this post was submitted on 14 Aug 2023
290 points (88.4% liked)
> Greentext
7524 readers
2 users here now
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
America has a lot of commuter rail, wtf are you talking about?
Don't spout off about shit you know nothing about. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commuter_rail_in_North_America
How about instead of proving your point by seeing if a wikipedia article exists with your search term as its title, you actually try to book a trip from one major city to another and see what that looks like
I have taken an Amtrak train between Houston and Dallas and it sucked like all passenger rail sucks. Yes, even Japanese passenger rail sucks.
Take the fucking L.
wrong
Congratulations on destroying my hyperbolous statement by being hyper literal and proving my overall point that commuter rail in the US is garbage that doesn't factor into what people actually use on a day to day basis
"I took a train one time"
Bruh Amtrak sucks because there's extremely low rail density in this country generally and they don't own any of their own tracks, so the (relatively) few trains that they do run are always getting waylaid by freight trains. Also maintenance requirements for rail companies is incredibly lax, which results in poorly maintained tracks, which limits the trains' speeds. All of this is a simple public investment problem.
Really now, you can't come in here with complete ignorance of why a thing is the way it is and say authoritatively that it all sucks, even in countries I'm 100% positive you've never been to. All generalized from a single personal anecdote.
I mean I guess you can, you did just do that, but you really shouldn't. It makes you sound foolish.
You have the brain of a baby
I have no idea what your standards are if you think Japanese commuter rail sucks.
I remember is was WORLD NEWS when a train was over a minute late. Meanwhile, the one time I tried Washington DC's commuter rail (which I hear is one of the better US ones?), it was a little over 5 minutes behind schedule.
Not to mention, I didn't feel the need to shower after riding the Japan trains (not something I can say for any American train I've taken).
Edit: fixing typo ('an' -> 'any' in my last sentence)
It so fucking crowded its ridiculous. Im a dude and I still felt like I was getting molested.
I don't see what your gender has to do with your ability to feel molested, or why you keep saying it
but go off king
Yeah, if you're not used to it, I can see that being a problem. I didn't take the trains during the major commute hours, so I probably dodged that experience on my own trips around. Not sure how I would have taken it, but yeah, I probably wouldn't have enjoyed the experience either (probably typical American opinion on that though).
That said, it definitely feels like one of those "no one drives in Los Angeles; there's just too much traffic" kind of situations.
NY subways are just as bad when crowded and everything else about the experience is worse and that's literally the best public transportation in the wholr country
Japanese passenger rail, by which assume you mean the slower trains and not shinkansen (because shinkansen is in another world of superior experience), is comfy as fuck and reasonably priced. As someone who rode Amtrak, you know neither of those are the case in the US.
It so fucking crowded its ridiculous. Im a dude and I still felt like I was getting molested.
It was crowded on Japanese intercity commuter rail? Was this a JR Line or a city metro line? Were you on peak hours?
I've been on hundreds of trains in Japan and the only time I remember it being too crowded to move are the ones early in the morning and the ones at rush hour.
They also get a little crowded in inner cities on Friday and Saturday nights, but you know what? They're great. They're almost never late, they're comfortable, and they get you where you're going. Cheap too. I remember going from Narita to Shinjuku (40 something miles) for around 2700 yen (like $24).
The best trains I've used ever are actually in China, unless the shinkansen in Japan counts. The shinkansen is the best transportation I've ever experienced. Surreal levels of comfort and smoothness.
Not taking that person's side, but they did say their experience sucked. I think their point is that all transport sucks (not true at all).
Took 23 hours to do it.
And this to you suggests that america has anything other than abysmal infrastructure?!?
most internally coherent reactionary
I can't believe you're still underlining my point after I pointed out that's what you're doing with observations like this
Cool. Thank you I guess. You still go in the gulag.
you keep proving them right
yeah america has uniquely bad commuter rail for it's level of wealth
hell, america has uniquely bad commuter rail for it's level of rail development
it absolutely didn't have to be the case. the USA was an industrial colossus and then made the political decision to have shitty rail. it's not alone in that mistake. but it now holds onto it for stupid ideological reasons to the point that it's now sabotaging it's freight rail as well.
jesus just take the L
wow, you probably haven't even seen a train IRL
That's very little commuter rail lol
Honestly fair point. America does have commuter rail. I would certainly say that compared to other countries of equal GDP it is much worse, but there is indeed commuter rail in America.