Quote:
Originally Posted by the urban politician
So a train line should be built to accommodate you? Do you realize just how minuscule of a minority people like you are amongst Americans?
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Good transit, including intercity rail, is one of those things that attracts customers and people like if and ONLY if it works. Most US transit services are unreliable, the routes are inadequate and the whole scheme is inconvenient so of course people disdain it all.
But it doesn't have to be the way it is. Are people in places like Europe and the more advanced countries of Asia really that different? In Europe, trains are often the most convenient way to get from one major city to another and they are heavily used. That was true even before high speed service became as common as it is now. It used to be true because the routes were complete and the trains, however slow, kept to the published schedules pretty rigorously, something AMTRAK has never done.
This is a chicken/egg thing. Should we require heavy usage before bothering to create good service? If we keep trying that it'll never work. It's time to improve the service and watch the users come as I believe they will.