In movies I often see cars used for long distance travel and not trains. I can’t imagine having to always drive for a long time everytime I need to commute long distances. Sorry for the shallow question, I’ve never been to the USA.
In: Technology
Three reasons: because industry lobbyists (mostly the airline industry) have spent a lot of money on discouraging high-speed rail development; because Americans value their cars, and see road trips as a staple cultural practice to be enjoyed rather than an onerous burden to be endured; and because the US is really, *really*, ***really*** big.
For example, it’s over 1100 miles (over 1800 km) to go from just Seattle to Los Angeles. It’s over 1700 miles (over 2700 km) from Seattle to Chicago–and you have to go across the largest mountain range in North America.
I’ve taken an Amtrak train from (near) the Pacific Coast out to Chicago. It took more than two *full days.* Even if you could ride a continuous-speed bullet train over that distance, it would still take *ten hours* in the fastest bullet trains on Earth on a straight-line connection. And that doesn’t even get you from one coast to the other! To get from Seattle to New York City overland, it’s nearly 2900 miles (over 4600 km), and again, even the fastest bullet trains on Earth would take 12 hours or more, and more typical bullet trains would take 15 hours or more. (The “or more” is because that’s 15 hours assuming the train goes perfectly at maximum speed the entire time, which is not realistic.)
So yeah. Driving is part of our culture, we have lobbyists actively fighting against the idea of high-speed rail, and we live on an insanely large landmass.
If you want a physical intuition for how big the US is, flying from Seattle to Los Angeles is equivalent to flying from Berlin to Istanbul. Flying from Seattle to Chicago is very nearly the same distance as flying from Lisbon to Warsaw. Flying from Seattle to New York City is equivalent to flying from Edinburgh to Cairo. There aren’t single trains that connect distances this far apart in Europe, and there certainly wouldn’t be bullet trains doing so.
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