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MxSelfDestruct
@MxSelfDestruct

the fact that american and canadian rail is so pathetic pisses me off so much because these are literally the perfect countries for high-speed rail. very flat, lots of smallish cities with very fucking little in between, could hardly be more ideal. hell, 90% of canada's population lives in two straight lines along the southern border. hell, we used to have fucking national rail networks one hundred years ago. and yet.

and yet. a train from PDX to SEA costs about $100 US and takes longer than driving. a ticket from Vancouver to Toronto costs over two thousand dollars and three days. china is full of fucking mountains and they've somehow managed to put high speed rail everywhere, what's our excuse?


zumphry
@zumphry
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in reply to @MxSelfDestruct's post:

i think the most common "excuse" is that it's not profitable... i agree, there should be more rails, foot- and bicycle-paths and less roads.

the only thing i think i "need" a car for actually would be to relocate

I'm not defending North America's lack of viable passenger rail by any means... but a thing I've heard train enthusiasts point out before is that we actually have a vast & efficient rail infrastructure, it's just entirely dedicated to freight. Trying to operate fast passenger rail on the same lines as much larger & slower cargo trains would be a logistical impossibility, to the point that we'd have to build an entirely new passenger rail infrastructure to do it.
Which we could and should, but it'd be a huge & disruptive project.