Imagine a zero emissions electrical vehicle with no batteries at all, much more easily automatable than cars, infinitely safer and can be used for medium and long distances. Looks like a Tesla pipe dream, right? Now imagine a complete transportation grid using these and add public individual vehicles for last mile transportation.
Trains are the rational future, they were before, but irrational market forces are against them.
Trains can also be used to mandate development patterns. If you build roads through an area, then people can build houses (or slash-and-burn forest) anywhere and they know they'll have transport. But with rail, significant development will only occur near stations. This is a big problem in the Amazon; imagine if Brazil built trains instead of roads.
Unless you care at all about how long it takes you to get somewhere.
I've taken the train from central Pennsylvania to NYC several times. It's great, but it's also a hike and not something you want to do for anything shorter than a long weekend (4 days is perfect, especially if you can do Fri-Mon as the Sunday train is usually very full). I did it once for a Sat/Sun trip and you just spend too much time on the train watching a movie or staring out the window.
But that's not inherent to the mode of transportation. In germany (and generally in Europe) taking the train is often a bit faster (~20%) than by car - assuming no traffic. Of course this doesn't apply to rural regions, but between most cities trains run every 1h.
And the train network in germany isn't even very good.
Around the year 2000+/-2 that was my daily experience on the track from Hagen in Westfalen(near Dortmund) to Cologne or Düsseldorf. When it went over the Autobahn there was always gridlock. I noticed that mostly out of the corners of my eyes, while reading Tipler's Physics, Stryer's Biochemistry, Albert's Molecular Biology of the Cell, or other sciency stuff like that, comfortably munching something and sipping coffee. Hopping into some bus, tram, subway for another 10 to 20 minutes, arriving relaxed and fit.
> And the train network in germany isn't even very good.
It's all relative :) Coming from Ireland (where intercity is still diesel with max speeds around 160km/h, and average speeds far worse), ICE kind of seems like magic.
A lot of this seems like a policy issue though- Why do trains only top out around 60mph? There is no technical limitation that I know of that would prevent them from going faster in most places. Giving them a leg up on cars would induce demand dramatically IMHO.
Its such a better ride as well- I mean I love getting a nice stretch of open road where you can go 60-80mph and such, but the reality of most travel in the northeast is just traffic and congestion and a lot of paying attention to that dude in the SUV who seems like he wants to jump in your lane without so much as a blinker of warning.
We have massively funded our highways, claim that Amtrak is a suck of taxpayer funds and do the bare minimum for it, and then complain about traffic, it's quite irrational.
That's because trains in the US are incredibly slow. There is nothing inherent in train travel the requires it to be that way.
If you visit a country that actually invests in train travel you'll see it's a fast, convenient way to get around. The most underrated aspect, IMO, is that it's not a hike: the train stations are slap bang in the middle of every city. That's even true in the US, it's just the rails between the cities that let the whole thing down.
> I've taken the train from central Pennsylvania to NYC several times. It's great, but it's also a hike and not something you want to do for anything shorter than a long weekend
From where in Central PA? It's definitely the fastest way to get into downtown NYC from anywhere between Philly and Harrisburg.
I checked Lancaster->NYC on Google Maps and Amtrak and it looks like Amtrak is about 30 minutes longer on a ~3 hour trip, depending on the exact train. Traffic on Maps may be playing with those numbers though.
I see 12:41 pm -> 3:20 pm from Lancaster to Penn Station, which is 2:39, and Apple Maps is giving me 2:40 for the same drive, so nearly exactly the same. Of course, this is under Covid, when Amtrak is reducing service and there's far less traffic into NYC than usual.
There are lots of places in the US where the train is a huge time sink, it's just that in my experience, getting into NYC is one of the few where it's much faster and more convenient.
Trains are the rational future, they were before, but irrational market forces are against them.