How to keep trains as popular in North America as they are in Europe

[dmg86]

yes. If you expect railroads to do it. Many of the east coast railroads in the areas you mention are essentially bankrupt or had no interest in passenger service. The biggest bankruptcy before Enron was Penn Central which owned many of the railroads in the areas you mention.

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[Mark E.]

yes. If you expect railroads to do it. Many of the east coast railroads in the areas you mention are essentially bankrupt or had no interest in passenger service. The biggest bankruptcy before Enron was Penn Central which owned many of the railroads in the areas you mention.

The money wasn't there partly because there was plenty of money spent on new Interstate highways, that took far more right-of-way than grade separated rail lines. After all, everybody can drive on highways; rail line are owned by industries.

 

[marathag]

The money wasn't there partly because there was plenty of money spent on new Interstate highways, that took far more right-of-way than grade separated rail lines. After all, everybody can drive on highways; rail line are owned by industries.

But Interstates didn't need as much effort to keep grade changes to a minimum. Interstates go use form 4-7% grade elevation
Mainline Railroads?
anything more than 2% is rare

Even more so for curves.

 

[Mark E.]

But Interstates didn't need as much effort to keep grade changes to a minimum. Interstates go use form 4-7% grade elevation
Mainline Railroads?
anything more than 2% is rare

Even more so for curves.

Rail rights-of-way can be rather narrow. Elevation/overpasses helps grade separation. In extreme situation, they can be cogged as they are in Switzerland and Colorado. Of course, this is not a high speed application, but in rough elevations, nor are cars. A century ago, those 2% grades served town after town.

 

[marathag]

A century ago, those 2% grades served town after town.

Around WWI, mainline RRs would avoid that, given limitations on adhesion of steam locomotives, and even a 2% grade required the Engineer to be on the ball for water level in the boiler, even that 2% change could cause issues. Logging locos were designed to run on grades, while other engines were not
That's why you had such effort put into works like the Tehachapi Loop, to keep things under 2%, while not blasting huge paths thru bedrock

 

[Comte de Geneve]

I respect Bytor's enthusiasm for train travel and he paints a pleasant picture of frequent and easy train travel across the midwest and north east. I took the commuter railroads for 22 years here in the Chicago area and even with the relatively spartan Chicago area Metra service I must preferred the train rather han trying to drive into the Chicago Loop. I have also enjoyed rail travel in Europe, including the true HSR Line between Frankfort and Koln. How do we get there, it's political will, not technical capabilities that is required. This doesn't happen without several cultural and political changes:
1. Acceptance of European style socialism leading to the nationalization of the railroads. Only a government owned system is going to construct and maintain that style of rail net.
2. Popular rejection of and government action to prevent auto-suburbs after WWII. William Levitt doesn't get his towns. Long Island remains potato fields. This may well require a less robust American Industrial response to WWII and the return of the economy to near Depression-level sluggishness after WW II. It may even require butterflying away WWII and the dynamic changes it brought to America. Without WWII the economy likely remains in a sluggish stupor for much longer which may well lead to the adoption of something more socialistic than the New Deal.
3. No 40K Interstate system for National Defense, leading from points 1 & 2.
Essentially you need a poorer, denser, less individualistic and more political left-wing post WWII or post-Depression America to maintain an European style rail net in current USA. No fifties as we knew them! Yes, this sounds like Debbie Downer, but OTL post-war America is based on the individualistic car culture and any form of public transit (trains or buses) was for the losers who couldn't afford cars. Making Trains as Popular in North America as in Europe cannot happen in OTL post-war America.

 

[Fabius Maximus]

In an ATL where trains stayed as popular in North America as in Europe and the infrastructure continue to be built and upgraded rather than disused and closed down, such that HSR was added starting in the late-1970 or early 1980s, I think it's a reasonable assumption that the commuter rail options from the Chicago suburbs would instead be some form of regional express rail that would not be on limited schedules and that it take significantly less than and hour to get to Chicago Union Station and that it would not be schedule limited, either. For example, Aurora to Union onthe BNSF line, about 65km (40mi) woldn't take an hour but probably only 20 minutes.

A USA with more public-transit use probably sees less urban sprawl as well (American suburbs generally presuppose everyone using a car for every trip), which would make intra-city commuting times shorter.

2. Popular rejection of and government action to prevent auto-suburbs after WWII. William Levitt doesn't get his towns. Long Island remains potato fields. This may well require a less robust American Industrial response to WWII and the return of the economy to near Depression-level sluggishness after WW II. It may even require butterflying away WWII and the dynamic changes it brought to America. Without WWII the economy likely remains in a sluggish stupor for much longer which may well lead to the adoption of something more socialistic than the New Deal.

Post-War Europe didn't see Great Depression levels of sluggishness, and still managed to keep its rail network. The problem isn't wealth of industry, it's the mindset that getting in your car every time you need to buy a pint of milk is some great blow for freedom.

 

[Fabius Maximus]

You can disagree with my all you want but you arre wrong, plan sinple fact, you are wrong. Washington DC, Chicago, Boston, New York, Paris, London, Tokyo etc etc etc ALL of them have one thing in common. The streets are as. packed as. they can get. If people prefered Subways GB would have a tax on using the Subway to force people off the over croweded subways but they tax you for DRIVING not riding. Why? Because more people (by far) would prefer to drive if roads were not so full or other issues (lack of parking, coat of insurance over taxed gas, etc)

Have you ever been on the London Underground during rush hour? It gets absolutely packed. By your logic, this means that people must prefer to use public transport rather than driving.

Also, the reason cars in London are taxed isn't because the streets are full, it's because having lots of cars packed together is bad for air quality. Public transport produces fewer emissions per person transported, so if you want to lower air pollution, it makes sense to try and get more people onto buses/trains rather than cars.

Come to think of it, that might be a way to get a more rail-friendly America: have some big scare over air pollution, leading to more emphasis on public transport, walkable cities, etc. Ideally before suburbanisation really sets in, because it would be easier to design suburbs to be more public-transport-friendly than to retcon car-based suburbs to be easier to get around.

 

[Comte de Geneve]

Re Fabius Maximus, Post-War Europe, until the 30 glorious years took off, was below Great Depression levels of economic despair thanks to WWII. But yet is it's the mindset that matters, although in the USA the getting a bottle of milk mindset is between walking or driving to the local store and not rail or car. You cannot get a rail-friendly USA without blocking the auto-suburbs of the 50's. Once the Beaver has landed it's all over for a rail-friendly America. The pre-WWII suburbs were rail-friendly because they were laid out around commuter stations for the sake of the upper-middle class businessmen who lived there. Levittown and its ilk broke that model. Air pollution was not a scare issue until well into the 60's and then only in some areas (like LA).

 

[Dan1988]

And would point out that a lot of people seem to be rather unimaginative and think only of plopping HSR routes into the middle of the mostly shitty passenger infrastructure we have today in North America, rather than considering what I actually said:

"How to keep trains as popular in North America as they are in Europe"

That's because, for the most part, the vast majority of possible PODs to make that work are basically ASB, without something like the Railway Conversion League in operation in the US. It also has a problem where the basic assumption is "North America = the US" when lurking behind all of this is Canada. At one point, Canada met some of the guidelines @Comte de Geneve points out, yet even then there was more enthusiasm for the Trans-Canada Highway (which is non-Interstate standard, as expressways are usually provincial jurisdiction) and suburbanization than maintaining the duopoly of the CPR and the government-owned CN Rail. As far as the US is concerned, the RR companies were generally not interested in passenger service at all except as advertising vehicles (hence the "hotel on wheels" reputation they tend to have), preferring to concentrate on freight service instead - which is why the passenger infrastructure is shitty. On top of that, the RR companies were long hated by many Americans (and, for that matter, both CN Rail and the CPR in Western Canada), and hence a good portion of the Progressive Era-related reforms for the transport sector, such as the ICC (plus whatever international agreements, at a country-level and/or industry standards, could be agreed upon between Ottawa and Washington/New York).

So, the better options to have what you want lay not in the 20th century, but in the 19th century (and in another board within the forums), when the technology was new. There's a reason why people are fixiated on HSR on top of the existing infrastructure rather than something more fundamental - for example, when television became a thing, cinema fought back with widescreen and color (especially for epic stuff, like Cecil B. de Mille's big-budget 1956 remake of his earlier 1920s-era silent film, The Ten Commandments), so the idea here is basically why not try something similar in the US. Which doesn't really work out in practice (even the closest thing to that around that time, the TEE, never really went for that high of an ambition). I hate to be deterministic, but for the most part unless stuff is worked on sooner rather than later, than it's going to happen that much of what you mentioned will not happen - in a contest between a car and a train, the former is going to win. Rather than a contest, I would instead see more of a complementary role between them (indeed, I'm thinking more of a Swiss approach to things, at various regional levels rather than as one continental system).

So the Progressive Era would need a different approach to train travel, which would be exacerbated by the Grand Trunk bankruptcy (one of the largest at the time, well before Penn Central), which would have to force both the US and Canada to cooperate. On top of that, the main target for the reforms was the NYNH&H (think of it like the Microsoft or Amazon.com of its day, for comparison with 1990s or 21st-century stuff), which was fiercely protective of its monopoly (combined with shitty service all 'round). So the NYNH&H would have to be addressed; in post-1900 pre-WW1, options are somewhat limited but one can try to force a breakup (Teddy Roosevelt's administration was big on such things), which opens up competition in the Northeast. On top of that would be the most difficult of things to tackle, which informed a lot of the worldviews of many Americans (and would eventually shape the perception of public transit in general), would be racism and particularly the Jim Crow system. Dismantling the extension of Jim Crow to transport would help out a lot, even if there was resistance to it. As long as addressing racism is delayed, you're never going to address the "hotel on wheels" reputation passenger rail has in the US, as well as making it more comfortable to introduce more comprehensive social reforms after addressing the railways (Canada is a different story - here, focus would probably be more on defusing linguistic tensions between English-speaking and French-speaking communities through equal service, although addressing race here would also be helpful).

 

[Bytor]

Bytor,
You are actually making my point. I did the same analysis for Paris to Nice and got similar numbers. So two high profile routes in France's high speed rail network aren't completely HSR.
What makes you think the US would be different?

Where did I say that single rail line in the North America would be HSR in my proposed ATL? I mean, did you even read what I wrote?

Title: How to keep trains as popular in North America as they are in Europe

The title mostly says it all.

That both countries in their populated areas have inter-city passenger rail networks as dense as France and Germany have at the same time. Like east of 100°W in the USA, the Pacific Coast, southern Ontario, southern Quebec, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, plus corridors to any major cities outside those areas Like Calgary, Regina, Denver, Salt Lake City

The idea being that both federal governments (and many provincial and state ones, too) are seriously considering building high-speed rail when the Oil Crisis arrives in the 1970s. End goal is that by the time 1990 arrives, both countries each have at least 700 km of HSR lines in operation, and 2,400 km by 2020 (the same as OTL France, roughly), or more.

What needs to change to make that happen?

(Emphasis mine.)

Boston→NYC→DC would be ~440mi
DC→Pittsburgh→Cleveland→Chicago is ~725mi
Los Angeles to San Francisco is ~385mi

That would be the same length of HSR tracks as France has today, as per the top end in my post.

But, really, the US economy is so much larger than Frances, so if the same level of commitment to rail infrastructure were there, don't you think the USA could have built more than 1,500 miles worth in the same amount of time that France built that much?

What of the Federal Aid Road Act of 1916 had instead been the Federal Aid Rails and Roads Act, providing equivalent funding to states for building metropolitan passenger railways? And then instead of the Federal Aid Highway Acts in 1921 and 1956, they had been the Federal Highways and Rail Corridor Acts, also providing money for intercity passenger railways such that the base was already there, like In Europe?

Distances are bigger

So what? We're not talking about transcontinental HSR lines, NYC to LA.

and geography is harder.

The geography is not harder. The Appalachians are pitifully small compared to the Alps between France and Italy, and aside from that it's pretty much flat or small hills to the foothills of the Rockies.

But, hey, if we can build 400-series highways through the Niagara Escarpment, or Interstates across the Appalachians, if the same interest in railways were there as there are in freeways, then I bet you a few HSR routs can get built.

The geographically easiest route bypasses the biggest intermediate cities. It's the old NY Central route, NY, Albany, Rochester, Buffalo, Erie, Cleveland, Chicago. The PA railroad route was NY, Philly, Pittsburgh. Bigger cities harder geography. You aren't building both.

Why do you think that large cities and HSR are incompatible? In Europe before HSR the 110mph (177km/h) were already there into the middle of the cities and towns, even down to villages of only a few thousand. HSR trains need 5 to 10km to speed up and slow down anyways, so they use those original tracks for the last bits into the city centre station, and first bits out again. Why do you think North America, in a timeline where rail transit remained just as popular and funded as in Europe would be any different?

The first LGV from Paris to Lyon didn't build a full 424km of brand new tracks, BTW. Much of the track was already straight enough and well-ballasted enough to handle 250+km/h trains and their heavier locomotives. After all, where did you think SNCF did the testing before a specifically high-speed corridor was built?

Paris to Lyon is about 240 miles and takes about 2 hours, 120 mph. NY - Chicago is 900-1000 miles depending on the route. At Paris to Lyon speeds that's 8+ hours of transit time. I grew up outside of NYC. I have family in and around DC. It took the same amount of time (about 6 hours) to get there if you flew, drove, or took the train. This is with Newark airport being really close to Newark Penn Station.

So? I already gave you a table of common speeds and times for New York to Chicago. The point of that was to show that it is time-wise competitive with flying, and comfort-wise. NYC to Chicago is at the outer edge of what is competitive with flying, to be sure, but it still is.

Would you prefer to compare NYC→DC? 445km or 277mi. The there is no HSR link there and currenly it takes Amtrak 3.5 hours and 9 stops in between without considering how to get too and from the stations. To make that a 6 hour train trip, as you say, that an hour to 90 minutes travel at both ends to and from the train stations. From Washington Union on public transit that puts you some place like Annandale or Reston, according to Google Maps suggested transit trips. Still inside the beltway.

At 200km/h (125mph) speeds and two or three stops along the way you'll probably average 160km/h and take just over 2.75h to do it. Express in just under 2.25 hours. add on 30 minutes public transit from home to city centre station, and 15 minute at the far end to the hotel (or workplace), that makes 3.5h for an all-stops or 3h for an express, door-to-door. For somebody like you visiting family rathe rthe a work or a hotel in the downtown business district, make that 30 minutes from central/union station. We're talking about an ATL where the rail infrastructure not only survived but was kept up and upgraded, just like in Europe, so, we're not talking about not just a 30 minute metro ride across the river to Arlington, 30 minute MARC trip to Landover (I did that one when I went to DC about 10 years ago). We're also talking about a 30 minute regional express rail trip running at 177km/h (110mph) as far into Virginia as Fredericksburg, Leesburg, or Culpeper.

Notice how that door-too-door express beats the current Amtrak station-to-station by half an hour. Like most Americans and Canadians, you're thinking about current shitty train infra in North America and thiking that's what HSR would give you, but you're wrong.

At 250km/h (160mph) speeds you'll probably average about 205km/h and take a smidgen over 2.25 hours for the all-stops and just under 1.75 hours for the express. Add on the bits at the ends to/from the train station and it's 3 hours home to hotel for the all-stops, 2.5 hours home to hotel for express, and 2.75 for your trip to visit family home-to-home.

At the 350km/h of modern HSR lines getting upgraded in France, Itay, Spain and Germany, it's not quite 1.6 hours for the all stops and 1.25 for the express. Add on the extra to and from the stations bits and you have home to hotel of 2.3 hours for all stops and 2.25 hours for express. Or 2.5 hours for your family visit trip on express.

Flying NYC→DC takes about 1.33 hours, but it's recommended that one arrive 2 hours early at the airport for a domestic flight in the USA to have time to check in, get through security, and walk to your gate. That alone adds up to 3.33 hours. Getting to and from the airport is a chore in and of itself, usually about 1 hour on average, but for the sake of argument let's bias in favour of air travel and say 30 minutes at either end. You're still talking about 4.33 hours for that door-to-door trip

Driving, of course, takes 4-5 hours depending on traffic, possibly up to 6 if my friends who live in the NYC→DC corridor are to be believed.

So, really, even the lowest bar for HSR, 200km/h trains (most set the bar at 250km/h minimum), If I took the express HSR train and you flew, I'd've beaten you to the hotel by by almost an hour and a half. Plus, I would have had more leg room, a comfier seat. With 250km/h trains (real minimum HSR) I beat you by nearly two hours, and by more than 2 hours for modern new or upgraded HSR at 300+km/h.

From 1980 to 200 as countries built out their own HSR networks, it started to cannibalise the domestic air travel markets in the 500km range. From 2000 to 2020 as France, Germany, and the Low Countries started linking their HSR corridors together we saw it start to cannibalise the shorter international air travel market up to 1,000km distances. From about 2015 and on as Swiztzerland, Spain, and Italy connect and build out their patchy HSR networks to France and Germany, we've started to see the first signs of HSR affecting the 1,500km air travel market. That's why flights are so cheap, it's the only way airlines can keep market share and the smaller airlines have either gone bankrupt or been bought up an dtheir

Once the Montpelier to Perpignan HSR corrisor is completed you'll be able to go from Paris to Madrid, 1,600+ km, on tracks that allow 270-320 km/h and the expectation is that it will noticibly affect a significant portion of the air travel between Paris and Madrid, and that the planned HSR corridors from Bordeaux→Bilbao and Toulouse→Huesca will only make it worse. Current work on Genova→Rome and Firenze→Rome for 300km/h and Naples→Messina, plus the Scandinavian countries now building their own 250-300km/h networks.

My general rule these days is if you can drive there in 6 hours, that's the fastest method.

And if the train gets you there in 4 instead of 6, pleas you can read, nap, use the dining car, play cards with your travelling companions.

I don't know about you, but considering 6 hours of wearyingly paying attention to the road as faster than 4 hour hours of relaxing seems a little, well, denialist.

The economics also disfavor rail if you are traveling with kids.

No, they don't. Any form of mas transit is cheaper than cars, and anybody who has ever lived in Europe can tell you that kids are just fine travelling on trains.

 

[marathag]

Come to think of it, that might be a way to get a more rail-friendly America: have some big scare over air pollution, leading to more emphasis on public transport,

The US was a happy adopter of the Automobile to save the inner city from the Horse, and the waste they left behind.
coal burning Steam Engines wasn't a good choice either. Electrics were in their infancy, and needed far more infrastructure, and cable cars were even more expensive

 

[marathag]

Flying NYC→DC takes about 1.33 hours, but it's recommended that one arrive 2 hours early at the airport for a domestic flight in the USA to have time to check in, get through security, and walk to your gate.

More Rail travel, the TSA would also do their security theater there as well.

 

[Fabius Maximus]

Re Fabius Maximus, Post-War Europe, until the 30 glorious years took off, was below Great Depression levels of economic despair thanks to WWII.

The Trente Glorieuses began pretty much immediately after WW2 finished, didn't they? The book that coined the phrase dates the beginning of period to 1946.

But yet is it's the mindset that matters, although in the USA the getting a bottle of milk mindset is between walking or driving to the local store and not rail or car.

I know that people don't normally get public transport to buy groceries, I was more commenting on the mindset that takes hopping into your car for any and every errand to be a good and natural state of affairs.

More Rail travel, the TSA would also do their security theater there as well.

Does literally any other country in the world make rail passengers undergo the same security theatre as air passengers?

 

[Mark E.]

In 1951, I doubt if many could predict passenger railroads would collapse as thoroughly as they did.

America underwent a total change-of-living from the early fifties to late sixties. Passenger rail with sleeper cars was still common in the early fifties, as jet air service would not come along until late in that decade. Major league baseball went no farther south or west than St. Louis, given the constraints of rail travel. By the late sixties, travel changed to jets and cars, homes had a new layout and battery of appliances; television covered the country; audio stereo recording practically created a new entertainment medium. Civil rights, voting rights, women's rights, dress codes, hair styles, birth control, automatic transmission, air conditioning, clothes dryers, etc. all transformed society.

In 1970, many thought we would have colonies on the moon or Mars by now. Instead, we saw a societal order that remained relatively intact for over 40 years. Most of the dramatic changes of the period were in communications, electronics, computers and Internet. At some point, I would say after 2011 and by 2015, society has been making another major change. Most obvious is the decline of traditional retailing. A decade ago, if I wanted aquarium plants for a tank of tropical fish, I went to a pet supply store. Now, they don't stock them. I have to order them on the Internet so they can ship from California. I might say the new "roaring 2020's" will see societal changes as dramatic as those of the sixties.

 

[Mark E.]

I know that people don't normally get public transport to buy groceries, I was more commenting on the mindset that takes hopping into your car for any and every errand to be a good and natural state of affairs.

Go back enough decades and many women born before 1925 never learned to drive. Many were afraid to. My mother didn't. My mother-in-law didn't. Many shopped once a week. They got rides from family members or took taxi cabs, which were common generations ago. They received door-to-door milk/dairy deliveries every few days. Today, these people are long since retired.

 

[marathag]

Go back enough decades and many women born before 1925 never learned to drive. Many were afraid to. My mother didn't. My mother-in-law didn't.

My Mom didn't learn to drive til 1974 or so.
That's about the time you could no longer get the Milk delivered, and she no longer wanted to walk to get groceries every other day or so to the neighborhood grocery that was on the edge of city limits. Oh, and Taxis started charging more, I don't believe they were under Nixon's Price Controls, for when she wanted to go shopping and not bug the family about giving her a ride over to Sears or wherever.

Now when she was a girl, she wouldn't had a problem with getting the horse drawn buggy setup for those longer trips, but that wasn't really an option anymore after WWII, even though our Farm still had horses after she learned how to drive.

 

[GuildedAgeNostalgia]

Just out of curiosity considering they have similar geographic issues, how did Russia's train system develop post 1945 compared to the United States in terms of passenger use? Also how did civilian air travel develop in the Soviet Union?

 

[Mark E.]

Oh, and Taxis started charging more, I don't believe they were under Nixon's Price Controls, for when she wanted to go shopping and not bug the family about giving her a ride over to Sears or wherever.

In many places, there are no taxis or Sears stores. In the sixties, Kresge became K-Mart, Woolworth became Woolco and TG&Y became Family Centers. They are all gone. Major cities had their own upscale department stores: Marshall-Field in Chicago, Famous-Barr in St. Louis, Jones Store in Kansas City. Macy's now has them all. A drive down the commercial district shows an abandoned K-Mart, abandoned Sears, abandoned Shopco (more upscale than K-Mart but not quite Macy's). Another department store is now a clinic. The Mall is renamed Towne Center (with the clinic) and only few jewelry and clothing stores remain. But malls have been on the decline for some time.

 

[Fabius Maximus]

Go back enough decades and many women born before 1925 never learned to drive. Many were afraid to. My mother didn't. My mother-in-law didn't. Many shopped once a week. They got rides from family members or took taxi cabs, which were common generations ago. They received door-to-door milk/dairy deliveries every few days. Today, these people are long since retired.

That's all very well, but I don't see what it has to do with the topic under discussion. After all, most (all?) other first-world countries don't have the same fixation on car use as the USA does.