What will accelerate the passenger train system in the US?

Question

You would think the the rails would play a major role in helping reduce emissions.

Answer 1

They already do. Freight is shipped by rail. An amazing tonnage of freight goes this way.

The US is too big to have practical passenger rail. Air is faster and cheaper.

Answer 2

Sit down and do some basic calculations on the number of passengers carried by cross-country airline flights per day in the US. Then compute the number of trains per day that would have to run to get that same passenger density. I forget what it comes out to in terms of trains per day, it's been a while since I did this exercise, but you find the existing rail structure comes nowhere near close enough to being able to support the demand. There isn't the rolling stock, or the rails to run it on.

If you want to dream, you might envision a 200 mph average train running from LA to NYC. That would take 15 hrs (approx.) of travel time, connecting maybe Denver and Chicago as well. That sort of thing might be practical from a social engineering perspective (people would have to get used to the idea of not getting home in a day like they can now), but to rework the transcontinental railbeds to take high-speed trains is realistically not going to happen.

I like trains, my grandfather was a railroad engineer (not in the sense of driving the trains but in the sense of engineering the rail beds and trestles and things). I wish that long ago we had committed to making them both fast enough to compete with air travel and run on time. My favorite way to travel on the BosWash corridor is Amtrak, but it's not going to be a serious transcontinental option in our lifetimes.

Answer 3

Airfare is cheap and so is gas, a better strategy would be to take trains to popular tourist destinations connecting from international airports.
For eg. tourists coming to California would try and visit say Sanfransisco, Universal studios, Disneyland,Hollywood. these are the most famous spots world over.
If by some way they can be linked conveniently with trains then the tourists will prefer to take the train route, no one prefers driving in the touring country unless absolutely essential.
Same could be extended to make a scenic route train journey from say west coast popular destination to East coast popular destination and so on.

Answer 4

The attitude is still that if you don't own your own car, you are somehow a lesser person.

I just say that as a person who hates driving. That's why I take the bus. I still think global warming is a giant hoax. I'm all for reducing pollution though. The smog is horrible sometimes.

Answer 5

as you well know,president franklin d. roosevelt was an advicate for saving our natural resources as much as possible and yes, he refused to fly on planes andtook trains instead and he used to talk about how the rail system was the 'lifeblood of america',i suggest that all college students set up on their computer a seperate email section to save all email addresses of all senators and eps, then build an email and save it to themselves to mass email all of our eleted people

Answer 6

Private transport and trucks are cheap and fuel is cheap (relatively, believe it or not!). Will need higher fuel taxes or government action I am afraid.