Railways in America are not an important method of transport for people. The passenger rail system in America is more suited to people who just like travelling by train, rather than those who are concerned with travelling from A to B. This can be seen strongly by looking at some statistics. The most railway friendly country in the world is Switzerland, in which the average person travels 1750km per year. The UK (who invented railways) is not so friendly with only 500km per year per person. However, the USA comes right at the very bottom, the average person in the USA travels only 33km per year by rail! You can assume that what I say for the UK is applicable for the rest of europe.
Clearly there is a huge difference, but why? I shall attempt to explain, there are three basic factors.
In order for railways to exist as a viable form of transportation they have to be fast. As every household in America and Europe has a car, the railway has to be at least as fast. With motorways (highways/freeways) cars (In the UK) are allowed to reach speeds of up to 70 mph and sustain them for a long period of time. It is not good enough for a railway to have a lower journey time for a particular distance than a car... it has to be faster than the car after taking into account journey time to and from the station, as well as time waiting for the train, which is related to frequency.
The maximum speed the train is capable of seems the obvious area to start. However this is only useful if it can be sustained for long periods of time. The average speed of the train is of most importance.
Trains in the USA are relatively slow. Almost all railways have not been electrified and rely on diesel locomotives.
Well diesel locomotives are always slower than electric's for technical reasons. The world speed record for a diesel is held by Britain at 148 mph, which pales in comparison for the French electric TGV record of 320 mph.
Because 97% of railway revenue is from freight transport, emphasis has been on building engines that are big and powerful to haul very large freight trains. Freight does not have to travel very fast, so most of these engines are limited to only about 70 mph. Often such engines are used for passenger services which translates to a very slow and long journey, with an average speed only around 45 mph. In the UK even on the most under-funded line (the west coast mainline) average speeds are above 70 mph, meaning they can compete with cars. The highest average speed is 112 mph in the UK, nearly twice the road speed limit, giving rail passenger travel a great edge.
The American centennial has the record for the largest engine in the world, a diesel weighing 207t and with 6,600 hp its also the most powerful diesel in the world. However amusingly most modern electric engines are more powerful than this.
Also in order to have high speeds, the tracks have to be properly maintained. This is because above a certain speed the train will have enough energy to lift itself off the track. Not enough money is put into a lot of railways in the USA than the UK for two reasons, the length of the railways are much greater, and the number of people travelling on the railways is too small for high expenditure.
It seems an obvious thing, the average electric is half as heavy, twice as fast, and twice as powerful as the average diesel. Electrification involves suspending wires across the length of the whole track and providing a power supply. This is very expensive. It would cost hundreds of billions of dollars to electrify large parts of the US rail system.
One of the few parts where the line is electrified is where the fastest train in the USA runs, the metroliner, with a top speed of 125 mph (200 km/h). This is equivalent to the top speed of the British diesel Inter-City 125 train. However, unlike in Britain where the inter-city 125 operates on all major non-electrified inter city routes, the metroliner only operates between Washington DC and New York.
Trains have to go where you want to go. This is not a problem
in the UK. There is 26,000 miles (40,000km) of track which is
a lot for what is a fairly small country. Cities often have many
large station, every town has a railway station, some country
villages have stations. London has a massive 8 main terminus stations,
some with up to 30 platforms
In the USA things are very different. Railways are a rarity, some
towns and cities have no connection to the railways at all.
You can see a very stunning comparison by looking at rail maps:
It has to also be remembered that the UK is about the size of an avarage american state, which really shows just how much more railways per square mile there are in the UK. Another thing is that there are a lot more railways than motorways (highways/freeways) which is certainly not true of america.
Generally speaking in the UK all intercity routes have a frequency of at least one train per hour, sometimes up to one train every half hour during peak periods. Some city stations have rediculously high freqency. London Paddington to Reading (40 miles) can be up to every 10 minutes. However this is because all trains going from paddington happen to stop at reading, as the lines don't branch until after reading. In America it is very much harder to maintain high frequencies of trains. Take the east coast main line, London to Edinburgh, a distance of 400 miles. The journey time is about 4 hours. This means only 8 trains are needed in operation at once to provide an hourly service from London, Edinburgh, and all the stations in between, right across the UK. In the USA when thousands of miles are being considered, and journeys lasting over many hours, say 15 for example, 30 trains all in operation at the same time would be needed to maintain an hourly service, clearly something not viable.
What is often not realised is that the UK is one of the most densly populated countries in the world. America has a more fair population density. Some statistics are useful. The UK has 56 million (46 million in England) people. To put that into perspective, Canada has a population of 20 million, Australia has a population of 18 million, and Ireland has a population of 3 million. The population of the USA is a larger 280 million.
In the UK it is simply not possible for everyone to rely on their cars all the time for all journeys, with a population density of 700 per square mile traffic conjestion is very high. Railways can move a lot of people. Also domestic airlines are not really viable, airports are already over-conjested and the short distances involved do not really mean that people so much desire the reduced journey time of flight.
Small local trains that stop every few miles are viable in the UK in non-urban areas because of tthe high density. While these are much slower than high speed trains, they only really have to contend with country roads and lanes ie, low speed cars.
Population density is much more modest at 50 per square mile in the USA. This means less people want to get around, which means there is less demand for trains, so they are less frequent, which in turn causes lower demand, which means less investment, and this circle goes on. However this is still rather a strange thing because with the advent of diesel multiple units frequency can be kept up even if the numbers are low.
Until high speed trains came along, generally most railway services run at a loss, and have done for many years as a result of the car. America is very much a capitalist society, and capitalism has the view that anything not commercially viable is a waste of human resources. This has somewhat hindered investment in the railways. In the UK, which is not quite so right wing a fair amount of money has been spent on rail.
Clearly Railways are a very efficient method of transport, so why are they so often economically unviable? Well there are many reasons. Roads are provided by the state, and the expenditure on private transport usually has little bearing on how much they actually travel. This leads to an unusual situation, people spend vastly more amounts of money on private transport than public transport, however it appears that travelling by public transport (rail) is more expensive because while there is no initial cost, relative to the car the price is higher per distance needing to travel. Railways have to offer low enough fares to do attract any customers, and yet pay for trains, maintenance and upkeep of them as well as the maintanance of the track... if a road gets potholes, your car bumps. If a railway gets potholes, trains derail and people die.
Having said all this high speed trains are very commercially viable. Because they have high speeds, the car is no longer any good as a substitute good. The Eurostar with a top speed of 186 mph travels London-Paris in 3 hours. By car this takes around 8 hours. By plane 1 hour, but as the Airports are out of town... the time door to door is almost identical whether you fly or go by train. What does this mean? The Eurostar is in fact the most expensive way to travel to Paris. Each train can hold 800 passengers, 12 trains a day. This services makes money, a lot.
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