> our trains really do suck

You mean passenger trains. For the most part, the US rail network was constructed for and is primarily used for cargo transportation, where it excels.

The perpetual comparison of the US (cargo) train network to the other passenger train networks (Europe, Japan, China) is a tedius and misguided apples to oranges comparison.

Most of these comparisons blatently ignore the fact that population density is radically different between the US and these other systems, which is an important criteria in understanding the time/economic tradeoffs.

I like train travel a lot and living in the New York to Boston corridor I've always had easy access to commuter trains, the New York and Boston subway systems, and Amtrak for longer regional travel. Regardless, I don't think passenger rail makes much economic sense outside high-density areas and even then only survives with dubious tax subsidies.

In Europe, barges handle the freight traffic that fills the US railroads and trains handle the cross-continent traffic that runs in airplanes in the USA. It's mostly a result of Europe's many great rivers and the USA's vast open spaces.

That doesn't mean we can have great high speed rail from Boston to DC and Florida, from SF to LA, and from Chicago to New York, just like Europe can run freight trains under the Swiss Alps.

The main reason quality passenger rail doesn't get built and run well in the parts of the USA where it should is politics. The FRA regulations, the national transportation funding process, the state funding politics, the work rules, liability rules, labor regulations, safety regulations, and environmental regulations all work to make high speed rail five or more times as expensive per mile as in Europe. At that price, we should just live with the low quality infrastructure we've got. The only alternative is to reform the process and even supposed rail advocates like Obama haven't lifted a finger on the most obvious abuses, e.g. to loosen FRA buff strength standards or strict Buy American rules for rolling stock.

The entire interstate highway system is extremely heavily subsidized (along with gasoline). I'd be interested to see how it would compare with passenger trains without the subsidies, but I suspect it's not as lopsided as we think when it comes to a marginal passenger.

I understand what you are saying about the highway system being subsidized, but I'm not sure I understand your reference to gasoline.

Private energy companies explore, extract, refine, and sell gasoline, with all sorts of taxes (as opposed to subisidies) along the way. What subsidies are you refering to for gasoline?

The government creates foreign policy around the maintenance of oil supplies, which has a very large cost, and is largely a gift to the oil companies. This is reflected in income taxes rather than in the cost of gasoline. There are also large tax breaks given to oil companies. Domestic fossil fuels like coal and natural gas don't get quite the same treatment, since we have plenty.

Less politically-biased information about rail at Wikipedia[1].

Politically biased opinion: the Dems could have done anything from 2008-2010, and they chose healthcare. TSA didn't get any better, nor were trains built. More stringent mileage requirements were handed down, for those eco-friendly types out there, but we are not aggressively pursuing nuclear/fusion power generation like we should.

I would love to be able to grab a train from Houston to Dallas, as it would certainly beat the air travel experience, as other comments have mentioned the additional time required for check-in, security, etc. But the cost of new rail is in the billions per route, and we have lots of land to cover in America.

We are too cheap for high-speed aircraft, but we can (hopefully) do something to rid us of TSA and the accompanying security theatre, which would make air travel so much better.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-speed_rail_in_the_United_S...

What I always find funny with this type of discussion is that, when an article talks about the state of broadband connection in the US, someone (usually more than one person actually) will inevitably use the argument that the country is too sparsely populated and that's why we can't compare to Europe. While when an article talks about a possible train corridor between some major regional hubs, someone will inevitably mention that there are too many houses on the way and it's not practical :)

+10 for "the Dems could have done anything from 2008-2010, and they chose healthcare."

A decision the nation and the Democratic Party will be kicking themselves for for decades.

Compared to the urgency of high speed rail, they made the right choice!

I do not agree with the exact details of how they chose to tackle health care, but there is no question that it was the right priority at the time. Healthcare costs were at 18% of GDP and rising rapidly.

Even the hospitals and insurance companies recognized that something had to be done very soon. Between increasing poverty and companies dropping health care for their employees, they were losing patients at a record pace.

The risk of launching a startup was becoming almost unbearable. Many young entrepreneurs arbitrage the cost of their health risk by betting they won't get seriously ill and make themselves, their companies, and their investor funds go bankrupt. That is NOT a safe bet.