Wolfgang Schwanke wrote:
"Gig 601XL Builder" wrDOTgiaconaATsuddenlink.net wrote in
:

The distances here are just plain longer than what you are dealing
with in Europe.

Not really. Europe as a continent is a bit larger than the USA.

The straight line distance between Paris and Berlin
~450 miles. In the US that would get you from New York to Detroit.

How about Madrid - Moscow or Athens - Tromsø?

Well if you are going to play that game then you have to take Mexico and
Canada into the mix here. But I was giving you the benefit of counting EU
nations. If you'd like we could reduce the conversation to individual
countries on both sides.



To
get to Los Angles you'd have to go another 1900 miles. Which is
further than the distance from either the Northern tip of Denmark to
the Southern end of Italy or from Gibralter to the Polish border.

Quite. But Europe is a bit larger than the examples you chose.

One factor is that people tend to live their lives within one country,
they don't really dash across the entire continent that much, and that
contributes to overall shorter journey times. But that is changing as
national borders become less relevant.


Exactly. And I gave you the benefit of considering the EU as a country.


Would it be nice to have electric rail serving the majority of the
US, hell yes, but after WWII we decided a huge highway system would
be the way to go

Nothing wrong with that as such, but smashing the railway system at
the same time (which AFAIK was better then than today, correct me if
I'm wrong) wasn't really a good idea.

and it served us well and help make the US the worlds
largest economy.

I don't know about that, but neglecting the rail system certainly
wasn't economically sound.


It certainly was at the time.



But trying to install an electric rail system now
would be next to impossible.

It would take a huge effort comparable to the buildup of the highway
system, but why impossible?


We could probably have scheduled flight to Mars for the cost.


And there is one big plus to highways over rail. We don't grind to a
halt every time a single union goes out on strike.

He Well they've stopped for the moment.


For the moment. They probably already have the next strike date on their
calenders.