Why Some Countries Have More Rail Services Thank Others

Many people wonder why some countries have more rail services than others. Most people in these situations will usually compare rail services in the USA to various countries inn Europe, so that’s what I’ll do, I’ll compare Europe to the USA

One of the most important factors to consider when building a rail line is population density. Other factors include mountains and freight trains vs passenger trains

One of the most important factors in deciding whether or not to build a rail is population density. You see, 1 kilometre train line will cost the same amount of money to build whether one person uses or 1,000,000 people use it, and maintenance costs don't vary that much with user numbers. In order to justify a train line, there have to be enough people close to each other to justify building a rail line.

As for long distance non-high speed trains are concerned, there are only 3 or 4 pockets of the USA which have enough of a population density to justify heaps of rail lines, and these places have somewhat good rail lines. I’ll get back to this later, but with a country as densely populated as the USA, (the USA has a significant population density, even though it's unevenly spread across the country), with a population density as high as the USA's, long rail lines have to be shared between freight and passengers. Europe prefers to move freight by road and passengers by train, whilst the USA prefers to move freight by rail. You know those huge, kilometre long freight trains in the USA or Canada or Australia? They wouldn't be possible if the USA had more passenger services, and as only so many carriages can use the track at once. Had the USA decided to prioritise passenger trains over freight trains, there would be significantly more trucks on the road.

If you want travel from Chicago to Los Angeles, Amtrak’s Southwest Chief take 2 days to get complete this journey, whilst a flight takes 3 and a half hours. Likewise, Amtrak has to pay their crew for 2 days of labour, whilst the airline only has to pay for 4 and a half hours of labour. Further, someone has to pay to maintain the rail lines along the entire route, and crews have to be transported to where the tracks are- planes use the sky which requires no maintenance.

Then there's the commute. And, unless you can walk to the train station, it makes no difference whether you have to commute to the train station or the airport. Yes, airport security does eat up a lot of time, but it's still faster than catching a train as trains are slow. Contrast this to Europe where most train stations are within walking distance of where most people want to go (for more about this, see my next post about the three types of cities.

And then there’s mountains. It’s difficult and expensive to build train tracks through mountains, especially considering that inclines have to be very gentle, as trains and steepness don’t mix well. So, building railways over mountains is not justifiable, unless it’s really worth it.

This is the reason why Amtrak (The Contiguous USA’s national long distance rail system) has more rail lines in the east than in the west

That’s for non-high speed trains. In order for high speed trains to be viable, cities have to be close to each other, but not too close. If the cities in question are too close to each other don’t have time to reach high speeds, and if too far apart, it’s much faster to catch a plane. Also, the commute at each city has to be short

So then, why do non-high speed long distance rail lines exist? A big reason is rural towns. For this example, I’m going to use my home country, Australia. There are people who desire to spend 12 hours on a train to travel between Sydney and Melbourne, and they do contribute to the market, but a significant proportion of the commuters are travelling to/from rural communities. Airspace might not require maintenance, but airports cost money to build and maintain. (It’s also not free to use airspace, which I’ll get to later) Rather than building and maintaining an airport in every little town along the Sydney to Melbourne route for 3-4 flights per day, it’s cheaper to use an existing rail line and build a few stations along the route, and run one or two single daily trains per direction to serve all those towns (also, trains can have multiple destinations, whilst planes can only have one destination). Additionally, the Sydney to Melbourne rail corridor is used by freight trains, so adding a few passanger services wouldn’t be too big a deal

As for short distance trains, same principle. If people live too far apart, then a train station would serve fewer people meaning more stations are needed, thus increasing expense. More densely populated areas have more train stations than less densely populated suburban areas, but in some newer suburban areas, car parks can offset the lower population density, giving a train station a larger radius to help justify its existence

So what price is there on airspace? The cost to build, staff and maintain control towers.