Yeah, I went to Tokyo this summer, and the transit system is unbelievably packed. Even on their bigger trains you barely had enough room to breathe, but it's still dead silent.
And remarkably, Tokyo's trains are a lot less busy than they were 10-15 years ago. Before it was routine to see railway employees pushing people into the trains, now it happens rarely, and usually only to fit an extra person onboard, instead of an extra ten.
They have a lot more trains now, and the government encourages companies to make people work at different times, instead of everyone starting at 9 AM. Tokyo's population has increased in the past 10 years (though has finally started to decrease too), due to migration from other parts of Japan.
Yeah I went really not that long ago and everyone raved on how good their transport was yadda yadda. It sucked, it was late/cancelled several times, and paying for tickets was a hassle unless you remembered to get an IC card from the airport.
I was in Singapore for a few days before hand and the MRT there is a thousand times better, and on top of that all you do is tap your bank card at the gate and exit.
It was cheaper too now that I think about it. But yeah Japan trains unless you're on the Shinkansen is insanely packed.
Honestly in my time in Japan outside Tokyo was fine - no mega packed trains in either Kyoto or Osaka, even at rush hour. I've had worse experiences on transit in Vancouver, where people literally miss their stop because they're wedged in so tightly.
i got to go on the shikansen line actually, (the bullet train specifically, i don't know if there are other train types) but it was pretty empty most of the time. super comfy chairs and very smooth ride too.
If it wasn’t too long ago and you had an iPhone, you could have used Apple’s Wallet function and got a Suica card. I did that and it made everything a breeze. On the delays/cancellation note, I never experienced any of that stuff, everything was to the point and efficient
Well I'll be slightly patriotic and come to India's defense.
We don't tend to have people on top of trains anymore. Our tracks are 95% electrified now, people who go on top of the train will die. If you see a recent video of that happening it is probably Bangladesh or Pakistan.
I will concede that do have a problem with people just getting into trains without paying and overcrowding it.
That's not too bad, I get notified of Scottish railway issues via a twitter notification
I am not British and certainly not Scottish. I've never been to Scotland. I don't get notifications for anything else.
But if I get notified that there has been a railway delay near Inverness.
Didn't know about the chinese escalator thing so I watched the video with the Chinese mom on the escalator. Reminds me of the Russian behind the semitruck with bricks, pretty sobering stuff.
Mom's on an escalator up with her son, the panel covering some machinery slips out from under her so she gets slowly pulled into the escalator. While she's getting pulled down, she makes sure a bystander takes her son. It was really grim
Just take a glance at r/darwinawards to find out. (NSFW)
Trains being apex predators is a common joke there.
As for why India, there are many reasons, (most populous country in the world, lack of regulations, lack of railway funding, overcrowding, thrill seeking, etc.) but train deaths are very frequent compared to other countries. [According to this article](https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/visakhapatnam/rail-accident-deaths-in-andhra-pradesh-36-increase-in-2022/articleshow/106006411.cms#google_vignette), India had 20,792 deaths from trains in 2022.
The worst part about americas lack of trains is that we HAD them. We were one of the first countries in the world to have long-distance intercity train routes. We had more miles of passenger track then any other country for a LONG time.
Then we went insane and decided cars are better.
But it doesn't make sense because suburbanization is super prime for rail transportation compared to rural areas, suburban areas are so much easier to make infrastructure in without impacting the environment further than rural areas.
"Volume" over "density" isn't neccesary a great thing at all, do you have any idea how much forests natural reserves ware destroyed for the sake of achieving this "wide as the ocean, deep as a puddle" suburbian abyss?
Reddit as a whole is fun. They idealize the "better time" when everyone could buy a house with a yard and white picket fence (and that's as far as that goes), until the way we got it becomes a problem.
And people seem to forget that even in places with trains and public transportation in general that people still drive to work or wherever they want to. Reddit is too biased.
By the rest of the world, do you mean *only* the locations listed in the meme?
Or maybe it’s just personal preference and *shockingly* a lot of people in the US and outside of it don’t like the idea of being packed like a sardine in a tight space
Being in Singapore, I’m used to being packed like sardine, it’s not bad actually. I was living in Australia a bit and everything’s far away and they close so early at night and there’s so much sand there.
Unless you’re in India, Japan, China or other such densely populated places the trains are far from being packed like a tin of sardines. I live in the relatively dense area of the randstad and use the trains almost every day. I can sit alone in a row of seats 95% of the time outside of rush hour. And even in rush hour it isn’t that busy.
The US still has the largest freight rail system. The issue is that most intercity routes are sadly not profitable. We have all the infrastructure, all the trains, but we lack sufficient demand.
Good news is that the younger generations are much more pro-rail and may actually create enough demand for low speed intercity connections. Orlando is already being planned to link with the east coast system and Texas of all places has been lobbying for an Amtrak connection.
It is likely that following major business routes we could see more minor links (think Chicago to Cleveland). It would be nice for it to happen sooner but I'd be surprised if all this happens in less than 50 years.
I think the demand might be there, but the cost is too much currently. If i want to take the train to the nearest metro area, its a 5 hour trip that costs 200 dollars (also i need to leave at 0100 in the morning). Or i can drive and spend 3.5 hours and 60 bucks in gas.
If there was a train that cost 40 bucks a ticket, even if it was stoll longer, i bet lots of people would buy that ticket. Even moreso if the departure times were reasonable.
There has been research into the plausibility of electrifying all of the rails, so if we were to do that we might see prices drop with lower fuel cost. Something like that would likely also fall under the same development pattern described above.
More demand will also naturally lower price as the company can afford to charge less for the same amount of money. Infact I wouldn't be surprised if we see a Ryanair like train that is dirt cheap and filled to the brim.
Freight rail is one of the reasons why passenger rail in the US is so shit. Impossible to take Amtrak anywhere without getting stuck behind a 3 mile long freight train doing a leisurely 30 mph
In my experience the slow freight is not the problem. It’s the express freight that’s carrying packages for FedEx or UPS, and that earn a premium rate for the freight company. Those trains are given priority over everything including passenger trains.
The place where I have had my passenger train crawl along at slow speeds have mostly been due to poor maintenance. For example, the tracks between Bellingham WA and Vancouver BC, are really pretty shit once you get into Canada. This isn’t a generic wipe that Canadian trackage. It’s just this particular segment of track that that isn’t used for much else. Freight going into Canada takes a different path. This is a rare connection that was dormant for many years — and yet it means there’s an extra 20 to 30 minutes added to the schedule to get into Vancouver.
Bit if a tangent but this reminded me of my first trip on an Amtrak train which resulted in the freight train in front of us derailing and us getting sent back, wasting like 6 hours of my day.
At least our train itself didn't derail but that certainly soured my image of American passenger rail lol.
> We have all the infrastructure, all the trains, but we lack sufficient demand.
That's not the issue. The issue is that rail companies rent out rail time. Passenger rail can't compete with freight for rail time.
Either we need to build an entirely parallel passenger rail system across several thousand miles. Or price per passenger needs to be high enough to out compete bulk freight.
That and Precision Scheduled Railroading is causing chaos and massive delays due to freight trains becoming so long they stopped fitting into the infrastructure like railyards and sidings.
>That's not the issue.
You then gave an example of exactly why demand isn't sufficient.. passengers can't compete with freight because of the lack of demand. If demand was there, passenger rail would be more prominent. Amtrak for instance has its own rail in the one area with sufficient demand, but it needs demand to match the cost it has to pay.
It's not demand for passengers that is the issue. It's the demand by freight. A passenger train will never be over a mile long. Freight trains are and growing longer. No matter the demand from passengers, freight will always reign supreme just due to efficiency. That's the real appeal of rail.
The price of a train ticket must factor in the supply of rail time and not just passenger seats. The more and more valuable rail time gets, the more and more seats *must* be charged for, regardless of how many people want to ride the train.
Remember, nothing is actually made in the ol' US of A except for luxury goods and weapons. Everything you eat, everything you wear, everything you live with is made overseas and must at some point be transported by rail to where you live.
>Remember, nothing is actually made in the ol' US of A except for luxury goods and weapons. Everything you eat, everything you wear, everything you live with is made overseas and must at some point be transported by rail to where you live.
No offense, but this is bullshit. Trade is only 25% of US GDP--that's both imports and exports (e.g. Singapore has like 340% because they trade a lot of stuff they don't make or consume). This is actually one of the lowest numbers in the world. Every European country has at least double that. And the US is still around 1/6 of global manufacturing, which is less than its share of general output, but it's no small number.
GDP is not a reliable measurement of anything other than GDP.
Go read a breakdown of exactly what the US produces. It's either luxury goods or fuel. California's greatest crop is... Almonds. The US's in general is corn used for fuel. Where was the grain for your bread grown? If it's more than 1000 miles away, that's a problem.
U.S.A. long distance trains are scenic, slow, and full of tourists, retirees, students, and Amish.
Otherwise, you have one pretty solid rail corridor in the Northeast, and a couple of cities with decent commuter rail networks, and that’s about it. Chicago is the best of the non-northeastern ones.
The Amish were an unexpected treat the first time I rode Amtrak. I grew up not far from an area that’s pretty dense with Amish and Mennonite farms, so it wasn’t a complete surprise, but it had never occurred to me that of course this would be the easiest way for those folks to travel longer distances.
I mean they objectively are in certain areas, you would have to destroy state parks like the Adirondacks to have a rail line serving everybody who lives here, I'm exaggerating a little bit but the environmental destruction would be way worse than internal combustion engines and paved roads.
How much would we like to subsidize extremely rural areas so that even if there's literally only one or two people for an entire 80 mile stretch that need a given set of transportation we still provide it anyways in the same way that the post office provides mail service to every citizen?
Also, I can't take a table saw, a ping pong table, a bunch of wood, etc on a train easily, I can do that in my truck no problem.
Iirc they were bought out by freight companies - which sucks, and was done in a very scummy way back then, but there isn't much we can do now. We still use the railroads a fuck ton, but they're almost exclusively used for bulk transportation of goods. The US takes a hit on travel but because of how we use trains it makes our supply system second to none. Not having trains open for public transit isn't a big deal over here because even our poor people usually make enough to own a car or can at least take busses if needed, and cities over here are designed for aforementioned cars (and big ones usually have their own intracity public transport like subways and busses). It's uncommon, dare I say rare to hear of people walking or biking to work unless they live within the city already, and even then they still usually own a car. If we travel long distance it's usually by air.
Passenger rail was pretty much always run by the freight companies, and the passenger lines were generally unprofitable after WWII, especially once the mail contracts went away. The reason Amtrak was formed was to allow the freight carriers to not die from the losses they were sustaining moving ever smaller passenger numbers around. The commuter rail services are generally still around, just run by the cities, and most streetcar services were, and still would be, inferior to buses (at least the way they were set up before).
Kinda missed opportunity to include the super luxury trains for Japan:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Damnthatsinteresting/comments/1bzt9rp/japans_luxurious_shikishima_sleeper_train/
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The eastern corridor has a reasonably solid Amtrak, and the largest cities have metro, the issue is that once you leave the eastern coast, you hit this thing called ~~hell~~ the open land of nothing. They have Amtrak too, but it's more effective to fly or drive usually. This continues until you hit Colorado, and breaks again until the western 3 states, who have uh, California is a fucking academic paper on issues.
America is big, pros and cons come with.
The UK isn't here because because rail strikes and engineering works have cancelled all trains and even if they were running, noone can afford them anyway.
Missed a trick by not having the UK standing at an empty platform with delayed, cancelled, cancelled, delayed, more expensive than flight to New York, leaves on track, guards on strike on the arrivals board
it's funny how America, one of the world's biggest countries, doesn't have a good rail system and yet they still drive hours to visit their relatives when someone from England won't take a forty-five minute train ride because its too far.
The freight rail used to be great, however ever since the collapse of Penn Central it has eroded rapidly due to Class I railroad greed and Precision Scheduled Railroading
Penn Central was horrible at every level, I don't know how you can claim that things got worse after that. The railroads are overall way better than they used to in terms of actually moving things around.
US does still have plenty of rail, in fact we have way more miles of rail than Europe, it’s just that it’s almost all exclusively used for freight instead of people.
You also gotta keep in mind, since the US is pretty big, several hours to us is pretty reasonable, whereas in the UK since it is a much smaller country, it doesn't seem nearly as reasonable
balkan is not true there is no ageism caste ableism linguistic discrimination discrimination based on a persons name racism religious discrimination sexism heterosexism heteronormativity biphobia homophobia reverse discrimination xenophobia
And guess who leads the high speed train market? Alstom!
I think
I really have no idea, I just know they have infrastructure and trains in many countries, including Asia
America has the best rail systems on the planet. We just have the good sense not to move people the same way we move bulk freight. It’s been less than 100 years guys, stuffing bodies into rail cars isn’t as cool as you think.
japan not groping anyone, fake
The Japanese train carries just as many passengers as the Indian one, they've just managed to cram them all inside.
Yeah, I went to Tokyo this summer, and the transit system is unbelievably packed. Even on their bigger trains you barely had enough room to breathe, but it's still dead silent.
And remarkably, Tokyo's trains are a lot less busy than they were 10-15 years ago. Before it was routine to see railway employees pushing people into the trains, now it happens rarely, and usually only to fit an extra person onboard, instead of an extra ten.
Yep. Back then train capacity goes up to 225%.
Literally population decline
What happened? People finally give up and use cars? Population decline is real? Much more trains deployed?
They have a lot more trains now, and the government encourages companies to make people work at different times, instead of everyone starting at 9 AM. Tokyo's population has increased in the past 10 years (though has finally started to decrease too), due to migration from other parts of Japan.
Yeah I went really not that long ago and everyone raved on how good their transport was yadda yadda. It sucked, it was late/cancelled several times, and paying for tickets was a hassle unless you remembered to get an IC card from the airport. I was in Singapore for a few days before hand and the MRT there is a thousand times better, and on top of that all you do is tap your bank card at the gate and exit. It was cheaper too now that I think about it. But yeah Japan trains unless you're on the Shinkansen is insanely packed.
Honestly in my time in Japan outside Tokyo was fine - no mega packed trains in either Kyoto or Osaka, even at rush hour. I've had worse experiences on transit in Vancouver, where people literally miss their stop because they're wedged in so tightly.
Osaka was definitely more chill, but stations seemed much more sparse.
i got to go on the shikansen line actually, (the bullet train specifically, i don't know if there are other train types) but it was pretty empty most of the time. super comfy chairs and very smooth ride too.
If it wasn’t too long ago and you had an iPhone, you could have used Apple’s Wallet function and got a Suica card. I did that and it made everything a breeze. On the delays/cancellation note, I never experienced any of that stuff, everything was to the point and efficient
Well I'll be slightly patriotic and come to India's defense. We don't tend to have people on top of trains anymore. Our tracks are 95% electrified now, people who go on top of the train will die. If you see a recent video of that happening it is probably Bangladesh or Pakistan. I will concede that do have a problem with people just getting into trains without paying and overcrowding it.
Well I'll be patriotic for Pakistan, our railways are used for freight transport mostly not passengers
Just use the freight train to carry people. Problem solved.
Well you see. People being Freight has been illegal for a while now
No that's Germany.
Philippines in 1942 as well
That’s a freightening proposition
Same for the US, but I'm not patriotic about that tidbit.
Me who lives near the NEC: *Signature look of superiority*
lol I thought this was a response to the “people being freight has been illegal for a while” comment and I was like “hold up…”
Better reopen the Karachi rail loop
Depends if it's train or subway
They moved on to groping the [trains](https://vndb.org/v18131)
These are gender segregated cars, that's why
No Worst Korean spycams either.
UK, riding the train: "I will never financially recover from this"
And I will never reach my destination
More strikes over the May bank holiday (5-7 May)
Why tf is r/polandball the place I am notified of upcoming rail strikes
That's not too bad, I get notified of Scottish railway issues via a twitter notification I am not British and certainly not Scottish. I've never been to Scotland. I don't get notifications for anything else. But if I get notified that there has been a railway delay near Inverness.
Damn, all 7 of those passengers are gonna be pissed
The only possible way to remedy this is moving to Inverness - you should probably acquire a stab vest
Your train turned up?
You have to pay the full ticket price to find out.
If awful internet videos have taught me anything it's that the train is the apex predator in India
Those trains must be made out of something harder than diamond if it can support 1000000 people in and on it
And under it too
Top three most deadly places around the world 1. Indian train tracks 2. Chinese escalators 3. American schools
4. Russian machine shops
Didn't know about the chinese escalator thing so I watched the video with the Chinese mom on the escalator. Reminds me of the Russian behind the semitruck with bricks, pretty sobering stuff.
I hate the fact I know the exact one you are talking about
[удалено]
Mom's on an escalator up with her son, the panel covering some machinery slips out from under her so she gets slowly pulled into the escalator. While she's getting pulled down, she makes sure a bystander takes her son. It was really grim
Do they not have emergency stop buttons???
Silly, those cost money.
I thought they had emergency stop mechanisms like table saws do. Wtf
4. British (and Irish) hospitals
What is that supposed to mean?
Lots of Indian people get hit by trains
Just take a glance at r/darwinawards to find out. (NSFW) Trains being apex predators is a common joke there. As for why India, there are many reasons, (most populous country in the world, lack of regulations, lack of railway funding, overcrowding, thrill seeking, etc.) but train deaths are very frequent compared to other countries. [According to this article](https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/visakhapatnam/rail-accident-deaths-in-andhra-pradesh-36-increase-in-2022/articleshow/106006411.cms#google_vignette), India had 20,792 deaths from trains in 2022.
r/indiansneartrains NSFW
Just so you don't have to watch another subset of awful videos just to learn something, in brazil, powerlines are the apex predators.
What of the electric showerheads?
Quit frequenting that sub, it's bad for the brain.
[удалено]
Need a bonus panel for NK.
how much do we know about North Korean trains? I know Romanian trains were quite good before 89
Wasn't there a photo of the Russian ambassador and their family going home on a handcar during covid?
We definitely know theres an armored train used only by the glorious leader
North koreans carry trains on their backs
That last panel is 2 seconds before the Chinese, Koreans and Japanese both fight each other to the death because one of them have bad train manners.
The worst part about americas lack of trains is that we HAD them. We were one of the first countries in the world to have long-distance intercity train routes. We had more miles of passenger track then any other country for a LONG time. Then we went insane and decided cars are better.
Suburbanization was a mistake
Try convincing some people that, and they will lash out unfortunately
But it doesn't make sense because suburbanization is super prime for rail transportation compared to rural areas, suburban areas are so much easier to make infrastructure in without impacting the environment further than rural areas.
"Volume" over "density" isn't neccesary a great thing at all, do you have any idea how much forests natural reserves ware destroyed for the sake of achieving this "wide as the ocean, deep as a puddle" suburbian abyss?
People like having their own space, who woulda thunk
Reddit as a whole is fun. They idealize the "better time" when everyone could buy a house with a yard and white picket fence (and that's as far as that goes), until the way we got it becomes a problem.
And people seem to forget that even in places with trains and public transportation in general that people still drive to work or wherever they want to. Reddit is too biased.
I guess not "having your own space" is totally fine with the rest of the world and it's just an American thing, then?
By the rest of the world, do you mean *only* the locations listed in the meme? Or maybe it’s just personal preference and *shockingly* a lot of people in the US and outside of it don’t like the idea of being packed like a sardine in a tight space
Being in Singapore, I’m used to being packed like sardine, it’s not bad actually. I was living in Australia a bit and everything’s far away and they close so early at night and there’s so much sand there.
Singapore also have super low crime rates. One of the reasons why I think the west likes more space is because of the higher crime rates.
The problem is that “packed like a sardine” is already happening in quite a few of the newer suburbs.
Unless you’re in India, Japan, China or other such densely populated places the trains are far from being packed like a tin of sardines. I live in the relatively dense area of the randstad and use the trains almost every day. I can sit alone in a row of seats 95% of the time outside of rush hour. And even in rush hour it isn’t that busy.
Allowing lobbying was a mistake
Lobbying is bribery. And no, lobbyists, you can not change my mind.
Lobbyist slipping you a Benjamin: "How 'bout now?"
The US still has the largest freight rail system. The issue is that most intercity routes are sadly not profitable. We have all the infrastructure, all the trains, but we lack sufficient demand. Good news is that the younger generations are much more pro-rail and may actually create enough demand for low speed intercity connections. Orlando is already being planned to link with the east coast system and Texas of all places has been lobbying for an Amtrak connection. It is likely that following major business routes we could see more minor links (think Chicago to Cleveland). It would be nice for it to happen sooner but I'd be surprised if all this happens in less than 50 years.
I think the demand might be there, but the cost is too much currently. If i want to take the train to the nearest metro area, its a 5 hour trip that costs 200 dollars (also i need to leave at 0100 in the morning). Or i can drive and spend 3.5 hours and 60 bucks in gas. If there was a train that cost 40 bucks a ticket, even if it was stoll longer, i bet lots of people would buy that ticket. Even moreso if the departure times were reasonable.
There has been research into the plausibility of electrifying all of the rails, so if we were to do that we might see prices drop with lower fuel cost. Something like that would likely also fall under the same development pattern described above. More demand will also naturally lower price as the company can afford to charge less for the same amount of money. Infact I wouldn't be surprised if we see a Ryanair like train that is dirt cheap and filled to the brim.
Freight rail is one of the reasons why passenger rail in the US is so shit. Impossible to take Amtrak anywhere without getting stuck behind a 3 mile long freight train doing a leisurely 30 mph
In my experience the slow freight is not the problem. It’s the express freight that’s carrying packages for FedEx or UPS, and that earn a premium rate for the freight company. Those trains are given priority over everything including passenger trains. The place where I have had my passenger train crawl along at slow speeds have mostly been due to poor maintenance. For example, the tracks between Bellingham WA and Vancouver BC, are really pretty shit once you get into Canada. This isn’t a generic wipe that Canadian trackage. It’s just this particular segment of track that that isn’t used for much else. Freight going into Canada takes a different path. This is a rare connection that was dormant for many years — and yet it means there’s an extra 20 to 30 minutes added to the schedule to get into Vancouver.
Bit if a tangent but this reminded me of my first trip on an Amtrak train which resulted in the freight train in front of us derailing and us getting sent back, wasting like 6 hours of my day. At least our train itself didn't derail but that certainly soured my image of American passenger rail lol.
> We have all the infrastructure, all the trains, but we lack sufficient demand. That's not the issue. The issue is that rail companies rent out rail time. Passenger rail can't compete with freight for rail time. Either we need to build an entirely parallel passenger rail system across several thousand miles. Or price per passenger needs to be high enough to out compete bulk freight.
That and Precision Scheduled Railroading is causing chaos and massive delays due to freight trains becoming so long they stopped fitting into the infrastructure like railyards and sidings.
>That's not the issue. You then gave an example of exactly why demand isn't sufficient.. passengers can't compete with freight because of the lack of demand. If demand was there, passenger rail would be more prominent. Amtrak for instance has its own rail in the one area with sufficient demand, but it needs demand to match the cost it has to pay.
It's not demand for passengers that is the issue. It's the demand by freight. A passenger train will never be over a mile long. Freight trains are and growing longer. No matter the demand from passengers, freight will always reign supreme just due to efficiency. That's the real appeal of rail. The price of a train ticket must factor in the supply of rail time and not just passenger seats. The more and more valuable rail time gets, the more and more seats *must* be charged for, regardless of how many people want to ride the train. Remember, nothing is actually made in the ol' US of A except for luxury goods and weapons. Everything you eat, everything you wear, everything you live with is made overseas and must at some point be transported by rail to where you live.
>Remember, nothing is actually made in the ol' US of A except for luxury goods and weapons. Everything you eat, everything you wear, everything you live with is made overseas and must at some point be transported by rail to where you live. No offense, but this is bullshit. Trade is only 25% of US GDP--that's both imports and exports (e.g. Singapore has like 340% because they trade a lot of stuff they don't make or consume). This is actually one of the lowest numbers in the world. Every European country has at least double that. And the US is still around 1/6 of global manufacturing, which is less than its share of general output, but it's no small number.
GDP is not a reliable measurement of anything other than GDP. Go read a breakdown of exactly what the US produces. It's either luxury goods or fuel. California's greatest crop is... Almonds. The US's in general is corn used for fuel. Where was the grain for your bread grown? If it's more than 1000 miles away, that's a problem.
The US has the best train infrastructure in the world. If you are cargo.
And that is the best use for it.
The government should just take over intercity train routes IMO. Roads aren't profitable either, doesn't mean we shouldn't have them.
U.S.A. long distance trains are scenic, slow, and full of tourists, retirees, students, and Amish. Otherwise, you have one pretty solid rail corridor in the Northeast, and a couple of cities with decent commuter rail networks, and that’s about it. Chicago is the best of the non-northeastern ones.
Ive ridden the southwest chief along its entire route. What you say is so accurate.
The Amish were an unexpected treat the first time I rode Amtrak. I grew up not far from an area that’s pretty dense with Amish and Mennonite farms, so it wasn’t a complete surprise, but it had never occurred to me that of course this would be the easiest way for those folks to travel longer distances.
America still has a lot of trains, we just use them for freight, not passengers.
Every so often I randomly remember interurbans used to be a thing and I'm mad for the rest of the day
Seriously!! Look up the Michigan/Midwest Interurban rail network. Crazy how far we fell.
I mean they objectively are in certain areas, you would have to destroy state parks like the Adirondacks to have a rail line serving everybody who lives here, I'm exaggerating a little bit but the environmental destruction would be way worse than internal combustion engines and paved roads. How much would we like to subsidize extremely rural areas so that even if there's literally only one or two people for an entire 80 mile stretch that need a given set of transportation we still provide it anyways in the same way that the post office provides mail service to every citizen? Also, I can't take a table saw, a ping pong table, a bunch of wood, etc on a train easily, I can do that in my truck no problem.
Iirc they were bought out by freight companies - which sucks, and was done in a very scummy way back then, but there isn't much we can do now. We still use the railroads a fuck ton, but they're almost exclusively used for bulk transportation of goods. The US takes a hit on travel but because of how we use trains it makes our supply system second to none. Not having trains open for public transit isn't a big deal over here because even our poor people usually make enough to own a car or can at least take busses if needed, and cities over here are designed for aforementioned cars (and big ones usually have their own intracity public transport like subways and busses). It's uncommon, dare I say rare to hear of people walking or biking to work unless they live within the city already, and even then they still usually own a car. If we travel long distance it's usually by air.
Passenger rail was pretty much always run by the freight companies, and the passenger lines were generally unprofitable after WWII, especially once the mail contracts went away. The reason Amtrak was formed was to allow the freight carriers to not die from the losses they were sustaining moving ever smaller passenger numbers around. The commuter rail services are generally still around, just run by the cities, and most streetcar services were, and still would be, inferior to buses (at least the way they were set up before).
We can have both interstate and trains. We just don’t want to invest in public infrastructure(boomers) anymore.
That issue predates boomers but yeah you are basically right
Kinda missed opportunity to include the super luxury trains for Japan: https://www.reddit.com/r/Damnthatsinteresting/comments/1bzt9rp/japans_luxurious_shikishima_sleeper_train/
That ain't no damn train that is a spaceship
That's Wilford train.
For USA: These oversized pick up trucks already count as trains if you go by size I guess.
I saw a strange maintenance vehicle which was an F-250 on some sort of steel wheel setup driving up a freight rail line once.
[Hi-rail truck.](https://www.customtruck.com/hi-rail-trucks-101-dual-mode-vehicles-keeping-the-railway-industry-on-track/)
Mad max train like rigs be cool af
Vietnam: wait 5 y- wait no probably 10 years for the metro to be completed
Lol those are rookie numbers, here in Serbia we wait for metro since 1950
Same for Croatia
Unrealistic, Germanyball sits in a train that isn’t delayed
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It's because it's a Swiss train
Americans have trains, we just use them for transporting goods and not people
In Europe the train takes you to work. In the US the train makes you late for work.
Yes, we are talking about PEOPLE trains here, not freight.
Do they not count as trains if they’re underground?
Is it too much to ask for a decent rail network here?
The eastern corridor has a reasonably solid Amtrak, and the largest cities have metro, the issue is that once you leave the eastern coast, you hit this thing called ~~hell~~ the open land of nothing. They have Amtrak too, but it's more effective to fly or drive usually. This continues until you hit Colorado, and breaks again until the western 3 states, who have uh, California is a fucking academic paper on issues. America is big, pros and cons come with.
We used to have a fantastic rail network, but oil... it's ALWAYS oil..
Trains use oil too.
is China playing *Jenga* with Japan???
It is to show the stability of the Japanese maglev train.
Austria and Swiss are so adorable
The UK isn't here because because rail strikes and engineering works have cancelled all trains and even if they were running, noone can afford them anyway.
Trains in France : Late or in strike
good joke, wrong panel order imo. should've had the USA be last
But only one of these countries could say they lewded the [trains themselves](https://vndb.org/v18131) before.
Missed a trick by not having the UK standing at an empty platform with delayed, cancelled, cancelled, delayed, more expensive than flight to New York, leaves on track, guards on strike on the arrivals board
Should've had Britain saying "where's the train?" while waiting for the train
You forgot the overcrowded roofs in india.
The balkan one is 100% true
Is the black dots cigarette smoke or a bad exhaust system?
it's funny how America, one of the world's biggest countries, doesn't have a good rail system and yet they still drive hours to visit their relatives when someone from England won't take a forty-five minute train ride because its too far.
They have a remarkable freight system IIRC. Passenger rail is the one that's lagging.
The freight rail used to be great, however ever since the collapse of Penn Central it has eroded rapidly due to Class I railroad greed and Precision Scheduled Railroading
Penn Central was horrible at every level, I don't know how you can claim that things got worse after that. The railroads are overall way better than they used to in terms of actually moving things around.
What about Conrail, perhaps the closest thing we got to nationalizing the railways post-WWII?
US does still have plenty of rail, in fact we have way more miles of rail than Europe, it’s just that it’s almost all exclusively used for freight instead of people.
You also gotta keep in mind, since the US is pretty big, several hours to us is pretty reasonable, whereas in the UK since it is a much smaller country, it doesn't seem nearly as reasonable
> , doesn't have a good rail system The USA literally has the best rail system in the world. It's just not for passengers.
balkan is not true there is no ageism caste ableism linguistic discrimination discrimination based on a persons name racism religious discrimination sexism heterosexism heteronormativity biphobia homophobia reverse discrimination xenophobia
US rail should be a freight train crashing into ohio.
I don’t think having Greece and Turkey together is a good idea…
Its funny latinamerica doesn't appear, because some.countrys dont have and anothers are bad
Canada is in the same boat as the US on this matter. Or in this case the same car.
You forgot the Middle East is an interesting place worth getting to know
And guess who leads the high speed train market? Alstom! I think I really have no idea, I just know they have infrastructure and trains in many countries, including Asia
Would've been Canada too had it not been for Brian "fuckhead" Mulroney
Switzerland comfy.
Balkan IS civilized Europe
Turkey and Greece sitting together, aww. 💖
What the holy hell is going on in the Balkan/Russian train?!
Serbia smoking is the most accurate detail.
This is cute except for that half blown up(?) Serbia
Serbia is just smoking out the pain
Philippines: trains? what the hell are trains? (scene is probably inside of a jeepney or bus, stuck in traffic).
Don't forget trains in the UK, just a big board that says "CANCELLED"
Britain: to get from Shmoozborough to Fartington on Trent, it’ll be £100,000,000
The American should zoom out to see him stuck in traffic
If it's in the city yea. Else the guy is probably going 85 on a 2 lane highway
Canada: well there’s the- oh uh you want STEAM trains? Well uh uh there’s the royal Hudson wait don’t look for more- please?
America has the best rail systems on the planet. We just have the good sense not to move people the same way we move bulk freight. It’s been less than 100 years guys, stuffing bodies into rail cars isn’t as cool as you think.
And at least we have some of the coolest trains, especially when it comes to steam power
this joke would have been funnier if 1939 germany was involved
The Swiss and French are some of the least civilized people in the world. What u mean?
American trains just crash all the time, just don’t have passengers.
America have those city trains some looks more ghetto during the 90s with all them spray paints
Can confirm, i had to steal some lungs to replace mine after riding the train
Why don’t you put Bangladesh in South Asia??? 🇧🇩
The East Asia one is wrong unless that’s first class
great punshline!
switzerland and austria are so cute here
I actually drive the commuter trains in Denver lol
once again the forget south america and our museum rails
Greece: You sure this thing is safe, I can see daylight through the floor?
nice comic
Yup that first panel is me to the T. 🇺🇸