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Wait, you guys have trains?
Wait, you guys have trains?
Depending on whether the stars are right. Or whether you need to cross the tracks - there’s always one when you need to cross the tracks.
there’s always one when you need to cross the tracks.
This, but you ever notice that it’s pretty much never passenger trains? This efficient mode of transportation is largely designed for and used by industry rather than for travel or commute. The exception is within big enough cities like DC and NYC to get from one side of the city to the other or anywhere between. Sure there are some trains that go between cities, but they’re largely unreliable because passenger cars yield to industrial freight, and so people are less inclined to opt for them over planes or cars, and so there are fewer trains available to go wherever you’re going in the window you’re trying to go. So you book a flight instead.
I’d take a long train ride over a road trip any fucking day. I don’t understand anybody who would rather drive than chill and read a book or play games or watch movies or nap.
This, but you ever notice that it’s pretty much never passenger trains? This efficient mode of transportation is largely designed for and used by industry rather than for travel or commute.
Yet massive amounts of goods are shipped long-distance via truck anyway, clogging up highways and polluting far more per-ton and per-mile moved.
Truly the worst of both worlds! USA! USA! USA!
Exactly, it’s not that the US doesn’t have trains, there are plenty. Lots of relatively small towns have rails going to or through them. The problem is that only a tiny fraction of them are passenger rail.
We have trains that have lethal derailments every year or so.
fast ones, we have slow ones, that are often on edge of collapse.
Although there are many improvements to be made, like international euro rail connecting the capitals, better prices, a reliable DB and most importantly EU standard track system, I love our euro rails.
But I’ve gotta confess, the fact the US train is called Marc is kinda cool.
“Hey, I wonder where Marc is. Is he coming?”
“Nah men, Marc is completely derailed again. He burned down an entire town and he’s toxic AF.”
MARC is unfortunately only a regional train for Maryland, and he is very limited on the weekends… The national passenger train system is called Amtrak.
Oooh, is he Swedish?
Removed by mod
He live in Cananda you wouldn’t know him…
Don’t forget BART and DART as well.
should have named them BORT and BURT
Deutsche Bahn has entered the chat.
Too early
As a DB user: “ha!”
50 minutes late due to a door malfunction.
DB doesn’t hold a candle to VIA Rail. Germans and Europeans in general like to mock DB, and with reason, but as a Canadian, I’m still so very jealous of DB.
Due to [these] restrictions, 80 per cent of trips suffered delays of more than 10 to 15 minutes in February between Quebec City and Windsor, where the majority of Via trains operate. In January, 67 per cent of trains were late on the same corridor. Delays have been even greater between Quebec City and Ottawa this year, affecting 94 per cent of trains last month and 86 per cent in January.
funny but inaccurate
i live in vienna. the train comes so often, nobody bothers to check the schedule anymore. just wait 2 mins, enter, go.
American here - I recently started taking the train to go to work! Previously I couldn’t due to no trains scheduled for the return home trip after my shift was over, but after getting a new schedule, I got on board the train! So far in the past two months, I’ve already had a few instances of the train being delayed or missing it entirely. One day, the train was delayed by 30 minutes and stated they would be held for an unknown amount of time to put out a fire on the tracks at a station ahead - drove into work that day. Another day, the train was delayed by 5 minutes. Outside of that, I was late to the train by like 5 minutes and it left without me (still adjusting to early morning schedule).
So far, I like taking the train much more than driving the car.
Of course the trains leave without you if you are 5 min late.
It will leave without you if you are 30 seconds late. Hell, it will even leave if you are 5 seconds late unless they see you running and are feeling extra nice.
Never said it shouldn’t! Just means it’s running on time. Like I said, I’m still adjusting to the early schedule.
I owned a car in Toronto. I still took the train DT. Driving DT literally was longer then the train.
I’m Polish but I also made the switch to use public transport instead of my car, even though it’s not the cheapest once you’re not a student anymore. I feel better though knowing how much fuel I save by not driving in traffic for 1.5h 4 days a week. The other thing is that the money goes to the city so I will likely benefit from it in some way
And you also get a little bit of time to yourself! I use it to study for certs.
True, although this aspect is actually an area where I prefer driving. I find it relaxing to zone out my thoughts and just focus on what’s ahead of me with my favorite music. Depending on time of day, trains here are a bit tough to study in due to how many people there are
I am here to represent the germans. The country where the only thing we agree about is, how fucking shit our trains are
Which eu countries? Most of eu countries are on second meme
From my small experience as an a American. Netherlands had some really reliable transit. Never had a problem in France though definitely not as nice as Netherlands. Italy was definitely hit and miss depending on the city but loved the high speed rail from Naples to Rome. Germany was reliable during October Fest so I assume at least Munich is reliable if it was good at that time. Though I wouldn’t say I used much in Germany.
Other countries I’ve been to but I’ll just list cities for these because I didn’t go much anyone else for them: Prague, Budapest, Vienna
I can’t say there was a single country/city here that had transit that was worse than the best transit in the US. Was it all perfect? No. But compared to fucking Amtrak that literally has to stop for hours at a time while we wait for other freight trains to pass. Literally multiple times during a single train ride.
Some countries may not be the first meme. But what major city in Europe has worse local transit than say Chicago or New York? Or worse heavy rail than Amtrak? Just honestly asking.
I don’t think anything could be worse than Amtrak.
You mentioned 4 - 5 EU countries, even major cities. You are missing other 22 countries. Not going too far like mentioning Romania, but have you ever tried Renfe en Madrid? Hehehe it fails many times
On the contrary, when I lived in the US on Long Island, a part of the country where people warn life without a car is impossible, I had a great transit experience. Buses were generally on time, modern and equipped with live tracking, and the trains were great too.
I know LI’s relative poor transit options are mostly in comparison to other areas in the Northeast, which is a densely populated region. I imagine my experience would be totally different in the Midwest or the Prairies. And that’s especially true for trains – LI is awesome in that regard
Meanwhile in Japan: Train is 30 seconds late “here’s a letter for your employer explaining why you were only 29 minutes and 30 seconds early for your 8 hour shift that will inevitably have an additional 8 hours of unpaid overtime tacked on to it.”
Where is this magical European place with trains that are only .5sec delayed? Our public transit authority considers train “on time” if they’re no more than 20min late…and still, less than 80% of trains are “on time”…
compared to my area where we don’t even have busses, trains are a dream
Austria, apparently.
You clearly havent heard of swedish trains.
The railroad here is a bad joke at this point, mainly due to shutting down the organization that was responsible for maintainence and shoving it into another agency that has no clue. As a bonus the new agency doesn’t even do the repair work themselves but hires contractors at the lowest bidder. So stuff breaks constantly, which causes delays.
At this point just getting the rail network to “normal” standards would cost billions. Let alone expanding it to cope with current traffic levels.
[cries in Swedish]
To be fair, most higher density areas in Sweden have fairly good infrastructure for public transit. The national railways are a disgrace, but that mostly affects long distance travel. Mostly. Short to medium distance commute works fairly well everywhere I’ve tried it.
Scandinavia has more in common with Canada when it comes to public transportation
Canada has high speed trains?
Their trains break down a lot and it’s a bigger joke
no fast railways in the US at all, hyperloop delayed cali long enough til trump was able to stop it in his first term. it would solve alot of employment locaitons issues like biotech, and tech hubs. which are situated outside of major freeways and highways and major metro areas, even cars have a trouble navigating to.
So that’s what a train looks like
Germany’s known for having terrible rail. Probably on account of BMW lobbying.
Really? As an American who had never ridden a train before, I was impressed by Germany’s public transit. I remember wishing we had such systems everywhere over here.
Honestly though, I’d prefer high speed mag-lev systems that run like clockwork.
Germany’s known for poor rail, America’s known for no rail.
American public transit varies widely, ranging from better than driving to comically horrible.
Trains specifically are bad on shared lielnes because passenger trains are lowest-priority rail traffic, so you can get delayed for days at a time.
I thought authoritarianism was supposed to at least make the trains run on time. Or maybe the dictator will just edit train schedules with his sharpie if anybody dares to ask.
The origin of that saying, the trains in Fascist Italy, were basically never on time. But the fascist government put great effort into telling people that, at long last, they were running on time, so it stuck.
Narratives dig deeper into cultural consciousness than reality itself.
So it’ll be the sharpie then.
