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Why Trains would NEVER WORK in the USA (slrpnk.net)
submitted 3 weeks ago by to c/memes@slrpnk.net
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[–] 1 point 3 weeks ago (4 children)

America has trains. We use them for freight because it doesn't care if it sits for a while or takes weeks to cross the country. Much of the US is too spread out for trains to be super useful for passengers. The areas that make sense do have reasonable passenger rail usage, mostly the east coast metropolis and Chicago to nearby cities.

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  • [–] [S] 9 points 3 weeks ago (3 children)

    The contiguous United States has a higher population density than Spain, which has a great high speed rail system. Metropolitan France is not much more denser than that as well.

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  • [–] 6 points 3 weeks ago (1 child)

    Chicago to nyc is currently a 20 hour train or a two hour flight. High speed rail would be a massive expense to get a best case scenario of maybe 4 hours. The flight just makes more sense for people. Both cities have good rail options for inter city transport, or even out to suburbs.

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  • [–] 2 points 3 weeks ago

    If you guys ever properly tax your carbon, that 4 hour electric train will sound much better than a 1 or 2 hour flight in jet fuel.

    Though this is a problem worldwide, even here in Europe jet fuel isn't taxed enough.

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  • [–] 3 points 3 weeks ago

    You can't generalize population density across the entire continent like that. Montana and Wyoming have a wildly different population density than California or New Jersey and they're all in the contiguous United States. Even just looking at the region east of the Mississippi to between the Mississippi and the Rockies, shows a striking difference in population density.

    Also, Spain is like 1/16 the size of the US with mostly a singular population center in the literal center of the country. And, the Paris metropolitan area is comparable to the tri-state NY Metro area and a fraction of the size of the surrounding region from NY to D.C., which itself is a tiny fraction of the area we call the East Coast.

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