You’re right about all that, but it’s worth noting that U.S. population centers tend to be coastal. New York to Chicago is one of the closer city pairs between the 10 largest cities in the U.S. Here’s the driving distance from New York to each of the other 9:
Los Angeles: 2800 miles (4500 km)
Chicago: 800 miles (1300 km)
Dallas: 1600 miles (2500 km)
Houston: 1600 miles (2600 km)
Miami: 1300 miles (2100 km)
Washington: 230 miles (370 km)
Atlanta: 900 miles (1400 km)
Philadelphia: 100 miles (160 km)
Phoenix: 2400 miles (3900 km)
Dallas and Houston are close to each other. New York, Philadelphia, and DC are close (and are already connected by the most popular passenger rail line in the US). But the others are all pretty spread out.
So the type of travel people might imagjne doing in the U.S. tends to be weighted towards pretty far distances.
That’s a good point, the population in Europe is much more evenly spread. But that still doesn’t explain why a train journey from San Francisco to Los Angeles has to be 12 hours long.
Also, I guess you guys do not regularly travel from New York to Los Angeles for a weekend trip, just as we Europeans don’t usually do that with Stockholm and Barcelona (which is a distance the average European would also travel by plane).
We do however travel from Frankfurt to Strasbourg for a day trip, and of course we do that by train.
why a train journey from San Francisco to Los Angeles has to be 12 hours long
That’s its own saga, with a bunch of factors specific to California politics (and national politics with funding and permitting California projects). The California High Speed Rail project intends to connect SF to LA in less than 3 hours (and the original 2008 plan aimed for a 2020 operational start date), but we’ll see if that ever comes to fruition.
Also, I guess you guys do not regularly travel from New York to Los Angeles for a weekend trip, just as we Europeans don’t usually do that with Stockholm and Barcelona (which is a distance the average European would also travel by plane).
One wrinkle in comparing things is that the US’s cultural affinity is less tied to geographical proximity than in Europe. Obviously European villages and cities and major population centers were established long before rail, much less before automobile highways and commercial air travel (or even before global television broadcasts), so each local region will have its own culture and language.
In the U.S., with the population centers built up much more recently, cultural affinity between cities or regions is distinct from geographical proximity. So for many, a weekend getaway or a one-week vacation will tend to look to other similarly sized cities. One joke in the TV show 30 Rock was the idea that someone from New York would want to move to, or even visit, Cleveland. This is especially true for those who aren’t straight white Christians, where much of the geographical footprint of the United States represents urban islands where you might feel like you belong, and where you’d want to hop from island to island rather than explore the vast areas geographically nearby.
You’re right about all that, but it’s worth noting that U.S. population centers tend to be coastal. New York to Chicago is one of the closer city pairs between the 10 largest cities in the U.S. Here’s the driving distance from New York to each of the other 9:
Los Angeles: 2800 miles (4500 km)
Chicago: 800 miles (1300 km)
Dallas: 1600 miles (2500 km)
Houston: 1600 miles (2600 km)
Miami: 1300 miles (2100 km)
Washington: 230 miles (370 km)
Atlanta: 900 miles (1400 km)
Philadelphia: 100 miles (160 km)
Phoenix: 2400 miles (3900 km)
Dallas and Houston are close to each other. New York, Philadelphia, and DC are close (and are already connected by the most popular passenger rail line in the US). But the others are all pretty spread out.
So the type of travel people might imagjne doing in the U.S. tends to be weighted towards pretty far distances.
That’s a good point, the population in Europe is much more evenly spread. But that still doesn’t explain why a train journey from San Francisco to Los Angeles has to be 12 hours long.
Also, I guess you guys do not regularly travel from New York to Los Angeles for a weekend trip, just as we Europeans don’t usually do that with Stockholm and Barcelona (which is a distance the average European would also travel by plane).
We do however travel from Frankfurt to Strasbourg for a day trip, and of course we do that by train.
That’s its own saga, with a bunch of factors specific to California politics (and national politics with funding and permitting California projects). The California High Speed Rail project intends to connect SF to LA in less than 3 hours (and the original 2008 plan aimed for a 2020 operational start date), but we’ll see if that ever comes to fruition.
One wrinkle in comparing things is that the US’s cultural affinity is less tied to geographical proximity than in Europe. Obviously European villages and cities and major population centers were established long before rail, much less before automobile highways and commercial air travel (or even before global television broadcasts), so each local region will have its own culture and language.
In the U.S., with the population centers built up much more recently, cultural affinity between cities or regions is distinct from geographical proximity. So for many, a weekend getaway or a one-week vacation will tend to look to other similarly sized cities. One joke in the TV show 30 Rock was the idea that someone from New York would want to move to, or even visit, Cleveland. This is especially true for those who aren’t straight white Christians, where much of the geographical footprint of the United States represents urban islands where you might feel like you belong, and where you’d want to hop from island to island rather than explore the vast areas geographically nearby.