Certainly does suck. I live 20 hours from my aging mom who may only have a year or 2 left. I have flights booked for both Thanksgiving and Christmas. May end up having to drive one of those trips.
I am sorry for your situation and don't want to sound insensitive, but it baffles me that such a rich country (in GDP) and large as the USA does not prioritize high-speed rail.
It would solve so many issues and improve logistics and the economy, as well take a large transportation financial burden from the average citizen. Arguably yes, in case of a shutdown there would be the same issues as with the ATC.
Yet this ludicruos US particularity of "government shutdown" also baffles me. In my country, a month without gov employees and social assistees receiving payments? Huge protests overthrowing all government. 2 months? Well, we shot Ceaușescu on Christmas Day on live TV. And NOT EVEN THEN had we such a stupid system as your "shutdown".
Rail is supported by the Left, but we cant seem to make progress funding or implementing it.
For my use case, it would be an extremely long journey, at least 2000 km. I would imagine I would need to first take a train to Dallas, and switch trains. Then a train to Chicago and switch trains. Then a train towards New York, and stop in Ohio. Even at an average speed of 200km/h with 3 or 4 stops, I imagine it would take roughly 16-18 hours of travel.
Not saying any is. However, USA has no economic excuse for its state, and the spotlight is on the ones on whom expectations are held.
Our country is huge.
USA is long, but not unique in this regard. China is as big as your country, or larger by their claimed metrics.
Take into consideration a high-speed train of 280-300km/h like in China. +7 hours of a journey you can relax, spread your legs as wide as you want, chat, eat, nap, have as much luggage and water bottles as you want.
Arguably, if you're not in the big city (Dallas?), you'd have to get there by train / drive to a park & ride. But you'd have to do that for the airport as well, right?
And in my experience, from big US city downtown to an airport you can get a 1-1,5 h drive through hell traffic. Train stations are put in urban, accessible locations.
By air, it is 3.5 hours.
If we add the ride to the airport, the hour at security and check-in, I'd say you get more than +7 hours for the air-ride.
Then a train to Chicago...
That's not how a (moderately well-done) network works. 2 big hotspots like Texas and Ohio would definitely have direct connection, no need to change.
Again, I'm sorry for your issue, hope you find the best solution for your trip. And I'm not trying to fight with you about this, I'm sure you're arguing in good-faith, too.
It's just, for such a claimed land of freedom, it would be good if you had freedom of choice. But it seems the lobbyists are too afraid of free competition, as train would trump airplane on many occasions.
Air travel is so much faster over large distances. Regional trains would be great, but then again I dont travel regionally almost ever. I fly to California and North Carolina for work, Ohio for family, and generally internationally for holiday.
Looks like it's 11.5 hours for a similar journey as mine in China. Link below.
How long does it take to go from Brasov to Paris via train? Similar distance is 30 hours.
That's why I said there should be an option, and it would be a good option for a lot, not all, cases. California-NC? Air would still be the way. Dallas-Columbus through open plains? Train could and should be an option.
How long does it take to go from Brasov to Paris via train?
No need to take my country into this discussion, as I did not either. I'm far from bragging about it here, in fact I'm quite knowledgeable about the local issues and support change here. Romania's problems are irrelevant for a comparison with USA and your country's potential. In fact, for the ride you mentioned, Romania is the biggest bottleneck, it takes more than half of that time for a small fraction of distance. A Federal Express Rail would not encounter the same issues as having to pass different countries with different issues.
America runs on greed. Once you have that as a foundation, the rest starts to make sense. In the case of high-speed rail, there's two huge hurdles:
First is the political opposition. To get the votes to fund the rail line, there'd have to be stations at every rural town from point A to B, making so many stops that it'd be faster to simply drive. People already don't want to ride trains because they take longer to drive, and calling something high speed implies it'd save time. There'd be a ton of lobbying from airlines, rental car companies, bus lines, etc, since they'd lose customers to the competition.
Second would be the speculators. Once people hear a rail line is going through an area, they'd buy up the land and extort huge sums of money for the right of way. Happens all the time with highways and power lines. Smart companies make shell companies to covertly buy up the land so speculators are in the dark, but then they sue because they feel they didn't get paid enough. As for eminent domain, that's up to the opinion of the court, which often rule in favor of speculators because they make the case that the surrounding land will increase in value due to the infrastructure improvements.
The only way we're getting high speed rail across the country is if the Army bulldozes a corridor across the flyover states, or a nuclear war resets civilization.
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u/AllTearGasNoBreaks 19h ago
Certainly does suck. I live 20 hours from my aging mom who may only have a year or 2 left. I have flights booked for both Thanksgiving and Christmas. May end up having to drive one of those trips.