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Why Trains would NEVER WORK in the USA (thelemmy.club)
submitted 1 day ago by to c/memes@slrpnk.net
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[–] 7 points 22 hours ago (4 children)

the worst part of Amtrak is how often it's late, making it not only more expensive than driving or flying but also less reliable.

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  • [–] 3 points 18 hours ago* (3 children)

    Old story. That happens when so much of the tracks is owned by freight rail, so little proper passenger rail infrastructure exists and laws that would require passenger rails to be given priority being so weakly enforced and largely ignored, never mind that the infrastructure is maintained as freight rail needs it, which is really bad for passenger rail purposes.

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  • [–] 1 point 18 hours ago

    This is the bigger thing I think, Luke AmTrak at least west of the Mississippi doesn't have a whole lot of options for long distance travel, there's functionally one train that goes west from Chicago and one train that goes east to Chicago and that's only if you want to be in the north, but if the rails were govt owned, it would be easier to justify adding more trains and more destinations because they could start making the service note reliable.

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  • [–] 0 points 18 hours ago (1 child)

    it wouldn't be as much of an issue if Amtrak ran more than once a day in megacities and thrice a week elsewhere

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  • [–] 2 points 18 hours ago

    It would be even more of an issue because freight rail would fight the higher track usage of Amtrak even more, making the service even more unreliable. Amtrak needs its own infrastructure and between metropolitan areas there needs to be HSR corridors. This is quite a task even in countries with functioning institutions and capabilities to build infrastructure at a reasonable price. The US isn't such a country.

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