Another reasons trains work well in Europe and not in the US is that most cities in Europe are either walkable or have very good public transportation systems. Consequently, you can take a train to your destination, hop on a subway, streetcar, taxi or bus and get to your hotel easily and without your personal vehicle. A car in many European cities is like having an albatross around your neck. In the US, you will need that car in about 80% of our cities so if it is at all feasible, most people choose to drive.WSPanic wrote: Would've been great if we had developed in the same way as Europe, but they had pretty good head start on widespread infratstructure for railways. Coupled with the fact that everything is relatively close in distance for the most part, it developed in a much different way.
The east coast of the US has a much older rail infrastructure and the cities are much closer together. And you see lots of train travel between NY, PA, MA, etc. Couple that with the auto and airline industries and you have some good reasons.
I agree it would be a nice option to have.
By the way, training in Europe, while better than the US by a longshot, is not without its own travails. My worst experience was similar to Cityscape's; I was riding through Scotland during the Christmas holiday and the train's heating went out on an extremely cold gale-prone night heading up the east coast from Edinburgh. After the heating went out, they de-prioritized our train so we were constantly pulling over to sidings to let other trains pass and what should have been a 3 hour trip ended up being about 6 hours. They extended the beverage service so that people could get hot drinks and then had the audacity to make us pay for tea and coffee. Easily one of the worst travel experiences I had over here. In the UK, train service can be really spotty with frequent cancellation of trains and poor overall service. In Germany, however, I've never had a bad experience and the trains are almost always on time....they know how to do trains there.