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Comment by ericmay | Hacker News Reader

Yep, it's misleading. The America is big argument fails to hold water once you actually take a look at a map. Take Columbus for example where we're within just a couple hours by train (could be less if we had any sort of seriousness about our country) away from:

  Chicago
  Detroit
  Cleveland
  Cincinnati 
  Indianapolis
  Pittsburgh

and maybe just a few hours away from other cities like Toronto, Buffalo, Louisville, and more.

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The US has the largest rail network in the world (for now). It’s hugely dominated by freight.

It’s not for lack of rail lines we don’t have good passenger service it’s a priority and preference issue.

If you got a fast train between Indianapolis and Cleveland what would you do with it? Neither has reasonable public transit and aren’t dense cities that are good for walking. They also are only 4.5 hours away from each other by car, something residents of both largely own.

Chicken-egg problem with the density. But we know that things can change and it's always surprising when we're always very open to changing things when it comes to technology, but other areas we're not so open to it. Amsterdam is a canonical example [1] or how you can fix infrastructure.

Example: I am not the biggest soccer fan in the world, but I might take a train down to Cincinnati and get dinner, stay the night, and watch Columbus play Cincinnati. I'm not doing that with a car because of parking and it being a big hassle. If I can take a train down there, I'm way more likely to go. Once I get there the very first time I'll just arrive in the downtown area, plenty to walk around to see and do. The same is true for the reverse trip. Someone coming from Cincinnati can arrive in the Short North in Columbus and walk anywhere they want from German Village to Downtown to Ohio State's campus.

I'm not entirely sure about Cleveland (haven't been in a while) or Indianapolis (haven't been maybe ever?) w.r.t to walking around, but in the example I gave you can see there is plenty to do with a train that gets you from one of the example cities to another and it only improves as more and more people use the service.

Funny actually. What you were saying kind of applies to cars too. You'd just drive through or around Indianapolis. After all once you park there's nothing to do and nowhere to go.

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2015/may/05/amsterdam-bic...

I'm shocked to learn that only a 1%, yes, ONE percent of American rail network is electrified. At least according to wikipediahttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_rail_tran...

> They also are only 4.5 hours away from each other by car, something residents of both largely own.

Not to sound too flippant but this is the most American thing I've read that doesn't involve guns. Being in the UK, the idea of "only" being 4.5 hours away by car is unreal. This is exactly the kind of thing getting the train should be perfect for.

For context: that's longer than Manchester to London, essentially opposite ends of England!

Indiana has “constitutional carry” which means that you need no licensing to carry a firearm, concealed or otherwise.

It's only misleading if you disregard the rest of my comment :-)

You have identified a part of the USA with a decent density of cities - nice! That is exactly what I think. There are pockets where rail makes sense, and should be built up. But even this area is not nearly as dense as Germany, England, Belgium, Italy, etc, so I fail to see why it makes sense to compare this to the EU.

There are lots of pockets in Europe that aren't that dense, they still have good public transport, as least compared to the US.

It always really funny when American point at some place, and say 'look how not dense' and then there is like a city of 200+ people there. Sure maybe not close to other cities. But any city that size should have its own S-Bahn system at least.

Right, but that's where the vast majority of the population is too. It's not that there are pockets where rail makes sense, rail just makes sense and should be built up.

> But even this area is not nearly as dense as Germany, England, Belgium, Italy, etc, so I fail to see why it makes sense to compare this to the EU.

Why would you compare America to the EU anyway then?

-edit-

Sorry I also wasn't trying to disregard your comment, I just thought it wasn't a great argument (you're a great person though I'm sure! :) )

There are other factors to trains not being viable in the states: cost to build. Every project they try, it’s almost always a financial disaster.

Sure but I was commenting on the "too big" argument which I think we can say is just factually incorrect at this point.

To address your points I think it's a much more nuanced conversation. I'd argue that car-only infrastructure is actually a gigantic financial disaster as well but it requires additional examination.

I think trains amd especially the rails mostly are funded through other ways (government/ taxes) something which americans are not too fond of.

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