alt Hacker NewsThat's got zero to do with anything. you do not need to add rail to the whole country.
As an example SF Bay Area and Switzerland are about the same size, SF has double the population density. It has a Bay, Switzerland has mountains. Switzerland has like 10x the trains. There's no reason SF Bay couldn't too.
It's similar for most metro areas. LA used to have a huge train system. Bad insentives and government policies killed it. They're adding new ones back but they're adding them in the worst possible way, making them unprofitable and designed only for people who can't afford cars means they'll only be a money sink at best, or they'll get underfunded and decrepit at worst
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> As an example SF Bay Area and Switzerland are about the same size,
> SF has double the population density.
These two statements seem hard to reconcile considering that Switzerland’s population is higher.
Even the lowest density US states have most of the population in corridors or areas with sufficient density.
E.g. Montana used to have passenger rail through the most densely populated Southern part of the state. That region has comparable density to regions of Norway that have regular rail service. (There are efforts to restart passenger service in Southern Montana)
And it's not like places like Norway have rail everywhere either - the lower threshold for density where rail is considered viable is just far lower.
The actual proportion of the US population that lives in areas with too low density to support rail is really tiny.