I’m not sure if an opinion piece is appropriate here, so please let me know if this doesn’t fit the theme of the community, and I’ll avoid sharing such thoughts in the future.
I’m extremely frustrated with the car centric culture in my area. I live about 25 miles west of a quarry. Every day I watch trains go up and down the railroad mostly carrying gravel. This railroad stretches for several hours by car in each direction, connecting several large cities and even passing a few tourist attractions, and despite our traffic congestion problems there is little interest in trying to use this rail for actual people.
One company moved in and started running a new passenger rail service. Within a few weeks, we had protesters at the railroads complaining that drivers don’t understand railroad crossings. I saw posters about how trains were killing residents when drivers park on the tracks and get hit. I don’t understand! Where do you think the train is going to go? They don’t exactly come out of nowhere. They follow the tracks! And we’ve always had trains passing through our town before. At a later local election a candidate ran on the premise that they’re going to protect home values and our children by reducing or eliminating the number of trains passing through our town. This candidate did win our local election and sadly they succeeded in cutting down on rail investment.
Fast-forward a couple years later. Passenger rail stations were built at the endpoints of this rail to ferry tourists. I drive parallel to this rail on the way to work several times per week for almost 45 minutes each way, 20 minutes of which is heavy traffic. I get to enjoy watching people ride the train while there’s no stop anywhere near my house because our local government has sided with homeowners that a passenger rail station is “simply too dangerous.” I would have to drive over an hour to the nearest passenger rail station to ride the train, and I can literally see the tracks from my apartment.
Every time I see that train I feel bitter. I could save so much money if these boneheads would have let them build a train station in our town. Absolutely ridiculous! The train is there. The rail is there. I don’t understand why a train is such a personal, existential threat to your way of life.
My city had Amtrak back in the 70s or something and it came back a few years ago. The common thread I see around here is "I caught an hour delay one time so never again!"
Never mind that they get held up for hours every other time they travel on the highway, that's just part of it, I guess? Enjoy sitting there burning gas I'll just take a nap 🤷
Even worse, those same people come home from their commute and immediately pour themselves a drink or kvetch to their partners about how bad the commute was. I mean... you cannot convince me that ANYONE likes sitting in traffic, it's just anathema to the human mind.
Unfortunately the trains are like that, especially under a few circumstances:
Also the fact that the vast majority of our remaining rails are owned by private freight companies that get to make up silly rules like passenger trains having to pull over for ridiculously long and slow freight trains to pass them.
Yeah, passenger trains pretty much have no choice if there is a 2 mile freight train, a single track, and a short siding. The passenger train has to pull off and wait. There really need to be something like financial penalties for the rail carrier every time that happens. Something to make extremely long trains uneconomical.
One thing they've been working on in my neck of the woods on the Amtrak Cascades line is passenger train only track that runs in the same right-of-way. I'm not sure exactly how it works, but I assume that passenger trains run on it by default and switch to the freight rail or sidings when there is a passenger train going the other way. The Seattle-Portland leg is already congested between freight and passenger traffic. Additional track should aid on time performance for the eventual target of 13 round trips per day. They also got the line rerouted off a single track route that was a serious bottleneck.
Sure, and all of that should be tended to, but it doesn't make massive delays an absolute or change that driving can be just as unreliable but gets this mental loophole even though people bitch about it constantly.
Absolutely. I was hearing that Switzerland has excellent on time performance, to the point where 5 minutes is considered late (and that happens infrequently). For comparison, Amtrak uses a 15 minute threshold for lateness. This accuracy, the "integrated timetable" strategy that syncs trains with other trains and transportation modes, and frequent service allow for tight transfer times.