<story><title>American trains need more than railfan nostalgia</title><url>https://www.slowboring.com/p/amtrak-review</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>kumarsw</author><text>Somewhat tangentially, I watched a recent Not Just Bikes YouTube video that discusses the merits of commuter rail [1]. The video is obviously trying to discourage infrastructure that supports car-based suburbs, but another point came out that struck me: commuter rail is very expensive infrastructure with very low utilization, say 4 incoming trains in the morning and 4 outgoing trains in the evening. Any public transportation option needs to be compared against the default choice of &amp;quot;run more buses,&amp;quot; which it turns out is pretty hard to beat in terms of cost-effectiveness.&lt;p&gt;[1] &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;youtu.be&amp;#x2F;vxWjtpzCIfA&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;youtu.be&amp;#x2F;vxWjtpzCIfA&lt;/a&gt;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>TulliusCicero</author><text>It depends on the commuter rail. The S-Bahn in Germany is sort of &amp;#x27;commuter rail&amp;#x27; but also gets regular use for other types of trips. And actual commuter-specific train lines tend to go on just general tracks that are used for other lines as well, so it&amp;#x27;s not a huge deal.&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s just that US-style development -- more or less mandated by the government -- makes public transit in general infeasible. For example, in Munich where I lived, there are suburbs nearby surrounded completely by farmland, where the whole town is still a handful of minutes by bike to the train station. That means that even in these sleepy little towns, it&amp;#x27;s dense enough to where a car is unnecessary. In the US, that kind of development is a rarity, because the local zoning makes it literally illegal, and the roads have been designed to be hostile to anything that&amp;#x27;s not a car.</text></comment>
<story><title>American trains need more than railfan nostalgia</title><url>https://www.slowboring.com/p/amtrak-review</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>kumarsw</author><text>Somewhat tangentially, I watched a recent Not Just Bikes YouTube video that discusses the merits of commuter rail [1]. The video is obviously trying to discourage infrastructure that supports car-based suburbs, but another point came out that struck me: commuter rail is very expensive infrastructure with very low utilization, say 4 incoming trains in the morning and 4 outgoing trains in the evening. Any public transportation option needs to be compared against the default choice of &amp;quot;run more buses,&amp;quot; which it turns out is pretty hard to beat in terms of cost-effectiveness.&lt;p&gt;[1] &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;youtu.be&amp;#x2F;vxWjtpzCIfA&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;youtu.be&amp;#x2F;vxWjtpzCIfA&lt;/a&gt;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>jeffbee</author><text>That sounds like the worst rail service imaginable. Very American.&lt;p&gt;The Swiss town of Chur, which has the same population as Menlo Park, California, and which is a good distance from Zurich, as Menlo Park is from San Francisco, has five S-Bahn trains every hour, all day long, plus 9 other regional, interregional, and intercity trains per hour.&lt;p&gt;There&amp;#x27;s nothing fundamental about trains that says you have to have insulting levels of service. It&amp;#x27;s a choice.</text></comment>