Dear Europeans and East Asians: to paraphrase Douglas Adams, America is big. Really big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist, but that's just peanuts to an American.
I've been to Japan and been a passenger on the Shinkansen, and as the article says, I wept. I'm also well aware of the disconcerting contrast with the totally dysfunctional Amtrak—I've taken the Silver Star from NY to DC many times.
I tell my foreign friends the reason why the most technologically advanced country in the world has a third-world, Soviet-era train system is because Amtrak labour is expensive and incompetent, our government is so deeply in debt that they haven't invested enough in infrastructure for us to have a modern train system, and public transportation is a political football in the US Congress. After all, $117 billion USD isn't chump change. And if we weren't spending $664.84 billion per year on the DOD and military, we'd easily have enough for up to date trains. [1]
Also not helping trains is the fact that more than any other country on Earth, Americans love cars. Not a little. A lot.
This doesn't mean we won't have great trains someday. I hope that day is coming soon, but currently trains don't scale well in the USA.
[1] US military budget for the 2011 fiscal year.
I've been to Japan and been a passenger on the Shinkansen, and as the article says, I wept. I'm also well aware of the disconcerting contrast with the totally dysfunctional Amtrak—I've taken the Silver Star from NY to DC many times.
I tell my foreign friends the reason why the most technologically advanced country in the world has a third-world, Soviet-era train system is because Amtrak labour is expensive and incompetent, our government is so deeply in debt that they haven't invested enough in infrastructure for us to have a modern train system, and public transportation is a political football in the US Congress. After all, $117 billion USD isn't chump change. And if we weren't spending $664.84 billion per year on the DOD and military, we'd easily have enough for up to date trains. [1]
Also not helping trains is the fact that more than any other country on Earth, Americans love cars. Not a little. A lot.
This doesn't mean we won't have great trains someday. I hope that day is coming soon, but currently trains don't scale well in the USA.
[1] US military budget for the 2011 fiscal year.