Why don't Americans use rail service?

I think the primary reasons we don't use trains like they do in Europe are:

1. When the major cities of Europe were maturing/growing into major cities (Paris, London, Brussels, Berlin etc). Trains were coming of age as THE mass transit system. They built their cities arouind the train, the train stations, the subway etc.

2. Geography. Europe is the size of Texas. It lends itself well to rail travel.

3. The U.S. as it was growing had a lot of open space, creating rail serice everywhere wasn't practical. The big cities in the northeast have it and some out west but the larger part of the country does not. The airplane was our salvation in regard to mass transit. Can you imagine a train from Atlanta to LA? No thanks.

In Japan, there has never been a fatality on the shinkansen. They are immaculate, cost effective, and you can set your watch to the schedule. In America,...............it's not like that. (Don't want to bash my country).

You know what would be great? If you could drive your car onto a train to take you to another hub. Like some sort of land ferry.

The U.S. is vast. Think about Germany. The entire country is the size of Montana and they have 60 million-ish people living there. I love their rail system and the way it interconnects with other countries. In the U.S. you have a lot of wide-open spaces with no population to support increased railways. Add to that, it's expensive to ride a train across the country - a lot more than it is to fly. And we American's do love to drive. :)

There is an excellent article on how GM, Goodyear, Firestone Tire, and oil companies deliberately purchased and then botched railway systems. 10 corporations were tried for conspiracy and GM was fined $5,000, but of course they were all filthy rich by then.

It is cheaper to fly, i have purchesed a round trip ticket from Orlando to Boston cheaper than a one way ticket with Amtrak same destination.

I think it's other: not readily available/well maintained. When I was in Europe rail service was typically available with a 30 minute or less drive for the main lines and nearby stops for light rail in the cities. For the most part the trains were in decent to good shape and seemed safe. Some areas have specific issues (such as Poland with bands of pick-pockets) but overall it's a workable system.

Over here we have very limited infrastructure now for rail overall, and the big cities that have it are largely underground and/or limited access/poorly maintained. I'm glad to see some places like Denver that have put one in and it seems to be used but from what I've heard they have a lot of freeload riders that'll impact maintenance, etc so they need to enforce ticketing better.

I think if the infrastructure was put in place, made convenient enough vs busses/taxis, and connected easily to larger interstate networks with a reasonable price it'd catch on. Right now even AMTRAK does a lot of transfers via Greyhound or other bus services. No thank you.

Plus, we all seem to love our gas guzzlers and the 'freedom' they provide. ;)

I think it has to do a lot with associated costs, nowadays at least. We could build a national rail network more or less shadowing the interstate highway system, but that could cost hundreds of billions of dollars and possibly take decades to complete. With the current political climate in the country where we don't want to spend a million to replace a bridge that could collapse and kill people, expanding rail networks just seems too extravagant and pie-in-the-sky for some.
I also think a bit of it might have to do with the prolonged travel time associated with rail travel: You could spend $350 on the cheapest train ticket from LA to NY, but that would take 46 hours, when you could probably spend less on a flight and be there in maybe 4 hours. With travel times like that, it kind of relegates rail to the vacation crowd. If there was an available high-speed rail service such as the Shinkansen which would reduce travel times to something comparable to air travel, I imagine we would probably see a substantial uptick in rail usage.

After traveling by air recently I continue to wish that America would develop high-speed rail like the rest of the world. But, alas, our freeway culture and multiple airline bailouts seem to mean that will never happen.

I have heard numerous arguments against it but considering how awful air travel is these days I'm unsure why nothing is moving forward.

The size between Europe and the US is the biggest factor I believe it's not feasible. You have countries that are equivalent in size or smaller to some of our states. Take Texas alone, it's larger than France. Austria is about the same size as Maine. When you get into the larger populated areas....DC and the surrounding area, metro travel is used quite extensively but to travel from NY to California is just to time consuming.