Rail travel is booming in America
economist.comTook Amtrak from LA to San Jose last week, which was a good experience. The train runs along the coast for a good stretch, from Ventura through Vandenberg and then through the hills. It's certainly not the fastest way to go (~10 hours) but you can leave in the morning, have a couple of sit down meals on the way, watch the world go by, work if necessary, and be in San Jose in the evening. Probably not something to do regularly, but a great occasional change from flying.
Since Amtrak is often delayed due to freight having priority, traveling the other way is more risky from a scheduling point of view, since the train starts in Seattle and could already be heavily delayed by the time it gets to San Jose.
https://www.amtrakvacations.com/travel-styles/famous-routes/...
> due to freight having priority
Fun fact: by law, Amtrak has priority. Not that it matters much, even back when laws themselves mattered.
It's not an enforcement issue so much as it is a heavily exploited loophole. Part of the reason freight trains are so long is so that they can't fit in passing sidings. Since Amtrak does fit, they end up having to yield because the freight trains simply cannot.
Could this be fixed by legislation on max train length to ensure all trains fit in sidings? Yes. Will that legislation get passed? No.
An interesting video on the subject: https://youtu.be/qQTjLWIHN74?si=t3u3iyZj1kRQQUCe
This is correct but needs more explanation. What the commenter is alluding to is Precision Scheduled Railraoding ("PSR") [1]. Basically this means having really long trains with half the crew and cutting down on safety inspections to increase profits by spending more time delivering freight. It also gets around the Amtrak priority. Why fewer staff? Because you only need one engine crew for a train twice as long.
Increasing train length on tracks not designed for it is a safety issue. Think about it, you have a whole bunch of separate carriages. Some are turning because that's wher they are on the track. Others are going uphills, yet others downhill. All of these forces become a problem that arguably increases the likelihood of derailment, the kind of which we had in East Palestine, Ohio a few years ago.
The labor situation is so bad that there was the threat of a strike in the Biden administration. For what? Paid sick leave, mainly. Biden got Congress to use their powers to end a strike by "essential" workers and then quietly later went and partially conceded to their demands.
Retiring crews haven't been replaced so the labor is at dire levels, all to slightly increase profits. It was estimated that if UP conceded toa ll the union's demands it would reduce their profit by 6%. Not revenue, profit.
[1]: https://www.fractracker.org/2024/06/exploring-the-fallout-of...
Amtrak says this but the freight disagree. At this point I assume both sides are lieing.
Having a enforced max length on any route especially those with commuter service is not a bad idea, it is the tendency of freight to scale up the number of cars as much as possible for efficiency, passenger services work better shorter with more frequent services.
Yes there are myriad other reasons Amtrak gets delayed, it is not like this is the only bottleneck they have, but that doesn't mean this is not also a key problem.
long trains are great for reducing cost and reducing total profit by delivering slower less frequent services :\
Amtrak isn't lying. You can see that the freight trains are too long by literally just watching one.
What does Amtrak have to gain by lying about this?
No idea how true/false the comments are, but one reason to lie would be to scapegoat someone else for Amtrak's problems. If an airline's flights were regularly delayed by 6-24 hours, they'd go out of business
I am skeptical that Amtrak is outright lying about this, but of course I can imagine the motivation: they get to blame delays on an external factor.
I don't think anyone is outright lying. I think they are just not telling the full story. What that full story is though I have no idea, nor do I have any way to figure it out. (Any investigative reporters want to spend a year or two tracking this down? Beware that there probably isn't enough interest to pay for the time you spend)
From what people in the industry have told me, freight train management is no less scummy than any other kind of freight transportation management, and they continually make trains longer and longer despite nearly everyone’s objections. Some are miles long so there’s no way engineers can see the front of the train even with a gentle curve, and they’re taking hazardous cargo through populated areas.
I’d take Amtrak’s word on it.
Those in the industry includes those who benefit from calling management bad. As such it is hard to know if anyone is telling the truth.
everything I've heard doesn't add up. So I know someoneeis lying but not who or how much
Do you have any reason to believe amtrak would lie?
Wasn't there a big train crash with hazardous materials on an understaffed train a few years ago? And a strike for more sensible working conditions that was struck down by Congress?
I love that the US moves so much freight by train rather than truck, but everything I hear about how trains are run in the US sounds terrible.
The infrastructure is horrifying and the railroads do everything possible to defer any and all maintenance. Practically every train arrives late, but the customers can't really do much about it (how else are you going to move 4 million pounds of coal?)
The main infratructor is in great shape. There are a lot of little used lines in terrible shape
The East Palestine, Ohio crash can’t be directly blamed on lean staffing.
Biden for all his pro-union talk intervened to prevent a strike, valuing consumers and capital over the union.
https://www.bls.gov/opub/btn/volume-13/tracking-productivity...
Yeah, kind of like when they put ‘style’ on the end of a product that copies the aesthetic of something without functionally being that thing— like a kosher-style deli or a professional-style stove— the mainstream democratic leaders are pro-labor-style politicians.
I worked for a freight railroad. Amtrak is correct.
Hang in there, I hear it’s anything but easy working for freight rail.
I've been out for a couple years and was just a code monkey anyway. But they did treat me poorly, and it was quite shocking seeing how the sausage was made.
Classic America. Laws favor industry and commerce over individuals. Because lower prices benefits everybody. Uh huh.
Amtrak trains have priority until they fall out of their slot.
I thought they didn't due to the rails they use being privately owned...
To the downvoters: this comment is correct. E.g. [1] for an example of this being enforced.
Apparently the problem is the law is not enforced that much? And that there are loopholes around it.
[1] https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/norfolk-southern-agrees-give-...
The problem is, overtaking is one thing when you got two parallel rails and ample point switches.
But when you don't have them or only every 100km or whatnot, or any of the potential places (such as in a train station) just isn't long enough to accept and buffer a 3 miles long train... then good luck, there just is no physical opportunity for the faster passenger train to speed ahead, not to mention the absurd amount of energy wasted in braking and then re-accelerating that 3 mile freight monster.
Fixing this would be possible - either by limiting the maximum length of a train or by forcing the extension of parallel rail segments. The former makes logistics significantly more challenging plus it requires more staff (which is the real problem, long haul isn't wanted much these days, neither rail nor road), the latter is darn expensive and someone has to foot the bill - Congress certainly won't.
> ...not to mention the absurd amount of energy wasted in braking and then re-accelerating that 3 mile freight monster.
> Fixing this would be possible - either by limiting the maximum length of a train...
It can't be both. Splitting a freight train and then stopping and starting the smaller trains would take the same amount of energy as stopping and starting the single long freight train.
Unless they're deliberately moving empty freight cars to make it artificially long.
The smaller trains wouldn’t have to stop as frequently. The total number of stops increases but the average rail cart sees fewer stops.
> Fun fact: by law, Amtrak has priority. Not that it matters much, even back when laws themselves mattered.
Are you sure about that? I've never looked up the law, but my understanding is that, for most (all?) of its routes, Amtrak is running on privately owned track, and, on such track, freight has priority.
(I'm surprised at the number of downvotes. The replies indicated that I'm wrong, which is awesome in the sense that I like riding Amtrak and want it to have priority, and so I understand the frustration; but I think that I cannot be the only one who has heard from every Amtrak rider they've talked to that freight has priority, and surely it's a good thing to seek an authoritative answer? Maybe it looked like I was rhetorically saying that someone was wrong rather than honestly seeking clarification.)
Yep. Federal law requires passenger trains to get priority.
But for some reason the government basically stopped enforcing it like 40 years ago.
So in practice it tends to work the other way.
I've been told that there's a legal loophole where freight trains are built to be too large to fit into overtaking loops, and so don't need to use them.
My understanding is that as part of the Amtrak Improvement Act[1] Amtrak is given preference over freight rail, even on private track. However only the Department of Justice may enforce this, which it has done only once.
Fair warning I haven't read the text of the law in full, only heard this second hand.
https://www.congress.gov/bill/93rd-congress/house-bill/15427
Due to the history of Amtrak this is actually true. The railroads in America (while privately owned and operated) were built with much government subsidy. The railroad companies originally provided passenger service. Eventually, to ensure this service continued a law was passed that prohibited railroads from dropping passe nger service. After the rise of personal cars coinciding with the massive federal investment in car infrastructure in the 1950s with the interstate hughway system, passenger rail travel was in free fall in the late 60s and the railroad companies begged to be allowed to end passenger service. Congress stepped in and nationalized the passenger service exempting the railroad companies from their mandate to provide passenger service while requiring them to give passenger trains priority in scheduling. So, TL;DR passenger trains have legally mandated priority over the freight trains of the host railroad.
Working on trains is also often nice so you do not really lose much time. You can just do a normal workday at the train including lunch and then quit working for the day when you arrive.
I do that route all the time, "work from train" days before in-office events in SF are one of my greatest pleasures.
If I had one wish it would be a second daily Coast Starlight offset 12 hours from the current one. LA Union to SJ Diridon is roughly 9am to 8pm in both directions, so my second train would be the perfect night train from LA to SF.
I took the Amtrak Cascades from Seattle to Portland recently and was pretty impressed. It’d be a bit silly to fly, but it’s long enough that if I drove myself I’d be kinda tired when I arrived. On the train I got to nap and eat something. The boarding experience is great and the staff were pros. It’s not cheap though; I think it was about $90 each way for business class, and about $70 for coach. I plan on taking it to Vancouver BC next. :)
by comparison: ~3 hours is the Barcelona-Madrid trip via AVE with a slightly bigger distance.
Seems good. If you're driving, you kind of have to bracket ~10 hours for that trip anyways.
I have investigated taking Amtrak for a family trip to do something different. "The journey is the destination" or something like that. I was branding it "slow travel" to the family so we could use it as a sort of modern life/digital detox. I also looked into a trans-Atlantic passage on the QM2.
I'm sad to report that renting a family bedroom or two joined bedrooms on Amtrak to take a journey on say the California Zephyr didn't pencil out. It is costlier than flying (about $2000 vs $1600 at the low end for both options, resp.) Even if you account for the cost of staying two extra nights at the destination it about breaks even.
With children I don't want to risk the days of travel becoming an ordeal as opposed to hours of flight time. The "digital detox" might quickly go sideways and require hours of screentime pacifiers. Maybe when they are older.
Happily the QM2 actually made financial sense and there would be more room to move about and explore the ship.
I think rail travel makes the most sense in the Acela context the article opened with - routes between cities that take less than a day. For cross-continent travel the time savings of air travel make rail travel a harder case to argue.
The point of cross continent rail travel is not being cheaper than air at all, it is about seeing and enjoying the country and the route, there is no easier or cheaper way to do that.
- A road trip would be both more expensive (fuel, hotels and maintenance/rental), strenuous and also less safe given the number of miles to be driven.
- There is quite little to see in a cruise if not near a shore or on a plane flying at cruising altitudes well above the clouds.
While times have changed and it is lot harder for parents now, I cannot help but remember growing up the number of cross country train trips just sitting at the window with nothing but a book/magazine or conversations with passengers and it was formative life experience even when quite young. It wasn't that long ago and my generation was just as addicted to tech but we were limited to doing that only on a desktop with a modem.
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If you want to see and show the kids to help them understand the size and complex geography and beauty of the country they will inherit despite what limited time screen distractions allow, I don't think there is any better way to do it.
> The point of cross continent rail travel is not being cheaper than air at all, it is about seeing and enjoying the country and the route, there is no easier or cheaper way to do that.
Amtrak isn't useful for that. For see the continent you need to get off the train for a few hours here and there to see something. That means flexible tickets; more trains so you don't have to spend a day in a small town with 3 hours entertainment, and enough space that you can make a last minute decision to see some little tourist trap for the fun of it knowing you can get the next train.
> A road trip would be both more expensive (fuel, hotels and maintenance/rental),
Very much it depends. If you are single Amtrak is cheaper (coach seats). a family is a lot cheaper to drive, since most of the costs are fixed for everyone. You likely own the car and so are making payments anyway. Gas is the same for 1 person or a full car. Hotels are rented per room. My last trip I needed a rental car to get to the family reunion 1 hour from the station, just the cost of a rental car would have paid for gas and hotel to drive my own car (the strenuous miles is why we took the train anyway, but it was more expensive than driving)
> There is quite little to see in a cruise if not near a shore
I've never been on that type of cruise (they exist, just not what I've been on). What I've been on the sea days were near shore taking in the beautiful scenery (you don't take an Alaska cruise for the ports, you take the cruise to watch the shore on sea days), or the ship hopes between islands at night and so you are at a port all day (though next time I think I'd get a resort and stay on one island). Beware.
Amtrak is often a great choice to get around. However there are problems and they are not to be overlooked.
> the continent you need to get off the train
I can only say your understanding of Amtrak offerings are very inaccurate.
Amtrak offers plenty of trips with kind of features you are asking for https://www.amtrakvacations.com/travel-styles/cross-country-...
For example the NYC to SF is an itinerary goes like this https://www.amtrakvacations.com/trips/great-american-majesti....
It is a 12 day one way trip that includes plenty of overnight non train stays(i.e. hotels), full day sight seeing stops etc .
You can mix local car rentals to take extended side trips add much longer breaks with hop-on/hop off if you plan to do so.
There are national park themed trips specifically, or number of great regional options or other cross country journeys like LA to NOLA etc.
It will be never be perfect exact fit to your specific tastes and needs, no public transit can ever be,. However that doesn't mean it is not a great option for a traveling family vacation with sight seeing and breaks, where you can actually spend quality time with the family rather than just looking straight at the road all day, while everyone else is on the phone.
Cross country rail journeys will always be the domain of weirdo railfans (I say, having ridden many of them many times). Flying is just too economical past the first few hundred miles.
However, we live along the Surfliner route, and for weekend trips it's fantastic. It's a 1-3 hour penalty versus driving depending on which city we're going to, but the kids vastly prefer it because they're not strapped in and we can all interact.
The US should focus on medium speed rail (100-155mph). It is easier to upgrade existing track than build new high speed track. There are lots of routes that aren't worth doing for HSR but would be at slower speed.
Good example is the Amtrak Cascades which reaches 80mph. The rolling stock can reach 125 mph. High speed rail would be nice, but Portland, Seattle, Vancouver may not be big enough to support it.
I disagree. The US should focus on those routes that there is ample reason to believe there would be high demand for true high speed rail (280km/h average speed including stops). DC to Boston Via NYC for example: there is every reason to believe this could pay for itself running 8 trains per hour all day. Once we have that there are lots of other cities that can be connected and as the network grows the whole becomes more useful. East of the Mississippi the US is about as densely populated as Europe.
If you already have a route in place using that is cheaper, but often you are stuck with decisions that made sense in 1850 when trains didn't go very fast. Where you are building new track is should always be build to 350km/h standards (you run at 300km/h, but build to a higher standard just in case you need to run fast to make up time at the cost of efficiency). There are many towns with populations of 50,000 or so people that you wouldn't build new track too, but if there is existing track running slower trains make sense.
Only in a country with dysfunctional rail infrastructure.
The US is physically big enough that coast to coast would probably always be a fairly niche pursuit. New York to SF, say, is about 4700km. At 300km/h, assuming no stops, that is 15 hours. Most people won't want to do that.
Seattle to SF, however, is only about 1300km, so a bit over 4 hours under ideal conditions. At that point, it's probably quicker than a plane (no need for the whole getting to and from the airport thing, or the security, or the inevitable delays).
These days, being in the flying sardine tin often beats out train travel. With more adoption, I’ll bet the price difference will be closer. The comfort factor alone means I’ll take the train over flying if it’s feasible, every time. Even coach on the northeast regional is so much nicer than flying, and you’re usually a lot closer to where you actually want to be when you get off.
Depends on where you are going - for my family vacation a sleeper for 4 is cheaper than flying by a lot (i live in a high priced air travel city, I would money driving to chicago despite the higher parking costs). However I have 5 people going and so it does't work out. (It doesn't help that amtrak dosen't suggest options like 2 rooms)
We went coach amtrak which was cheaper and more comfortable than flying. I'd do that again.
Amtrak would benefit from a coach-class sleeper, like they have in India or in Eastern Europe. They just need coach benches that convert to beds. If, for a reasonable price, you could lie flat at night behind a little curtain, like you can in e.g. Indian Railways 2nd Class, it would change the game completely. Without that, you can only travel comfortably during the day, and trips are limited to about eight hours for the non-masochist. With it, cross country would be fine. It doesn't seem that hard. Lots of other railways do it.
Amtrak coach seats don't lay flat, but they are not far off. Most people find them plenty comfortable.
Oh, don't get me wrong, during the day it's the most comfortable way to travel. But the ability to lie flat, even in fare classes that aren't too fancy, like they have in India, counts for a lot when you're traveling overnight.
I've thought trains are cool ever since I was a kid reading about the Silver Streak and the Orient Express, so every now and then I look into travelling by train. Unfortunately, Amtrak is like someone was tasked with making train travel as inconvenient and expensive as possible to make the idea of state-funded rail look bad. It's so bad someone wrote a book about it, called "Derailed."
Yes. Perhaps it makes more sense for people "travelling" i.e. exploring the world where the fact that it is a nights accommodation too makes it a savings and speed is not an issue.
I used to have to take the train to college and back home on breaks and it was nice trip.
You can't bring a whole dorm and your closet, but a backpack and a bag for clothes are manageable. I always brought some bags of beef jerky and would watch the scenic view or listen to an audiobook. Just sitting on the train, enjoying my snack and watching nature was a nice way to pass time time.
Same here, Capital Region NY to NYC. Such a nicer trip than city road traffic.
If I never had to fly domestically again it would be too soon, high speed rail ftw!
Don't worry, if high-speed rail displaces flight they'll have the federal gropers jobs program for that too. Soon enough it will suck just as much as flying "for your security."
I recently saw that Canadian passenger railways have security checks and bag check-in just like airlines :-))
They're like aliens seeing humans preparing food but not understanding what taste is.
> I recently saw that Canadian passenger railways have security checks and bag check-in just like airlines :-))
It's probably harder to drive a train into something than it is to fly a plane into something, but a bomb on a train could do a lot of damage even if it wasn't as cinematic as a bomb on a plane. And, having traveled on Amtrak and seen what people try to cram in to the limited space available, it's not clear to me that some sort of baggage control is automatically a bad thing.
(Don't get me wrong, I like not having to go through those airport-style controls, but it's a tragedy of the commons sort of thing, where abuse of it by a few renders it unpleasant for everyone.)
> but a bomb on a train could do a lot of damage even if it wasn't as cinematic as a bomb on a plane
Same for a bus, tram, funicular, metro, ferry. At what point does the insanity stop?
A crowded bus in Bucharest probably has 200 passengers and at peak times it could drive near stops and streets where hundreds, if not thousands of other people, are in a 100m radius.
you could be like india where even going to the metro requires a bag scan
Metro, the mall, your hotel room. India has terrorism problems. I wonder how much / if this helps. (India also has a lot of cheap labor and this might just be a jobs program for attendants of the machines)
The rails are also a target though. I'm surprised we don't see more bad actors sabotaging high speed passenger rail tracks.
Think what a bomb on a freeway bridge would do. Clearly need to grope everyone before they get in their car.
Of course that happened with the Crimea bridge but seems less of a problem elsewhere.
Traffic fatalities are like 10 9/11s a year. Think of the children!
In 2020 a train engineer intentionally drove a train off the end of the tracks because he believed a Covid-19 conspiracy theory about a nearby hospital ship. https://www.justice.gov/usao-cdca/pr/san-pedro-train-enginee...
Ok, but that's
1. More like if the pilot of a plane lost his mind, which all the horses and men in TSA couldn't fix, and, 2. He didn't exactly drive it into the Pentagon, did he?
Nothing at all like the TSA Experience
Yes, there is more room available at the bottom of the barrel.
Security of that sort for high speed rail is extremely unusual, possibly non-existent. Spain does x-ray baggage, I think, but even that is pretty weird.
It'll only cost $10 trillion dollars and still be slower than planes.
"Slower" only if you consider yourself to be the only individual that matters. High speed trains move way more people per mile per hour. Plus train stations can be located in much more convenient locations (directly in city centers), so even though your time in the air may be less time than you would be on a train, door-to-door home-to-destination may be faster.
Realistic HSR is regional. Connecting Boston through DC at 300 km/hr. Sacramento to San Diego. Chicago St. Louis Kansas City. Running track through states with more cattle than people would be a waste of capital. Flights from NYC to DC are barely long enough to get to cruising altitude. HSR would be great for that segment.
Sold!
I heard that Caltrain toyed with the idea of partnering with waymo to get people to and from train stations more affordably but dang wouldn't it be nice if one of the ride hailing companies started offering shuttle type services to get you to the train station but while sharing with other people.
Better bus coverage and reliability would be ideal but perhaps this could be used to help make the case in the mean time.
The Dutch railways have offered ridiculously cheap bicycle rentals by almost every station for years now, and it's so helpful. No need to plan travel times, just tap your card and go.
Of course this also requires proper bicycle infrastructure to be available, but it shows how well this could work.
I rented one of those in Amsterdam then rode the beautiful tree-lined path along canals to Utrecht one day. I then rode back with the bike to Amsterdam. When I arrived, I was told this was not allowed, but it wasn't clear why. Maybe the municipal bikes need to stay in city limits? This was about a decade ago. Maybe you can enlighten me?
Hm, strange. That has been allowed for many years now, you do pay a fee of 10 euros though. There are no restrictions on where you can ride the bikes either.
https://www.ns.nl/klantenservice/deur-tot-deur-diensten/ov-f...
>Kan ik een OV-fiets op een andere locatie inleveren?
>Je kunt een OV-fiets ook op een andere locatie inleveren. Je betaalt dan wel € 10 extra. Deze extra kosten zijn voor het verplaatsen van de fiets.
>Lever je de fiets in bij een andere locatie op hetzelfde station? Dan betaal je niks extra.
Was that an OV-fiets (which I was talking about)? (Also asking because they're not by the municipality.)
The main restriction is that you should bring it back to the place where you rented it, or pay €10 extra. I don't know how they'd even know that you took it out of the city?
It was OV Fiets. Maybe the issue is that I wasn't supposed to have it on the train back from Utrecht during certain hours. Or a certain car. Despite receiving this info, I wasn't fined or anything.
Ah, you took it by train - yes, that's probably it. You can only take bikes on the train outside of rush hours. The main reason I think is just because they take up too much space, so presumably it wasn't too much of a problem, so glad to hear they were lenient.
It requires dense cities too unless most of the population is fit enough to cycle
Well, not super dense; it's available at least in the towns and cities that most people either live in or visit. And it obviously only works for people who can cycle.
But with those two restrictions you would still serve a very significant chunk of the population of pretty much any country. It's really the bike infrastructure that's the limiting factor elsewhere.
Bikes can work great for travelers aged from, say, 13 to 70 without much luggage. Not so great for travelers outside that age range, with more luggage, or with physical disabilities. I wonder what fraction of travelers falls into the latter category.
I agree standard bikes are a poor fit for luggage. There are cargo (e)bikes that can comfortably hold large bags (e.g. https://larryvsharry.com/products/ebullitt). They may make sense at major rail stations, but the logistics of keeping them in stock at the station would be hard, and of course this doesn't solve the infrastructure or physical disabilities/age problem.
Yeah, that covers a significant portion of the population, leaving the roads less congested for those who can't use both that and e.g. a bus.
While we're on that subject, there is a special place in hell for whoever decided to put stairs with the only backup option being the smallest, slowest lift known to man in St Pancras station. Such idiocy.
> Better bus coverage and reliability would be ideal
Busses seem suboptimal if you don’t need a driver. They’re too big.
Peoples’ travel plans in space and time are naturally heterogenous; the less we force passengers to travel to and from stops or change their plans to match a schedule, the more people will ride.
Not when you are operating around scheduled transport like trains and planes. Buses are optimal in that case.
If you've ever taken a cruise you've seen this work beautifully. Even with multiple excursions, busses are optimal for getting people around because the 100s of people on the ship are ultimately going to the same places.
> Even with multiple excursions, busses are optimal for getting people around because the 100s of people on the ship are ultimately going to the same places
Cruises are one of the rare cases where our buses are correctly sized and competitive against rail, in large part because you’l continuing the social experience of being on a cruise ship.
When you consider what makes a bus-sized bus perfect for tour groups and the like, it quickly becomes apparent why they’re not optimally sized for transit outside the constraints imposed by driver economics.
Why? During rush hour buses transport like 100 people each. That is a lot of cars that would congest the roads.
Why would this be an issue with the driver? I don't mean that combatively; I really don't see it. It seems to me that any form of transit, autonomous or not, either runs on some sort of centrally controlled schedule subject to optimization, or can be summoned on demand, in which case it only works as long as not too many people use it (usually because of cost), or else it will lead to traffic congestion and worsen rather than improve traffic.
> Why would this be an issue with the driver?
Drivers are the dominant operating cost of a bus system, and they’re typically paid regardless of ridership. That means you have a minimum ridership per driver required to offset their cost.
Bus systems thus size the bus and route to ensure that minimum ridership. That, in turn, requires aggregating demand, i.e. forcing people to change the places and times of their transit to line up with the bus’s. Analogous to lift and drag, the more you force people to change their schedules, the more you lose potential demand to alternatives.
If you don’t have a driver, you can make your transports as big or small as you’d like. In rare cases, they’ll be bus sized. But most busses either aren’t consistently full or lose a lot of potential riders because their schedules and stops are inconvenient. A fleet of smaller vehicles sops up that demand without hauling around a bunch of dead mass off rush hour.
If most buses are consistently full, it means that you have too few buses or the level of service is poor outside peak hours.
Transit systems are usually sized for peak demand. Because you are paying for the vehicles and the infrastructure anyway, the marginal cost of offering better service outside peak hours is low. Especially if the drivers receive monthly wages and have semi-reasonable shifts. And that means buses are far from being full most of the time.
> Transit systems are usually sized for peak demand. Because you are paying for the vehicles and the infrastructure anyway, the marginal cost of offering better service outside peak hours is low. Especially if the drivers receive monthly wages and have semi-reasonable shifts
Right. Now remove drivers from the equation.
The ideal size for a bus goes down because you can effectively turn off parts of the bus outside peak hours. (By parking some of the fleet.) Moreover, you can induce new demand by adding (and moving) virtual stops wherever your customers are. Busses via rideshare doesn’t work with a driver; it does if you can spin up and down your fleet on a dime.
> The ideal size for a bus goes down
No, it doesn't, because if you have lots of small buses then high-traffic areas will get clogged with lots of little buses loading and unloading and just physically taking up space in bus lanes. If anything, you generally want _bigger_ buses; most large cities size buses as big as the road infra will take (with the exception that a lot of cities won't consider double-deckers even where they'd make sense, due to lack of familiarity). Now, some of that is drivers, but some of it is just capacity.
(Or sometimes slightly bigger than the road infrastructure will take. About once a decade, Dublin Bus tries articulated buses, which then get stuck on roundabouts, reminding Dublin Bus why it doesn't have articulated buses.)
The mass difference between a big bus and a small bus also isn't generally _that_ huge. A smallish single-decker is about 10 tonnes, these days a big double-decker is only about 12.
The ideal size does not go down. You want the bus as large as practical in all cases. The difference in cost between a small and large bus is not significant (a little more full, and the bus costs 10x as much - but both of these are insignificant over the life of the bus), and the large bus can handle it if you decide to take everyone bowling after your kids birthday party or some such.
The dominant constraint is usually road capacity during peak hours. You need a certain number of large buses to handle that, and those buses are cheap to use outside peak hours.
Ideal bus size may go down if peak demand also decreases. For example, if working from home becomes more common. Smaller buses may also become more viable when direct bus lines are replaced with rail lines and feeder buses.
> dominant constraint is usually road capacity during peak hours
Where are you getting this? I know of no transit system which would add more buses were there just less congestion…
But many transit systems use larger buses to increase passenger capacity.
Most city streets are intended only for local traffic, and it's often inconvenient to use local streets for longer trips. Which means buses usually drive on major streets, which may become congested during peak hours. Due to fixed overheads, large buses use less road space per passenger and less stop time per passenger getting on/off.
It's also common that there is not enough space for a bus to pass a stopped bus due to congestion. Which means buses may have to stop at every stop on the route, even if no passenger is getting on/off.
> But many transit systems use larger buses to increase passenger capacity
Non sequitur.
You said busses are constrained by congestion. That's simply not true. When congestion is reduced, due to demographics or a congestion charge, cities don't run out to buy more busses. If the release of a suspected constraint doesn't cause an increase in signal, it isn't a constraint.
The real constraints on buses are demand, capital budgets and operating budgets. The dominant component of the last is the driver. The dominating deterimant of the first is the route. If you can have more buses on more routes for the same capital and operating cost as fewer, big buses, you'll increae ridership.
> If you can have more buses on more routes for the same capital and operating cost as fewer, big buses, you'll increae ridership.
The problem is, you probably only have a limited number of suitable arteries, so those routes are going to have places where they overlap. There are bus stops near me which at peak times have multiple buses per minute arriving, on many different routes, and at peak times these sometimes pile up and have to wait to load and unload. That's with big hundred-person double-deckers; it would be far worse if they were smaller.
I said that the dominant constraint is road capacity. Which means that buses must be large enough to carry the required number of passengers on the streets that exist. When you have buses running on ordinary streets with dedicated bus lanes (but no bus rapid transit), peak capacity is around 120 vehicles/hour/lane. Even mid-sized cities can have bottlenecks where that limit is reached due to geographic constraints.
On demand is a bad thing - it means you can't know when the bus will arrive because sometimes it will take a detour to pick up someone else. For a bus to be useful you need assurance of when it will arrive so you can be on time but not too early.
frequent buses are good because you shouldn't have to wait when you are ready to go. Fixed routes again mean you can plan on it.
> On demand is a bad thing - it means you can't know when the bus will arrive
You'd still have buses travel routes with fixed points they aim to be at on time. They just have more freedom between those points to deviate. Again, if you have one big bus this doesn't work. If you have lots of smaller ones, it does because not everyone on board will need to stop at every scheduled stop. (And if they do, you punt the detour to the next bus. Or better yet, spin up a new one from the garage. Mechanics you can't do with a fixed set of scheduled drivers.)
If you punt that means someone isn't picked when expected and so is late. Even spinning a new one up means they are late. Geometry works againts you
A fleet of smaller vehicles will congest the roads during rush hour and will only work off peak.
I'm not sure I agree with the conclusions, but I know that I haven't thought about it in detail and you obviously have. Thank you for the considered argument.
Buses are high capacity. A double decker bus will take about 100 people, in a space that realistically only about two cars can fit into.
Ive wondered if more people would use trains if you bring your car with you. You skip the traffic, but you have your car at the destination.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motorail
These used to be quite a big deal, but in practice most such services have died out.
There also used to be _car planes_: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aviation_Traders_Carvair
Or you could just hire a car at the destination. If you need one.
Sure - at $100/day. This cost adds up fast. Bringing my own minivan would have been a similar cost, and had a lot more space than the small car we were able to rent. Plus we could have left most of our baggage in the car since we didn't need it on the train.
You'd need to do it to get to the train too. To someone who lives 45 min+ away that would be a lot.
You’d drive your own car. Sane as you would to the airport. Or to a motorrail station.
Where I live, overnight parking is $20-30 a day. For longer trips I'd imagine bringing your car is worth it. Especially if you are renting a car on the other end.
ACE Rail (from Stockton to San Jose) has an absolutely wonderful network of eight shuttle buses that meet the train when it arrives at the Great America station[1]. They fan out across most of the Silicon Valley so that there's no need to wait for a bus or make connections between buses.
Every commuter rail line really should do this. Obviously Caltrain could not do this for every train, but how about some trains?
[1] https://cdn.acerail.com/wp-content/uploads/ACE-Shuttle-Map-S...
Feeder buses are fairly standard in many transport systems.
The Avelias are nice but the problem with the Acela hasn't been the rolling stock in a long time, it's that it can only reach top speed (~150mph) on a tiny portion of the track, mostly between Boston and Providence and some more in New Jersey. The rest of it, we're running proper high-speed trains at like 70mph, unfortunately. Fixing the alignment and upgrading the track is a kind of political nightmare that upgrading the trains just isn't.
The problem with every train is that it doesn't go faster. But Acela is already faster than driving, which is a benchmark no other train can match in North America. Probably faster, door-to-door, than flying, unless you ride its entire length.
The Chicago El is faster than driving. BART may be too, depending on time of day.
Is Brightline faster than driving?
The new LA-Las Vegas line should be faster than driving, but it's not here yet.
Sorry, I meant long distance train. DC metro and especially NYC are also both faster than driving.
Yep. What Metro North is doing is a travesty.
Whenever I go to the East coast, I make a point of finding some reason to ride Amtrak, preferably Acela. There's just something magical about staying anywhere between Boston and DC, and yet only being one relaxing, couple-hour trip away from central Manhattan, downtown Philly, etc.
I wish the West Coast also had frequent service between Vancouver, Seattle, Portland, SF, LA, and points between. Driving and flying stresses me out and is generally an awful experience. When I arrive by train, I'm more relaxed than when I started.
It always floored me when I moved to the Bay Area that Caltrain from SJ to SF took about as long as Amtrak from Philly to NYC (twice the distance). I know they are different systems and electric Caltrain is faster, but still, it felt like a step back rail wise. Also, Amtrak out here stops running so ridiculously early, which is very frustrating.
Caltrain is a commuter rail and Amtrak is regional. Caltrain makes 15-20 stops between SF and San Jose. They aren’t the same sort of system at all. It’s like comparing Amtrak to Metro North.
The low-hanging fruit is regional rail. Caltrain, LIRR, et cetera. That together with a robust metro system that links parking garages and airports is the realistic multi-modal transport we need.
Too many rail projects seem to have been prosecuted by purists who are anti-car or anti-plane. That leads to bloat, or ignoring designs that would increase real ridership (e.g. adequate parking at endpoint, or RORO stock).
The State of North Carolina runs several trains a day between Charlotte and Raleigh (The Piedmont). It runs along the same tracks as Amtrak's Carolinian. The Crescent, Palmetto, Silver Meteor and Floridian aren't focused on North Carolina but make stops in the state.
I've ridden the Piedmont a couple of times and it's very convenient compared to driving, especially during inclement weather. Could it be better? Yes - especially in Charlotte where they have a half-completed station in Uptown while the current station is in a sketchy industrial area and isn't convenient for anyone.
Once Charlotte Gateway station is completed it will link Amtrak service with local commuter rail and streetcar service (and bus/ride-share).
> The low-hanging fruit is regional rail.
Amen!
I recommend taking a look at Newsom's proposal for a regional program unifying San Joaquin Valley, Sacramento, and the Bay Area into a single unified rail system along with expanding ACE to Modesto a couple years ago - that would have been a game changer, but the purists struck along with other more politicially palatable options.
> Too many rail projects seem to have been prosecuted by purists who are anti-car or anti-plane
Exactly! And a la Tsebeleis, they are a significant veto player that are functionally turning a stag hunt into a Nash equilibrium.
Idk, America is littered with Park-and-ride stations with perpetually empty lots
Is the frequency and reliability of the attached rail service sufficient? Park and ride can work pretty well, but you do need a reliable rail service attached to it.
Though, also, the trouble with park and ride stations is that there's a very specific utilisation at which they work well. If they get too popular, that is also a problem.
Notable is the recent introduction of Mardi Gras Service, a route from New Orleans from Mobile that hasn't been used for passenger trains since Hurricane Katrina. The maximum one-way fare is $15, and its already popular enough that they added 60 more seats. I'm looking forward to riding it and thumbing my nose in the direction of I-10.
I've taken the Surfliner route (SB->LA) frequently while in college. Moving to NYC and taking the Acela (NYC to Boston) over 20 times, I have to say the east coast experience is amazing. The route is super popular with business travelers commuting to NYC or other major cities along the route. You show up, grab a seat, pop your laptop open, get some work done... wow you're at your destination. Hungry? Walk to the snack cart and grab a coffee or a beer, at a reasonable price.
Amtrak is not reasonable prices compared to trains in like any other part of the world, except some parts of UK. Other than booking extremely early you're looking at 150$ plus tickets.
Last minute can be a bit pricy. But Boston to NYC is 40-78 dollars. Bus is 40, and takes 2x longer, and uncomfortable. I can get 4 hours of work done. It's not Europe, but it's really a way nicer experience than I expected.
> Last minute can be a bit pricy.
Which sucks for a public good. Imagine if roads worked this way (and no, surge pricing of express lanes don't count, since there's no discount for using it at the same time having booked it two months in advance). Or, like, water use.
This is, unfortunately, not just a US thing. Dublin to Cork is 20 eur if you book a few days in advance, 32 eur if you book same day, and, if you actually think you can just show up and pay _in the station_, 50 eur.
> Last minute can be a bit pricy
Which is genuinely infuriating when you subsequently board a half-empty train.
The Surfliner in Southern California is a great deal. Take the business class ticket. OC to San Diego is a breeze and you can relax and enjoy all beach towns with a glass of wine. Took it from OC to Santa Barbara. It takes about an hour longer than driving but so worth it. Can’t say enough good things about it. Views in all directions totally amazing. Trains are packed at times but it’s good to see.
I think high speed cross country rail travel is not very practical either to build or for travelers. The distances are too large, terrain too difficult and population densities are too low west of the Mississippi. It’s worth noting that the US train network is optimized for freight and we carry much more freight than many countries by rail.
High population density corridors like BOS-NYC-PHL-DC and SB-LA-OC-SD make a lot of sense and would be great to see even better service. We are seeing a high-speed, private service building track between Ontario, CA and Las Vegas. Distances to Vegas and Phoenix are short enough and population densities high enough that it makes travel by train from SoCal competitive with driving and air.
I can't read the article. What does it say?
It looks like Amtrak trips are up 7.5% since 2019 (https://ti.org/antiplanner/?p=23182). Does that count as booming?
Relative to most other transit options that never fully recovered after COVID? Yes. Amtrak is even doing better than airlines.
Remote work and Zoom have reduced the demand for business travel flights. No one takes a train for business.
> No one takes a train for business.
I mean surely that's a big part of what the Acela one is used for?
There is a private train system in Florida that connects major cities. Sadly, my understanding is its financials are not great. Hopefully that changes.
The engineering is not stellar either. 96% of the line's crossings are at grade. Those intersections are undersignaled with barriers that are easy to drive around.
If you know anything about Florida drivers you won't be surprised to hear there have been 180 fatalities on Brightline since its inception in 2017.
No doubt the public blames the trains rather than the drivers
> you won't be surprised to hear there have been 180 fatalities on Brightline since its inception in 2017.
... Wait, _seriously_? That seems implausibly high, for one not-very-frequent train line. Are these just uncontrolled crossings, with no barriers, or something?
Yeah in Florida Brightline runs the deadliest railway in the country by a pretty good margin. In California they've pared back their grand plans dramatically because (surprise, surprise) even when you're cheaping out on the infrastructure railways are expensive.
They're also building the same thing between Las Vegas and SoCal: https://www.brightlinewest.com/
(un)surprisingly, this will be operational well before the California HSR (SF->LA) boondoggle.
Yeah, maybe. Even if Brightline succeeds in building something it's going to fall short of connecting LA to Vegas.(un)surprisingly, this will be operational well before the California HSR (SF->LA) boondoggle.https://www.npr.org/2025/09/11/nx-s1-5495584/brightline-west...
I think they're burning capital faster than they're recouping anything. I think they have $5B on debt on $500m in revenue.
I think if they can hold out they could be successful, but thats a big if.
https://www.wlrn.org/business/2025-08-12/brightline-fares-pr...
So funny enough, I'm sitting on a plane right now because the amtrak train was late, then announced a different trip number then what was on the ticket. No information on what was coming or leaving. It was a small city depot, but it was nothing like I've come to expect in Europe. The Chicago/Minneapolis ticket was cheap. Seats on the way up were comparable to first class. Wifi did not work on the way up. Did turn a couple hour journey into an all day affair. My kingdom for a bullet train like others have.
Took the California Zephyr from Emeryville to Chicago and loved it! but 5x more expensive than flying for a private room...but an absolutely beautiful journey.
I needed to travel from NYC to Washington DC, specifically without driving. Sounded like a perfect case for Amtrak.
Turns out flying was both cheaper and faster.
I live in DC and go to NY a couple times a year, for a decade+. It can be a little faster to fly, sometimes it can be a little cheaper (but that depends a lot on when you book), but AmTrak wastes less of my time. Living in DC proper, it's faster for me to get to Union Station. Once there, maybe I'll grab a coffee and then it's time to board the train. I get on, I sit down, I plug in, and I have three hours of no hassle quiet work time. Then I come into Penn Station, catch the A train downtown, and I'm at the NY office. There's way less standing in line, dealing with security, being shutdown due to taxiing, waiting in traffic, etc.
The Acela is useful if I'm trying to make a tight time window. However, I prefer the café car booths on the Regional.
I took the Acela from NYC to DC to visit a friend. It was expensive, but I wanted to try it.
The interior of the cars was old and beat up. The tray in front of me didn't work. The bathroom door was borked and there was this persistent hint of a foul smell.
The woman across the isle was bombed and clearly going through something, but before long she fell asleep and when she woke up was docile as a lamb.
I've read that the main advantage of inter-metropolis rail travel is that you enter and exit in the middle of town. This helped for NYC and DC -- I took a short subway ride to Penn Station on the NYC side, and then walked from Union Station to my friend's house on the DC side.
Rail is the most comfortable way to travel by far. If only it were cheaper and faster.
The first half of your post seems to contradict your conclusion in the last sentence.
Your first half would describe a pretty miserable trip for me. I’d gladly take TSA over what you described.
That gives you an idea of how much I enjoy buses and airports.
I complained, but it wasn't that bad. Mostly I was pointing out that the "premium" line is in disrepair. This is why they're replacing them.
I've ridden plain old Amtrak many times before, and it can be hit or miss but is invariably better than a bus or a plane, in my opinion. Big seats, plenty of room to walk around, a dedicated lounge car, big windows, no TSA.
If the train shows up, that is.
Old and beat up train would still handily beat economy class in any plane, comfort-wise.
I'm taking torn seats over TSA 10/10 times
The new acela trains will improve the first part but i honestly feel like the regional is the better train. It's basically the same speed as acela south of Philly anyway
You have to add comfort to the equation.
And don't forget about TSA checks which can be stressful.
And the stress of whether or not the airline will let your luggage on board with you.
For a flight that lasts less than an hour, I didn’t find comfort or the TSA screening really much of a drag.
I came across this video[0] a little while ago which gives a pretty in depth look at the efforts being made to modernize bridge and tunnel infrastructure in a crucial but small subsection of the American rail network.
I knew this would be the B1M just from your description. I’ve been a subscriber of theirs for quite some time now - they have some fascinating videos.
>...TikTok... Amtrak... Its posts can get hundreds of thousands of views.
For me online addiction/enthusiasm has swung me towards trains. I'm fairly happy sitting there a while if I can do stuff online and get bored driving or doing airport faff.
Not here in TN. If it were, I'd be going places. I love trains, and even long train rides, regardless of the cost.
I really wish there was an auto train connecting the west and east sides of the country.
Access to Economist articles is not booming in America though :-(
Amtrak is amazing, but it is horrendously slow outside of the NE corridor (due to freight priority) and routes that should exist don't (Dallas to Houston, Toronto to NYP diagonally across New York instead of via Albany).
Apparently it takes 8h to do DFW to Little Rock despite this being a 6h trip by car. That's not great.
If you're looking for a paywall bypass, it's still paywalled under archive.today :(