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Comment by paganel | Hacker News Reader

For as much as the Americans like to complain in here and on reddit about their train infrastructure, imo it is still one of the best in the world. Yes, the big tragedy it's that is focused on freight transport instead of also taking into consideration public transport, but the good thing is that you still have most of the actual tracks in place and functional.

Over here in Europe most of them are gone, with very exceptions (like Switzerland). This reddit post [1] comparing the French railway network in 1910 to what was still available in 2014 is just depressing.

[1] https://old.reddit.com/r/MapPorn/comments/4be0sc/train_netwo...

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The US rail network does what it is designed to do very well - move absolutely insane amounts of freight (container/truck and bulk) relatively quickly over insanely long distances.

Unless you live in or near a deep-water ocean port, almost everything you have went on a train at some point if you're in the US.

> the big tragedy it's that is focused on freight transport

I don't see the tragedy in that. Tracks in the US are privately owned and freight makes them more money than passenger rail. Don't think we'd gain anything by artifically changing that. Even in Europe planes are usually faster and cheaper than rail when traveling between countries.

I'm not sure why this would be considered a controversial statement. A lot of short to medium distance in Europe is very good/convenient by rail, e.g. Eurostar from London to Brussels or Paris--even if not necessarily cheaper than flying. But while I've taken night trains between countries, it was more for the experience and not to save either time or money.

The tragedy is that people who want to use the railways are put below freight in priority - whereas other countries such as Russia and India are capable of mixing both.

If you were to make the same comparison in the US it would be very similar.

A lot of railroads were abandoned or turned into trails. Those that remained were stripped as much as possible to fire sell assets in desperate attempts to improve the balance sheets (de-electrified to sell the copper, reduced tracks from 4 to 2 or 2 to 1 to sell the rails, etc.)

At least part of it is that in some US jurisdictions railroads have to pay property tax on their assets, which is not something that (usually) publicly owned roads and airports deal with. This is a massive perverse incentive to run everything as skimpy as possible to reduce the value of land.

I’m not sure I’d call it a tragedy, at least not when talking about trains across the American West or Midwest. That’s an absolutely massive space, and outside a few cities, it’s pretty sparse.

It IS absolutely a tragedy that we don’t have particularly good rail transit from major city to major city. A proper high speed line from DC->NYC->Boston. SD->LA->SF. And NYC to Chicago, maybe. Probably others, but those seem like they’d be doable and get some airplanes out of the sky and cars off the interstate.

Northeast Corridor works pretty well as it is--and is very popular, albeit mostly to and from NYC as opposed to the entire length. The controversy around California HSR is well-known. And NYC to Chicago has to go through a continental divide so it's not clear how competitive that could be with flying--which it has to be if it's going to be popular with business travelers.

What continental divide does it cross? Chicago is on Lake Michigan, which drains into the Atlantic. New York is on the Atlantic.

Basically some combination of the Eastern and St. Lawrence divides--mostly the Appalachians. [1] (Would have to look up the exact current route.) It's basically why the Erie Canal was built. [2] The Saint Lawrence Seaway goes into the Atlantic north of the St. Lawrence divide.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eastern_Continental_Divide [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erie_Canal

I do not consider the St. Lawrence divide to be a "continental" divide, nor do I know of anyone who considers it to be so. It's just a watershed divide, and those are a dime a dozen.

I can see that some people would consider the Eastern divide to be a continental divide, though I do not.

So I gave you a reference. But you're smarter. And a "watershed divide" still suggests a higher height of land that still needs to be passed through whether or not it passes your personal definition of a continental divide.

Sure. But I never questioned whether they had to cross a watershed divide. Of course they had to, because Lake Michigan doesn't drain into New York Harbor.

The New York Central Railroad followed (more or less) the path of the Erie Canal. They advertised themselves as "The Water Level Route", because they didn't have a major mountain crossing between New York and Chicago (unlike, say, the Pennsylvania Railroad).

It's not major--obviously the Erie Canal more or less followed the path of least resistance so it's not surprising the railroad did as well. But it's certainly not flat which would presumably make it difficult to put modern high speed rail along a similar route that was competitive with flying.

High speed rail can take the same grades as regular rail, so far as I know. And on the Water Level Route, there is no grade that gives any kind of problem to regular rail. So, it may not be flat, but it's not non-flat enough to be any kind of an obstacle.

Now, if you wanted to say that going up the Hudson clear to Albany before turning west - essentially, taking two sides of a right triangle instead of the hypotenuse - added too much distance for a serious high speed rail line, I could maybe listen to that. If you said that following the Hudson forced you into too many curves, which limited the speed, I could maybe listen to that. But the grades? No way. Not a problem.

The Acela from NYC to DC is "particularly good." I rode it, and it's already popular.

The others... well, check on status of the "high-speed rail" from SF to LA, which was going to be only twice as fast as driving, at most. If it ever gets built.

And that's if you don't factor in getting to and from the train stations, since unlike Europe, most people in CA aren't a tram ride away from downtown.

My main issue with the Acela is it’s only partially high-speed. It only hits top speed of 150mph on a short stretch between Boston and NY. And due to turns on this stretch, it only averages ~70mph. The rest of the line is capped at 135mph. Over the whole DC-Boston route, it saves about an hour over regular rail, but it could/should be even faster.

One of the big wins of Acela was it got the route north of New Haven electrified which saves a good often 30 minutes off the pre-Acela regional train run because an engine switch is no longer necessary even for the non-Acela runs. Would have been nice for Acela to be higher speed overall--it's usually not that practical for a Boston to DC run especially given that both cities have pretty convenient transit links to their airports.

But I suspect the cost delta compared to Acela as realized would have been huge given how built up most of the corridor is. And it's still pretty competitive with flying unless you have an early meeting and can't/don't want to go down the night before from BOS/RTE to NYP.

Yeah, I'd add that in both NY and DC, the train station is a much shorter distance between where you're likely to be and where you probably want to go. Penn Station and Union Station are pretty convenient.

Reagan/National is pretty good for the Metro as well. Presumably the airport->Manhattan situation still kinda sucks though I haven't personally experienced it recently.

Oddly enough, I was staying in NYC in a friend's place near Gracie Mansion, and La Guardia was amazingly convenient.

It has kinda that Mad Men vibe, too.

> This reddit post [1] comparing the French railway network in 1910 to what was still available in 2014 is just depressing.

Well don't be depressed because that second map is obviously and totally wrong.

It's even mentioned in the comments of the reddit link if you scroll down enough. The maps should actually be pretty much the same.

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