Question

Comparing US transportation to that of European, how has European transportation proved to be more efficient than that of the US?

Answer 1

It has not grown because it depends on private companies to construct new rail lines and roads, and in the past the railway network in the United States was quite obsolete, so many secondary railroad roads were abandoned in the 1970's and 1980's as the railway companies struggled to make money. Passenger travel on railroads in the United States is not a lucrative venture for the railroads, which is why they turned the passenger operations over to Amtrak operated by the federal government, which runs at a loss, except in the northeast corridor.

In the United States, the size and population density is the reason why passenger service is not established. Rail transport is very advanced in the United States for freight service but not for passenger service. First you have to consider US scale because it's the third largest nation in the world. There are 11 states in the region that are greater than the UK. United States population density is not quite high by other European or Asian nations. Yes at one time you had excellent passenger rail service in the United States. The Commercial Airlines then came and took the passengers off the railroads in the 1950s and 1960s

If you looked at the United States, Canada, France, the United Kingdom, Germany, and Australia in the 1950s, they were all on the same trajectory as they were all moving toward car dependence During this period, many European cities did their best to maintain pre-existing transit networks and extend them to through suburbs. Separately, many of Western Canada's newer cities have invested more in light rail lines and reliable bus service, even though they were planned for automobiles. As a result, both of these areas still still have significantly higher rates of transit ridership than comparable size and density in US cities.