I should have mentioned clearer in the video that the connectsUS map used (in the video and by Matt) is the modified one with Amtrak's/the FRA's other corridors of interest added too.
Other lines are deleted from it too. Does this mean that the Atlanta-Chattanooga-Nashville line is no longer in the cards? That's the one I was looking most forward to. :(
@@JAXONcreed I found out it’s complicated… the newer map is representative of routes that still require funding and need to be initialized, so if a route is removed it means it’s funded. The only route I think was actually removed was the Boston-New Hampshire route because NH is the most NIMBY/anti-transit state in the US.
Great point about France. I live in Grenoble, and while we do not have a direct HS rail line until you reach Lyon, we have a robust rail network with over a hundred trains a day including more than 8 TGV's that depart to Lyon and Paris daily. They are lovely, but I am very grateful for the regional lines and branch lines that allow me to explore France without a car. Building a regional network is much more important, especially in the United States. Side note, railway drivers here are surprisingly low paid and I support them striking whenever they want!
no dude our regional network is terrrrible what are you talking about our HSR is also just annoying and unaffordable please just please never look at SNCF in a positive light there is strictly nothing good that they've done in the last 10 years
@@ronylouis0 @ronylouis1817 I am originally from the Northeast of the US, and so the Regional network of where I am now is much better than anything I grew up with. . That being said, I definitely think the decision to make Oui Go a thing was and is terrible. They gotta subsidize ticket sales and avoid neolibralising the SNCF.
SNCF is managed terribly but there's no denying their rail network and service is world class. The only issue seems to be that they're French and hate having to go out of their way to do things (cough cough OuiGo) and God forbid you take an international trip that isn't the Eurostar. The horror stories of people just trying to run on lines between Spain and France with the Spy vs Spy esque feud between SNCF and AVE is honestly pathetic.
@@trashrabbit69 I am planning to take one of those trains from France to Spain in the near future, so I look forward to reporting back war stories and or nightmare fuel!
The fact that an average small village in the UK, France or Germany, has the same size train station as Houston, a city with millions of people, tells me all I need to know about how much you guys need trains lol
The average village in the UK USED to have a train station…until the mid 60s. Now while there is an OK train network it’s being ran into the ground by a government that doesn’t give a shit about public anything and will let the private sector milk it for all its worth (but hey, at least Birmingham will be getting a high speed connection to London, so that’s cool I guess)!
it get even more ridiculous if you look at some Swiss villages with not even a thousand residents but still better rail service than US cities with literally a housand times the residents
I took amtrak from Chicago to San Antonio Texas. San Antonio has millions of people and all it had was a couple platforms and a tiny station building the size of a house. Its pretty sad
I love cars they're fkn cool but I don't want to have to own some econo box car and stay stuck in traffic for an hour because cities are too damn car centric
How to get people to use a train 1) it has to be quicker than driving 2)it has to be cheaper than flying. 3)provide ways to connect at the end to where people want to get to/from
cheaper than flying is easy: currently, the US government subsidises airlines to fly a lot of otherwise unprofitable domestic routes. To the point where some smaller airlines run basically exclusively those routes because that's how they make a profit. European governments (mostly) don't do that. They run (or subsidise businesses that run) train lines on their equivalents of such routes. You make it cheaper than flying by subsidising the rail lines rather than the air lines. (note that the vast majority of subsidised flights are very short, relatively speaking, and most of the longer ones are profitable without, or there's no real need for them.)
You could sell regular trains on dedicated corridors (no sharing with freight) pretty easily to a business class based on *productivity*. Even if a trip takes longer (not counting mandatory time for security theatre before a flight), the ability to work thanks to built-in tables, device charging/USB ports and wi-fi could get you a long way. All of which are much easier to provide on a train than an aircraft. Even overnight trips could be sold on being fresh for meetings when you arrive at your destination. For regular passengers, a lot of the same things would be good selling points, but I think comfort and reliability would be more important, plus again getting rid of the security theatre.
@@laurencefraser This! All of these righties and right-leaning people constantly forget how much we subsidize flying and driving. Then the same people simultaneously block the same level of subsidies for rail _and_ complain that rail is more expensive. Well, yes, it will be if you're not subsidizing it to the same extent as flying and driving! Ugh! It's so frustrating to argue with these selectively "subsidy-blind" people!
One of the interesting points about this is that both China and Japan continue to run slower train Services even along the high-speed rail corridors. It's much cheaper to take a slower train and they stop more often and cover more cities. This is also the true to a degree in france, which has a Hub and spoke system, which is what California High-Speed Rail is designing its system based off of.
@Zaydan Alfariz they should keep it. I think Jakarta Bandung route is kinda a mistake since it is better to make route from Jakarta Cirebon Semarang and you can further expand it until Surabaya. Also Jakarta bandung has already a nice highway and behind Bandung is just mountaineous region of Garut so it is hard to expand beyond bandung.... it is just there...
Hell, that's done on the Northeast Corridor, which has several tiers of passenger service. It's not perfect, but there's a _very_ good reason why it's so well-used in spite of being in a car-centric country.
Japan runs multiple levels of service on HSR and they have smaller stations too, but they don't run any express services on lines that are duplicated by HSR. It's very hard to go long distance on local trains because you have to switch many times (in particular, any time you get to a different JR) and they stop a lot. On top of that, the express surcharge for the Shinkansen isn't actually a lot over the normal fee, so you're talking about maybe $80 for an 11 hour journey vs $110 for 3 hours.
This is something what annoys me about the German HSR network. There are cases where a new line was build next to existing ones (e.g. Stuttgart and Ulm already have a direct route and the planned Frankfurt-Mannheim line is the third direct line between both cities) but overall, my government is mostly made out of cheapskates and want to build as few new lines as possible. :D
I live in one of the very small towns you talked about being built for railways. I would almost never drive if I had the ability to use a train for public transportation
I grew up in a small town that was built around a railroad about an hour away from a big city. A railroad that Amtrak even uses. But in order to take a train to the city, you have to drive halfway there to get to the nearest station. To make things worse, in the last 25 years, the number of daily trains has continually dropped to where there are now only two, and they both overnight trains that go through in the middle of the night, making them completely pointless for anyone that isn't the far ends of the routes. If Amtrak (or if a local service were created) would have put a station there (and in other towns along that railroad), and had trains that went to the city in the morning and out from the city in the evening, those trains would be full of people that currently drive to the city for work every single day. IMO, the thing stopping it is the freight companies that own the railroad infrastructure, which means the solution is to nationalize the infrastructure.
@@axmajpayne my entire district here in southeast Colorado was laid out along the Oregon trail and later the railway replacing it. I am an hour from a large city, and we have freight trains still running this line. The towns this side of that large city are all extremely small, with limited employment opportunities. A train running reliably enough for us to get to the large city for work would literally be full four times a day, if not more depending on if they had a second run going a little bit later in the morning for people who don't have to be there at 7:00. But nobody's even talking about it, let alone anywhere near getting the permission from the state and federal rail. Plus of course convincing Union Pacific to let anyone else use their lines.
As someone who was born in Ohio, thank you for the brief spotlight on the map there. I can only hope Ohio and Amtrak have the balls to go through with that plan, especially because I think the Columbus-Chicago line would have a stop in my hometown of Lima. I demand a revival of Lima train glory
Coming here to second this! As someone who'd most likely be served by a revived Lima stop, I'm hoping they seriously consider that plan, even though I'm not getting my hopes up
@@Endless_May if they did, then all that would be left is for lima to improve its bus system so I could hop of a train and take the bus to visit my parents
Thank you thank you thank you for bringing up people who are unable to drive. I am one of those people, and so whenever someone says "people will just drive or fly places" i want to scream. What that looks like for me is either an expensive ride share, a very long bus ride, or an extremely expensive and inconvenient airport visit... that someone will have to drive me to!! And I live in the midwest where everything is extremely spread out, so I can only walk so many places. Having even just one train station in my town would absolutely be life-changing, and I know I am far from the only one in that boat.
I am not unable to drive, but I live in a dense urban neighborhood in a major midwestern city (Minneapolis). After 2 years of never needing to drive I got rid of my car. I maintain my driver's license but don't trust my driving skills any more. I do lots of walking, take public transit, and the occasional ride hail. My city is on an Amtrak route ... we get one eastbound and one westbound train per day, at inconvenient times. I would love to be able to take day or weekend trips to explore some of the interesting towns nearby ... but there's no way to get to them without driving. Local service trains would fill this need perfectly. A HSR line to Chicago, through Madison and Milwaukee would be awesome!
It would make a huge difference in the midwest.Cause I live in a mid size city in the midwest and though it has a train station,it looked like it hadn't been visited in years and it takes 6 hours and back to get from where I live to Chicago on a train meanwhile I can get there by car within 2 hours and I hate driving.So to have high speed rail the midwest sounds like a dream.
Today I have witnessed a miracle. Someone called Ohio a chad (which might be more a testament to the sad state of rail in the US but I digress). Also to your point about the empire route between NYC and Albany, yes it is a great train. I grew up near Albany and have made the drive to NYC many times. When I moved out I moved far away and so the best option for me to get back to visit family is to fly into NYC and then take the train to Albany. It is so much cheaper and less stressful than flying to Albany and I get such a nice view on the train while I get time to stretch my legs out after a long plane ride. Few things make me want better trains in this country quite like riding that one does. (insert "We were on the verge of greatness" meme)
I love the Empire service route as well, though the Albany to NYC section is definitely the best running part. If you board earlier, there's often significant delay waiting around in Albany. But it should be a relatively easy fix if we start actually prioritizing passenger rail.
I rode that train several years ago. I was booked on the Amtrak to Chicago, #49 I believe. I was making a connection at Penn Station. There are better places to be. The Chicago train was delayed. First 10, the 20, then 40 minutes late. It was later in the day, and I wanted to do the ride in daylight. I noticed a local was due to depart in 10 or so, so a went down to the platform, showed my Amtrak ticket to the conductor. He said "You want to go to Albany and wait there, fine. So I rode to Albany in the fading light along the Hudson on a coach that was mostly empty. I realized fully then why New York is such a great city. As it turned out 49 was about an hour late, and full. Rode along the Mohawk in the dark.
I'll believe the rest once they get the main line (3C line) actually in service first. This is a state that loves to do a lot of talking and not that much doing.
@@ajmentel2453 you could def have an HSR corridor through ohio connecting ith with other midwest cities, and low speed rail feeding into it from all over
there is always this one thing this guy and so many other of your fellow americans don't understand about highspeed rail in japan or europe: it did not come out of nowhere. it's always either a replacemant or an upgrade of an existing connection or line. they all had very robust regional and intercity rail networks before.
Love the video. I'm from PHL, and I think we need way more trains to small towns again. We need the people who never see trains outside their regional locomotive museum to start using trains. They will also greatly appreciate not having to drive on the chaotic city roads, if they want to visit. I lived in Philadelphia, and worked in rural PA for a while, and driving is a major reason people avoid visiting the city. Besides, of course, that some news has them convinced our cities are only filled with flying bullets and feces. I like Amtrak's new plan. It is a plan for progress. I feel like we have not been making progress for some time, and now everyone wants giant leaps. We have to build up incrementally like everyone else. We just haven't been doing it for decades while many other wealthy countries have been. We are behind, and there are no shortcuts.
@Zaydan Alfariz It might be that too. I just grew up in and around Philadelphia. PHL is our US airport code and an abbreviation of Philadelphia. I'm sure there are other groups that use PHL as well.
@@taiidaniblues7792 Ever seen CGP Grey's video on airline codes? th-cam.com/video/jfOUVYQnuhw/w-d-xo.html His frustration with them alone is entertaining :)
That part about news convincing people that cities are dangerous is also an impediment to rail deployment. Note that the 1950s-onward suburbs and exurbs were built to turn the cities into ghettos with a paywall (of car ownership) to get out. We already see, within metropolitan areas (I can't really call the suburbs and exurbs "cities"), mass transit expansion being opposed on the basis of racism and classism...
Never taken an Amtrak train on the Empire Corridor, but I used to live by Tarrytown station on the Metro North and would take the Hudson Line into the city. My parents are from NJ though I was born in Westchester, and they specifically chose Westchester because of the convenience of the Metro-North express. I agree that the line is absolutely gorgeous. Now living on Long Island and having to transfer to switch from diesel to electric trains as part of my commute, I can't help but miss the views of the Hudson Line. I also can't help but laugh at the thought that Matt doesn't realize certain towns have popped up because of trains. Just look at Long Island and how much it developed because of the LIRR. Hicksville was named after Valentine Hicks, the son-in-law of abolitionist preacher and LIRR president Elias Hicks. Valentine bought land in 1834 so he could put a LIRR station/depot there in 1837. It would eventually grow into a bustling suburb thanks to a building boom following WWII, with the LIRR contributing to this rise.
you would see the train as a thing in lots of NYC suburbs in housing listings even up in CT "easy access to NYC commuter rail". if the town had a Metro North station. I admit I would drive from Danbury to Southeast though, Because the Harlem Line did not require a train change in New Haven where as the Danbury Branch had no direct trains. Something even more insane, The Danbury branch was once electric and is all diesels now. Sometime in the far past they pulled the wires down but you can still see the rusting support structures that once held the overhead lines.
The line between college station and Dallas/Houston/Austin is going to be huge for college students, maybe it will get houston to have a station that isn't just a single wide in the middle of nowhere
Watch SouthWest step in and absolutely lobby the heck out of the project to promote flying, its a battle of corporate greed vs the rail transit for the greater good
Investing in HST but very less in normal trains, is what's happening here in italy, and it sucks! I mean HST is good, but most of the time you need to connect to your destination by normal trains, and that sucks, especially if the country ignores them
Re: they can just fly, I know a few people who live in the south who have to drive 2+ hours to their nearest airport hub so they can fly to their intended destination. Having local state rail services can capture many of these first/last mile trips.
First/last mile is the absolute worst scenario for rail/public transportation. They're much better suited for the highest density routes that are currently suffering from overcrowding.
I took Amtrak to Boston from Philly because I didnt want to drive and honestly the Acela is probably not much slower than flying when you tack on all the bullshit that comes with flying. Travel time from where I am to 30th street station is roughly equal and there is no TSA theater and all that for boarding an Acela.
I really hope that the map gets built and expanded upon, because the map is definitely missing some connections that should exist like Pueblo to La Junta, there's probably no rails there but it should be built.
The lines are there. I live in Rocky Ford, literally right on that line, and up until the 80s there was a train running from Lamar all the way to Pueblo and then up to Colorado Springs. They fazed it out, converting it to a bus route. That bus runs once a day each direction, and you could not work in Pueblo on the schedule it offers. Passing La Junta at 8:30 and getting to Pueblo at 10:00, then picking up from Pueblo at 3:30 and returning to La Junta at 5: 30 makes it completely impossible to use as a daily Transit
It's funny how obvious that connection is. I've never been anywhere near that far out in this country, yet the lack of a proposal to properly connect those two points sticks out like a sore thumb.
@@tfhorsch4527 it would not be a federal project, so not even a main interest for Amtrak. It would be a state funded from here in CO, and as a person actually interested in the idea and watching it, there has been nobody pushing on the Front Range Rail (which would require only a very small addition to close the loop down to the Amtrak station at La Junta).
@@leechowning2712 Sorry, I never said it was official, I have been also following this closely and early ideas were thrown around for a connection there when the commission to get the line built at all was originally created. I understand it’s a state project, the video literally highlighted that, but Amtrak would be assisting it and that is why it is even displayed on the map used in the video, which Amtrak created.
Connect Pueblo to La Junta, connect Phoenix to Vegas thru Flagstaff, and then connect El Paso and Albuquerque and this map would be perfect for me. Maybe also throw in a connection between the California Zephyr and that new north line, but I'm not sure where.
Couldn't agree more. As a urban planning student it's one of the biggest obstacles is everything or nothing mentally. High speed rail or nothing. France did not start with tgv. It got there. Keep it up.
Exactly, everybody goes for the newest, shiniest, fastest, fanciest trains when it's the small things that have laid the tracks for it (literally). Conventional rail is the one that brings me home, to work, to school, to an airport, not HS railway. It's not HS trains that yank communities out of isolation, it's faster and better services on conventional rail. It's freight that generates lots of revenues for railway companies, not HS, and it operates on slow tracks. I love HS trains, but it's infuriating to look at the public opinion wanting HS rail but refusing commuter. That's simply idiotic to me
I live in medford OR, a town of nearly 100,000 people, and there are NO passneger trains in this entire county. There are freight rail lines that run through downtown of basically every city along the I5 corridor that used to have passenger trains but those were shut down a long time ago. I would love to have a train I could take to connect with the main Amtrak line further north to go see my family in the portland area without driving but I doubt that's going to happen in my life
"weirdos and hobbyists who want to ride a train from Birmingham to Shreveport or from Athens to Fort Wayne via Columbus but serves no particular transportation purpose." he unironically says it serves no transportation purpose, but he just explained the purpose, to take anyone on those routes and serve those cities. People in those cities aren't weirdos for wanting to take an alternate form of transportation that isn't a car or plane, there are people who are afraid of flying or can't handle being in a car for a long time and would rather stretch/walk like you can on a train. And Amtrak wouldn't be so infrequent if it didn't face challenges from freight, but of course this hasn't clicked yet in Matthew's mind.
That's my thought exactly as well. Whether there are towns and villages next to the tracks (dense population) or just miles of nowhere (sparse population), HSR just don't care what's in-between the stops. This is my counterargument against the density counterargument (to the point where HSR actually benefits from sparsity rather than get hurt by it) but it also means that when there is a somewhere (especially when there is a lot of somewhere), the residents want some form of compensation which tends to translate to also a stop or at least a conventional rail line for slower trains. In fact, I say that CAHSR and the current route shows this point very well: There were multiple reasons why CAHSR follows Route 99 instead of the coast or I-5 (geography, allowing for allowing easy and direct access to Sacramento from the Bay Area and LA, having enough justification for intermediate stops without diverting too much, etc.) but another one is that the San Joaquins route already exists and is in fact one of the more popular lines within the US so the San Joaquin residents are already familiar with (passenger) trains (the coast also has trains but also a more difficult terrain while the I-5 has no passenger trains at all). Granted, the service could be improved with better connected towns but still, there is service and CAHSR supplements it thanks to dedicated passenger tracks.
One incentive that Amtrak uses to persuade passengers to ride their trains is the beautiful scenery that they can enjoy along the journey, as well as the succulent cuisine served in the dining/food service car.
My Dad always reminded me that "conventional rail" - even in the days of steam - could hit 100 mph. The upper bound speed isn't really the problem. It's all the frigging stops. And, the real economic killer in the US, is the imbalance of our freight infrastructure in favor of roads over rail.
conventional rail pushed to it's limits can go up to 125mph technically 140mph with Incab signalling. UK has constantly had diesel and electric trains running at 125mph for years with the potential to go faster just lacking infrastructure upgrades to do so.
They also didn't really care as much about the trains crashing due to poor maintenance. If you've ever seen one of the bridges that they still run trains over, those are absolutely terrifying. Many of them were made out of cast iron and not even steel.
This is like if every time a new town wanted a fish and chip shop there was somebody saying they shouldn't be allowed to have that until the town already had a 5 star restaurant. Or even more insultingly it wasn't allowed until the slightly bigger next town over had a 5 star restaurant!
We don’t need highspeed national rail, what we need is frequent, electrified commuter lines with more stops. I cannot express the frustration of waiting for a train after work to go home for OVER AN HOUR, ride it for 45 minutes, only to have to walk a few miles after I get off. If I can get on a train that comes every half hour, and is a bit faster than the ones we have now, I will be happy.
When talking Amtrack, even this non-HSR stuff (actually HSR would mean higher frequencies as there's dedicated tracks and a need to justify the expense of construction) is looking at longer-distance, trains-per-day rather than trains-per-hour sort of service rather than the more useful frequent lines serving the hinterland of cities.
You should do a video on the long debate about installing a commuter rail system along 422 in Chester County, Pa. the road is so congested on workdays and loads of people go through KOP via car so if it hey could connect to the Main Line regional rail, so many people would use it. 422 also has a massively huge median, more than wide enough for rail and stations with pedestrian overpasses.
we need better service than what was proposed though. No one is going to ride a train that runs three times a day and takes longer than what it does to drive.
@@tonywalters7298 Only the most outdated 3C plans had the trains going slower than driving. 80-110-125 MPH lines along the 3C-D corridor would be equal to/faster than driving.
@@tonywalters7298 Not that I want to be complacent but I would always choose a train that takes 20% longer over a car drive because at least on the train I can relax/sleep, or do something productive instead of staring at miles of pavement and fast-moving metal for hours.
What we need now is any trains at all. We shouldn't be getting all elitist about the trains not being good enough. Any train is better than no train and if building less HSR means we get lines that support smaller centres then that's a good thing.
I live in central PA and that rail line is phenomenal. Getting to NYC with Amtrak is literally the best way to travel and incredibly cheap. I know people who rely on that line to colleges in NYC and come home for holidays, it makes visiting home a lot easier for those people. Also, your point is totally right about the train stations being the center of the town. I live in a small city with a lot of trainyards but the fact is that most are abandoned and the Amtrak station is really left as the center for the town. For the longest time it was the only large thing downtown 😂. The idea that these routes to smaller cities and even towns aren't necessary and should be destroyed to fund high speed rail elsewhere is crazy. The transportation system in the US already sucks, and this journalist doesn't realize that their ideas are literally making it worse. Okay, done with my rant :)
I lived in Albany for a couple years and used to love taking the train into NYC. It takes the same amount of time as driving, but without worrying about traffic or parking. I also recently visited China and their high speed rail network was great. We took the Fuxing train which goes 350kmh from Beijing to Nanchang, then took a smaller 180mkh train to get to our final destination in a more remote part of China. I hope that some day the US will wake up to the comfort and convenience of a good high speed rail network.
Yeah, I fully agree with you! High speed rail without regional rail and good bus connections is pretty useless in a nation that has lots of cars... If you're going to need to drive to the station in your region and from your target location to the place you really need to go to, there is absolutely no point in taking the train at all, just drive the entire route! Build decent public transport and then you can focus on making it an alternative to planes or long distance car travel.
I live near Scranton and am excited and hopeful for them to begin service to NYC. There are many places I want to see in NYC, but I refuse to drive into the city. This will be a great economic opportunity for both cities as I know there are many commuters that live in my area. Also, you could ride a train to visit the Steamtown National Historic Site and enjoy Railroad history at its best!
@@SPQRTejano I think you are mistaken. You can take a 3hr bus ride from Scranton, Pa to Philadelphia and get on a train to New York from there, but there isn't a direct route from Scranton to NYC.
I agree with everything you said in this video. It's so important to focus on smaller branch line connections in addition to main lines, so this way every town has some sort of access to rail transport and doesn't have to rely on cars as much. (A step further would be giving these smaller services a lot of luxury, such as the Pennsylvania Railroad's streamlined doodlebug [#4663], and more recently with Ontario Northland's Siemens Charger sets.) I see why so many [non-railfan] people are obsessed over high speed rail since it sounds fancy, but few people realize the various challenges associated with building HSR routes from scratch ranging from NIMBYs to land use. With that said, we should be encouraging the development of any rail related project, since it's still a great form of rail transport when compared to the alternatives, and any articles going against this sentiment should be discouraged as they're only giving ammo to the opposing side.
I see lots of praise for high speed rail and local commuter rail/metros/trams. But almost no mention about regional heavy rail at all. I come from Germany. Yeah, DB bad yada yada. Anyways, what is pretty important about our network is how massive it is. If you live in a German town with about 10,000 or 20,000 people then you actually have a high chance of having rail access. For most towns that is just once an hour per direction, but I still see a good amount of people from these small town taking them. Despite the fact that most towners dirve, they are still an important piece of infrastructure and an underestimated amount of people would be screwed without it. Regional rail heavy is important. Especially if you consider how many old people live there who cannot drive anymore. And how hard it would be for children to get to the next sign of civilization just by bus lines. And then if you were clever (wishful thinking) that town could benefit from transit oriented developement. Personally, I commute between two closeby cities. According to reddit, my options would be infrequent and expensive HSR or a slow commuter rail (I don't benefit from it's inbetween stops). But in reality there is a heavy rail line which is 60% faster than the commuter rail and that is actually part of my college semester ticket. Also, if the train dakimakura takes too long to get into the store then I am going to sabotage the state funded lines.
alan the funny thing is you show france as an example despite it being the absolute worst at regional connections, which really drives the point home that amtrak needs to work on theirs what makes it even funnier, is that prioritizing high speed rail and treating it like an airplane instead of integrating with the rest of your network is precisely why SNCF is in a catastrophic position. Matt is literally pushing an example that has already failed
Raleigh to DC service literally stops in the middle of random fields. It takes 4.5 hours to get there by car and 7 by train. (For now) we don’t need HSR. We need proper normal trains
In my experience, Amtrak has great service, good clean passenger compartments with lots of space, and in *some* areas decent coverage (albeit limited mostly to connecting large metro areas). The only problem I have with Amtrak currently is price. For commuters, it’s about $12-15 to go 50-60mi. Long trips are exorbitantly expensive. It’s *much* cheaper to fly between Charlotte, NC and Boston, MA.
Agreed, a basic rule with transportation is price needs to reflect speed and convenience. Amtrak can't be priced higher than air travel when it's many times slower.
I come from a country with one of the densest rail network in the world and I must say, it Is sooo convenient that wherever you Are, you can walk or take a bus for a few stops to get to rail station!
@@lwf51 it absolutely has the density for high speed rail in the right regions, taking something like the northeast corridor or California you can greater densities than countries like spain or France with extensive high speed rail networks
Of course the idea of coast to coast high speed rail is probably never really gonna be justifiable but the sort of clustered US megaregions including also say the Midwest around Chicago and the Texas triangle are just obvious wins as as a high speed rail network goes
@lwf51 If density should be as high as Japan's, then go ahead, start building a high velocity train connection between DC and Boston, because DC + Maryland + New Jersey + Connecticut + Rhode Island + Massachusetts combined, have a higher density than Japan. Delaware and New York have a higher density than China. If France is the benchmark, you can use the outside of Ile de France density to calculate viability, and it asks for a line between Chicago and Boston, through Illinois, Ohio and Pennsylvania. Florida and California can get their lines too.
I live in Lambertville NJ and we used to have trains running through town where you could get to Philly or New York. But not anymore. The class three railroad, the Black River and Western is trying to get the train back and would be nice to take it to Flemmington (the biggest place to where I live) But yeah, small slower lines helpm
When people complain about Amtrak being "subsidized", they neglect to understand the billions of $$$ spent every year on thousands of miles of highways, not to mention the air-traffic control system and airports nationwide!
i live in a random small mountain town in Spain and i have like over 30/40 trains a day to go and get back home to the nearest big city, a person in Chicago has only 4 trains at 10/11am
The thing that I don't think much of America gets is the rail is for mid distance too! Half hour journeys on trains are common even in the UK where I live, but if you're relying on HSR there will be fewer lines which do t go through every large town, which they need to to be worthwhile and be a proper substitute for cars, which they can be for many people in Europe (in conjunction with other forms of public infrastructure and bicycles).
I would rather have a full network of 110-125 MPH rail lines than just a single 186-220MPH line. Yes, both would be nice, but if I have to choose, the full network with frequent trains and connectivity would be much better. I love Brightline. Yeah, they only started at 80 MPH but it got people into the seats quickly and the service is great. Then expanding north of West Palm Beach at 110 MPH & Cocoa 125 MPH, these kinds of services can go a long way.
100-125mph lines are pretty much standard lines pushed to their limits. britain has ALOT of them to the point their classed as high speed here in britain.
@@davidty2006 Yes, I'm aware of the lines in Britain which is why I think the US would be in a far better position right now if it already had regional/hubs of 110-125 MPH with the Siemens Chargers in use. I can see why HS2 is needed though.
That NYC to Albany line along the Hudson is gorgeous. Almost as nice as my personal favorite, Reno to Oakland in late winter when there's a ton of snow in the Sierras. You get on around noon and make this amazing trip through Donner Pass down into the central valley, arriving at Sacramento around sunset. Meanwhile the snow is gone and everything's green and luscious and you can see why the settlers thought they might be in heaven. Truly breathtaking.
Another interesting video. Improvements to existing rail infrastructure to increase average speeds remains a worthwhile and attainable goal given political realities, NIMBYs and construction times.
Not to mention the fact that Americans don't want to touch shoulders with other passengers they deem as "ghetto". They drive for what they see as privacy/safety as well.
Its just sad that there are so many bad infrastructure on the Northeast Corridor that limited the speed of Acela and no real high speed train for the east coast city. Its crazy to think about how those poor south east asian contry is getting high speed rail but not between major city of America.
The thing that makes taking Amtrak frustrating for me has nothing to do with train speed and has everything to do with freight companies like Norfolk Southern gunking up the routes.
When comparing to flying, people always forget to include the time it takes to 1. get to the airport (compared to getting to a more local train station) and 2. just how long getting thru the airport takes at larger airport, or how much time layovers can add when flying from small airports. Also those train services take people to a larger airport, for example the new service shown from Green Bay WI to Milwaukee. (Would have said O'Hare but their is no easy connection from the Hiawatha to O'Hare, you need to either taxi from the station or take the CTA from Central Station to O'Hare 😡)
One of Matt's big points wasn't that we shouldn't build out local connections, but that let's build out HSR so that when we go to build out local connections, it's way more useful.
That, and Matt literally put out an article today expanding on this one, where he kind of gives a more in-depth view into his thinking on prioritizing ridership vs coverage. He even literally writes "The carless Americans who also don’t live near good transit are a very marginalized group, so a ridership goal naturally has a thumb on the scale in favor of finding concentrations of low-income people to serve," he clearly understands that carless people do exist.
@@adamvandolder1804 It might be worth querying how many of the carless Americans with bad transit options are candidates for high-speed rail versus slow rail, because of the likely price differences.
@@gamelord12 the length of the lines are too long. It's way past the optimum zone for high speed train travel (about 80-400 miles) and a lot of it goes through empty country. NYC to LA high speed? 2800 miles or so. That's way too long.
@@raucousraptor There are other cities between those two points though. You're unlikely to take NYC to LA, but you might stop at any number of cities in between.
@@raucousraptor I've also seen maps that are ignorant of terrain problems. For example I sometimes see people propose high-speed rail up the California coast, but the coast here is very mountainous. (That's why the official plan runs inland, up the Central Valley, instead.)
The real reason HSR is a good idea is so that Amtrack could own the rights to the track and not suffer 8 hour delays as are common currently with shipping rail lines having track priority. This could be a short email.
My understanding, c. 2000, was that U.S. Rail had no tracks available that could handle Speed over what was currently available. That the proposed California "to be built" would be unprofitable
As a frequent Empire Service rider, CSX adds an extra 20-30 minutes from Rensselaer to Syracuse (2h45) vs Rensselaer to NYP (2h20) for nearly the same mileage covered. I would bet almost all of that difference is due to having mostly separated Amtrak/Metro North tracks down the Hudson. If you want to get to Buffalo, it's almost an hour slower on Amtrak vs driving, the stop-and-go caused by CSX really adds up. I mean there's only 6 stops between Rensselaer and Depew. You'll still find me preferring the train because it really is capital-G Gorgeous along the Hudson River and Erie Canal.
Thats an entirely different animal and its the freight rail that needs to get its shit together. Because of PSR the freight trains are longer and so they clog up the right of ways. They don't fit into the sidings anymore, so the shorter Amtrak trains have to park and wait for CSX to pass when its supposed to be the other way around. I know it sounds fucking unbelievable, and you'd think that since Amtrak is government supported that they'd tell the Class I railroads to cut the shit.
I’d say 90% of the time I would take a six hour train ride where I can relax, do work, or just pass out than a four hour drive where I have to actively pay attention to traffic every single minute
What’s crazy to me is that a lot of these older NIMBYs that don’t want trains near them grew up riding trains everywhere!! Have they just forgotten completely??
They probably think old trains where more segregated and privileged people rode so it was good that's why they love old trains and hate on new ones because new one are liberal hell hole
I agree Yglesias's article focuses to much on HSR, but I think there is still room to criticize Amtrak's corridor vision. A lot of new proposed routes have 1 or 2 round trips a day, which will make it expensive to operate. If they don't focus on greenfield HSR, they at least need to focus on frequency to make the network more usable. Also, "State Supported" routes have their operating expenses mostly paid for by the states, but capital expenses are usually paid for through grants form the federal government, including funds made available from the Bipartisan Infrastructure bill, which is why we are are all talking about this.
Several cities, including Chicago once has fast services via regular passenger trains and interurbans. There were two in the Chicago area that I know well, and those are the CA&E and North Shore Line. The CA&E had cars that could top out around 80 mph, and the North Shore had a set called the electroliner that was built in 1941 and had a top speed of around 100 to 110 mph, but was cut back to 90 because of the grade crossings that the NSL had.
Amtrak trains between Chicago and Detroit currently operate at 110mph, and trains between Chicago and St. Louis currently operate at 90mph and are planned to increase to 110mph sometime this year.
something i see when discussing a lot of issues and potential solutions to problems that exist in America is this idea that ‘Americans don’t do x’. In this case, ‘Americans will just drive or fly’. No, Americans _currently_ drive or fly, because there’s no other choice. Americans aren’t special or unique, solutions that exist and work elsewhere will also work for you. Habits only don’t change if you refuse to change them.
What definitely irks me about the attitude of this article, and these kind of opinions overall, is it presumes that HSR projects only make sense on a seriously massive corridor or established passenger rail line with the biggest of cities. Not only making the assumption that "high speed rail" is only valid when electrified and over 160mph, it also completely overlooks that Amtrak *is* making speed upgrades and new higher-speed rail lines across the country, and that there's potential to induce demand for rail transit where it no longer, or never did exist, wherein we could improve services and speeds even further in the future. It also ignores the fact that the FRA+FTA have notoriously prohibitive standards and outdated regulations in regards to higher track speeds, making """true""" HSR projects in the US notoriously expensive and prohibitive. One of the most obviously overlooked projects on Amtrak's Connect US map, and the silver bullet against these arguments, is the Northern Lights Express HSR route from Minneapolis to Duluth MN. Restoring what was previously a 50mph sleeper train route from Duluth to Chicago, Amtrak's North Star, to a 90-110mph higher-speed passenger line with multiple daily round-trips, making *huge* track upgrades with plenty of room for future service upgrades and track speeds as the service will continue to grow in popularity. For a 152 mile corridor, it will be directly competing with driving on the corridor, which sees roughly *3,600,000,000 annual car trips according to MnDOT*. The Northern Lights Express would meet ridership expectations if only 1 out of 5000 of those trips were replaced by the train. Total project cost is $425,000,000 and the Feds are matching 80% of it, so just a mere $85,000,000 for the state of Minnesota to fund. The lesson here is that slam-dunk corridors exist all over the country in cities that these people don't particularly care enough to learn about, and if they spent just a *little bit* of time researching these state-supported and other regional Amtrak routes, they would see a high speed rail system that has LONG been in the making, and we need to walk before we can run.
I live in a smaller Wisconsin city, and the train line runs freight right through town to the extent that it bisects the factory I work at. If it had any passenger rail at all, I could visit other cities easily and go have fun on my own terms. But as it is, with no car, I'm literally trapped in this place.
There seems to be this weird view that you can only afford one or the other when it comes to trains in the US. And then you look at the US defense budget.....
@Oak Island Pictures I could have sworn someone else once posted something similar elsewhere, and I thought it was a great idea then too. I wonder why I forgot about it.
My go-to argument for rail is that, since electricity can't feasibly be produced in the Middle East or Russia and sent here with huge undersea cables, the idiotic Democrats will be forced to keep the energy supply for the trains domestic and thus much less susceptible to foreign influence.
Great video, thanks! For me as European, the discussions about funding passenger rails (both regular service and high speed lines) is hard to understand. By the way, tomorrow I will visit my parents, living in a town 320 km from the place I live. I can choose out of 3 to 4 trains each hour and It takes me two and a half hours on most trains to go there. It is affordable, clean and trains are usually in time. And of course we are complaining, that the service still could be much better.
One great explanation: Americans are fundamentally conned into ignoring the cost of a vehicle. Taxes, maintenance, parking, cleaning... are all seen as sunk costs. If you add it up, most commuters REALLY spend $100+ per week on their car. If you get someone to consider $100/week for a car versus a rail pass that might be $100/year, then they start to get it. Especially if they aren't terrified of having to sit near poor people. Sitting near lower class people is honestly a HUGE roadblock in America.
@@KevinJDildonik Also, unless you're driving an open top sports car through some breathtaking scenery on a good road with very little traffic, most times I'd rather take the train. You don't have to waste time concentrating on the road and the traffic around you. Instead, you can eat, read, work, whatever. It's also more comfortable than driving.
@@KevinJDildonik Hell, out in California these days it's easy to spend $100+ per week on gas alone, without even driving *that* much (around 30 miles a day, with occasional longer trips). It only takes a few weeks of that to convince a conservative that Joe Biden is a bad President and that America needs to obtain oil domestically to ensure prices are reasonable. It only takes a few weeks of that to convince a responsible progressive that Joe Biden is a bad President and that America needs to obtain oil domestically to ensure prices are reasonable, as well as to highlight the critical importance of affordable transportation networks and the critical role that personal EVs play in dealing with what America has now.
@@PtrkHrnk they still do a lot of that, but they also go in depth into very important infra projects around Europe. They’re a construction channel so not everything they make is geared towards urbanisms, but ime there’s a lot of crossover.
For HSR from Boston to New York, it may be best to simply avoid southwestern Connecticut. The city pair is almost as populous as London, Paris and the Dutch cities, so an approach as expensive as the Channel tunnel should be viable (and then on Long Island follow expressways and the LIRR, say, cut and covering as needed).
I think its important to note that HSR needs to be treated like express lines that go between major hubs. If the trains stop at every station then you defeat the purpose of HSR reaching high speeds. To your point, the "slower" speed rail networks, need to be built out to feed HSR.
Mhm HSR pretty much going from major hub to major hub that idealy should be interchanges. Columbus in ohio do be looking like a good stop for a HSR route between NEC and chicago.
It can do both. There can be different service patterns with the slowest stopping quite frequently and the fastest making no underway stops between major metropolitan areas. That way you can serve large areas with high quality service without slowing down the busiest connection.
This also is something what annoys me about the density counterargument since that implies a high-stopping density of HST even though a distance of 50 km is already on the lower end and no one cares if the trains blast next to some towns or in the middle of nowhere.
@@MarioFanGamer659 Stations on the Tokaido Shinkansen are on average less than 20 km apart. Yet the fastest trains do the over 550 km between Tokyo and Osaka in under 2.5 hours. You don't need to make every train stop at every station. It's that simple.
@@lars7935 I'll say you're just proving my point. Japan is a special case since it is quite densly populated which results in more cities with a notable population (at least by western standards) and as a result has an insanely low stopping distance for HSR (and as you're implying, makes express a necessity), not to mention the Toukaidou Shinkansen is the first of its kind so what were good and bad practices weren't as known back then as they are today.
The other thing I think worth pointing out is that service induces demand and changes behavior; you don't want to build to current demand, you want to build to what demand is potentially there given a certain quality of service. If you have accessible options to reach something other than the biggest of cities, you can induce demand to travel to something other than the biggest of cities. You stop comparing a direct route from hub to hub, but instead the added connecting time to someplace that isn't a central urban area that doesn't require ritual sacrifice to be able to afford to live in. Chicago does pretty well as an Amtrak destination, for example, because there's an entire series of small towns folk can jump on a train to and not want to hate themselves when they arrive in downtown Chicago and don't have to park. Columbus having similar accessibility would be brilliant for the state of Ohio. It would make Columbus the nerve center not only of the state but the entire region. There's relatively little regional travel that happens in the midwest because it's multiple-hour car drives to get anywhere, but pretty much everyone has been to Chicago in no small part because there's a relatively direct rail route to almost every urban center in the region. People will visit Chicago instead of nearer urban areas simply because it's much more accessible. The downtown regions of the so-called "rust belt" cities are all experiencing major revivals but very few experience it, because unless your destination is Chicago, it's a pain in the ass to get between them. The proposed second nerve center in Columbus connects relatively direct routes that make Cinci, Louisville, Pittsburgh, Toledo, Cleveland, Detroit, and Indianapolis far more accessible to routes needing much less covered distance and no more than a single route connection. High speed rail in the Northeast would be a nice convenience; reliable interstate rail in the Pittsburgh/Ohio/Indiana/Michigan/Illinois/Kentucky nexus would be transformative to the region especially as we lean into automobile electrification and an increase in remote work. If you could joint venture to *electrify* some of those lines for both passenger and freight use, you could also completely transform regional freight traffic as well as you'd make mixed freight far more viable.
It frequently does, but not always. We got street cars 15 years ago and even before the pandemic they weren't ever used. I do think that HSR would be different, at least if it's located in sensible locations, but it's not a guarantee, especially if it's not more convenient than flying.
That's true American logic right there. Step 1: Build isolated high-speed route that's incredibly expensive Step 2: Notice that at both ends of the service there's nothing to connect to, so unless you literally want to be at the train station, you need a car to get to your train, and then a car to get to your destination Step 3: Be surprised that's your highspeed trains aren't as popular as elsewhere They are called public transportation NETWORKS for a reason. A slow train is as much part of it as a fast train. As is a bus. Or a tram. You need all of these things - not just shiny prestige projects. They do serve their purpose, but they aren't any more important to the transportation puzzle than any other single thing.
To be fair to the NIMBY's high speed rail is often quite bad for those not given a stop. The whole point of the trains is they are fast, you can't be fast with a lot of stops. Thus most area's get all the negatives of having trains go through their area with little benefit if it doesn't even stop.
exactly!!!! and not to mention, because alot of rail routes have tons of curved tracks, you definitely DO NOT wanna go fast in certain areas, or you'll run the risk of a train derailment
Let me add that there is absolutely NO truly successful high speed rail service in a country that does not have a robust intercity rail network with the exception of China (which has certain incentives and insanely large cities to make up for the lack of options). It just doesn’t exist. Japan’s, Germany’s and France’s HSR networks are highly successful BECAUSE of connecting traffic from local, regional, and intercity services. Many people who cannot be served by a city’s local bus, subway, or tram networks are at the mercy of regional and intercity services to support them. And unfortunately, most cities in the US DO NOT HAVE robust regional rail or intercity rail networks, even on the NEC - none of boston, Baltimore, DC’s regional services are electrified or run particularly frequently, electrified service does not exist to many cities (especially in Virginia, but also in New York, Massachusetts, and half of NJ), and there are a shit ton of cities that are not serviced at all (Scranton, Allentown, Hershey, Reading, etc).
Actually China has 141,000 km of normal rail, loads of intercity options. It's HSR is massive and the biggest/ densest in the world, but 'only' 40,000 km in comparison
@@Token_Nerd The network still works out at about half the density of the UK one in terms of population per route km (higher than smaller neighbours like South Korea or Taiwan), but doubling every decade. The fact a bigger percentage is HSR shouldn't detract from the fact it still has fairly good coverage.
@alanthefisher -- thanks for posting this because I have felt like the only one thinking this way! If we could get trains to go 160kph system-wide on Amtrak would make a world of difference. People pile up on me when I point out that a lot of European intercity rail isn't going that fast either. The train from Berlin to Copenhagen is not a fast train, nor is the train from Florence to Rome. The thing right now is that with present off-the-shelf technology in the US and Canada in terms of track to rolling stock 160kph is doable now. Things like quad-gates with sensors are a thing, New Amtrak rolling stock can safely do 200kph, and welded rail is not a fantasy technology. Overpasses and underpasses for trains would be nice and dedicated passenger rail would be also, however, in the meantime we ought to be able to duplicate what some roads were doing in the 40s with their intercity trains. Thanks for posting. I can link this to other people.
From Roma Tiburtina and using the 250 km/h Direttissima, Trenitalia Frecciarossa high speed trains join Firenze Campo di Marte in 1h19 at 192 km/h average speed or F. Santa Maria Novella in 1h23 at an average speed of 185 km/h. These are fast trains by any standards.
Longer distance trains in Europe aren't typically running on tracks designed for slow freight trains and operated primarily for their benefit. Most of Amtrak does... To improve frequencies, and also get that higher speed (but not high speed) railway outside of a few routes where it already exists, Amtrak will need to spend a lot of money on significant upgrades and a new build line wouldn't be out of the question: at worst not much more expensive, but more benefits too. And if you are building new tracks for fast and frequent intercity trains, then the extra level up to HSR makes a lot of sense - an extra 10% costs, but more than 10% more benefits than building a decent speed railway.
I'm fine with the new routes. Being from Ohio that have been talking about connecting the 3C's for a long time. I think it would be beneficial for some. With living almost equal distance between Cleveland and Columbus I'd take it occasionally.
If you look at a map of the rail network in the USA it is extremely well-connected. Just not passenger rail. Freight covers most of the country and goes through numerous small towns and cities and quite a few of them still and the old train depot for passenger rail services which were suspended years ago.
As a side note, what do u think of the plans through high speed rail in Connecticut? I am from CT and I think that prioritizing going to CT's 4th, 5th and 6th (Danbury, Waterbury and Hartford) largest cities instead of it's 1st, 2nd and 3rd (Bridgeport, Stamford and New Haven) feels really misguided. I also think going through Bridgeport could revitalize that area. Stamford is also one of the fastest growing cities in the state rn. Bridgeport and New Haven are the two most densely populated areas in the state and also have the highest population who doesn't have a car. I do think a train from new york to boston that goes that route would b beneficial but I don't think this is the best HSR route
Which plans are you taking about? New Haven and Stamford already are on Acela. Bridgeport and Hartford are on the NEC so they get other Amtrak service still, and Acela isn't much faster than Northeast Regional for CT. Danbury and Waterbury are only serviced by Metro North. You're right, we should def put out the best trains we can, but maybe the ROI for improvements is best put into those spots now. Idk, they're the only non-electric passenger lines in the state left, maybe that's it?
Building a HSR line through Danbury, Waterbury and Hartford will be difficult. HSR along the coast via Stamford, Bridgeport and New Haven would be impossible because there is no open land.
@@linker12795 Sorry I don't I said this clearly. Amtrak's plans for the northeast corridor hsr are to put a different route in connecticut and keep the route otherwise mostly the same. If you look at page 26 you can see the preposed route. I would rather my state get hsr than not but population wise it seems wrong
@@mayam9575 Thanks! I found a 2012 amtrak report and a NH Indy article on it. I don't want to push back against it just cuz it's different, or just write it off because it's such a weird way to spend a lot of money that's planned so far out, but every FRA or Amtrak report I've seen since then hasn't brought it up. Super long term, that path probably faces a lot fewer maintenance problems than our shoreline, and they skip CT entirely (the super express only hits 4 cities). I don't think it's a big threat to NHV, BRP, or STM with how much investment is going to the metro north corridor today.
Too many people fail to see that an effective public transportation system is like a tree: it needs strong roots to survive and thrive. The feeder roots of transportation are the small lines which go to the outlying communities. Without them, the system dies. Unless, of course, you feed it with massive infusions of tax money.
Hi Alan I will be writting a letter to the editor of the Salem news, Salem Mass. I will propose the title "The consequences of the lack of high speed rail with connecting slower speed trains " .Re the holiday travel nightmare with southwest airlines. I,ve read the book " Supertrains" by Joeseph Vranich circa 1991. There are chapters that' depict Herb Kelliher of southwest airlines back in the late 1980s early 1990s lobbying viciously against any such projects. Hence, they did a good job in keeping the Texas triangle high-speed rail off it's tracks. Now look at what happened over the Xmas holidays. Not in the least to say that weather does effect all kinds of rail systems but not as bad as it effects air travel. The main stream media does not understand that.. I loved that video about it's OK not to build hsr but we need to upgrade the existing connecting lines to semi high-speed rail as Alan Drake would call it Paula Walach. -- B & B ELECTRICIAN for MBTA/KEOLIS commuter services
I don't know how the Brightline Surpassed Amtrak as being the first hispeed rail in the us, Amtrak northeast corridor, Acela is the first in the nation hi speed rail.
People are really insistent on pretending Europe and the US are incomparable, even though Europe and the Lower 48 are roughly the same size, and China is so close in size to the states that there difference comes down to how you count coastal waters
Actually Texas is 25% larger than France. France only counts larger if you take its overseas territories into account (former colonies), notably the state of French Guiana in South America.
I'm from a small town on the Illinois Central Railway. The Chicago Central line was acquired in 1998 by Canadian National and you know what they did with it? ABSOLUTELY NOTHING. It's sitting there completely unused and unserviced. 100 years ago, I could've taken a train to Chicago, Omaha, St. Louis or New Orleans from my tiny little town of 5000 people. The destruction of rail was the start of the blight we see across America in small towns.
You've hit the nail on the head. Having a train that goes 200mph is great, but it's not a huge improveent to quality of service vs a 150mph train, or even a 100mph train. There's been lots of pushback against HS2 in the UK, with opponents saying that "why do we need a train that can go from London to Birmingham in 50 mins rather than the current 1h20", but they're missing that the real benefit of HS2 is the huge increase in capacity. Taking the fast trains off the existing lines and onto HS2 frees up space on the existing line for more local and freight trains, ultimately providing better service overall. The US is slightly different because it lacks any passenger rail in most of the country, but as with HS2, the "high speed" gets the attention of the media and public, but capacity and connections are what really makes a difference. It may not be sexy for Amtrak to focus on connecting up the country with lower speed lines, but that will make far more of a difference than an upgraded NE corridor. This is why what Brightline are doing is so good in Florida. Their trains aren't anything special, with a current maximum speed of 80mph, and when they extend to Orlando the top speed will be 125mph, but just providing that connection is the key, the same is true in the rest of the US. Plus another thing is that there's no point having HSR going to cities if those cities don't have any public transit of their own. A high speed line from Dallas to Houston would be useless unless both cities connected their new stations to the rest of the city with good transit. If the HSR is 90 mins faster than driving, but it takes me an hour at each end to get to and from the HSR stations to where I'm going, then it's pointless and easier to just drive. Same logic applies to connecting the HSR lines to slower local lines, to allow for people to actually get where they want to go.
Having a train that goes 200mph is a massive, massive improvement of service over one that goes 150mph or god forbid 100mph (also, Amtrak goes an average of 80 mph at best on the NEC). Right now there are dozens of daily flights between New York and Boston/DC, because they make more time sense. People drive from Philly to NYC (or take chinatown esque buses) because Amtrak's pricing model is so insane that it can cost $200 for a 90 minute train ride
not to mention: high speed rail is expensive. In Europe there are few countries that offer actual high speed rail on a budget but only because someone before them built the infrastructure, maintains it and has earned money with it already, pretty much paying off the construction costs and now only needing to support maintenance. In Germany, while we do have a good high speed rail network this is predominantly used by business people either commuting to and from work or going on business trips and sometimes by families who just don't wanna go through the hassle of sitting on a train 6+hours with their kids. Most trips over here are done on regional express trains (Regional Express), regional trains (Regionalbahn) and commuter trains (S-Bahn) in cities and their immediate surroundings. Those trains travel at up to 140kph. And if you want to cut the travel time a little connecting major cities but don't want to pay for the high speed train, there's still the Inter City trains, that run slower than the Inter City Express trains, but only stop in major cities. All of these option can get you pretty much anywhere in Germany within 6-8 hours. Yes, it's a huge chunk of time, but it is fine as those are the extremes. I'd say in 75% of the cases you won't be longer than 3 hours on a train, needing only to change trains twice on average. Comparing the costs of taking those connections to taking a high speed train connection in most cases high speed trains don't make sense. Yes, we need high speed rail, but high speed rail is not the solution to everything. You need a proper regular / regional train network to allow for affordability. Only then you can think about getting the added comfort for a higher price for high speed rail. And don't be mistaken: High speed rail tickets will be (much) more expensive. That being said: Italy has a fantastic concept for its high speed rail network and operation, effectively leading to the bankruptcy of Air Italia, as they were focussed on national regional flights which the new(ish) high speed rail concept managed to completely obliterate.
If we can achieve HIGHER speed rail (80 - 110 mph) that'd be amazing. It is much more affordable than HIGH speed rail (120 - 150 mph). With the current situation that Amtrak is in, it would be highly beneficial to improve present routes and add new routes of higher quality, speed, and frequency. We should be adding more trains to a service, adding new service, and increasing speeds on present routes wherever possible. It will greatly improve the ability to match with driving and flying.
120-140mph isn't full on HSR. Pretty much just conventional rail pushed to the upper limits with better trains and signalling. Full on HSR is normally around 320km/h (200mph).
What you call "HIGHER speed" is really just conventional speed here in Europe while what you call "HIGH speed"... okay, that depends on whether the route is upgraded or not since for upgraded tracks, it's 125+ mph to be considered high-speed) while for new tracks, they're only high speed when they're rated for at least 155 mph.
The lack of a route for Omaha-Des Moines-Chicago is kinda frustrating. I don't live in Des Moines anymore but it would have been nice, and I would hope IAIS would...just enable it, the owner seems keen on adding new services. But still nothing on that route... Oh well... And yeah, for all my US High Speed advocacy, I'm still huge on good regional spokes coming off that. It's so important everyone has access to the system they need.
@OakIslandPictures Osceola is honestly a bit far off to be useful to Des Moines, especially with the infrequency of said route. Plus the fact there is absolutely not regional transport down there currently. The Amtrak may end up hitting Osceola on the north/south but as said, the usefulness will be very limited unless regional connections along the CZ route get better. If the CZ runs even 3 times through per day each way you may have something, but in the end just having the Omaha-Des Moines-Chicago connector would be tremendous. Maybe some day, IAIS railway is aiming to help make Des Moines a significant intermodal hub with the amount of train/truck freight terminals having been added in the past 5 years even. Union Pacific, I think, has been able to benefit from this (ironic since UP wanted that railways route when Rock Island went under, lol).
You mention multiple times in this video that matt is a "transportation journalist", when in reality he really isn't. He is mostly an Economics journalist/thinker, which might explain why his train takes aren't always 100% the best
He is more accurately a pundit, and has takes, good and bad, on many subjects. He did not study journalism AFAIK, but majored in philosophy. He has written for a number of publications and co-founded Vox, so it is reasonable that he is Twitter-verified.
It’s a legit point that, historically, the way freight rails are operated in the US makes for horrific capacity issues that eventually cause the service to get cancelled when nobody uses it
I should have mentioned clearer in the video that the connectsUS map used (in the video and by Matt) is the modified one with Amtrak's/the FRA's other corridors of interest added too.
Other lines are deleted from it too. Does this mean that the Atlanta-Chattanooga-Nashville line is no longer in the cards? That's the one I was looking most forward to. :(
@@JAXONcreed I found out it’s complicated… the newer map is representative of routes that still require funding and need to be initialized, so if a route is removed it means it’s funded. The only route I think was actually removed was the Boston-New Hampshire route because NH is the most NIMBY/anti-transit state in the US.
@@toadscoper4575 Well that's great news, then! Thanks
The ConnectsUs map used doesn’t reflect the FRA’s corridors of interest. It reflects municipalities that have submitted interest to the FRA for routes
It’s Euclidean zoning
Great point about France. I live in Grenoble, and while we do not have a direct HS rail line until you reach Lyon, we have a robust rail network with over a hundred trains a day including more than 8 TGV's that depart to Lyon and Paris daily. They are lovely, but I am very grateful for the regional lines and branch lines that allow me to explore France without a car. Building a regional network is much more important, especially in the United States.
Side note, railway drivers here are surprisingly low paid and I support them striking whenever they want!
no dude our regional network is terrrrible what are you talking about
our HSR is also just annoying and unaffordable
please just please never look at SNCF in a positive light there is strictly nothing good that they've done in the last 10 years
Classic French comment, I love it
@@ronylouis0 @ronylouis1817 I am originally from the Northeast of the US, and so the Regional network of where I am now is much better than anything I grew up with. . That being said, I definitely think the decision to make Oui Go a thing was and is terrible. They gotta subsidize ticket sales and avoid neolibralising the SNCF.
SNCF is managed terribly but there's no denying their rail network and service is world class. The only issue seems to be that they're French and hate having to go out of their way to do things (cough cough OuiGo) and God forbid you take an international trip that isn't the Eurostar. The horror stories of people just trying to run on lines between Spain and France with the Spy vs Spy esque feud between SNCF and AVE is honestly pathetic.
@@trashrabbit69 I am planning to take one of those trains from France to Spain in the near future, so I look forward to reporting back war stories and or nightmare fuel!
The fact that an average small village in the UK, France or Germany, has the same size train station as Houston, a city with millions of people, tells me all I need to know about how much you guys need trains lol
The average village in the UK USED to have a train station…until the mid 60s. Now while there is an OK train network it’s being ran into the ground by a government that doesn’t give a shit about public anything and will let the private sector milk it for all its worth (but hey, at least Birmingham will be getting a high speed connection to London, so that’s cool I guess)!
it get even more ridiculous if you look at some Swiss villages with not even a thousand residents but still better rail service than US cities with literally a housand times the residents
I took amtrak from Chicago to San Antonio Texas. San Antonio has millions of people and all it had was a couple platforms and a tiny station building the size of a house. Its pretty sad
I love cars they're fkn cool but I don't want to have to own some econo box car and stay stuck in traffic for an hour because cities are too damn car centric
@@adamknott7830 that’s pretty pathetic not gonna lie, especially for such a wealthy nation
How to get people to use a train
1) it has to be quicker than driving
2)it has to be cheaper than flying.
3)provide ways to connect at the end to where people want to get to/from
Also it has to be more comfortable.
But for what i seen about american train seats it doesn't seem like a big issue.
High speed rail is faster than flying in certain circumstances, so it wouldn't have to be cheaper.
cheaper than flying is easy: currently, the US government subsidises airlines to fly a lot of otherwise unprofitable domestic routes. To the point where some smaller airlines run basically exclusively those routes because that's how they make a profit. European governments (mostly) don't do that. They run (or subsidise businesses that run) train lines on their equivalents of such routes. You make it cheaper than flying by subsidising the rail lines rather than the air lines. (note that the vast majority of subsidised flights are very short, relatively speaking, and most of the longer ones are profitable without, or there's no real need for them.)
You could sell regular trains on dedicated corridors (no sharing with freight) pretty easily to a business class based on *productivity*. Even if a trip takes longer (not counting mandatory time for security theatre before a flight), the ability to work thanks to built-in tables, device charging/USB ports and wi-fi could get you a long way. All of which are much easier to provide on a train than an aircraft. Even overnight trips could be sold on being fresh for meetings when you arrive at your destination.
For regular passengers, a lot of the same things would be good selling points, but I think comfort and reliability would be more important, plus again getting rid of the security theatre.
@@laurencefraser This! All of these righties and right-leaning people constantly forget how much we subsidize flying and driving. Then the same people simultaneously block the same level of subsidies for rail _and_ complain that rail is more expensive.
Well, yes, it will be if you're not subsidizing it to the same extent as flying and driving! Ugh! It's so frustrating to argue with these selectively "subsidy-blind" people!
One of the interesting points about this is that both China and Japan continue to run slower train Services even along the high-speed rail corridors. It's much cheaper to take a slower train and they stop more often and cover more cities. This is also the true to a degree in france, which has a Hub and spoke system, which is what California High-Speed Rail is designing its system based off of.
@Zaydan Alfariz they should keep it.
I think Jakarta Bandung route is kinda a mistake
since it is better to make route from Jakarta Cirebon Semarang and you can further expand it until Surabaya.
Also Jakarta bandung has already a nice highway
and behind Bandung is just mountaineous region of Garut so it is hard to expand beyond bandung.... it is just there...
Just like most rail lines have both a regional and an express service.
Hell, that's done on the Northeast Corridor, which has several tiers of passenger service. It's not perfect, but there's a _very_ good reason why it's so well-used in spite of being in a car-centric country.
Japan runs multiple levels of service on HSR and they have smaller stations too, but they don't run any express services on lines that are duplicated by HSR. It's very hard to go long distance on local trains because you have to switch many times (in particular, any time you get to a different JR) and they stop a lot. On top of that, the express surcharge for the Shinkansen isn't actually a lot over the normal fee, so you're talking about maybe $80 for an 11 hour journey vs $110 for 3 hours.
This is something what annoys me about the German HSR network. There are cases where a new line was build next to existing ones (e.g. Stuttgart and Ulm already have a direct route and the planned Frankfurt-Mannheim line is the third direct line between both cities) but overall, my government is mostly made out of cheapskates and want to build as few new lines as possible. :D
I live in one of the very small towns you talked about being built for railways. I would almost never drive if I had the ability to use a train for public transportation
I grew up in a small town that was built around a railroad about an hour away from a big city. A railroad that Amtrak even uses. But in order to take a train to the city, you have to drive halfway there to get to the nearest station. To make things worse, in the last 25 years, the number of daily trains has continually dropped to where there are now only two, and they both overnight trains that go through in the middle of the night, making them completely pointless for anyone that isn't the far ends of the routes.
If Amtrak (or if a local service were created) would have put a station there (and in other towns along that railroad), and had trains that went to the city in the morning and out from the city in the evening, those trains would be full of people that currently drive to the city for work every single day. IMO, the thing stopping it is the freight companies that own the railroad infrastructure, which means the solution is to nationalize the infrastructure.
@@axmajpayne my entire district here in southeast Colorado was laid out along the Oregon trail and later the railway replacing it. I am an hour from a large city, and we have freight trains still running this line. The towns this side of that large city are all extremely small, with limited employment opportunities. A train running reliably enough for us to get to the large city for work would literally be full four times a day, if not more depending on if they had a second run going a little bit later in the morning for people who don't have to be there at 7:00. But nobody's even talking about it, let alone anywhere near getting the permission from the state and federal rail. Plus of course convincing Union Pacific to let anyone else use their lines.
It would be nice to only have to drive 10 or so minutes to a train station instead of 30+
I required all my employees to walk so I could pay them less. It worked.
surprise, small towns would cease to exist if the feds got their hands on rail system planning.
Amtrak’s doing more routes, AND Alan Fisher’s releasing an Acela body pillow? What a time to be alive! :)
Yes!
Oversimplified Reference.
*Acela Body pillow*
Man I can't believe people are gonna sleep with a train at night now and name them Acela-chan or kun 💀
@@oofyalDAMMIT Yes! Acela-kun go faster!!!
As someone who was born in Ohio, thank you for the brief spotlight on the map there. I can only hope Ohio and Amtrak have the balls to go through with that plan, especially because I think the Columbus-Chicago line would have a stop in my hometown of Lima. I demand a revival of Lima train glory
Coming here to second this! As someone who'd most likely be served by a revived Lima stop, I'm hoping they seriously consider that plan, even though I'm not getting my hopes up
The columbus to pittsburgh line might support my home town. c'mon amtrak! do it! I would take the train to pittsburgh or columbus a lot
@@minnalunar that would be great. I'll ride from lima to wherever the heck your town is just as a victory lap over cars
@@Endless_May if they did, then all that would be left is for lima to improve its bus system so I could hop of a train and take the bus to visit my parents
@@adamknott7830 zanesville
Thank you thank you thank you for bringing up people who are unable to drive. I am one of those people, and so whenever someone says "people will just drive or fly places" i want to scream. What that looks like for me is either an expensive ride share, a very long bus ride, or an extremely expensive and inconvenient airport visit... that someone will have to drive me to!! And I live in the midwest where everything is extremely spread out, so I can only walk so many places. Having even just one train station in my town would absolutely be life-changing, and I know I am far from the only one in that boat.
I am not unable to drive, but I live in a dense urban neighborhood in a major midwestern city (Minneapolis). After 2 years of never needing to drive I got rid of my car. I maintain my driver's license but don't trust my driving skills any more. I do lots of walking, take public transit, and the occasional ride hail.
My city is on an Amtrak route ... we get one eastbound and one westbound train per day, at inconvenient times. I would love to be able to take day or weekend trips to explore some of the interesting towns nearby ... but there's no way to get to them without driving. Local service trains would fill this need perfectly. A HSR line to Chicago, through Madison and Milwaukee would be awesome!
It would make a huge difference in the midwest.Cause I live in a mid size city in the midwest and though it has a train station,it looked like it hadn't been visited in years and it takes 6 hours and back to get from where I live to Chicago on a train meanwhile I can get there by car within 2 hours and I hate driving.So to have high speed rail the midwest sounds like a dream.
Fine, I'll do it myself
California be like:
Wdym you'll do it yourself build a high speed rail line?
Mate you'll need lots of money for that, talks with the government the fra and public support
@@tristanexists1806 oh my god no way you saw that comment and took it seriously (🤓-this is you)
@@bababababababa6124 oh my god no way you liked your own comment 🤓
@@editoronAnd Texas Central
(How’s that doing anyway?)
Today I have witnessed a miracle. Someone called Ohio a chad (which might be more a testament to the sad state of rail in the US but I digress).
Also to your point about the empire route between NYC and Albany, yes it is a great train. I grew up near Albany and have made the drive to NYC many times. When I moved out I moved far away and so the best option for me to get back to visit family is to fly into NYC and then take the train to Albany. It is so much cheaper and less stressful than flying to Albany and I get such a nice view on the train while I get time to stretch my legs out after a long plane ride. Few things make me want better trains in this country quite like riding that one does. (insert "We were on the verge of greatness" meme)
as an ohioan i have dreams about the big 3 being connected by train
I want the MBTA to extend the Worcester line to Albany.
I love the Empire service route as well, though the Albany to NYC section is definitely the best running part. If you board earlier, there's often significant delay waiting around in Albany. But it should be a relatively easy fix if we start actually prioritizing passenger rail.
I rode that train several years ago. I was booked on the Amtrak to Chicago, #49 I believe. I was making a connection at Penn Station. There are better places to be. The Chicago train was delayed. First 10, the 20, then 40 minutes late. It was later in the day, and I wanted to do the ride in daylight. I noticed a local was due to depart in 10 or so, so a went down to the platform, showed my Amtrak ticket to the conductor. He said "You want to go to Albany and wait there, fine. So I rode to Albany in the fading light along the Hudson on a coach that was mostly empty. I realized fully then why New York is such a great city.
As it turned out 49 was about an hour late, and full. Rode along the Mohawk in the dark.
As an Ohioan I hope that map comes true. Knowing our state government it won’t unless Amtrak and trains uses the great method of corruption.
seems like all of ohio's lines are feeding into it's capital making it quite a big hub.
Quite a classic model when it comes to railways.
I'll believe the rest once they get the main line (3C line) actually in service first. This is a state that loves to do a lot of talking and not that much doing.
Yeah that's sadly true. Ohio does have the means to build good railroads, however they pump money into Oil and Gas instead.
I desperately want to be a chad hsr ohioan not a virgin highway ohioan
@@ajmentel2453 you could def have an HSR corridor through ohio connecting ith with other midwest cities, and low speed rail feeding into it from all over
there is always this one thing this guy and so many other of your fellow americans don't understand about highspeed rail in japan or europe: it did not come out of nowhere. it's always either a replacemant or an upgrade of an existing connection or line. they all had very robust regional and intercity rail networks before.
Love the video. I'm from PHL, and I think we need way more trains to small towns again. We need the people who never see trains outside their regional locomotive museum to start using trains. They will also greatly appreciate not having to drive on the chaotic city roads, if they want to visit. I lived in Philadelphia, and worked in rural PA for a while, and driving is a major reason people avoid visiting the city. Besides, of course, that some news has them convinced our cities are only filled with flying bullets and feces.
I like Amtrak's new plan. It is a plan for progress. I feel like we have not been making progress for some time, and now everyone wants giant leaps. We have to build up incrementally like everyone else. We just haven't been doing it for decades while many other wealthy countries have been. We are behind, and there are no shortcuts.
@Zaydan Alfariz It might be that too. I just grew up in and around Philadelphia. PHL is our US airport code and an abbreviation of Philadelphia. I'm sure there are other groups that use PHL as well.
@@taiidaniblues7792 Ever seen CGP Grey's video on airline codes? th-cam.com/video/jfOUVYQnuhw/w-d-xo.html His frustration with them alone is entertaining :)
That part about news convincing people that cities are dangerous is also an impediment to rail deployment. Note that the 1950s-onward suburbs and exurbs were built to turn the cities into ghettos with a paywall (of car ownership) to get out. We already see, within metropolitan areas (I can't really call the suburbs and exurbs "cities"), mass transit expansion being opposed on the basis of racism and classism...
I'm from Philadelphia and we have trains that go to rural pa ..the harrisburg line is about to have a major upgrade to high speed
extending the lines past norristown to reading would be amazing lol if it didnt suck i would literally always rather ride the train to Philly
Never taken an Amtrak train on the Empire Corridor, but I used to live by Tarrytown station on the Metro North and would take the Hudson Line into the city. My parents are from NJ though I was born in Westchester, and they specifically chose Westchester because of the convenience of the Metro-North express. I agree that the line is absolutely gorgeous. Now living on Long Island and having to transfer to switch from diesel to electric trains as part of my commute, I can't help but miss the views of the Hudson Line.
I also can't help but laugh at the thought that Matt doesn't realize certain towns have popped up because of trains. Just look at Long Island and how much it developed because of the LIRR. Hicksville was named after Valentine Hicks, the son-in-law of abolitionist preacher and LIRR president Elias Hicks. Valentine bought land in 1834 so he could put a LIRR station/depot there in 1837. It would eventually grow into a bustling suburb thanks to a building boom following WWII, with the LIRR contributing to this rise.
you would see the train as a thing in lots of NYC suburbs in housing listings even up in CT "easy access to NYC commuter rail". if the town had a Metro North station.
I admit I would drive from Danbury to Southeast though, Because the Harlem Line did not require a train change in New Haven where as the Danbury Branch had no direct trains.
Something even more insane, The Danbury branch was once electric and is all diesels now. Sometime in the far past they pulled the wires down but you can still see the rusting support structures that once held the overhead lines.
Metro-North is great, but it's a commuter line, not a long distance line.
Very true what you said about towns and railroads. Particularly in the Northeast. Also, LIRR is 24x7, though limited of course.
The line between college station and Dallas/Houston/Austin is going to be huge for college students, maybe it will get houston to have a station that isn't just a single wide in the middle of nowhere
Wait there's actually students that go to College Station?
@@garcar2814 It's where Texas A&M is, just over 70,000 students
@@garcar2814 Yeah College Station actually has colleges there. /gen
Watch SouthWest step in and absolutely lobby the heck out of the project to promote flying, its a battle of corporate greed vs the rail transit for the greater good
I live in College Station. That line would be amazing!
Investing in HST but very less in normal trains, is what's happening here in italy, and it sucks!
I mean HST is good, but most of the time you need to connect to your destination by normal trains, and that sucks, especially if the country ignores them
I’m inclined to agree that simply getting trains to transit deserts should be the top priority. We can focus on making the trains faster afterwards
Re: they can just fly, I know a few people who live in the south who have to drive 2+ hours to their nearest airport hub so they can fly to their intended destination. Having local state rail services can capture many of these first/last mile trips.
First/last mile is the absolute worst scenario for rail/public transportation. They're much better suited for the highest density routes that are currently suffering from overcrowding.
I took Amtrak to Boston from Philly because I didnt want to drive and honestly the Acela is probably not much slower than flying when you tack on all the bullshit that comes with flying. Travel time from where I am to 30th street station is roughly equal and there is no TSA theater and all that for boarding an Acela.
@@filanfyretracker Boston to Philly is a very high density route which makes it ideal for high speed rail
I really hope that the map gets built and expanded upon, because the map is definitely missing some connections that should exist like Pueblo to La Junta, there's probably no rails there but it should be built.
The lines are there. I live in Rocky Ford, literally right on that line, and up until the 80s there was a train running from Lamar all the way to Pueblo and then up to Colorado Springs. They fazed it out, converting it to a bus route. That bus runs once a day each direction, and you could not work in Pueblo on the schedule it offers. Passing La Junta at 8:30 and getting to Pueblo at 10:00, then picking up from Pueblo at 3:30 and returning to La Junta at 5: 30 makes it completely impossible to use as a daily Transit
It's funny how obvious that connection is. I've never been anywhere near that far out in this country, yet the lack of a proposal to properly connect those two points sticks out like a sore thumb.
@@tfhorsch4527 it would not be a federal project, so not even a main interest for Amtrak. It would be a state funded from here in CO, and as a person actually interested in the idea and watching it, there has been nobody pushing on the Front Range Rail (which would require only a very small addition to close the loop down to the Amtrak station at La Junta).
@@leechowning2712 Sorry, I never said it was official, I have been also following this closely and early ideas were thrown around for a connection there when the commission to get the line built at all was originally created. I understand it’s a state project, the video literally highlighted that, but Amtrak would be assisting it and that is why it is even displayed on the map used in the video, which Amtrak created.
Connect Pueblo to La Junta, connect Phoenix to Vegas thru Flagstaff, and then connect El Paso and Albuquerque and this map would be perfect for me. Maybe also throw in a connection between the California Zephyr and that new north line, but I'm not sure where.
5:18 Yes, Columbus needs more trains (seriously, I hated Columbus because of how car dependent it was and building Amtrak routes can help)
seems like a good spot for a quite big station.
and potential to be a stop on a through line from NEC to chicago.
Couldn't agree more. As a urban planning student it's one of the biggest obstacles is everything or nothing mentally. High speed rail or nothing. France did not start with tgv. It got there. Keep it up.
Exactly, everybody goes for the newest, shiniest, fastest, fanciest trains when it's the small things that have laid the tracks for it (literally). Conventional rail is the one that brings me home, to work, to school, to an airport, not HS railway. It's not HS trains that yank communities out of isolation, it's faster and better services on conventional rail. It's freight that generates lots of revenues for railway companies, not HS, and it operates on slow tracks. I love HS trains, but it's infuriating to look at the public opinion wanting HS rail but refusing commuter. That's simply idiotic to me
@@Hastdupech8509 Precisely, suspect it's this instant gratification society we now have.
I live in medford OR, a town of nearly 100,000 people, and there are NO passneger trains in this entire county. There are freight rail lines that run through downtown of basically every city along the I5 corridor that used to have passenger trains but those were shut down a long time ago. I would love to have a train I could take to connect with the main Amtrak line further north to go see my family in the portland area without driving but I doubt that's going to happen in my life
"weirdos and hobbyists who want to ride a train from Birmingham to Shreveport or from Athens to Fort Wayne via Columbus but serves no particular transportation purpose." he unironically says it serves no transportation purpose, but he just explained the purpose, to take anyone on those routes and serve those cities. People in those cities aren't weirdos for wanting to take an alternate form of transportation that isn't a car or plane, there are people who are afraid of flying or can't handle being in a car for a long time and would rather stretch/walk like you can on a train. And Amtrak wouldn't be so infrequent if it didn't face challenges from freight, but of course this hasn't clicked yet in Matthew's mind.
That's my thought exactly as well. Whether there are towns and villages next to the tracks (dense population) or just miles of nowhere (sparse population), HSR just don't care what's in-between the stops. This is my counterargument against the density counterargument (to the point where HSR actually benefits from sparsity rather than get hurt by it) but it also means that when there is a somewhere (especially when there is a lot of somewhere), the residents want some form of compensation which tends to translate to also a stop or at least a conventional rail line for slower trains.
In fact, I say that CAHSR and the current route shows this point very well: There were multiple reasons why CAHSR follows Route 99 instead of the coast or I-5 (geography, allowing for allowing easy and direct access to Sacramento from the Bay Area and LA, having enough justification for intermediate stops without diverting too much, etc.) but another one is that the San Joaquins route already exists and is in fact one of the more popular lines within the US so the San Joaquin residents are already familiar with (passenger) trains (the coast also has trains but also a more difficult terrain while the I-5 has no passenger trains at all). Granted, the service could be improved with better connected towns but still, there is service and CAHSR supplements it thanks to dedicated passenger tracks.
Hm... your comment looks familiar...
One incentive that Amtrak uses to persuade passengers to ride their trains is the beautiful scenery that they can enjoy along the journey, as well as the succulent cuisine served in the dining/food service car.
My Dad always reminded me that "conventional rail" - even in the days of steam - could hit 100 mph. The upper bound speed isn't really the problem. It's all the frigging stops. And, the real economic killer in the US, is the imbalance of our freight infrastructure in favor of roads over rail.
conventional rail pushed to it's limits can go up to 125mph technically 140mph with Incab signalling.
UK has constantly had diesel and electric trains running at 125mph for years with the potential to go faster just lacking infrastructure upgrades to do so.
They also didn't really care as much about the trains crashing due to poor maintenance. If you've ever seen one of the bridges that they still run trains over, those are absolutely terrifying. Many of them were made out of cast iron and not even steel.
This is like if every time a new town wanted a fish and chip shop there was somebody saying they shouldn't be allowed to have that until the town already had a 5 star restaurant. Or even more insultingly it wasn't allowed until the slightly bigger next town over had a 5 star restaurant!
We don’t need highspeed national rail, what we need is frequent, electrified commuter lines with more stops. I cannot express the frustration of waiting for a train after work to go home for OVER AN HOUR, ride it for 45 minutes, only to have to walk a few miles after I get off. If I can get on a train that comes every half hour, and is a bit faster than the ones we have now, I will be happy.
When talking Amtrack, even this non-HSR stuff (actually HSR would mean higher frequencies as there's dedicated tracks and a need to justify the expense of construction) is looking at longer-distance, trains-per-day rather than trains-per-hour sort of service rather than the more useful frequent lines serving the hinterland of cities.
You should do a video on the long debate about installing a commuter rail system along 422 in Chester County, Pa. the road is so congested on workdays and loads of people go through KOP via car so if it hey could connect to the Main Line regional rail, so many people would use it. 422 also has a massively huge median, more than wide enough for rail and stations with pedestrian overpasses.
As an Ohioan I would love Amtrak service connecting the 3 Cs but our state government sucks so much I'm still super skeptic it'll happen
we need better service than what was proposed though. No one is going to ride a train that runs three times a day and takes longer than what it does to drive.
@@tonywalters7298 Only the most outdated 3C plans had the trains going slower than driving. 80-110-125 MPH lines along the 3C-D corridor would be equal to/faster than driving.
@@tonywalters7298 Not that I want to be complacent but I would always choose a train that takes 20% longer over a car drive because at least on the train I can relax/sleep, or do something productive instead of staring at miles of pavement and fast-moving metal for hours.
@@Ven100 If there is some documentation more recent than the 2010 proposal which involved a 39mph average speed, I would be interested in it.
@@Drkbowers1 Personally, i would'nt mind either, but i think 110/125 top with an average of around 80 would be a better service
What we need now is any trains at all. We shouldn't be getting all elitist about the trains not being good enough. Any train is better than no train and if building less HSR means we get lines that support smaller centres then that's a good thing.
I live in central PA and that rail line is phenomenal. Getting to NYC with Amtrak is literally the best way to travel and incredibly cheap. I know people who rely on that line to colleges in NYC and come home for holidays, it makes visiting home a lot easier for those people. Also, your point is totally right about the train stations being the center of the town. I live in a small city with a lot of trainyards but the fact is that most are abandoned and the Amtrak station is really left as the center for the town. For the longest time it was the only large thing downtown 😂. The idea that these routes to smaller cities and even towns aren't necessary and should be destroyed to fund high speed rail elsewhere is crazy. The transportation system in the US already sucks, and this journalist doesn't realize that their ideas are literally making it worse. Okay, done with my rant :)
Scranton. Lackawanna Cut-Off. Stupid to have ever ripped it up.
@RussellNelson they're supposedly rebuilding it.
I lived in Albany for a couple years and used to love taking the train into NYC. It takes the same amount of time as driving, but without worrying about traffic or parking. I also recently visited China and their high speed rail network was great. We took the Fuxing train which goes 350kmh from Beijing to Nanchang, then took a smaller 180mkh train to get to our final destination in a more remote part of China. I hope that some day the US will wake up to the comfort and convenience of a good high speed rail network.
Yeah, I fully agree with you! High speed rail without regional rail and good bus connections is pretty useless in a nation that has lots of cars... If you're going to need to drive to the station in your region and from your target location to the place you really need to go to, there is absolutely no point in taking the train at all, just drive the entire route! Build decent public transport and then you can focus on making it an alternative to planes or long distance car travel.
I live near Scranton and am excited and hopeful for them to begin service to NYC. There are many places I want to see in NYC, but I refuse to drive into the city. This will be a great economic opportunity for both cities as I know there are many commuters that live in my area. Also, you could ride a train to visit the Steamtown National Historic Site and enjoy Railroad history at its best!
There is already a Scranton to New York train. Feel free to use it
@@SPQRTejano I think you are mistaken. You can take a 3hr bus ride from Scranton, Pa to Philadelphia and get on a train to New York from there, but there isn't a direct route from Scranton to NYC.
You can drive into Jersey and take NJT into the city for now.
I agree with everything you said in this video. It's so important to focus on smaller branch line connections in addition to main lines, so this way every town has some sort of access to rail transport and doesn't have to rely on cars as much. (A step further would be giving these smaller services a lot of luxury, such as the Pennsylvania Railroad's streamlined doodlebug [#4663], and more recently with Ontario Northland's Siemens Charger sets.)
I see why so many [non-railfan] people are obsessed over high speed rail since it sounds fancy, but few people realize the various challenges associated with building HSR routes from scratch ranging from NIMBYs to land use. With that said, we should be encouraging the development of any rail related project, since it's still a great form of rail transport when compared to the alternatives, and any articles going against this sentiment should be discouraged as they're only giving ammo to the opposing side.
I see lots of praise for high speed rail and local commuter rail/metros/trams. But almost no mention about regional heavy rail at all.
I come from Germany. Yeah, DB bad yada yada. Anyways, what is pretty important about our network is how massive it is. If you live in a German town with about 10,000 or 20,000 people then you actually have a high chance of having rail access.
For most towns that is just once an hour per direction, but I still see a good amount of people from these small town taking them. Despite the fact that most towners dirve, they are still an important piece of infrastructure and an underestimated amount of people would be screwed without it.
Regional rail heavy is important. Especially if you consider how many old people live there who cannot drive anymore. And how hard it would be for children to get to the next sign of civilization just by bus lines. And then if you were clever (wishful thinking) that town could benefit from transit oriented developement.
Personally, I commute between two closeby cities. According to reddit, my options would be infrequent and expensive HSR or a slow commuter rail (I don't benefit from it's inbetween stops). But in reality there is a heavy rail line which is 60% faster than the commuter rail and that is actually part of my college semester ticket.
Also, if the train dakimakura takes too long to get into the store then I am going to sabotage the state funded lines.
alan the funny thing is you show france as an example despite it being the absolute worst at regional connections, which really drives the point home that amtrak needs to work on theirs
what makes it even funnier, is that prioritizing high speed rail and treating it like an airplane instead of integrating with the rest of your network is precisely why SNCF is in a catastrophic position. Matt is literally pushing an example that has already failed
Raleigh to DC service literally stops in the middle of random fields. It takes 4.5 hours to get there by car and 7 by train.
(For now) we don’t need HSR. We need proper normal trains
In my experience, Amtrak has great service, good clean passenger compartments with lots of space, and in *some* areas decent coverage (albeit limited mostly to connecting large metro areas). The only problem I have with Amtrak currently is price. For commuters, it’s about $12-15 to go 50-60mi. Long trips are exorbitantly expensive. It’s *much* cheaper to fly between Charlotte, NC and Boston, MA.
Agreed, a basic rule with transportation is price needs to reflect speed and convenience. Amtrak can't be priced higher than air travel when it's many times slower.
I come from a country with one of the densest rail network in the world and I must say, it Is sooo convenient that wherever you Are, you can walk or take a bus for a few stops to get to rail station!
adopt me maybe?
@Zaydan Alfariz One of the densest, not the densest...I meant Czechia, but Germany, Poland And other States also have very dense network
@@lwf51 it absolutely has the density for high speed rail in the right regions, taking something like the northeast corridor or California you can greater densities than countries like spain or France with extensive high speed rail networks
Of course the idea of coast to coast high speed rail is probably never really gonna be justifiable but the sort of clustered US megaregions including also say the Midwest around Chicago and the Texas triangle are just obvious wins as as a high speed rail network goes
@lwf51 If density should be as high as Japan's, then go ahead, start building a high velocity train connection between DC and Boston, because DC + Maryland + New Jersey + Connecticut + Rhode Island + Massachusetts combined, have a higher density than Japan. Delaware and New York have a higher density than China. If France is the benchmark, you can use the outside of Ile de France density to calculate viability, and it asks for a line between Chicago and Boston, through Illinois, Ohio and Pennsylvania. Florida and California can get their lines too.
Trains are sustainable and environmentally friendly. I support every campaign to grow US passenger train network.
I live in Lambertville NJ and we used to have trains running through town where you could get to Philly or New York. But not anymore. The class three railroad, the Black River and Western is trying to get the train back and would be nice to take it to Flemmington (the biggest place to where I live) But yeah, small slower lines helpm
When people complain about Amtrak being "subsidized", they neglect to understand the billions of $$$ spent every year on thousands of miles of highways, not to mention the air-traffic control system and airports nationwide!
Lobbying too
i live in a random small mountain town in Spain and i have like over 30/40 trains a day to go and get back home to the nearest big city, a person in Chicago has only 4 trains at 10/11am
The thing that I don't think much of America gets is the rail is for mid distance too! Half hour journeys on trains are common even in the UK where I live, but if you're relying on HSR there will be fewer lines which do t go through every large town, which they need to to be worthwhile and be a proper substitute for cars, which they can be for many people in Europe (in conjunction with other forms of public infrastructure and bicycles).
I would rather have a full network of 110-125 MPH rail lines than just a single 186-220MPH line. Yes, both would be nice, but if I have to choose, the full network with frequent trains and connectivity would be much better. I love Brightline. Yeah, they only started at 80 MPH but it got people into the seats quickly and the service is great. Then expanding north of West Palm Beach at 110 MPH & Cocoa 125 MPH, these kinds of services can go a long way.
100-125mph lines are pretty much standard lines pushed to their limits.
britain has ALOT of them to the point their classed as high speed here in britain.
@@davidty2006
and longer term aims for 140mph sections when ETCS signalling implemented.
@@fenlinescouser4105 thats been in the plans ever since the class 91's started running and it still hasn't been done...
@@davidty2006
Oh total implementation will take decades but at least a start has been made on the ECML
@@davidty2006 Yes, I'm aware of the lines in Britain which is why I think the US would be in a far better position right now if it already had regional/hubs of 110-125 MPH with the Siemens Chargers in use. I can see why HS2 is needed though.
That NYC to Albany line along the Hudson is gorgeous. Almost as nice as my personal favorite, Reno to Oakland in late winter when there's a ton of snow in the Sierras. You get on around noon and make this amazing trip through Donner Pass down into the central valley, arriving at Sacramento around sunset. Meanwhile the snow is gone and everything's green and luscious and you can see why the settlers thought they might be in heaven. Truly breathtaking.
Another interesting video. Improvements to existing rail infrastructure to increase average speeds remains a worthwhile and attainable goal given political realities, NIMBYs and construction times.
Not to mention the fact that Americans don't want to touch shoulders with other passengers they deem as "ghetto". They drive for what they see as privacy/safety as well.
Its just sad that there are so many bad infrastructure on the Northeast Corridor that limited the speed of Acela and no real high speed train for the east coast city. Its crazy to think about how those poor south east asian contry is getting high speed rail but not between major city of America.
It's more shameful when you realise that south east poor country was bombed by the USA where as America sits on the loot of it
The thing that makes taking Amtrak frustrating for me has nothing to do with train speed and has everything to do with freight companies like Norfolk Southern gunking up the routes.
When comparing to flying, people always forget to include the time it takes to
1. get to the airport (compared to getting to a more local train station) and
2. just how long getting thru the airport takes at larger airport, or how much time layovers can add when flying from small airports.
Also those train services take people to a larger airport, for example the new service shown from Green Bay WI to Milwaukee. (Would have said O'Hare but their is no easy connection from the Hiawatha to O'Hare, you need to either taxi from the station or take the CTA from Central Station to O'Hare 😡)
One of Matt's big points wasn't that we shouldn't build out local connections, but that let's build out HSR so that when we go to build out local connections, it's way more useful.
That, and Matt literally put out an article today expanding on this one, where he kind of gives a more in-depth view into his thinking on prioritizing ridership vs coverage. He even literally writes "The carless Americans who also don’t live near good transit are a very marginalized group, so a ridership goal naturally has a thumb on the scale in favor of finding concentrations of low-income people to serve," he clearly understands that carless people do exist.
@@adamvandolder1804 It might be worth querying how many of the carless Americans with bad transit options are candidates for high-speed rail versus slow rail, because of the likely price differences.
Could you do a short video debunking some of those commonly tossed around high-speed rail maps?
Yeah, I don't really see the problem with it, as a novice, but I've now come across multiple TH-camrs scoffing at it.
@@gamelord12 the length of the lines are too long. It's way past the optimum zone for high speed train travel (about 80-400 miles) and a lot of it goes through empty country. NYC to LA high speed? 2800 miles or so. That's way too long.
@@raucousraptor There are other cities between those two points though. You're unlikely to take NYC to LA, but you might stop at any number of cities in between.
@@raucousraptor I've also seen maps that are ignorant of terrain problems. For example I sometimes see people propose high-speed rail up the California coast, but the coast here is very mountainous. (That's why the official plan runs inland, up the Central Valley, instead.)
3:00 France is slightly smaller than the state of Texas. Not only can you fit France in Texas, but you could also add in Switzerland.
The real reason HSR is a good idea is so that Amtrack could own the rights to the track and not suffer 8 hour delays as are common currently with shipping rail lines having track priority. This could be a short email.
My understanding, c. 2000, was that U.S. Rail had no tracks available that could handle Speed over what was currently available. That the proposed California "to be built" would be unprofitable
As a frequent Empire Service rider, CSX adds an extra 20-30 minutes from Rensselaer to Syracuse (2h45) vs Rensselaer to NYP (2h20) for nearly the same mileage covered. I would bet almost all of that difference is due to having mostly separated Amtrak/Metro North tracks down the Hudson. If you want to get to Buffalo, it's almost an hour slower on Amtrak vs driving, the stop-and-go caused by CSX really adds up. I mean there's only 6 stops between Rensselaer and Depew. You'll still find me preferring the train because it really is capital-G Gorgeous along the Hudson River and Erie Canal.
Thats an entirely different animal and its the freight rail that needs to get its shit together. Because of PSR the freight trains are longer and so they clog up the right of ways. They don't fit into the sidings anymore, so the shorter Amtrak trains have to park and wait for CSX to pass when its supposed to be the other way around. I know it sounds fucking unbelievable, and you'd think that since Amtrak is government supported that they'd tell the Class I railroads to cut the shit.
Great points. Also, Metro North owns the tracks along the river from Poughkeepsie. Amtrak has priority over MNR.
I’d say 90% of the time I would take a six hour train ride where I can relax, do work, or just pass out than a four hour drive where I have to actively pay attention to traffic every single minute
Actively pay attention every single minute? We're supposed to do that when driving?
(jk)
Same. And if the train has a cafe car and bathrooms I wouldn't have to worry about rest stops.
What’s crazy to me is that a lot of these older NIMBYs that don’t want trains near them grew up riding trains everywhere!! Have they just forgotten completely??
They probably think old trains where more segregated and privileged people rode so it was good that's why they love old trains and hate on new ones because new one are liberal hell hole
I agree Yglesias's article focuses to much on HSR, but I think there is still room to criticize Amtrak's corridor vision. A lot of new proposed routes have 1 or 2 round trips a day, which will make it expensive to operate. If they don't focus on greenfield HSR, they at least need to focus on frequency to make the network more usable.
Also, "State Supported" routes have their operating expenses mostly paid for by the states, but capital expenses are usually paid for through grants form the federal government, including funds made available from the Bipartisan Infrastructure bill, which is why we are are all talking about this.
Several cities, including Chicago once has fast services via regular passenger trains and interurbans. There were two in the Chicago area that I know well, and those are the CA&E and North Shore Line. The CA&E had cars that could top out around 80 mph, and the North Shore had a set called the electroliner that was built in 1941 and had a top speed of around 100 to 110 mph, but was cut back to 90 because of the grade crossings that the NSL had.
Amtrak trains between Chicago and Detroit currently operate at 110mph, and trains between Chicago and St. Louis currently operate at 90mph and are planned to increase to 110mph sometime this year.
What about The South Shore?
something i see when discussing a lot of issues and potential solutions to problems that exist in America is this idea that ‘Americans don’t do x’. In this case, ‘Americans will just drive or fly’.
No, Americans _currently_ drive or fly, because there’s no other choice. Americans aren’t special or unique, solutions that exist and work elsewhere will also work for you. Habits only don’t change if you refuse to change them.
What definitely irks me about the attitude of this article, and these kind of opinions overall, is it presumes that HSR projects only make sense on a seriously massive corridor or established passenger rail line with the biggest of cities. Not only making the assumption that "high speed rail" is only valid when electrified and over 160mph, it also completely overlooks that Amtrak *is* making speed upgrades and new higher-speed rail lines across the country, and that there's potential to induce demand for rail transit where it no longer, or never did exist, wherein we could improve services and speeds even further in the future. It also ignores the fact that the FRA+FTA have notoriously prohibitive standards and outdated regulations in regards to higher track speeds, making """true""" HSR projects in the US notoriously expensive and prohibitive.
One of the most obviously overlooked projects on Amtrak's Connect US map, and the silver bullet against these arguments, is the Northern Lights Express HSR route from Minneapolis to Duluth MN. Restoring what was previously a 50mph sleeper train route from Duluth to Chicago, Amtrak's North Star, to a 90-110mph higher-speed passenger line with multiple daily round-trips, making *huge* track upgrades with plenty of room for future service upgrades and track speeds as the service will continue to grow in popularity. For a 152 mile corridor, it will be directly competing with driving on the corridor, which sees roughly *3,600,000,000 annual car trips according to MnDOT*. The Northern Lights Express would meet ridership expectations if only 1 out of 5000 of those trips were replaced by the train. Total project cost is $425,000,000 and the Feds are matching 80% of it, so just a mere $85,000,000 for the state of Minnesota to fund.
The lesson here is that slam-dunk corridors exist all over the country in cities that these people don't particularly care enough to learn about, and if they spent just a *little bit* of time researching these state-supported and other regional Amtrak routes, they would see a high speed rail system that has LONG been in the making, and we need to walk before we can run.
I live in a smaller Wisconsin city, and the train line runs freight right through town to the extent that it bisects the factory I work at. If it had any passenger rail at all, I could visit other cities easily and go have fun on my own terms. But as it is, with no car, I'm literally trapped in this place.
There seems to be this weird view that you can only afford one or the other when it comes to trains in the US. And then you look at the US defense budget.....
@Oak Island Pictures I could have sworn someone else once posted something similar elsewhere, and I thought it was a great idea then too. I wonder why I forgot about it.
My go-to argument for rail is that, since electricity can't feasibly be produced in the Middle East or Russia and sent here with huge undersea cables, the idiotic Democrats will be forced to keep the energy supply for the trains domestic and thus much less susceptible to foreign influence.
Great video, thanks! For me as European, the discussions about funding passenger rails (both regular service and high speed lines) is hard to understand.
By the way, tomorrow I will visit my parents, living in a town 320 km from the place I live. I can choose out of 3 to 4 trains each hour and It takes me two and a half hours on most trains to go there. It is affordable, clean and trains are usually in time.
And of course we are complaining, that the service still could be much better.
One great explanation: Americans are fundamentally conned into ignoring the cost of a vehicle. Taxes, maintenance, parking, cleaning... are all seen as sunk costs. If you add it up, most commuters REALLY spend $100+ per week on their car. If you get someone to consider $100/week for a car versus a rail pass that might be $100/year, then they start to get it. Especially if they aren't terrified of having to sit near poor people. Sitting near lower class people is honestly a HUGE roadblock in America.
@@KevinJDildonik Also, unless you're driving an open top sports car through some breathtaking scenery on a good road with very little traffic, most times I'd rather take the train. You don't have to waste time concentrating on the road and the traffic around you. Instead, you can eat, read, work, whatever. It's also more comfortable than driving.
Are you German or Swiss? Because the German rail system is on the verge of collapse.
@@KevinJDildonik Hell, out in California these days it's easy to spend $100+ per week on gas alone, without even driving *that* much (around 30 miles a day, with occasional longer trips).
It only takes a few weeks of that to convince a conservative that Joe Biden is a bad President and that America needs to obtain oil domestically to ensure prices are reasonable.
It only takes a few weeks of that to convince a responsible progressive that Joe Biden is a bad President and that America needs to obtain oil domestically to ensure prices are reasonable, as well as to highlight the critical importance of affordable transportation networks and the critical role that personal EVs play in dealing with what America has now.
I'm so glad I found this channel. It's one of my favorites like NJB and The B1M :))
Did B1M get better at their stuff? Last time I've seen their video they were drooling over big shiny stupid megaprojects...
@@PtrkHrnk they still do a lot of that, but they also go in depth into very important infra projects around Europe. They’re a construction channel so not everything they make is geared towards urbanisms, but ime there’s a lot of crossover.
For HSR from Boston to New York, it may be best to simply avoid southwestern Connecticut. The city pair is almost as populous as London, Paris and the Dutch cities, so an approach as expensive as the Channel tunnel should be viable (and then on Long Island follow expressways and the LIRR, say, cut and covering as needed).
I think its important to note that HSR needs to be treated like express lines that go between major hubs. If the trains stop at every station then you defeat the purpose of HSR reaching high speeds. To your point, the "slower" speed rail networks, need to be built out to feed HSR.
Mhm HSR pretty much going from major hub to major hub that idealy should be interchanges.
Columbus in ohio do be looking like a good stop for a HSR route between NEC and chicago.
It can do both. There can be different service patterns with the slowest stopping quite frequently and the fastest making no underway stops between major metropolitan areas. That way you can serve large areas with high quality service without slowing down the busiest connection.
This also is something what annoys me about the density counterargument since that implies a high-stopping density of HST even though a distance of 50 km is already on the lower end and no one cares if the trains blast next to some towns or in the middle of nowhere.
@@MarioFanGamer659 Stations on the Tokaido Shinkansen are on average less than 20 km apart. Yet the fastest trains do the over 550 km between Tokyo and Osaka in under 2.5 hours. You don't need to make every train stop at every station. It's that simple.
@@lars7935 I'll say you're just proving my point. Japan is a special case since it is quite densly populated which results in more cities with a notable population (at least by western standards) and as a result has an insanely low stopping distance for HSR (and as you're implying, makes express a necessity), not to mention the Toukaidou Shinkansen is the first of its kind so what were good and bad practices weren't as known back then as they are today.
:D 👍 I was so happy when I saw that they were planning expansions to Amtrak.
The other thing I think worth pointing out is that service induces demand and changes behavior; you don't want to build to current demand, you want to build to what demand is potentially there given a certain quality of service. If you have accessible options to reach something other than the biggest of cities, you can induce demand to travel to something other than the biggest of cities. You stop comparing a direct route from hub to hub, but instead the added connecting time to someplace that isn't a central urban area that doesn't require ritual sacrifice to be able to afford to live in. Chicago does pretty well as an Amtrak destination, for example, because there's an entire series of small towns folk can jump on a train to and not want to hate themselves when they arrive in downtown Chicago and don't have to park.
Columbus having similar accessibility would be brilliant for the state of Ohio. It would make Columbus the nerve center not only of the state but the entire region. There's relatively little regional travel that happens in the midwest because it's multiple-hour car drives to get anywhere, but pretty much everyone has been to Chicago in no small part because there's a relatively direct rail route to almost every urban center in the region. People will visit Chicago instead of nearer urban areas simply because it's much more accessible. The downtown regions of the so-called "rust belt" cities are all experiencing major revivals but very few experience it, because unless your destination is Chicago, it's a pain in the ass to get between them. The proposed second nerve center in Columbus connects relatively direct routes that make Cinci, Louisville, Pittsburgh, Toledo, Cleveland, Detroit, and Indianapolis far more accessible to routes needing much less covered distance and no more than a single route connection.
High speed rail in the Northeast would be a nice convenience; reliable interstate rail in the Pittsburgh/Ohio/Indiana/Michigan/Illinois/Kentucky nexus would be transformative to the region especially as we lean into automobile electrification and an increase in remote work. If you could joint venture to *electrify* some of those lines for both passenger and freight use, you could also completely transform regional freight traffic as well as you'd make mixed freight far more viable.
It frequently does, but not always. We got street cars 15 years ago and even before the pandemic they weren't ever used. I do think that HSR would be different, at least if it's located in sensible locations, but it's not a guarantee, especially if it's not more convenient than flying.
Imagine highspeed freight. Doublestack containers blitzing through the countryside at 200mph.
When're we going to see that shit?
That's true American logic right there.
Step 1: Build isolated high-speed route that's incredibly expensive
Step 2: Notice that at both ends of the service there's nothing to connect to, so unless you literally want to be at the train station, you need a car to get to your train, and then a car to get to your destination
Step 3: Be surprised that's your highspeed trains aren't as popular as elsewhere
They are called public transportation NETWORKS for a reason. A slow train is as much part of it as a fast train. As is a bus. Or a tram. You need all of these things - not just shiny prestige projects. They do serve their purpose, but they aren't any more important to the transportation puzzle than any other single thing.
To be fair to the NIMBY's high speed rail is often quite bad for those not given a stop. The whole point of the trains is they are fast, you can't be fast with a lot of stops. Thus most area's get all the negatives of having trains go through their area with little benefit if it doesn't even stop.
exactly!!!! and not to mention, because alot of rail routes have tons of curved tracks, you definitely DO NOT wanna go fast in certain areas, or you'll run the risk of a train derailment
Let me add that there is absolutely NO truly successful high speed rail service in a country that does not have a robust intercity rail network with the exception of China (which has certain incentives and insanely large cities to make up for the lack of options). It just doesn’t exist. Japan’s, Germany’s and France’s HSR networks are highly successful BECAUSE of connecting traffic from local, regional, and intercity services. Many people who cannot be served by a city’s local bus, subway, or tram networks are at the mercy of regional and intercity services to support them. And unfortunately, most cities in the US DO NOT HAVE robust regional rail or intercity rail networks, even on the NEC - none of boston, Baltimore, DC’s regional services are electrified or run particularly frequently, electrified service does not exist to many cities (especially in Virginia, but also in New York, Massachusetts, and half of NJ), and there are a shit ton of cities that are not serviced at all (Scranton, Allentown, Hershey, Reading, etc).
Actually China has 141,000 km of normal rail, loads of intercity options. It's HSR is massive and the biggest/ densest in the world, but 'only' 40,000 km in comparison
@@zupermaus9276 that’s not much of a network by comparison though. Usually the order of magnitude is 10-20, not 2-3
@@Token_Nerd The network still works out at about half the density of the UK one in terms of population per route km (higher than smaller neighbours like South Korea or Taiwan), but doubling every decade. The fact a bigger percentage is HSR shouldn't detract from the fact it still has fairly good coverage.
the Albany to NYC route doesn't get the love it deserves. it's such a great way to travel and needs to be electrified yesterday
@alanthefisher -- thanks for posting this because I have felt like the only one thinking this way! If we could get trains to go 160kph system-wide on Amtrak would make a world of difference. People pile up on me when I point out that a lot of European intercity rail isn't going that fast either. The train from Berlin to Copenhagen is not a fast train, nor is the train from Florence to Rome. The thing right now is that with present off-the-shelf technology in the US and Canada in terms of track to rolling stock 160kph is doable now. Things like quad-gates with sensors are a thing, New Amtrak rolling stock can safely do 200kph, and welded rail is not a fantasy technology. Overpasses and underpasses for trains would be nice and dedicated passenger rail would be also, however, in the meantime we ought to be able to duplicate what some roads were doing in the 40s with their intercity trains. Thanks for posting. I can link this to other people.
From Roma Tiburtina and using the 250 km/h Direttissima, Trenitalia Frecciarossa high speed trains join Firenze Campo di Marte in 1h19 at 192 km/h average speed or F. Santa Maria Novella in 1h23 at an average speed of 185 km/h. These are fast trains by any standards.
Longer distance trains in Europe aren't typically running on tracks designed for slow freight trains and operated primarily for their benefit. Most of Amtrak does...
To improve frequencies, and also get that higher speed (but not high speed) railway outside of a few routes where it already exists, Amtrak will need to spend a lot of money on significant upgrades and a new build line wouldn't be out of the question: at worst not much more expensive, but more benefits too.
And if you are building new tracks for fast and frequent intercity trains, then the extra level up to HSR makes a lot of sense - an extra 10% costs, but more than 10% more benefits than building a decent speed railway.
Where did you get this particular map? I'm only seeing a different amtrak connect us map. Although I do like this one better
I'm fine with the new routes. Being from Ohio that have been talking about connecting the 3C's for a long time. I think it would be beneficial for some. With living almost equal distance between Cleveland and Columbus I'd take it occasionally.
If you look at a map of the rail network in the USA it is extremely well-connected.
Just not passenger rail. Freight covers most of the country and goes through numerous small towns and cities and quite a few of them still and the old train depot for passenger rail services which were suspended years ago.
Everyone always says hi speed rail but never asks how's speed rail 😔
This definitely needs more likes
there are underground bases in america with magnetic trains which already travel at mach 2. which is like 1482 mph.
We need to know how to operate a normal train again and for city designs to complement it
One year later. Amtrak wasted all the build back better funds. Every. Single. Penny.
As a side note, what do u think of the plans through high speed rail in Connecticut? I am from CT and I think that prioritizing going to CT's 4th, 5th and 6th (Danbury, Waterbury and Hartford) largest cities instead of it's 1st, 2nd and 3rd (Bridgeport, Stamford and New Haven) feels really misguided. I also think going through Bridgeport could revitalize that area. Stamford is also one of the fastest growing cities in the state rn. Bridgeport and New Haven are the two most densely populated areas in the state and also have the highest population who doesn't have a car. I do think a train from new york to boston that goes that route would b beneficial but I don't think this is the best HSR route
Which plans are you taking about? New Haven and Stamford already are on Acela. Bridgeport and Hartford are on the NEC so they get other Amtrak service still, and Acela isn't much faster than Northeast Regional for CT. Danbury and Waterbury are only serviced by Metro North.
You're right, we should def put out the best trains we can, but maybe the ROI for improvements is best put into those spots now. Idk, they're the only non-electric passenger lines in the state left, maybe that's it?
Building a HSR line through Danbury, Waterbury and Hartford will be difficult. HSR along the coast via Stamford, Bridgeport and New Haven would be impossible because there is no open land.
@@linker12795 Sorry I don't I said this clearly. Amtrak's plans for the northeast corridor hsr are to put a different route in connecticut and keep the route otherwise mostly the same. If you look at page 26 you can see the preposed route. I would rather my state get hsr than not but population wise it seems wrong
@@mayam9575 Thanks! I found a 2012 amtrak report and a NH Indy article on it. I don't want to push back against it just cuz it's different, or just write it off because it's such a weird way to spend a lot of money that's planned so far out, but every FRA or Amtrak report I've seen since then hasn't brought it up.
Super long term, that path probably faces a lot fewer maintenance problems than our shoreline, and they skip CT entirely (the super express only hits 4 cities). I don't think it's a big threat to NHV, BRP, or STM with how much investment is going to the metro north corridor today.
Too many people fail to see that an effective public transportation system is like a tree: it needs strong roots to survive and thrive. The feeder roots of transportation are the small lines which go to the outlying communities. Without them, the system dies. Unless, of course, you feed it with massive infusions of tax money.
Hi Alan
I will be writting a letter to the editor of the Salem news, Salem Mass. I will propose the title "The consequences of the lack of high speed rail with connecting slower speed trains " .Re the holiday travel nightmare with southwest airlines. I,ve read the book " Supertrains" by Joeseph Vranich circa 1991. There are chapters that' depict Herb Kelliher of southwest airlines back in the late 1980s early 1990s lobbying viciously against any such projects. Hence, they did a good job in keeping the Texas triangle high-speed rail off it's tracks. Now look at what happened over the Xmas holidays. Not in the least to say that weather does effect all kinds of rail systems but not as bad as it effects air travel. The main stream media does not understand that..
I loved that video about it's OK not to build hsr but we need to upgrade the existing connecting lines to semi high-speed rail as Alan Drake would call it
Paula Walach. -- B & B ELECTRICIAN for MBTA/KEOLIS commuter services
I don't know how the Brightline Surpassed Amtrak as being the first hispeed rail in the us, Amtrak northeast corridor, Acela is the first in the nation hi speed rail.
Glad to hear that you mentioned France is slightly larger than Texas. Unfortunately, not everyone understands this and they make wrong comparisons.
People are really insistent on pretending Europe and the US are incomparable, even though Europe and the Lower 48 are roughly the same size, and China is so close in size to the states that there difference comes down to how you count coastal waters
Actually Texas is 25% larger than France. France only counts larger if you take its overseas territories into account (former colonies), notably the state of French Guiana in South America.
I'm from a small town on the Illinois Central Railway. The Chicago Central line was acquired in 1998 by Canadian National and you know what they did with it? ABSOLUTELY NOTHING. It's sitting there completely unused and unserviced. 100 years ago, I could've taken a train to Chicago, Omaha, St. Louis or New Orleans from my tiny little town of 5000 people. The destruction of rail was the start of the blight we see across America in small towns.
You've hit the nail on the head. Having a train that goes 200mph is great, but it's not a huge improveent to quality of service vs a 150mph train, or even a 100mph train. There's been lots of pushback against HS2 in the UK, with opponents saying that "why do we need a train that can go from London to Birmingham in 50 mins rather than the current 1h20", but they're missing that the real benefit of HS2 is the huge increase in capacity. Taking the fast trains off the existing lines and onto HS2 frees up space on the existing line for more local and freight trains, ultimately providing better service overall.
The US is slightly different because it lacks any passenger rail in most of the country, but as with HS2, the "high speed" gets the attention of the media and public, but capacity and connections are what really makes a difference. It may not be sexy for Amtrak to focus on connecting up the country with lower speed lines, but that will make far more of a difference than an upgraded NE corridor. This is why what Brightline are doing is so good in Florida. Their trains aren't anything special, with a current maximum speed of 80mph, and when they extend to Orlando the top speed will be 125mph, but just providing that connection is the key, the same is true in the rest of the US.
Plus another thing is that there's no point having HSR going to cities if those cities don't have any public transit of their own. A high speed line from Dallas to Houston would be useless unless both cities connected their new stations to the rest of the city with good transit. If the HSR is 90 mins faster than driving, but it takes me an hour at each end to get to and from the HSR stations to where I'm going, then it's pointless and easier to just drive. Same logic applies to connecting the HSR lines to slower local lines, to allow for people to actually get where they want to go.
Exactly. Capacity is the real issue. Alarmingly few journalists and politicians understands this.
Having a train that goes 200mph is a massive, massive improvement of service over one that goes 150mph or god forbid 100mph (also, Amtrak goes an average of 80 mph at best on the NEC). Right now there are dozens of daily flights between New York and Boston/DC, because they make more time sense. People drive from Philly to NYC (or take chinatown esque buses) because Amtrak's pricing model is so insane that it can cost $200 for a 90 minute train ride
not to mention: high speed rail is expensive. In Europe there are few countries that offer actual high speed rail on a budget but only because someone before them built the infrastructure, maintains it and has earned money with it already, pretty much paying off the construction costs and now only needing to support maintenance. In Germany, while we do have a good high speed rail network this is predominantly used by business people either commuting to and from work or going on business trips and sometimes by families who just don't wanna go through the hassle of sitting on a train 6+hours with their kids.
Most trips over here are done on regional express trains (Regional Express), regional trains (Regionalbahn) and commuter trains (S-Bahn) in cities and their immediate surroundings. Those trains travel at up to 140kph. And if you want to cut the travel time a little connecting major cities but don't want to pay for the high speed train, there's still the Inter City trains, that run slower than the Inter City Express trains, but only stop in major cities. All of these option can get you pretty much anywhere in Germany within 6-8 hours. Yes, it's a huge chunk of time, but it is fine as those are the extremes. I'd say in 75% of the cases you won't be longer than 3 hours on a train, needing only to change trains twice on average.
Comparing the costs of taking those connections to taking a high speed train connection in most cases high speed trains don't make sense.
Yes, we need high speed rail, but high speed rail is not the solution to everything. You need a proper regular / regional train network to allow for affordability. Only then you can think about getting the added comfort for a higher price for high speed rail. And don't be mistaken: High speed rail tickets will be (much) more expensive. That being said: Italy has a fantastic concept for its high speed rail network and operation, effectively leading to the bankruptcy of Air Italia, as they were focussed on national regional flights which the new(ish) high speed rail concept managed to completely obliterate.
Thanks for the Ohio call out. The rail situation in Ohio is abysmal.
Hey Alan, what's the transition drum roll you use at 3:45. It's groovy, and I need it in my life.
If we can achieve HIGHER speed rail (80 - 110 mph) that'd be amazing. It is much more affordable than HIGH speed rail (120 - 150 mph).
With the current situation that Amtrak is in, it would be highly beneficial to improve present routes and add new routes of higher quality, speed, and frequency.
We should be adding more trains to a service, adding new service, and increasing speeds on present routes wherever possible. It will greatly improve the ability to match with driving and flying.
120-140mph isn't full on HSR. Pretty much just conventional rail pushed to the upper limits with better trains and signalling.
Full on HSR is normally around 320km/h (200mph).
@@davidty2006 200mph trains in the US feel like a pipedream to me. But it would be amazing to get legitimate HSR. I'd even be happy with 150mph.
What you call "HIGHER speed" is really just conventional speed here in Europe while what you call "HIGH speed"... okay, that depends on whether the route is upgraded or not since for upgraded tracks, it's 125+ mph to be considered high-speed) while for new tracks, they're only high speed when they're rated for at least 155 mph.
@@MarioFanGamer659 Our conventional trains here in the US usually go 50 to 90 mph (sadly)
The lack of a route for Omaha-Des Moines-Chicago is kinda frustrating. I don't live in Des Moines anymore but it would have been nice, and I would hope IAIS would...just enable it, the owner seems keen on adding new services. But still nothing on that route...
Oh well...
And yeah, for all my US High Speed advocacy, I'm still huge on good regional spokes coming off that. It's so important everyone has access to the system they need.
@OakIslandPictures Osceola is honestly a bit far off to be useful to Des Moines, especially with the infrequency of said route. Plus the fact there is absolutely not regional transport down there currently. The Amtrak may end up hitting Osceola on the north/south but as said, the usefulness will be very limited unless regional connections along the CZ route get better. If the CZ runs even 3 times through per day each way you may have something, but in the end just having the Omaha-Des Moines-Chicago connector would be tremendous. Maybe some day, IAIS railway is aiming to help make Des Moines a significant intermodal hub with the amount of train/truck freight terminals having been added in the past 5 years even. Union Pacific, I think, has been able to benefit from this (ironic since UP wanted that railways route when Rock Island went under, lol).
You mention multiple times in this video that matt is a "transportation journalist", when in reality he really isn't. He is mostly an Economics journalist/thinker, which might explain why his train takes aren't always 100% the best
He is more accurately a pundit, and has takes, good and bad, on many subjects. He did not study journalism AFAIK, but majored in philosophy. He has written for a number of publications and co-founded Vox, so it is reasonable that he is Twitter-verified.
It’s a legit point that, historically, the way freight rails are operated in the US makes for horrific capacity issues that eventually cause the service to get cancelled when nobody uses it