Looking at other Railway systems of the world, why doesn't theUS try to provide one as well?

Question

The TGV of France can take passengers in greater safety and comfort, not to mention efficacy to anywhere in the country and even out of France. Seeing the rapid rise of fuel, why don't we as a country demand a better source of public transportation. Amtrak is known for late trains and derailments. Not to mention that they SHARE tracks with regular freight trains AND have to pull over at the next station until the freight passes them!

Answer 1

Other industrialized countries, ALL of them except the U.S., tax their fuel ridiculously, so that the train gets lots of support that way.  It's an unfair tax.  The rich can afford to drive, and the poor take the bus. The U.S. has a far more egalitarian view of human worth, and the U.S. would simply never do that.

That has always been a part of the history of the U.S. culture.  In Europe, people are proud of their high-born status and all that they're entitled to.  In the U.S., people are proud of what they've accomplished starting from a humble beginning.  It has always been that way, ever since the American colonies began to have their own culture.

There is certainly some interest in the U.S. in adding demand-stifling gasoline taxes.  There's a lot of good that could be done by that, in terms of world peace particularly, but it's not a fair tax for the working class or the poor.  It's just not an American style thing to do.

CAFE actually doesn't seem like such a bad idea when you view it in these terms.

Answer 2

The answer to this question is quite complicated but the short answer is, contact your state senators about funding such a system as Congress is the reason we do not have such (it's a shame because we could very much use it, nothing is more efficient at moving freight and passengers than railroads and for all of the automobile's freedoms it provides, it's a major reason why pollution levels are so astronomical in this country).

The free market, in this case, has nothing to do with a high speed passenger rail system because passenger rail by nature is never profitable and therefore requires subsidization to properly maintain and function (this is the very reason why the private railroad companies wanted out of the passenger business in the 1960s and which is why Amtrak was created in 1971 by the government, and remains a government controlled and funded organization).

And, yes, you are quite correct, all of Amtrak's long distance passenger trains (i.e., outside of the Northeast Corridor) operate over the private freight railroads' main lines and as such are subject to their dispatching, which is why its trains are (and have always been) chronically late and not on-time.

Also, in relation to this is the fact that our transportation infrastructure is in dire need of a makeover/upgrade, which was frankly pointed out by well-knowned columnist Don Phillips in the September 2007 issue of Trains magazine (a link to the story can be found below).  

In any event, regardless of high-speed passenger rail, if you would like to see how a passenger rail system itself should be properly maintained and operated check out what North Carolina is doing, it far and away surpasses what Amtrak is doing (this is not to say Amtrak is doing a bad job, quite the contrary, for the minimal annual funding it receives and under the circumstances, the carrier actually provides excellent, quality, service as was recently noted by the mainstream media in the form of the Wall Street Journal).

Answer 3

Well, France is 260,558 sq miles, the USA is 3,718,695 sq miles... the USA has 14 times the area to cover!!

Secondly, the US Government has shown itself to be a VERY poor manager of  the "nationalized" passenger rail system.

Sadly the US government doesn't OWN the right-of-ways needed to provide high-speed passenger rail throughout the USA they lease traffic-rights to run AMTRAK.  The current train routes belong to private freight companies, and aren't sufficient to handle "high-speed rail", nor meet requirements that ALL crossings on TGV / LGV lines are over or under the track.

We (the US Government or private-industry) would have to purchase NEW rights of way, build an incredible amount of infrastructure to support this new rail system... also displacing people and buildings to get those tracks in place.  Sadly, there just isn't the INTEREST.. too many folks (particularly in the west) are just MARRIED to their cars.

I'm very interested in the planned high-speed rail line planned for California: 700+ miles !!  I currently commute on CalTrain, and take a monthly ride on ACE.

Answer 4

At the end of WWII, president De Gaulle of France was given the choice of subsidizing highway or rail development.  He chose wisely for his country.  Eisenhower's opposite choice may have been distorted by the following types of pressure.  In any case, his warning about the Military-Industrial complex proved true in the area of transportation::

I have the following on excelent authority, a Registered Lobyist for a very large corporation:  "By far the most powerful lobby in Washington is the American Trucking Association.  They have been known to reverse the U.S congress by 180 degrees overnight.  How do they do it, simply: CASH."   If you add the Highway Construction lobby and The Oil Lobby, you have an unmovable source.

My personal, 40-years-in-Washington, experience is that sizable lobbies try to kill peripheral threats to remove support of their main threat -- in this case the FREIGHT RAILROADS.

I,ll give you another problem:  The oil-culture President of the U.S. allows his Secretary of transportation to travel around the country for about a year telling the most outrageous lies about Amtrak useage -- "No body rides trains (that are the only service to towns along their route)."

Answer 5

No, actually the freight trains pull over for the Amtrak.

Of course you have efficient train service there, we have states bigger than your entire country.

Answer 6

The simple answer is $$$$

Our politicians can only think forward to the next election, they cannot understand that a first class passenger rail system has to be funded for the long run.

A part of the equation is population density, more people = more potential riders.

Instead of a first class rail system we have invested the billions of dollars required in highways instead of railroads. Not that this is necessarily wrong but in the future the highway sysem and it's inherent inefficiencies will make railroad passenger travel more of a necessity than a novelty.

The current U.S. system as you pointed out, is just not working and never will until collectively we as a populace tell our representatives that a good rail system is important to us.

Answer 7

Dude, you can WALK across France...

Building a comprehensive rail system in this country would cost billions and billions to build and even more to operate and maintain. The fact is if there were a desire for such a system then the free market would provide it. We may even have one someday but don't compare our culture with France -- we love our privacy and we love our space and we REALLY love our independence. All three can be found in cars.

Answer 8

because we like it the way it is obviously.