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Comment by kgin | Hacker News Reader

Some of the new additions would have a ton of ridership, even if the trains weren’t particularly high speed. Los Angeles to Las Vegas, Nashville to Atlanta are the two that jump out to me.

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For Nashville to Atlanta driving is going to be cheaper and way more convenient. Plus you're likely to need a car anyways at your destination. Few people are going to choose the train.

This inexplicable fascination with trains is frustrating to watch. They're expensive to build and aren't comprehensive solutions. The first thing that needs to be done is to get people off of cars. The easiest way to do that is dump a bunch of money into on demand ad hoc shuttle bus size transport. Make public transport convenient and people will use it. If people use it then they will support it and cities will naturally build to depend on it.

Edit:To illustrate the problem, I live about a mile from the center of downtown Atlanta. To get to the Amtrak station would require a bus, transfer to the subway, and transfer to another bus. It would take an hour to get to the station 6 miles away.

At that point, just walk. At a comfortable pace, you'd be there in 80 minutes, and you'd have your exercise for the day.

With luggage, in a city that is hot and humid for a decent chunk of the year. More realistically, you're going to catch a cab/Uber.

I am a big proponent of walking to get around, but 6 miles in 80 minutes is closer to a jog than "a comfortable walking pace". Typical walking speed is 16-20 minutes/mile, and that's without carrying anything.

You're right. I did my math wrong. I was going for 20 minutes/mile and I have no idea how I arrived at 80. I think maybe I used 100 minutes/hour. Hah.

I suppose it would be two hours.

While I agree with what you said can’t these things be done in tandem? There is a lot of working being done in almost every major city to make them more public transit and pedestrian friendly. That work needs to be done by the city and county governments. Amtrak is federal. Amtrak should def work with local governments on station location and design to make sure they’re convenient and accessible with local transit.

Nashville <-> Atlanta is 4 hours and a lot of people (including me) just hate driving for long distances like that. It’s dangerous and boring. While yes you might need a car to fill your last mile obligations if you’re not going too far outside city limits ride shares like Uber and Lyft can fill that hole.

Because money, political capital, organizational resources, etc. is mostly a zero sum game. Effort spent on rail is effort not being spent on solving the most pressing problem. And at least in my locality the money and focus is on rail.

I'm pretty dubious about the demand. There's not even a megabus between Nashville and Atlanta.

Hmm I gotta disagree with that. While yes they are 0sum they are totally different organizations operating these things. If Atlanta DOT isn’t improving their local transit networks it’s not because they’re focusing on Nashville rail connections.

I’ll give you the demand aspect sure, but a 2.5 hour link between dense downtown Atlanta and Nashville business districts can also become a catalyst for increased demand. Depends how much cost goes into the project. Maybe it’s worth pursuing maybe not. I think the biggest obstacle is how much state and local governments cooperate. State and local governments that are supportive are going to reap the benefits while hostile ones will suffer in the long term. Nashville recently voted down a comprehensive light rail plan so not sure how much support there is on that end.

I said the focus on rail in general, not just Amtrak. MARTA and local transport activist in general have focused their efforts on rail expansion. It's consuming a large majority of capital improvement resources available.

The "if you build it they will come" is an argument I've seen a lot. But it's hard to square that with the decline in usage of exiting rail. I know in Atlanta ridership is down 15% despite a 40% increase in population.

> Plus you're likely to need a car anyways at your destination. Few people are going to choose the train.

Yep, this is a key problem in the USA. Even if you build an amazing regional rail system, the nature of what's at each end of most journeys will still push people toward cars far too much of the time.

One could say the same for airports though. The solution to that is either car rentals or better public transit.

True. I was thinking more of journeys in the 3-24hrs by train range, where flying is less likely to be an option, but driving is.

Notice the dotted line between Jacksonville FL and Mobile AL in the lower right?

That is because of a "temporary" service suspension in 2004 from damage by hurricane Katrina.[1]

Apparently even Amtrak thinks that by 2035 they won't be capable of restoring service.

[1]: https://www.jacksonville.com/article/20081117/NEWS/801256449

It’s not a matter of capability, they just decided not to. They don’t own the rails, so they don’t have to maintain or repair them. I believe that CSX owns that line, and they repaired it in 2004. Amtrack could have restarted that service any time they wanted to.

They show one going from SF to Reno. There is some kind of station at Truckee. I’ve never taken an Amtrack to Reno/Truckee. I would think if they promoted this more, you could have more skiers go the weekend to Truckee/Tahoe/Reno/Mt Rose a lot more to avoid getting stuck on I-80 during storms as well as avoiding 4-hr drives. I’m guessing it sucks.

Also nice would be SJC to Santa Cruz.

I’m guessing the problem is last mile. There is a train from Denver that takes you directly to one mountain (Winter Park) but getting a train to any other mountain adds a ton of time and expense because you need shuttles from the train stop. The ski resorts are necessarily far apart (because they’re huge) and the time most people want to go is in the worst weather to be driving shuttles all over.

That Reno to Tahoe drive is still a hike and Heavenly/Squaw/Sierra at Tahoe are decently far apart.

I've actually taken this on existing infrastructure (Amtrak has a bus from Sacramento to South Lake Tahoe). The train to Sacramento from San Jose takes at least 3 hours and the bus takes another 3 (in winter weather). It's not terrible if you want to go to Heavenly but would be completely useless if you wanted to go anywhere else.

Also, last mile transportation in San Jose/SV, especially if you were carrying around skis would be a pain. Add in the fact that it costs $60 each way and it just isn't worth it. There used to be ski busses that did the route (and presumably would take you right to the slopes) but I have no idea if they still run. Those seem like a much better option.

> the time most people want to go is in the worst weather to be driving shuttles all over.

Doesn't that also mean its a bad time for people to be driving their own cars all over?

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