With gas prices nowadays, why is US rail travel still so inconvenient?

[Eden]

Unfortunately here in the US (unlike Europe) we either never built or tore up most of our rail lines..... so you can't get to out of the way places at all for the most place and even for the bigger cities it is inconvenient. Granted our cities and towns are waaaay more spread out than most European ones are, and that make it inherently more difficult to provide effective service, but we certainly could be better.

I've looked at taking the train down to California or out to Las Vegas before and it would take several days... sometimes it would be faster to just drive because of the odd hours that the trains run, the limited routes and the infrequency of the connections. For some things it still is nice. I've take the train from Seattle to Portland before and it still is (or at least was... can't imagine with the price of gas that it still isn't) cheaper and nicer than driving.

[Trek420]

Unfortunately here in the US (unlike Europe) we either never built or tore up most of our rail lines.....

At least some of them are turning into bike paths

www.railtrails.org

[Eden]

At least some of them are turning into bike paths

www.railtrails.org

Indeed - if we hadn't torn up most of our light and heavy rail around here we would not have the Interurban trails, both in the north and south parts of the sound or the Burke Gilman trail, or the John Wayne Pioneer trail that goes nearly all of the way across the state and into Idaho or the new gravel trail over in the east Sammamish area, or even be discussing another trail that would go from Renton to Snohomish to meet up with the Centennial trail...... I could go on... we do have a lot of rail trails around here.

Of course if we'd kept it, we might not be waiting for and spending multiple, multiple millions our current light rail project.... Personally I like the proposed idea that there is room for both! The right of way on the east side could be used for new light rail to link Renton-Bellevue-Everett and still have space for a bike trail that runs parallel