I like trains, but I do not like Amtrak prices, especially when you buy tickets at the last minute. The fares on the East Coast are not uniform and go up dramatically if you have not bought in advance, and the ticket agents love to withhold this information - they are the least helpful in this respect. They love for you to pay the highest price possible. I guess airlines do the same thing with pricing, but I've always been prepared for that.

I do not expect to see bullet trains in the U.S. in my lifetime. I would love to have the option to have a bullet train from Los Angeles to San Francisco, but even now, Amtrak goes from L.A. to Oakland instead of to SF, and so you still have to take a bus over the bridge or BART under the bay to get from Oakland to SF, if you take a train.

Texas is considering bullet trains, and the first one should connect Houston and Dallas, since there is nothing in between. To go from Dallas to San Antonio, there are many places to stop, but from San Antonio to Houston again there are none, unless the train goes to Austin first, which it most likely would. I do not expect these trains to happen in my lifetime, but they would be much easier to build in Texas (with flat land) than in California.

I only once had occasion to ride the shinkansen on a two week vacation in Japan. I have much more experience with TGV type trains in Western Europe. I see from online stats that they travel at about the same speed, it's a fun ride. I remember just a few years ago hitting nearly 300 Kph (about 180 Mph) flying on the ground in a train in France and it was exhilarating.

Both Japan and Western Europe are denser and smaller than the US and can more easily support trains. Governments in both areas also subsidize transportation companies. The US once had an extensive passenger rail network that's been mostly abandoned. What remains now is not heavily used except for the Washington to Boston corridor. I don't expect train travel to ever come back again. The on again, off again project in California is a joke.

I love taking trains in Europe and do so whenever it's convenient. Depending on where I am and where I'm going, sometimes planes and car rentals are easier. For strictly center city to center city travel of less than 500 miles, trains are best.

lars, prices vary by day and time because that's demand pricing. Plane tickets in the US and elsewhere are the same, train tickets in Europe are the same.

I'm waiting for the Hyperloop! Hyperloop

Long distance, passenger trains are romantic, not practical in most of the US. Airline tickets are pretty cheap here.

It's unfortunate that it wasn't done earlier between Boston-Washington. Ancient history, but I rode Amtrak on those rails during college. It was often a miserable experience.

no. another taxpayer rabbit hole

The biggest taxpayer rabbit hole going is the Dept of Defense. More money is wasted there than anywhere else. It irks me to think of how much of the wasteful spending could be redirected to provide better value for money.

Which government service is your favorite that you wouldn't want to do without or have to do with less of?

I would love to be able to travel by fast train in more comfort than an airplane provides. I wonder if those trains have fewer polluting emissions than airplanes per mile? I'll have to look that up. I know I'll never see them in the U.S. in my lifetime. A project like that would require more political will and public support than is available right now.

Fun2B, at least in Europe, train travel is less polluting than planes or cars or buses by a large margin. Trains are electric. According to Wikipedia, electricity in France is about 90% nuclear and renewable and only a small percentage from fossil fuels. Germany's numbers are less impressive but fossil fuel sources dropped below 40% in 2019. Far ahead of what's happening in the US.

It would be great.

Maybe where you live affects your view. I, too, have ridden the TGV in France and the Shinkansen in Japan. On the East Coast, at least, I think this would have paid for itself over

It's been a few years (maybe about 5) since I last took the Eurostar, which is the TGV-type train with a terminus in London that goes through the Channel Tunnel, turns north to Brussels and Amsterdam with one leg of a Y and south to Paris and the South of France with the other and in the reverse direction too. The best way to travel between these cities when not connecting from a trans-Atlantic flight. It's a cool ride through the tunnel, that segment even at a seemingly reduced speed doesn't last very long.

Eurostar security is more airplane-like than train like. Scans and metal detectors are used but without limits on liquids, as I recall. Transportation security, including at airports, is a bit lighter in Europe than in the US anyway and other than sometimes at Heathrow, lines are usually short and move quickly.

When we lived in NYC we took Amtrak's auto-train to Florida. We were visiting family fairly often and the drive was terrible from NY to Fl. We'd drive to Virginia, Amtrak would put our car on the train and we'd have a small bedroom to spend the night. I loved it. The price included nice meals, drinks, etc. and the small bunk type beds were okay.

I found it relaxing and enjoyable.

When we got to Florida, we had our car and could stay for weeks without having to pay for a rental car for so many weeks or a month.

I would love auto-train expanded to other parts of the Country so you could take your car with you. The neat part was you could stuff your car with as much luggage and other stuff which you could never do on a plane. We'd spend a few weeks or longer with our own car and enough stuff to rent a condo for a month with the ability to take so much with us including our car.

I always felt we were on the Orient Express!

Jane

I'd like more train service, less Military spending. I realize the military-industrial complex pumps a lot of money into the economy, especially in my state of Virginia, and it's complicated. But imagine our country's transportation system if we had half of DOD's Research & Development to improve it, Operations and Maintenance to sustain it.

Oh well. Not in my lifetime, too many old farts in charge.

Pre-covid, I used Amtrak's service all the time. The Boston to DC service (and all points in between) is really good, IMO. If I was trying to get from NYC to Philly, or DC, or Boston I much preferred taking the train.

Elmer said everything else I would have added though, about why I just don't see if taking off here in this country.

Japan's entire bullet train system is only about 1700 miles from what I've read. That wouldn't even get you a single route from New York to Denver via Chicago. It would be a huge boondoggle.

Take an airplane if you are in a hurry.

Size is a real factor. it'd take imagination to engineer a practical way to cover our miles. But just because I can't envision a solution doesn't mean no one can (thank goodness).

I used to think that a train that ran from LA or SF to the gateway to Yosemite would be a good thing and possibly economically viable, if tourists would use it instead of driving. But it would require a real mindset change among Americans, I suspect.

I recall my grandmother taking the train from Cleveland to visit us in my hometown near Cincinnati. In Cleveland she relied on the light rail and buses. It was only after rail service was discontinued that she bought a car, about 1965 IIRC.

When my mother graduated from university, she took a train trip from Dallas to NYC to visit one of her friends in Connecticut. She stopped in Cincinnati on the way back and enjoyed her time there. She never traveled by air and never visited me in California, even though there are trains from where she lived to Los Angeles. Her mother was much more adventurous and visited Europe many times - she had no fear of flying. She also visited Lebanon in 1957 and thought it was a beautiful place. She also went to Turkey and quite a few other countries. My grandfather used to go with her, but he got tired of traveling before she did, and then she just went by herself.

When I was at university, I used to take the Santa Fe train between Houston and Temple, Texas, which is where I was born. Temple was built as a railroad town, has a Santa Fe Hospital, and is the location where the NorthSouth line intesects the East West line. I was not happy when Amtrak took over, but when I was at university, the Santa Fe railroad still operated the passenger trains. The train I took started in Houston and ended in Chicago or Milwaukee. At Temple, one could change trains to go west to El Paso and Los Angeles. I've also taken the train between Houston and New Orleans, which is pretty much a party train, especially around Mardi Gras. In California, I've only taken the train between Oakland and Vancouver.

When Amtrak took over passenger train service in the U.S., they sold the nice stainless steel passenger cars to Mexico, including the sleeping cars, and I used to ride on those all over Mexico. Then Mexico ended its passenger train service and replaced it with "luxury" buses, which are not nearly as nice.

I don't think we will have widespread train travel here either. Just wanted to know what you all thought about it. It was interesting reading all your thoughts, thanks.