Better bus coverage and reliability would be ideal but perhaps this could be used to help make the case in the mean time.
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...
Of course this also requires proper bicycle infrastructure to be available, but it shows how well this could work.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Consistently one of the most sold-out and profitable routes.
I don't really understand why because their main audience is rural people and those are the worst hit. Climate change causing extreme weather. A lot of them would even be farmers. Doubly affected, not just a danger to their homes but also their livelihood.
I mean a city of millions will just build a big wall (like in the expanse) Skyscrapers are built to withstand a lot. But rural communities won't have that kind of money.
I'm sure there's a good chance the worst predictions don't come true but even if it's half as bad it's very serious. We're already too late to stop the start of it.
Ps can't read the article as it's paywalled
Then buy a subscription to the economist or be a hacker.
For rail specifically: for rural Americans, passenger rail worth the name (aka what we get in Europe) is something that they see as unachievable, something for "librul city dwellers". When all they get from rail is noise and crossings blocked for hours [1], it's hardly a surprise that rail ends up being yet another culture war issue.
> Ps can't read the article as it's paywalled
Go to archive . today, enter the URL of a paywalled site, pass a CAPTCHA, off you go. It works with a bunch of popular news sites to bypass their paywalls, and for free but ad-infested, you'll get an ad-free experience.
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/11/business/blocked-rail-cro...
for rural Americans, passenger rail worth the name (aka what we get in
Europe) is something that they see as unachievable
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/...
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.)
But for some reason the government basically stopped enforcing it like 40 years ago.
So in practice it tends to work the other way.
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
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-...
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
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.
I’d take Amtrak’s word on it.
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.
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.
> 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.
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.
They're like aliens seeing humans preparing food but not understanding what taste is.
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.)
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.
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.
(un)surprisingly, this will be operational well before the California HSR (SF->LA) boondoggle.
(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 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...
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 looks like Amtrak trips are up 7.5% since 2019 (https://ti.org/antiplanner/?p=23182). Does that count as booming?
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).
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.
We went coach amtrak which was cheaper and more comfortable than flying. I'd do that again.
- 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.
---
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.
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.
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.
Turns out flying was both cheaper and faster.
And don't forget about TSA checks which can be stressful.
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.
tonetegeatinst•1h ago
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.
frankmatranga•26m ago