TBH, I'm genuinely a little shocked, because this is the first time I've actually seen the news. (and it's good to hear!)
My impression was that, passenger rail in the US is historically pretty consistently underwater in its budgets.
remember in 2020 when everyone was showing the amtrak across the country map and saying, "the one thing we can count on joe biden for is clearing the way to get the country back on rails! trains from coast to coast! trains everywhere!"
i miss that.
you know how twitter had that "there's always a dril post" thing? i'm pretty sure you only ever reply to me with a post you already made 3-11 months ago.
this is a compliment.
i've never been almost anywhere. i could conceivably afford to see cali in a world like this. then i could come home and be like, "ugh. cali." like a grownup from outside of cali.
I doubt train tickets would be much cheaper than planes if at all, but I do like them.
Also I have no clue where you are (perhaps by design) but I’m in Cali! So you could come hang with me!
i'm cagey about it on main but would tell you in dm. and yes, we could do that. corinne is smarter, funnier, and cuter, but also sensibly less terminally online.
All I’m saying, is if you ran a high speed rail from the UP to the LP of Michigan, people could work commute one hour and live for a fraction of the cost of the cities and suburbs.
It’s really weird that the US doesn’t have a more substantial inter-city rail network. I can understand people wanting to fly coast to coast or even state to state, but the distances involved between neighbouring cities seem optimal for rail journeys.
yeah! there was a lot of center left excitement about how biden - who was so well known for loving trains it was a repeated joke on 2017 parks & rec episodes - was going to have, as part of his BBB bill, funding to make national rail a thing. the maps of city to city transit were a thing!
it may have been overrepresented for me in the my specific situation of knowing a lot of "normie" libs singularly focused on beating trump, where i was farther left with an intense personal hatred of the man going back to 1991. when people pitched him to me, the first place they went was, "trains!"
Took a TGV in France a couple weeks ago, and it’s cool to go so fast, so smooth past fields of wheat and windmills, far outpacing pokey cars on parallel highways
It's such a great train, and there's a France-sized chunk of land around the Great Lakes and the US northeast that could really use something like that.
Whaaaat, you mean rail is profitable when it's not needlessly complicated and difficult to use for travel?
(Also damn if they fixed the Newark to New York run)
Well... "Surplus" rather than "profit," as ticket sales don't cover expenses -- Amtrak confusingly counts the state funding as revenue, so there was apparently about $300k from passengers, $300k from the states, but only $500k in expenses, leaving $100k left over. It's good, though
I remember taking a train from Boston up to New Haven. A pleasant ride in a quiet car that wasn't too expensive.
The view along the coastline was wonderful.
Why don't we have this EVERYWHERE?
Put trains where people want them, and people will use them.
Minnesota and Illinois have been battling Wisconsin to get this route for lit. years.
To put it into perspective, it's about 7 and a half to 8 hours compared with 6 hours or so driving and a 90 minute flight.
