The USA's twin addictions to car ownership and low-density, single-unit housing developments mitigate against the mass adoption of passenger rail. How ya gonna get from that McMansion deep in the sprawling suburbs, to the downtown railroad station? You're gonna drive, right? So instead, they'll drive to the airport, or take a road trip, and any available rail travel options simply aren't on their radar.
The Canadian doesn’t visit Banff now. While the old route of the Canadian once went there, the southern route was sacrificed in favor of the old CN line via Edmonton and Jasper. I’ve taken the Canadian westbound from Toronto to Vancouver. If you haven’t done it, I highly recommend it.
One big impact trains have had on people in the USA is the rail road companies snuck laws in states making it unlawful to walk across the tracks anywhere but a official crossing blocking huge areas of public lands and waters from people who used to cross to harvest fish and game for many years. The railroads have their own police who can issue a state fine, in my state it’s 3 hundred dollars. I think this is a terrible thing they are doing to the people. I live near the Mississippi river and there are rr tracks on both sides of the river bottoms.
I went to my army basic training in 98 and learned to drive the M113. We needed to go west for training so they taught me how to rail load these 13 ton vehicles,essentially driving the long way down the whole length of the train. These are your modern "military" trains in America-commercial freight going to military train sidings. All bases have these.
The size of the continental USA makes it more a "freight train" country than a passenger train country. Even with 300 km/h high speed rail, it's still too slow for many long trips in country. That's why airlines like JetBlue and Southwest dominate.
I keep trying to tell everyone this, but they don't want to hear it. People are addicted to saying "USA is bad". Its true, USA's passenger system is terrible. Its freight system is without peer in terms of technology, standards (good size gauge, not too narrow), and pricing. Even legendary nations such as Japan have significantly higher freight rail cost/km, according to an article I read in the Economist several years back that compared freight cost/km in all the major industrial nations.
The USA's twin addictions to car ownership and low-density, single-unit housing developments mitigate against the mass adoption of passenger rail. How ya gonna get from that McMansion deep in the sprawling suburbs, to the downtown railroad station? You're gonna drive, right? So instead, they'll drive to the airport, or take a road trip, and any available rail travel options simply aren't on their radar.
The Canadian doesn’t visit Banff now. While the old route of the Canadian once went there, the southern route was sacrificed in favor of the old CN line via Edmonton and Jasper. I’ve taken the Canadian westbound from Toronto to Vancouver. If you haven’t done it, I highly recommend it.
One big impact trains have had on people in the USA is the rail road companies snuck laws in states making it unlawful to walk across the tracks anywhere but a official crossing blocking huge areas of public lands and waters from people who used to cross to harvest fish and game for many years. The railroads have their own police who can issue a state fine, in my state it’s 3 hundred dollars. I think this is a terrible thing they are doing to the people. I live near the Mississippi river and there are rr tracks on both sides of the river bottoms.
I went to my army basic training in 98 and learned to drive the M113. We needed to go west for training so they taught me how to rail load these 13 ton vehicles,essentially driving the long way down the whole length of the train. These are your modern "military" trains in America-commercial freight going to military train sidings. All bases have these.
The size of the continental USA makes it more a "freight train" country than a passenger train country. Even with 300 km/h high speed rail, it's still too slow for many long trips in country. That's why airlines like JetBlue and Southwest dominate.
I keep trying to tell everyone this, but they don't want to hear it. People are addicted to saying "USA is bad". Its true, USA's passenger system is terrible. Its freight system is without peer in terms of technology, standards (good size gauge, not too narrow), and pricing. Even legendary nations such as Japan have significantly higher freight rail cost/km, according to an article I read in the Economist several years back that compared freight cost/km in all the major industrial nations.