this post was submitted on 11 Apr 2025
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Because the tracks are all owned by private entities and slow, long barely regulated cargo trains take precedence over passenger rail.
Oh and building new rails through expensive suburbs between the cities is prohibitively expensive because of our eminent domain laws.
Also: NIMBY
That's what's been a major problem for California HSR.
Long slow freight trains make sense for the things they are used for in the US. Europe is worse than the US for not having those long slow freight trains.
Fast passengers trains make sense for moving humans around. The US is worse of for not having them.
The point is don't compare passenger and freight trains. They have different constraints and should not be mixed.
The problem in the US is that there aren’t separate tracks for passenger rail, and that the freight trains are owned by the same company that owns the tracks so they can tell Amtrak to wait.
Also those companies have been making trains longer and longer, so long they don’t fit in the sidetracks. So even if they wanted to be nice to Amtrak they can’t.
The solution would be to build a passenger rail network but then you run into regulations and eminent domain and NIMBYism.
They don't just cause problems for Amtrak either. Sometimes trains are so long that, when parked, there's no where to put them except right through the middle of a town, blocking roads
Where passenger rail makes the most sense Amtrak owns their own tracks (with a couple exceptions) and they still can't figure out how to run great service.
Maybe it’s just because Americans are idiots who can’t do things right, then.
Americans are humans. We are not smarter or dumber than any other human. We might be stupid in different ways from you, but those are subtitle variations and mostly about people (everyone) ignoring how they are stupid.
I am, unfortunately, an American. Though not by choice.
And compared to other countries we are far stupider.