This may be true when averaged across the entire country (or even just the lower 48).

But it is absolutely not true if you consider various zones of the country as candidates for good rail service.

Several such zones exist, among them:

1. the north east corridor, perhaps one of the largest and densest conurbations in the world

2. the roughly rectangular shape formed with the NW corner in Minneapolis, the NW corner in Milwaukee, the SE corner in Detroit and SW corner in <wherever the hell that is>

3. The triangle in Texas formed by Dallas/Ft. Worth, Austin and San Antonio

All 3 have higher population densities than those found in non-urban parts of Europe; the latter have good to excellent train service, but none of these 3 do.

When you factor in that you need a car in both your departing city and destination city (except for NYC), AND the fact that nearly every household in those regions owns one or multiple cars (which is not true in higher density/higher urbanization countries)...it begins to not make sense especially given the massive upfront cost of construction.

Rail is not going to happen until you don't need a car in those cities. Chicago you could do, but the others are not pedestrian friendly. Anyone traveling within that region will have a 95% chance of already owning a car. Unless the train gets you from Chicago to Minneapolis in an hour, people are just going to drive. The risk with car rental and money spent on Uber's isn't worth it.

I feel like these types of comments come from people that live in NYC or LA. The rest of the country is so fuckin sparse. Your "walkable cities" idea doesn't make any sense and is completely unfeasible outside of major metro areas which land wise in the US is like 99%.

I've done Chicago -> Madison by bus, and honestly prefer it to the plane at least (even from the airport). More comfortable seats and I get out just at a station. High frequency bus lines feel like good indicators of where some trains could work, and it's not like bus services are dead.

(Similarly, I did Portland -> Eugene on Amtrak and it was nice and chill! I roadshared to my final destination but I had to get from A to B somehow)

Also for the record, the overwhelming majority of the US population lives in metropolitan areas, not rural ones.

- For France, rural areas don't really have that good of a rail network. Instead there are several trunk lines that are reliable. But it means that east-west stuff is nearly non-existent. Lots of "drive me to the station and drop me off please". Good enough to put France at number 2 in numbers of km ridden per passenger!

- For Germany, the network is much more evenly spread out. But ever German I've met complaints constantly about the unreliability of the trains, combined with the low rate of service. So you end up with stations everywhere, but if a train gets cancelled you could be stranded for hours.

Anyways I do think the French model makes a hell of a lot of sense (prioritizing train frequency over coverage), but it might not be what people are expecting if they just look at a map of trains.

    At the time, it seemed that Musk had dished out the Hyperloop proposal just to make the public and legislators rethink the high-speed train.
    
    He didn’t actually intend to build the thing. It was more that he wanted to show people that more creative ideas were out there for things that might actually solve problems and push the state forward. With any luck, the high-speed rail would be canceled. Musk said as much to me [Ashlee Vance] during a series of e-mails and phone calls leading up to the announcement.

An influential person admitted that he had interfered the development of the high-speed railway at US with a vaporware project, which reported to him juicy economic revenues generated by investments and subsidies from all over the world. Just with vaporware.

Should people think that this kind of interference does not happen with influential pockets because you call it a conspiracy, while they call it just business?

Instead you build rails between major hubs (those that got the biggest airports usually) and add stops on some medium cities that happen to be on the way. It serves those living close enough of the connected cities that want to go close enough to another connected city. _close enough_ depends on the local connection options like regional trains, bus, bikes, trams… and if there’s nothing you just grab a cab or rental car. The city of departure can be reached with your own personal car which is usually a bit cheaper and faster (therefore more range). Most travels destination are big cities or close enough (business, tourism…).

Rail planing is a Pareto game.

The vast majority of every agricultural society used to be farmers.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Motors_streetcar_consp...

"Between 1938 and 1950, National City Lines and its subsidiaries, American City Lines and Pacific City Lines—with investment from GM, Firestone Tire, Standard Oil of California (through a subsidiary), Federal Engineering, Phillips Petroleum, and Mack Trucks—gained control of additional transit systems in about 25 cities.[a] Systems included St. Louis, Baltimore, Los Angeles, and Oakland. NCL often converted streetcars to bus operations in that period, although electric traction was preserved or expanded in some locations. Other systems, such as San Diego's, were converted by outgrowths of the City Lines. Most of the companies involved were convicted in 1949 of conspiracy to monopolize interstate commerce in the sale of buses, fuel, and supplies to NCL subsidiaries, but were acquitted of conspiring to monopolize the transit industry."

This history also plays a large role in "Who Framed Roger Rabbit," as a bit of fun bonus lore...

Manhattan may have high population density, and the public transit that goes with it; but building passenger rail thousands of miles to the other side of a sparsely populated continent just doesn’t add up in the same way.

Also I'd argue street cars are way worse than busses which have route flexibility.

The bigger problem is Americans don't like being around other Americans and really don't like public transit.

It's not some giant conspiracy.

No, but the two feed into each other. Intercity rail loses most of its advantages if you have to hire a car at the destination.

> Also I'd argue street cars are way worse than busses which have route flexibility.

They're better for that very reason. You can move somewhere with a decent commute and know that the streetcar isn't going to disappear at the stroke of a pen.

There is a different section in Oslo where the streetcar and metro share a stretch of track using a clever interlocking.

I don't like bad public transit either.

"Americans don't like being around other Americans "

There could be the option of having personal cabins for yourself.

Buses are a joke. We cannot have public transit here without security to match, like at airports.

Quite unsurprisingly Americans end up isolating from each other in suburbs, often gated neighborhoods with private schools, cars and live overall miserable and unhappy lives.