mogu mogu paku paku asked: The usual answer given to the question “why is rail travel unpopular in America” is obviously:
“It’s a big, rich country. Travelling by plane makes a lot more sense.”
Point taken. Only idiots would invest in a high-speed passenger railway between, say, San Francisco and New York.
So, let’s focus on journeys of 100-300 miles within high-density “corridors” such as the Northeast. Here, it’s usually a choice between trains and cars, not trains and planes.
Take the Northeast for example: its population, area and population density are all comparable to France’s. Logically, the Northeast has the nation’s highest rate of rail travel (I read somewhere that it accounts for over 90% of rail journeys in the US!). It also boasts the nation’s only high-speed line: the Acela Express. So perhaps the Northeast alone has a rate of rail travel comparable to that in Europe?
Wrong. The ENTIRE Amtrak network, including lines in the Northeast, served only 26 million passengers in 2007. By contrast, Britain’s long-distance rail companies (National Express, Virgin, Cross Country) carried around 60 million passengers in total. Passenger figures are higher still in France, Germany and Japan.
… Which means that Northeasterners are choosing to drive long distances rather than take the train.
Some might say: “Driving is part of American culture. We’re used to it.”
But it didn’t always use to be this way, did it? Weren’t America’s railways once the envy of the world? Why did the development of rail travel in the US stop sometime around the 1950s? Why did the US government allow the nation’s railways to become a relic from bygone days?
I eagerly await your answers.
A sub-question:
Why did cars eclipse trains in the US, even in high-density regions, while trains in Europe and Japan developed alongside automobiles and eventually surpassed them in speed and efficiency?
