Public transportation in cities varies. But inter-city transportation? In most of the USA you simply cannot travel between towns or cities on public transportation. There are a few inter-city bus options (Greyhound, Flix, Megabus), but those don’t go everywhere.

The rail options outside of the NE corridor (Boston to Washington DC, basically) are very sparse. Here’s the map: https://www.amtrak.com/content/dam/projects/dotcom/english/public/documents/Maps/Amtrak-System-Map-020923.pdf

That’s it. Most of those routes are at most once per day in each direction. So if you city even has a stop (which it probably doesn’t) the train may only come through in the middle of the night. Some routes are only 3x/week. And because of the massive distances involved and old equipment, it takes at least 70h+ to travel from coast to coast (more really, since connection times are long) and costs twice the price of a 6h flight ($250+ vs $80-120).

Trains are often on schedule, but can be many hours late. Once they are off schedule they are at the mercy of the freight train lines (who own the tracks) for passing. You can get stuck behind a slow moving cargo train for many hours.

Why is it like this? It’s complicated. But it starts with very low population density, large areas/distances, and a very different relationship between the individual and the state in the US vs most of Europe. Add the rise of suburbs in the automobile right when many US cities were growing. Another factor is public attitudes. People think that public transportation is for poor people. I know people who have never ridden a city bus, and I live in a city that probably has above average public transportation for the region.

Anyway, as a public transportation rider-by-choice I feel your pain. Having spent a few weeks in Germany recently (with a DT for travel), and having ridden extensively on US train and bus networks, yous is definitely much, much better. Resist the politics of privatization and decay.

If it exists, it is better than American public transit. Here is my daily commute to work, as estimated by Google Maps:

Even Google goes “lmao use a fucking car, peasant.”

It’s technically possible for me to take public transit, but it would be about the same as walking. Here is a quick sketch of the route I’d need to take, compared to my drive:

That route is because there are no east/west lines between me and my job. It starts by walking/riding my bike the wrong direction to get to the nearest bus stop. Then it takes me south-west through two cities, then north-west through two more cities. Then I’d have a ~20 minute walk to transfer rail lines, because my job is serviced by a different rail system than the one that my bus service touches. After that walk (and waiting for the next train) I take it north and then have to walk another 10-15 minutes to finally get to work.

Not counting wait times, it would take me nearly 2.5 hours to use public transit. When you consider the fact that some busses and trains only run once every 20-45 minutes, it actually stretches closer to 3-4 hours, if the schedules don’t line up. Or I could just fucking drive 10 minutes. Yeah, it’s no wonder Americans use cars for everything.

“American public transport”

Good joke! Best joke I heard since “American democracy”!

Here’s a fun comparison: Tennessee vs Mecklenburg Western-Pomerania

They have very similar population density (70/km² vs 65/km²). Tennessee is roughly 4x the area and population.

There are only 2 inter-city train stops in Tennessee, in Memphis and a small town to it’s north, both on the 1x/day service between Chicago and New Orleans. The largest city (and its state capitol) Nashville has no rail service.

The entire state of Tennessee has only 10 inter-city bus stops. Ten! Serving 7M people. The 4th largest city in the state is Chattanooga (181k), and it has no inter-city bus and no rail.

Its so bad its use is (wrongly) looked down upon as poor person transport unless its a large city. Everything is car culture and you are fucked without a car except in the largest metropolitan.

Shit does not run on time, its more expensive than it needs to be, and it goes very few places. It takes huge huge work to get it expanded because of NIMBYs and car companies fighting it.

Amtrak is doable but it takes as long or longer than driving a car.

There are no high speed trains and busses are a joke in cities. It can take hours to traverse a city because bus routes are terrible and constantly cut.

This is seriously all to do with car companies forcing out public transport in anyway possible as well as buying up a lot of city transportation portions and shutting them down as “not profitable”. Americans defend it because “public good” has been vilified here. Its so dumb.

Not too long ago, I saw a map showing where each train is in USA. Someone also posted a similar maps from Switzerland. Can you guess which one had more trains?

I live in an area know for having some of the better public transport in the states. My drive to work is about 25 minutes. I can bus to work, but it takes almost three hours and three separate busses, and then I cannot bus home after work.

If americans come to germany and act like german public Transport is the best, how frickin bad non-existent is american public Transport?

FTFY. I was pretty blown away by it but I can get excited by a sidewalk.

i mean, can you get where you want to go, and back, by transit? if so it’s kilometers better than most american transit.

eta: wait, you’re talking rail specifically? then if you have any passenger rail, that’s already way better than most american cities.

It may be bad in Germany but its worse in the USA. I live in the San Francisco Bay Area, which has better transit options than the rest of the country. But its limited just to the city of San Francisco itself and maybe some parts outside the city. I just came back from a short trip to Germany, where my family lives. They live in Kassel, a mid-sized city in the north central part of the country. Even a mid-sized city has an extensive tram network and bus system. And a monthly transit card doesn’t cost as much. Getting to Kassel itself was easy by train, though the train was 1/2 hour late. I am very, very jealous of my family.

DB: “At least we’re not National Rail.”

National Rail: “At least we’re not Amtrak.”

America is owned and operated by rich people. They couldn’t make money running passenger trains so once we were ordered to invest in car-only infrastructure the trains were mostly disbanded and shut down. There’s a ghost of a system left with just a few corridors that could be considered bare minimum service in a developed nation.

How many kilometers of high speed rail does the US have? Zero. We have some that gets close, but not really.

My mid-sized city has two trains per day, one each direction, and they both leave between 1am and 2am. In Germany you would have 30+ trains per day in a city this size, likely a notable S-Bahn network, and also some trams and/or U-Bahns in the city to compliment busses. I’ve got busses in town, but they operated about every 30-45 minutes each, with evening service being every 60 minutes. Here’s the fun part: our busses are the most used public transit system for a mid-sized city in the US right now and it’s still pathetic when compared to even basic services in Europe.

DB needs to keep getting investment. Germany must get to a dedicated passenger rail network to separate out the freight trains. DB should also be re-nationalized and operated as a national service, not a for profit system that will inevitably fail as a commercial venture, leading to yet more terrible service. Here’s hoping the latest German Parliament follows through on investment money that they pushed through at the start of the year! Also, keep the Deutschland Karte! That’s such a great resource for everyone.

What’s American rail?

Our side of town has zero rail, and it would take about two hours on a bus to get home from downtown, 7 miles away. Oh, and the Amtrak train 7 miles away shows up once a day at 2am. And I could probably hitchhike to where I’m going faster than that shit train would get me there.

Once Kansas City had apparently a fantastic streetcar. Then the car companies bought it up and tore out the rails. Now we’re getting a streetcar being built again but it’s just doing downtown on one street. I’m not near the streetcar.

So I drive to work. It’s 12 miles, about 30 minutes (or 20 miles, 30 minutes if I take interstate around the city… honestly this city is weird, EVERYTHING is 30 minutes away.) If I wanted to take the bus, the shortest time frame would be 1 hr 35 minutes… not including that I’d have to get halfway there to get to the first bus stop.

Cities… if I wanted to take the train, I can go to Chicago for relatively cheap using Amtrak… but gotta plan that 3 months in advance, and the 8 hour ride we HOPE doesn’t get extended because Amtrak doesn’t own the rails it’s on. Flipside, driving is 8 hours. Other cities, St. Louis, Wichita, basically I have two train lines, one in state, and one cross country. If I want to go to Denver… it’s not happening.

So to answer your question, I want you to try to imagine how bad you think our public transportation is. Then lower your expectations.

I live in the largest city in a Midwestern state. To access amtrak (the only passenger rail in the us)I need to drive 3 hours to the nearest station.

The city is shaped like a lopsided clock. I live in the burbs around 1 o’clock. I work for a fortune 50 company headquartered at 10 o’clock. To take the bus to my job I need to take the bus downtown and wait for an out bound. This would take 90 minutes when I could drive in 25.

America has not made public transit a serious option unless you are in Chicago, NYC or DC.