Hacker News Reader

Comment by vagrantJin | Hacker News Reader

Hmm. Interesting.

The US has no intercity trains? Is there a reason? I've always seen the NYC subway in movies and just recklessly assumed all major US cities are connected by rail...which is silly of me in hindsight.

View on HN

There are a number of reasons:

* For most of the country, cities are really far apart.

* The US has excellent freight rail network. They lease their lines to Amtrak, but they only have secondary priority. Passenger trains often have to wait behind slow freight, or even allow freight trains to pass them.

* After WW2, the US aggressively built the interstate highway system, which simultaneously caused suburbanization and killed intercity passenger rail.

Like the other commenter says, the Northeast Corridor between DC and Boston is an exception, as the cities are closer, and there isn't as much freight traffic, and the highways have a lot of car and truck traffic.

> The US has excellent freight rail network. They lease their lines to Amtrak, but they only have secondary priority. Passenger trains often have to wait behind slow freight, or even allow freight trains to pass them.

This is only partially true, as I understand it. Amtrak has highest priority, as long as it stays within its schedule windows. When two trains pass as scheduled, Amtrak always gets the main line, and the freight has to wait in a siding. However, if Amtrak is delayed, and misses its window, then it has to wait, as freight does not have to give up its spot and be delayed to let amtrak make up time.

The northeast corridor (Boston to DC) is very popular and profitable for Amtrak. They have routes connecting major cities in the rest of the country but they're slow, expensive and unreliable. They're pretty much only ridden by train enthusiasts, people who are very afraid of flying, or banned from flying.

My experiences on Amtrak Boston to NYC (and previously BOS to BWI station) are that it’s slow, expensive, and unreliable in the NE corridor as well. I’m sure it’s profitable for Amtrak, but I’d estimate I arrive within 15 minutes of the published timetable less than half the time.

they exist, but arent really used. the us is much bigger / less dense intercity. going across the coasts is six hour flights but days(4ish i think) by train and significantly more cost, with not many cities in the middle that people stop at. too few people would use so theres no motivation to make it faster. where it works decently well is northeast, because the cities are very close together(dc,philly,nyc,boston). but it's usually much more expensive than driving/bussing and takes roughly the same time.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com