Quote:
Originally Posted by urbanview
America? Bow your head in shame. It only has a 20 mile segment somewhere in New England, that's nothing. Oh, America is too big and low density? That's a BS augment from oil apologist Republicans looking out for their wallets. America is enmaord with the car, but they can't even do roads.
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Wow! What tribe!
When the privately owned Pennsylvania RR electrified the NEC between New York City and D.C. back in 1930s, it was the first electric powered 100 mph max speed train line in the world. See Wiki GG1
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pennsy...road_class_GG1
Amtrak has been upgrading sections of the NEC a little bit at a time since 1971.
America is huge, and when it comes to intercity cross country travel, the airplanes and airliners won. USDOT spend over $17 billion on airways last year while spending over $5 billion on railways.
One can fly the 4957 miles between New York City and Honolulu in 10.5 hours. You can not take a train nor drive between these two cities, it is impossible to do so.
One can fly the 3321 miles between New York City and Anchorage in less than 6 hours. There is no train the entire way, but you can drive it over 4431 miles of highway in 76 hours or so, give or take an hour depending upon traffic.
Yes, those are extreme examples, but I can not think of any city pairs within any western European country where it takes up to 76 hours to drive where a highway exists.
Oh, that's not fair using cities in Alaska and Hawaii. okay, let's just look at the distance between the USA's largest cities, It's 2789 highway miles between New York City and Los Angeles, it would take 42 hours to drive give or take an hour depending upon traffic. You can fly it in less than 5 hours on any jetliner.
Using the Lake Shore Limited and Southwest Chief, you can ride a train that takes 80 hours 55 minutes total elapse time assuming the trains run on time.
Which would you choose, less than a 5 hour flight or almost 81 hour train ride?
Tic, tock, tic, tock.