The official tumblr of amtrak — Hi, so I'm french, and I was trying to explain...

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The official tumblr of amtrak

Amtrak, everyone's favorite underfunded government run train company.
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randomzeugma

theweirdalienoftheweb asked:

Hi, so I'm french, and I was trying to explain AMTRAK to my grandmother. She was shocked when I showed her the national map. She couldn't comprehend how this counted as a national system: "There are entire states without trains !"

France's train lines for contrast

(I get that we are smaller, but there was also a real choice by Napoleon the third to link the whole country)

I guess what I'm trying to say is : trains are cool, they get you places !

(Also, is it true you guys don't have high-speed rail ?)

amtrak-official answered:

I agree trains are cool, Amtrak is so small because it hasn’t been well funded historically, but we are expected to expand significantly over the next decade, and the whole the US doesn’t have High-speed rail thing is a myth, there is 1 High-speed rail line which reaches 155 mph or 250 kmph

randomzeugma

Okay, trains are cool. Okay, we have trains in France. We have a functionning railroad system. If you want to go by train from one city to any other, you can.

But I just want to add a nuance about France.

It is underfunded, privatized more and more each year, and also Paris exists. Paris means that if I want to go to another city that's not on the line between my city and Paris, I need to go through Paris first. Privatization means that the tickets are always extremely expensive, and that taking buses (which are cool, yes, but not as cool as trains, and also much more privatized) takes less time and less money, because you don't have to go through Paris. Underfunding means that it won't get better.

If I want to go from Bordeaux to Lyon, two of the biggest french cities, both in the center/south of the country, I need to go through Paris. Well I can also go through Toulouse, which isn't nearly as bad but like, these are the second and sixth most populated cities in France !!!

A railroad map of France, centered on a strip of France that allows the reader to see Lyon and Bordeaux, Lyon is close to the eastern french border and Bordeaux is close to the western french coast. A purple (somewhat) straight line goes from Lyon to Bordeaux.

(Fig 1 : a straight line between the two cities)

The same map of France's railroads as in the original post, except that there is a purple line from Lyon to Paris and from Paris to Bordeaux and a purple line from Lyon to Toulouse and from Toulouse to Bordeaux. Paris is at the north of the map, with a railway density much higher than anywhere else in the country. Lyon is close to the eastern border of France, in the center of the country. Toulouse is close to the France-Spain border, in the south. Bordeaux is close to France's west coast.

(Fig 2 : the two trips that I can do through the SNCF to go to the other city.)

(The trips info can be found by searching through through this webbed site :

https://www.sncf-connect.com/

The prices for next week don't go lower than 100€ [higher than 100$])

So uh. I might have gotten a bit angry about a very innocuous post, but it's just that the lack of reaction about the SNCF worsening is infuriating me. The French railway situation is of course not as bad as Amtrak's current situation, but it's a relic from France's industrialization and currently worsening because of privatization and the government giving no shit about it.