service now out of OCA. We, the State of Florida, now the #3 state by population for those just tuning in, have seen our interstate train options dwindle since 1980. We've lost our service to the Midwest. We've lost our service to New Orleans and LA. What trains that do still run have car counts about half from 30 years ago. But we do have Brightline...which is NOT Amtrak. So, why do we need Amtrak?
Perhaps some of the Florida population that does find what is left of Amtrak service to be a useful option may wish to continue it?
@ In our business we loose about 10% of our customers every year due to moving, mortality or other factors. As such there is always a fight to find new customers for rail travel. Narrowing the options you offer is counter to the goal of ridership sustainability let alone growth.
atlanta to macon/nashville/savannah/athens/literally anywhere
No Memphis mention 😔 I feel robbed due to the thumbnail
I want A+ public transit options in Metro Detroit waaaaaay more than I want a rail line to Toledo. 😭
CityNerd for Secretary of Transportation! (If he really wants it)
"Train Dork UA-cam" - LOL
I would be interested to see your take on the efforts to restore rail service on Vancouver Island.
One of the biggest disappointments in rail travel in this country, and there are many, is that there is no rail travel between anywhere in Florida (and much of the South, for that matter) and points west. Say you live in Jacksonville for some reason and. you want to visit New Orleans. You can either fly, or, if you want to take a train, you would have to travel clear. up to at least Raleigh, NC, then make a connections to Greensboro which then connects to New Orleans. It's too stupid to believe, but it's true. There isn't even service between Atlanta and Jacksonville. There is no way to take a train west from Florida without first traveling the 500 miles north to Raleigh first. I realize that is beyond the distances you were looking at in this video, but it's just one of those things that is so absurd, so unbelievable, that it needs to be stated. To add to this absurdity that leaves Tallahassee (the state capital), Pensacola, and Mobile, AL and, really, a decent chunk of the gulf coast without rail travel. Just bonkers.
Louisville, my home city, has two Ford truck plants and a Toyota Camry plant not far away. The city also has elected officials who sit on the laps of corporations and move their lips to what the corporations say.
So Amtrak hasn’t forgotten Louisville. Louisville hides from Amtrak.
I thought the Chicago-Indianapolis-Louisville-Memphis corridor might turn up in this list. I'm sure Jeffersonville wouldn't mind.
@@meberg500 Louisville extended its 1950s transportation system into the 21st Century, extending two expressways and building two new bridges in the '90s and 2000s without the then mayor even expressing an opinion on a proposal for light rail. Since then, Louisville's bus system has deteriorated and will be cut back next month. Very few of the metro council members care.
@@brianarbenz1329like many cities the Ponzi scheme of developers building roads to exurbia and racial segregation have really destroyed any hope of good and connected public transit