High-Speed Trains in the US?

demondawn asks: "Countries around the world are researching and adopting high-speed rail systems, but the U.S. seems to be behind the bandwagon. How do Americans feel about the adoption of a high-speed rail system in the U.S.? How do people in nations that have already adopted high-speed rail feel about their services? And how about tourists who have travelled either to or from the U.S. feel about public transportation around the world?"

Comments

Geography and Culture Driven

[harmic]

I'm an Aussie who has lived some years in Europe, and I've come to the conclusion that the take up or otherwise of public transport is largely culture driven.

Here in Australia the rail system is virtually non-existant - high or low speed. But I can see a lot of commonality with the situation in the US.

Population density in Aus is far lower than the US, let alone Europe or Japan. Our population is mainly centered in one large city in each state, with the closest of these being ~900km apart. This makes air travel the only option these days.

But on top of that we have ended up with a very US-style culture when it comes to many things - and car ownership as an expression of individuality is one of them. Even within the big cities, most people drive everywhere (even when that results in being stuck in a huge traffic jam). Building more tollways seems to be the government response to this. Meanwhile much of the public transport infrastructure has been privatised - and we all know private enterprise does not like to spend money without a guaranteed return.

Every so often, a dreamy eyed train lover will propose a high speed rail link along the most trafficed route in the country (Sydney-Canberra-Melbourne) but it never gets off the ground.

Re:Trains are best for medium distances

[lindsayt]

We had trains and they simply could not compete with the plane and the car. Planes are much faster and more flexible for travel across the country but the automobile, however, is the ultimate train killer. Nothing else beats it's flexibility, convenience, price, autonomy and privacy.

Actually, you're almost right but not quite. The automobile wasn't the train killer, General Motors was the train killer. Most people don't know that in the 1950s General Motors corporation actually asked and received the right from the US government to buy and destroy rail corridors, which they paid the US government for the right to do. They intentionally destroyed millions of miles of railroad track in this country.

Ever wonder why it is that in the 1900s railroad barons controlled the US and yet today there isn't any infrastructure for trains? It's because General Motors tore it up to make sure that trains wouldn't be practical and that they would have no competition. This was combined with a massive advertisement campaign to convince Americans that automobiles were the wave of the future, and that to be modern and advanced, one needed a car. Nobody talked about the rail getting ripped up by GM workers.

Now that's a reason to be outraged, and it rather undermines the argument that cars won out in the US because they were simply more adapted for the US problems. Remember that in the 1940s the US had a very extensive rail network but no freeways and very few good highways - have you seen pictures of Route 66? And that was the best highway in the country at the time. Cars were horribly impractical and slow compared to trains in the 1940s; but by the 1960s that problem was solved by General Motors' capitalistic, monopolistic decision.

Purposely and maliciously destroying national infrastructure is what conquering armies do to the vanquished as a way of making sure they never rise up again; and in war it's now considered a war crime to do such an act needlessly. And yet General Motors was rewarded with a 30-year near-monopoly of the US transportation markets...

Take your damned tinfoil hat off!

[aquarian]

The automobile was indeed the train killer, not GM. This GM-dismantling-the-railroads story has no credibility whatsoever.

People always point to the Los Angeles case, where the excellent light rail system was bought by a consortium of GM, Firestone, and Standard Oil. But this was not to dismantle it. It was to make sure they were invested in whatever transportation did eventually dominate in a fast growing city. At the time no one knew. In fact they did operate the railroad for many more years, in spite of dwindling ridership. They would have continued, too. But the citizens of Los Angeles were banging down the doors of City Hall, demanding the trolley cars be removed -- because they were blocking traffic.

Read your history. Talk to some long time Los Angeles residents. This is the truth.