Trains are awe-inspiring miracles of infrastructure technology . They can go reallyfast ! They ’re better for theenvironment ! There is no fasten seat belt sign dictating when you may and can not go to the bathroom !
alas , if you dwell in the U.S. , taking a train is at best slow and expensive , and at worst , totally unavailable . Part of this is because the United States is a big , self-aggrandizing place , but so is China — a country that is build a connection ofstate - of - the - arthigh - upper railways .
For short - haul trips , like between New York City and Washington D.C. , hop a train should be much faster than heading out to an airdrome , choke through surety , catching an 60 minutes - long flight , then claim a cab business district . But with Amtrak , it takes about as long as drive does , unless you take the state ’s only “ high - speed ” railway , the Acela Express , which still takes about three hours and costs more than a hundred dollars each way . ( Driving takes about four and a half minute . )
Why does America , a country where early railroad top executive became some of the rich work force in history and wield incredible influence over everything fromcity developmentto education ( Stanford and Vanderbilt University were both founded on railway line money ) , have such a bad railroad system ?
Cars and planes became more trendy and efficient in the 20th one C , so people did n’t involve to take trains . rider power train just were n’t profitable anymore , specially after the U.S. Post Office start ship chain mail bytruck and air , rather than on railroads . In 1970 , President Nixon signed the law that created Amtrak , the internal company task with getting people around the U.S. by rail . lamentably , Amtrak does n’t operate enough trains to actually make itself utilitarian — it operate around300journeys per daytime , liken to the 14,000 day-after-day journeys run by France ’s home rail service . Only72 percentof Amtrak ’s train arrive on time , on medium , in part because freight trains head for the hills on the same tracks , and often take precedency .
For a whole raft more on the lamentable state of American railroad , check out the video fromWendover Productions .
[ h / tBoing Boing ]
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