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
There are a number of reasons for this. Principally, the United States government has spent a lot of money over the past 75 years on an interstate highway system. This road expenditure is an inducement to drive. It makes most other forms of transportation less commercially viable.
Sometime after world war II, passenger service started to decline in competition with the new roads and greater car ownership. Eventually, this service was not profitable for the railroads. However, various rules from the federal government required them to continue offering passenger service.
Ultimately, in 1971 or thereabouts, the federal government made a deal by which the struggling railroads could stop offering passenger service. The federal government would wrap up that passenger service into something that would be a government run corporation, Amtrak.
Since that time, Amtrak has struggled to invest in the infrastructure needed to make itself successful. It’s not a politically popular issue. Many elected officials assert that Amtrak should make a profit or be self-sustaining. Unfortunately, Amtrak inherited the deferred maintenance and other problems of the railroads that were operating passenger service previously. Moreover, Amtrak doesn’t own any of the track that it runs on and therefore has to compete with the freight trains.
Order for there to be good passenger service across the United States, elected officials would have to decide to invest heavily in rail infrastructure and transit in the same way that they subsidize airports and roads. This is unlikely to happen because it’s not a politically popular cause.
I think the other reason that bears mentioning is the mere size of the United States. To achieve a dense enough network of passenger rail would require a lot more for a country the size of the United States then it would for the entirety of Western Europe. People here are just a lot more spread out and there are a lot more open spaces. It’s most of our cities were developed after cars, even cities to sprawl out.
To recap, the predecessor railroads to Amtrak did not maintain good quality passenger service. Amtrak inherited all of their problems. There is no will now nor has there been any will in the past to thoroughly fix Amtrak with adequate funding for a rail system that would serve people adequately. It’s a big task because of how spread out we are and how big the country is.
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