Geography Is Trains: The United States Actually Kind Of Is A Train Country...

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Trains are an incredibly important piece of transportation technology. But while the United States is not often considered to be a train country overall, it actually kind of is! It's just not one for passengers. Still, the U.S. has more active track than any other single country and hauls much of our goods from city to city. Join us as we tackle the global geography of trains including who carries the most passengers, what the longest rail line is, and what the United States', Canada's and Mexico's rail infrastructure looks like.

Episode Transcript

(00:04):
Hunter to kick off our episode todayall about trains. I have a question
that I think a lot of peoplehave an answer to, and you're probably
going to have an answer to aswell, Right, But I'm just gonna
go ahead and throw it out there. And here's the caveat. I think
that you, as well as mostpeople, are going to be wrong.
Okay, right, but do youdo you know what the longest train route

(00:26):
in the world is? Based onwhat you said, I think I do,
but now I don't think I do. Hit me with it. The
one that's super famous that comes tomind is the Trans Siberian Railroad. That's
that's one that comes to mind,right, that's the one that goes from
I believe it goes from Moscow toa lot of Ustok and Frdusiat good track.

(00:51):
Yeah, right, it's a verylong route. I have the stats
here. It's it's run by RussianRailways and it's about ninety three hundred kilometers,
has one hundred and forty stop andif you can believe it, this
is this is a daily service,which is quite unhusual, I would say
for this long route. Yeah,like there are there are some some long

(01:11):
routes in the United States, notquite as long as this, but long
routes, but they'll still be like, you know, weekly or like twice
a week service. It's not daily, so there's a few of them running
because it takes more than a dayto get there, so every day they
send a new one out. Yeah, that's true. That's a good point.
Yeah, it takes one hundred andsixty four hours or around seven days

(01:33):
to make that full journey, soagain, a long time. But we're
gonna talk a little bit more aboutpassenger rails, especially sort of some how
long it actually takes, you know, to get through some of these long
rail routes a little bit later.But while that is I would say the
most commonly thought of as the longesttrain round in the world, it's actually
not. It's it's really the longestpassenger rail route, which I think is

(01:55):
what most people the other shoe todrop on that one. Yeah, So
the actual longest like train routes whenwe factor in you know, freight rail,
is the yu Wu Madrid railway line, which is taken from the Chinese
city of yu Wu to the Spanishcity of Madrid, a distance of approximately
thirteen thousand KOs. Wow, that'simpressive. Yeah, so yeah, that

(02:21):
one's actually I mean you can evenwent through different countries, right, Like,
that's that's what makes yeah absolutely,Yeah, So it is it's kind
of interesting that in my in myhead that there's not actually a passenger rail
route that that maybe connects Europe toChina. But then also I start thinking
about it, I'm like, well, you start thinking about what's what's the

(02:43):
demand that's there for that, right? Uh, And we're going to talk
about that a little bit later.And like, you know, rail transportation,
even high speed rail, is onlygood for a certain amount of distance,
and then it becomes less competitive withsomething like uh uh airplanes or air
travel, particularly as it relates tothe human experience, right because humans we're

(03:07):
willing to pay a premium you knowon you know, yeah, to get
there from point A to point Band relatively quick, quick quick, uh,
relatively short period of time, iswhat I'm trying to say. So,
uh, let's talk about why we'retalking about trains a little bit.
So the first thing I want tosay is that's Hunter. We've done a

(03:28):
lot of transportation episodes already. We'vedone several, Yeah, we've done several
Yeah, we did We recently didair travel, which was a lot of
fun. Interesting. Yeah, wewe We've done the US automobile industry and
we have an episode on the Interstatehighway system here those from way back when
a double shot for automobiles. Yep, yep, we did. We did

(03:51):
the bicycle, which is transportation sortof you know, much more macro level.
We even did an episode on thegolf cart if you if you remember
that, that's right, that's trueexactly. I mean it was like the
whole the whole framing of it waslike golf carts is transportation. Listener,
I usually recommend people go and listen. That one had some audio issues that

(04:13):
we weren't able to fix. Soit's it's a little bit of a tough
listen to be honest, but itis. It's I think it's a fascinating
episode. Uh. We even youknow, with with respects to rail transportation.
We even have a whole two partepisode all about high speed rail from
the early days. Yeah, fromthe early days as well. Right,
So framing as like what if whatif we had this, and so you

(04:35):
can go back and listen to that. All that's to say is I think
it's long, long, overdue thattrains had a proper episode where we're just
talking about trains and like what aretrains and how Titanic even, right,
so that's transportation. I mean itwasn't really didn't pan out that great,
but yeah, that was that wasmade for transportation. Yeah, I mean

(04:55):
the episode panned out. Yeah,check it out. But yeah, yeah,
yes, the actual train system notas well, or sorry, not
the train system that the cruise thecrew system. Yeah, there had some
problems there. But also I wantto talk about trains mostly because well,
first they are I would say thatthey are one of the very first technologies

(05:18):
to really allow for humans to moveat a speed that is less natural and
for long periods of time without stopping. Of course, we've had ships that
have allowed this as well, butthose were constrained to the oceans or even
rivers. Right, you're not onland, which what I'm trying to say,

(05:38):
and so you're limited a little bit, right. Trains allowed people to
zip across the country. You know, when the trans Continental Railroad, for
example, was completed in a matterof time that was simply infeasible and not
even really unimaginable really form transform differentparts of the world, because all of

(05:59):
a sudden, there that would takefive weeks you could do in a couple
of days or something like that.So exactly again, Yeah, it's it
was an amazing transformation. They alsoeven to today, they also go through
areas of everybody's country that a lotof people don't ever get to see.
Right. The only way you're evergoing to get to see certain angles,
certain mountains, certain areas is ifyou do a very long backpacking trip into

(06:25):
those areas, right, or youride the train. Yeah. Yeah,
So I think that's an interesting sortof geography. That's sort of like,
you know, if you take thetrain from Portland up to Seattle, for
example, you're going to get somedifferent views than you would if you drove
from Portland to Seattle. That's right. Yeah, it's a unique. Yeah,
And you see really some beautiful areasand then some areas that are kind

(06:46):
of the backside of cities and thingslike that, which I think are interesting,
fascinating. I'm always you know,I used to take the train on
the East Coast a lot to getfrom my home to where I went to
college in Washington, d C.And I just remember you know, going
through you know, starting a NewHaven, going to New York, going
through Wilmington, you know, Baltimore, Philadelphia, was there, getting into

(07:09):
Washington, d C. And seeingthese really interesting parts by the tracks through
all those cities. I liked it. I thought it was great. Yeah,
it's it's a different view right,And I think to me that's really
important, like getting getting those sortof different view viewing angles from of different
places because we're so accustomed to likevarious ways that we see in portray areas,

(07:32):
right. I think the trains helpsbreak us out a little bit,
especially in this country when we're notwe're not accustomed to traveling by rail,
and so I think that's a reallycool I've more common in other places.
Yeah. Absolutely, So let's diveon. In Normally Hunter, we dive
deep into the history of any giventhings. Right, we just did last

(07:53):
week. We dove deeply into thehistory of pizza. We are not really
going to cover history in this episode. We think we kind of already did
that. We did that, right, Yeah, we did. Yeah,
it's been done. Go and listento it's part one of our high speed
rail We dive deep into the history, and you can go and listen to
that and learn all about how sortof some of the very first trains were

(08:13):
can a Bee you can learn allabout I think we talked a lot about
the trans Continental Railroad. Ye.The caveat is that we'll do a little
bit of history talk when we talkabout Amtrak later in today's episode. That's
going to be more of a youknow, recovering because we talked about Amtrak
in that old episode as well,but it kind of fits in with our
our overall story today, so we'regoing to rehash a little bit of that,

(08:35):
Okay, but it should still bevery interesting. I think in connecting
every all the pieces. This alsomeans Hunter that we are breaking our combo
here where Herodotus is not going tomake an appearance, an official appearance in
a sense. He just did becauseyou mentioned him. But yeah, he
probably didn't know much about trains,although as you pointed out earlier, somehow

(08:58):
maybe he did. You know,this guy seemed to maybe a lot of
different things. Yeah, we'll see, we'll see if maybe somebody, if
if somebody is a big herada tostand out there, maybe maybe they know
they might be creating some heratadas standsout there. So let's keep it moving.

(09:18):
So because today we're generally talking abouttrains at large. I thought it
would be worthwhile to talk about,you know, just trains broadly overall.
We can separate trains into a fewdifferent categories, mostly within two. Right,
there's passenger trains, which we've alreadytalked about, that be sort of
your Amtrak's, your European UH highspeed rail, your shinconsin and Japan,

(09:41):
Chinese China Railway, India railway,these things that just move us around as
people, right, get us frompoint A to point B. That is
kind of I mean freight. Theother the other side of that is freight
rail, which has kind of alwaysbeen in the picture as well. Right,
Historically trains were moving people around,not necessarily freight. There's always been

(10:03):
a little bit of that. Today, however, at least in this country,
in the United States, it's heavilyshifted over to freight transportation, not
passenger. There are some more specializedtrains out there, far more specialized that
we're not really going to get into, but I thought it was fun to
just call them out. So,for example, mining trains, right,

(10:26):
trains that go into mines. Thesewould be more commonly associated with those like
mining carts, you know, kindof orcognized a little bit. But there
are actual trains that run into mindstoo, that serve a singular purpose of
going in and you know, it'salmost like a freight system, but that
it's not connected to a wider systemof freight rail. And then there are

(10:48):
military trains, which I thought wasvery interesting, and this is something that
is not I don't think it's reallyused anymore. I didn't dig deeply into
this, but this would be likea train that is on rails but is
heavily armored and has cannons and almostlike a like a battleship of sorts.
Right, it's a it's a it'sa heavily armored train. I don't know,

(11:09):
there's not I guess there's not reallythat much more into places where that's
that's still very relevant, but youdon't hear about that so much in the
context of the United States, atleast now. I know, for example,
in World War Two there was someheavily armored trains that would go through
the Arabian Peninsula. I don't havea lot of information on that. I

(11:30):
just know broadly that that was anaspect of how they got around and how
they sort of I think it wasthe British how they sort of controlled the
colonies there. Fascinating though, Ithink it's just very interesting. But for
the purpose of today's episode, we'rejust going to talk about passenger and free
rail because the other stuff is alittle superfluous and we only have about an

(11:50):
hour, so let's go ahead andtalk about trains, you know, and
sort of their impact. So Hunter, question for you. Yes, in
today's day and age, where wehave planes, we have vehicles, and
you know, planes get us toyou know, across the country in a
matter of hours. Vehicles, youknow, allow us to move very independently,

(12:13):
you know, wherever we want withina given area. Why do you
think trains are still important today?Where our train's still important today? Well,
I think one of the things isthat they don't have to compete with
trucks. You know, we movea lot of things in trucks, but
these we've got them, We've gotthe railroads already and you don't necessarily have

(12:37):
to compete. So there's a lotof things probably moved around in trains that
would be maybe take longer or morecomplicated if we were using streets. And
then you know, flying things ispretty expensive, so there's probably a savings
in using a train over a jetor something like that. So I'm I

(13:01):
don't know if that's an answer,that's my answer. I mean that both
of those are totally true. Right, So let's let's run through some of
these reasons, right, because Iwanted to establish there's this there's this common
idea that you see get touted aroundwhenever somebody wants to basically create a passenger
rail service, and it's it's goessomething to the effect of, you know,

(13:22):
this is eighteenth or yeah, nineteenthcentury technology for a twenty first century
world or something like that, right, Like it's it's it's kind of a
bunch of you know, boloney,It doesn't really It's like the tagline from
the automobile industry, right, It'slike the tact Yeah, the automobile is
also a you know, it's anineteenth century technology, right, It's a

(13:43):
it's a pretty old technology. Anyways. That's that's on the side. But
I wanted to talk a little bitabout sort of why why trains are important
because they kind of are so.For one, trains are a very efficient
method of moving people and goods aroundin fact. On an energy basis,
it is probably the most efficient methodover long distances, right, so like

(14:09):
to get to get you know,let's say, you know, from here
to Portland to Chicago. In termsof the amount of energy expended, that's
going to use less energy per personthan an airplane or a vehicle. That's
an important cap. It's very efficient. According to the Association of American Railroads,

(14:31):
road railroads are the most fuel efficientand they can move one ton of
freight nearly five hundred miles per gallonof fuel on average. Now we compare
that to an average vehicle, whichis not going to move a ton of
freight, but it's just going tomove some people. You're still looking at
let's see what forty miles per gallonon the high end, right for like

(14:52):
a hybrid electric vehicle, twenty milesper using a tractor trailer truck or whatever
that that's going to that's no,yeah, yeah. And then a plane
is also it's it's getting it's notgetting uh, it's not getting on their
land. It's a mileage. Yeah. I don't have the stats on that,
but I know it's rock ground.Yeah yeah. Uh. On average,

(15:13):
railroads are three to four times morefuel efficient than trucks, and a
single freight train can replace several hundredtrucks on the road, right, I
think we all have this experience.Right, It's like you see the train,
you know, we're stopped at arailroad costs and you see the train
going by and buy and buy andbuy and buy, and you're like,
oh my god, how much longer? Right? Possibly be? The reality

(15:35):
is that they can go. Theycan be very very long. Yeah,
one engine can pull a lot ofcars, it turns out pull a lot
of cars. And then you andyou can stack up engines, right,
you can have two or three engines, and and now you have now you
have more you you can have moretrains on them or more cars, I
should say. And and of coursetrains are they're pretty fast overall, right,

(15:58):
I mean, granted, you seesome of those again, you see
some of those freight you know,you're stopp at railroad crossing. You see
a freight train, it seems likeit's going slow as molasses, crawling through
the city sometimes yeah, yeah,yeah, And well where I mean we
have a railroad crossing here in Portlandthat's notorious for that. It's if you
get stuck behind. It's it isbad, it's not fun. But overall,

(16:18):
trains can be very fast because onethey don't have to sit through traffic,
right trucks can get mired in traffic, and they can haul so much
more, which means maybe they're notmoving as fast, but collectively all of
the stuff that they're hauling is gettingto place as much faster at a much
faster speed. So there's that aspectas well. Obviously, planes can move

(16:41):
things far, far far far farfaster, but it's also they're very limited
in how much they can move,and it's very expensive to do so,
so it's just not an it's notnecessarily barring some some commodities, it's not
really generally worth it to ship thingsby by plane. I think during the

(17:03):
microprocessor sort of when there was thatwhole deal where we didn't have enough microprocessors
in anything, back in like twentytwenty one. I don't know if you
remember that. I think at thatpoint it became more costly to ship microprocessors
by plane around the world from wherethey're manufactured because there was such a high
demand for them. So I thinkthat was an interesting Yeah, But also

(17:29):
trains move people around too. Thismight not appear to be the case obviously,
you know in the United States,in Canada or Mexico, where trains
aren't featured prominently in our you know, daily transportation. But globally, trains
move people around really well. Soin twenty twenty three, according to the
International Union of Railways, trains carriednearly twenty three billion people, so a

(17:53):
lot of people. That's more peoplethan there are on the planet. But
obviously people are taking multiple trips.Yes, hunter, where do you think
most of these trips are located?What? What? What country? And
so the country that has the mostpassenger railroad trips, I'm I'm going to
go with India because it's a giantcountry, a large population, and I

(18:17):
think trains are a main mode oftransportation. So that's my first guess.
India is a good guess. Indiais highly ranked, but they're not the
most highly ranked. In fact,the most highly ranked is is actually Japan.
Oh I should you can buy thatone? Yeah? Yeah, that
makes sense. Okay. Unfortunately Idon't have the document up. Maybe I'll

(18:41):
get that up for part two.But there's I have this whole document that
breaks this all down in pretty prettygood detail based on like each individual line
within each country. Japan has somethinglike six six to nine billion billion trips
per year just by themselves. Yeah, and when you start thinking about it,
it's like, oh, yeah,they are a very rail heavy country

(19:03):
and it's very dependable there. Sopeople like that, So there's there's a
lot of motivation for taking it becausethey know they can depend on it.
Absolutely for those of us in theUnited States, this seems like a surprising
amount. We're going to talk alittle bit about a little later about sort
of how many you know, annualriders there are in the United States on
on Amtrak, but we'll save thatfor a little bit because we don't really

(19:30):
but basically, we don't really dotrain passenger rail transportation here in the United
States. It's just it's it's sortof the difference in sort of how we
prioritize rail over the last hundred years. But the reality is that trains are
highly efficient at moving people around theworld, especially in those mid distance trips.
So this is and this is largelywhat what countries use it for.

(19:53):
Right It's not those long distance thata lot of US stock to Moscow trip,
that longest train out to passenger trainround in the world. That's not
that's not a common train riding experiencefor most takes. It takes a week.
Not not everybody's got a week toget there, right, everybody has
a week instead. What what arethe most valuable passenger rail routes would be

(20:15):
something you know, like Paris toAmsterdam. It's a two hundred and fifty
mile trip. It's very efficient togo by train. You can take a
plane at least last time I checked. I know Europe is sort of trying
to clamp down on these sort ofsmaller distance trips up by a plane,
but getting to the airports respectively,you know, going through security, all

(20:38):
that kind of stuff, you know, ads it pads on time driving you
have to deal with traffic. Therefore, taking a high speed rail or even
a not even a high speed railcan sometimes be a lot more comfortable,
a lot more efficient to get youfrom Paris to Amsterdam and vice versa.
Well, I mean, the otherthing is that if you're going to an
airport, it's going to probably bein many cases on the periphery of the

(21:03):
city, and then you'll fly into the priftit in the city and you
have to get on a commuter trainor something else in order to get in
the city. When you take atrain, you know, there's sometimes multiple
stations within a city and you getout and you're already there, so that's
an advantage as well. Yeah,let's say I mean, so here in
the Pacific Northwest, we have arail route that will take you from Portland

(21:26):
to Seattle. It's called the AmtrakCascades. It's beautiful trip. It's actually
unless there's a delay, which theyare getting better about not having those.
It's pretty equivalent in terms of speedby car. Right, it's about three
to three and a half hours bytrain with no traffic. You can probably

(21:48):
make that in about two hours andforty five minutes by car with traffic.
You're probably looking at somewhere around threeto three and a half hours, and
there's always traffic. But that's morecommon for driving too, I think,
And that's there under three hours.That used to be possible twenty years ago,
but with the volume of traffic now, although now that the construction's done

(22:10):
in Tacoma, because that used tobe just I would just be hanging out
by the Tacoma Dome just waiting fortraffic to move and that doesn't happen as
much anymore. They finally finished thatconstruction. They did finally finish that.
Yeah, coma doome not getting nearlyas much advertising. No. Uh So
this concept though of like these midmid sort of you know, journey trips,

(22:33):
so Portland's Seattle for example, eventhough we have one here. This
is a concept that's very familiar acrossChina, India, Japan, obviously Europe,
vast parts of Europe, a lotof different countries, but it's something
that's actually been kind of lost tothose of us here in the United States,
Canada, Argentina, Australia, Brazil, places in you know, South

(22:59):
Africa, all these different places,right, this is a concept that's not
super common. So we're going totalk a little bit about that sort of
in our next section. But firstwe got to do our very first ad
break. So let's go ahead andwe're back. This is the Geography Is

(23:23):
Everything podcast. We're talking about trainstoday, passenger trains, freight trains,
just trains broadly. We just ranthrough a bunch of statistics. We're going
to dive into a lot more statisticsin this sort of part. But first
question for you, Hunter when youthink of a quote unquote train country,
what country do you first think about? Well, since we sort of went

(23:45):
over this a tiny bit in thelast segment, Japan definitely comes up.
But you know, Switzerland and Belgiumare kind of famous for also having very
efficient on time kind of train situations. And I lived in Belgium for a
year, took the train all thetime, So like, uh, those
are those are trained countries? Tome, both of those are, right.

(24:06):
I think most people would I thinkmost people at least you know in
our audience, which is mostly situatedhere in the United States and Canada,
would probably think of a country inEurope, probably based on their own experience
of traveling there, whether it's Franceor Germany or Spain. Right, these
are all, I mean there are. I would say they're all broadly trained
countries in that you can board atrain from almost any sort of major city

(24:29):
or even smallish city or town andtake it to someplace else if you needed
to and relatively quick time frame.Yeah. Yeah, And this kind of
makes sense because you know this ideathat Europe broadly is a European countries are
train countries because a lot of peopleuse them. Within that continent continent,

(24:49):
and they use them frequently, andit's also a place that that that people
like to visit to have this expsperience of taking the train. Right.
It's so funny how many people thatyou know, I've seen talk online or
I've spoken with personally as a formercity transportation planner about how much people love

(25:11):
the experience of taking trains, youknow, when they're traveling abroad, when
they travel to Europe, to like, oh, this is such a magnificent,
magnificent experience. I loved it.You could just sort of hop on,
and then you know, they getback to the United States and sort
of there's a disconnect for you know, them being able to do that here,
but the thought of getting on thetrain doesn't really come up. I
mean, it's one of the bestways. We sort of touched on this

(25:33):
before, but it's one of thebest ways to appreciate landscapes, right,
being on a train. And sometimesyou know, you go at different speeds
because sometimes, as we said,it's going quickly, sometimes it slows down,
but you're afforded this view into differentplaces that you've never been before.
That that's one of the reasons thatpeople like plus you can eat on the
train and you can walk around alittle bit, and so it's got a

(25:57):
lot going for it. It's interesting. Even so, we have here inside
of the United States, we dohave a real line called the Asella.
Celex might might not be called acell Express anymore. Anyways, the Acella.
It runs the Northeast Corriter basically fromWashington, d C. Up to
Boston. It's relatively quick, it'sin a very dense region of the country

(26:21):
overall. Right, it's going togo through Philadelphia, Baltimore, New York
City, you know. And it'sso funny because even though that we have
this, you know, people Iknow who live there or who have frequently
frequented Europe quite a bit and usedthe trains over there, they still it's
just not on the radar. It'snot It's it's almost like they have to

(26:44):
go out of their way to thinkabout taking the Amtrak Asella over driving or
over flying. Yeah. Well,as I said, that was exact route
that I took a lot back inthe day. And but near the end
of the flights started getting more competitivelypriced. It was much cheaper to take
the train at one point, andthen it was kind of close, and

(27:08):
so you're thinking, well, Ican save myself some time, and it's
not that much more. But yeah, I mean when I was on the
taking the train, I mean there'sstill a lot of people on it,
for sure on the East Coast.Yeah, there is, yes, Yeah,
but a lot of them are commuters, right, some people who do
this for business and stuff. Sopeople who do it more recreationally is probably

(27:29):
a lesser number. I'm guessing,yeah, I would guess I would be
my We're not going to really diveinto sort of the commuter versus recreation sort
of ridership. I'm sure that dataexists out there, but it's not not
really sort of we just we don'thave time on this episode to really cover
that. Yep. Now, allthat's to say, Hunter, what if
I said that the United States andCanada were just as much of a train

(27:53):
country as any of those European countriesor Japan or India. You know,
what what if? Like what ifI said that? How Well, what
would you say? I would believethat because because of the freight traffic that's
going on exactly in the United States, it's the freight companies that own the

(28:14):
tracks that for the most part,Amtrak doesn't really own so many tracks,
and so yeah, when we're waitingfor when you're waiting at a stop,
you know, you're stop waiting fora train. You know, if it's
an Amtrak train, it goes byin about fifteen seconds, but the freight
trains will take a lot longer.So yeah, that's that's I think that's
what's going on exactly. The UnitedStates and Canada and a lot of countries

(28:40):
actually do our train countries just notin the sort of human experience that that
we associate you know, Europe with. And again, you know, most
people do have experience with freight trains. It's just sitting and waiting for them,
which is kind of an annoying experience, right, So yeah, it's
that's visibility that it gets right totally. So the reality is that they're about

(29:03):
one hundred and forty thousand miles ofactive rail here in the United States.
So this is you know, railthat still has trains running on it.
There's a lot more that there's nolonger trains running on. This would be
compared to one hundred and sixty onethousand miles of active rail in Europe,
which includes Turkey. So I justwant to make that distinction because it's not
always included. So that to me, that's pretty comparable in terms of the

(29:27):
amount of rail. Now, obviouslyEurope has more people, but it's smaller
land mass. There's some other variableshere. You know, US has less
people, but it's larger land.All that's to say is it's equivalent.
I would say that based on thatalone, it's like, okay, yeah,
the United States is is matching almosttoe for tow the amount of rail

(29:51):
traffic in terms of rail line.That's that's still active to today. The
reality is that the United States usesthis for freight, though not passenger,
and this is kind of the inverseof Europe. Not quite but a little
bit so. According to the InternationalUnion of Railways, the United States hauled
about one point four billion tons ofcargo in twenty twenty three, compared to

(30:15):
Europe's one point one billion tons ofcargo. Now this might not seem like
a huge difference, but it kindof is when you start looking at sort
of the population differences, Because forone, Europe including Turkey, has about
seven hundred and forty million people,which is more than twice out of the
United States. If all things wereequal. If basically, if Europe was
pulling as much cargo per capita asthe United States was, Europe would haul

(30:40):
somewhere around three billion tons of cargoevery year. So I guess what I'm
trying to illustrate here is that Europeis, even though it's much more of
a it is a train country.It does use its train for freight.
The US is a train country aswell. We've established that it uses for
freight. Europe's is much more heavilybent towards passenger travel, whereas we're just

(31:03):
not right. It's just like youhad mentioned, it's the freight train companies
that own most of the rail andtrack owns some here and there. There's
Bright Line down in Florida, whichowns their own rail, California High Steed
Rail which will own their own,but broadly, of that one hundred and
forty thousand miles of active rail,it's like one hundred and thirty nine thousand,
five hundred are owned by Yeah,it's like, yeah, it's almost

(31:29):
all of it. All told,when we look at statistics from around the
world, we can see that theUnited States has the most length of line
of any single country in the world. So this is more rail lines active
rail lines than China, more thanRussia, more than India. Again,
just sort of illustrating that the UnitedStates has, I mean, it's a

(31:52):
big train country here. We havea lot of rail Yeah, I mean,
I think we think about it historicallyis a train country, but clearly
you're illustrating that that's still the case. It's not just a historical thing.
Oh and I wanted to have thislittle caveat here, and this is for
the supertrain nerds, so I hopeyou guys enjoy this. This one hundred
and forty thousand miles hunter is justfor Class one rail lines, which is

(32:14):
lead, which is leaving about onethird of the total active train tracks in
the United States out of the picture. So there's the United States has different
classes of rail. And we talkeda little bit about this inside our High
Speed railf so so you can golisten to that. But basically Class one
is for sort of long haul freightrail, but then there's sort of shorter
haul freight rail, which would beClass two. All that's to say is

(32:36):
there's actually more out there than thestatistics I'm even giving to you. Most
countries don't seem to break up therebased on the International Union of Railways break
up there. They're rail quite likethat, But the International Union of Railways
did not classify route class two,so I didn't want to include in those
statistics either. Well, there's lightrail to throw everything off as well,

(32:58):
because that's where we'd get a littlebit more of the commuters and a little
bit more of the people. Butthose are trains, right, Basically are
trains? Yeah, yeah, absolutelyyeah. I mean street cars are anything
that's on tracks as a train,right, that's really the defining feature of
what is and what is not atrain. For all these reasons, I
think it's pretty clear that the UnitedStates, as I've already mentioned, is

(33:21):
a train country. It's just nota passenger train country. But of course
many other places are. So let'stalk a little bit more about passenger trains.
Who's doing what and sort of whereare people coming and going. We
hinted at that in part and sortof the first part of today's episode.
Now we're going to sort of divea little bit more into those those stats.
Remind us again, Hunter, whowho is the most traveled passenger rail

(33:45):
country in the world. That wasJapan, right, it was Japan.
So according to the International Union ofRailways, Yeah, the Japan carries about
six point two billion passengers per year, so that there's a lot of people.
This would be followed by India withabout three point five billion, China

(34:07):
with two point six billion, andthen Germany with about one point eight billion.
Now there's a caveat with this datahunter, and this is this is
because the Union International Union of Railwaysdoes not necessarily track inner city or sorry,
basically passenger rail within withinside cities,your light rail systems, your subways,

(34:30):
X, Y, and z,so those kinds of things are sort
of left as an aside when tabulatingall this data, so you can kind
of find that information, but combiningthem is proven to be challenging. I
think they also they're sort of trackingthings a little bit differently as well,
so it gets a little bit harder. So this would just be sort of

(34:50):
inner city travel. So you know, if you're looking at India, how
many people are going from Mumbai toDelhi? Right? Japan? I guess
kyota kyoto that kind of thing.Yeah. Ye. For example, do
you want to hazard a guess atthe United States annual passenger ridership so we
were talking about what's over six billionin Japan, and so I'm supposed to

(35:15):
guess what the United States is.I see, I'm going to say two
hundred and fifty million. You havea very rosy outlook on Amtrak's success as

(35:37):
city passenger transfer. No, it'sAmtrak as of I believe this was twenty
twenty two. I don't think it'stwenty twenty three. I don't know if
they've released those numbers yet. No, Actually, I think it was twenty
twenty three. I think I didfind those numbers. Was that about twenty
eight million people per year? Right? So that's that's that's low. That's
that's that's not so many. Yeah, that's much less. Yeah, Canada

(36:01):
would be even less at about onepoint five million passengers. I don't have
Yeah, yeah, they have lesspeople, but this is this was this
would be less per capita over soI see. Yeah, so this is
they have about you know, onetenth the amount of people is the United
States a little bit more than that, actually, probably about one ninth.

(36:23):
This would be far less than that. So there's just there's less rail transportation
in Canada overall. I don't havedata for Mexico. We're going to talk
about Mexico or a little bit,and there's reasons for that. But if
we run through each continent, Asiaoverall moves the most amount of people,
with about thirteen billion people annually,So this would be you know, Japan,

(36:45):
Korea, you know, China,India, you know wherever, you
know, all the different countries thatare part of that. Thailand, you
know, population, a lot ofpopulation. China obviously has been modern and
extending their rail transportation for the lastyou know, twenty years. India has
been doing a lot of you knowthat same thing as well, and so

(37:09):
it wouldn't surprise me if, youknow, over the next twenty years one
of those two countries does surpass Japan, which has very impressive numbers but is
also a much smaller country in termsof population. Right, yes, I
would expect that to change. Yeah, right. This would be followed by
Europe with about seven billion annually,so, led by Germany, but not

(37:30):
not too far behind would be Franceand then eventually Spain and sort of the
bigger countries based on population. Itsort of follows that sort of that sort
of line. I think Turkey's upthere too, Okay, yeah. And
then we go to get to theAmericas, which includes South America, right,
so they're not breaking up North Americaand South America. The America's overall

(37:52):
has about one point two billion passengerrail transportation annually. Pretty impressive, I
would say, it's not too faraway from I mean, I think if
you're in the billion, you're probablydoing something right. Right. This would
actually be led by Brazil, whichhas a nearly nine hundred million passengers in

(38:15):
twenty twenty three, which I thoughtwas I mean, it sort of took
me by surprise. I did notrealize that that was such a big mode
of transportation down there, A lotmore than the United States, a lot
more than the United States. Andjust to you know, everybody likes to
point out the United States geography asbeing a limiting factor. Brazil is a
huge country, as is China.Yeah. Yeah, these are also giant

(38:37):
places, so that doesn't necessarily explaineverything that the United States is big.
Yeah. Yeah. So and thenthen we get to Africa, which has
about two hundred and forty one millionannually. Okay, South Africa would lead
here with about one hundred and thirtythree million passengers annually, though I wanted
to point out that Morocco, Tunisia, and Algeria all have annual ridership higher

(39:00):
than the United States. They rangefrom about the low thirties up to the
high forties. And I thought thatwas pretty interesting, especially because they're all
sort of near each other, They'reall inside the Northern African area, and
I know that that Morocco especially hasbeen doing a lot of work on rail
transportation, and I would be willingto guess that Algeria and Tunisia has has

(39:21):
been doing something similar. And thenfinally we have the Oceania region with about
forty million annually, and this isreally just Australia. There's not there's not
really. I couldn't even really findany statistics for at least not through the
International Union of Railways for New Zealand. So. And then obviously those small
islands, maybe they have some verysmall rail transportation, but they're pretty small

(39:45):
and I don't think most of themdo. Yeah, that infrastructure is probably
not highly developed. Yeah, andalso it's you know for some of those
islands, Yeah, for some ofthose islands that are really small, Like,
is there really an advantage to itover a road and truck system.
I don't know. Maybe there is, but maybe not enough. I don't

(40:07):
know. So now we're gonna shiftour focus to North America because I find
really fascinating that the United States,Canada, and Mexico don't have better passenger
rail, and we're gonna dive intothat a little bit. But first let's
go ahead and hit our last adbreak, and then we're gonna come back

(40:27):
and we're gonna dive deep into Amtrak, VIA and well Mexico's unique situation that
they have going on. So wewill be right back and we're back.
This is the Geography Is Everything podcast. We're talking about trains today. We

(40:52):
just ran through a bunch of statisticsall about the various passenger rail we talked
about freight rail broadly. Now we'regoing to dive into North America and specifically
we're going to talk about Amtrak.We're going to talk about VIA up in
Canada, and then we're going totalk about Mexico's unique situation. But let's
start with Amtrak because it's where we'relocated here. We've already mentioned them a

(41:14):
couple of times in today's episode.This is where we're going to do a
little bit of rehashing from our oldepisode. We're going to talk a little
bit about the history of how Amtrakcame to be. Really kind of what
what what's the deal with Amtrak?What are they? What's there? Why
aren't they more successful? What arethey doing? X y Z. So
the basic structure of Amtrak Hunter isit's a semi private corporation. Now,

(41:34):
if you remember, we just dida whole episode on the US Postal Service
that's rue, yeah, and golisten to that. It's fascinating how the
USPS works. Amtrak sort of fallsinto a similar bucket as the US Postal
Service, where it's federally managed.It is technically federally owned. However,
it's you know, it's a corporation. It has to be profitable. It

(41:58):
has to sort of you know,survive onto itself, all that kind of
stuff. It's expected to turn aprofit somehow, right, I mean,
or God, don't even know ifthe expectation is there to profit of course
of people to expand they have,but you know, they have to sort
of pay for themselves. Now theycan get grants and to like do other

(42:20):
things, and that's a whole otherside, but overall they sort of fall
into that quasi private quasi public entity, which is kind of like just a
weird designation. Trak is required bylaw to operate a national Railroad route system
passenger route system, and MTREK todayhas presence in forty six of the forty

(42:42):
eight cont contiguous states, as wellas the District of Columbia, with only
through way connecting services in Wyoming andunfortunately South Dakota. I'm very sorry to
say this, but you don't haveany service at all. Wow, it
actually like it's kind of weird.There's just nothing for you. Yeah,
well, I guess you've got todrive or something. Yeah, take a

(43:05):
plan. I don't know if.I mean, it's a pretty in terms
of population density, not a lotof people there. I don't know if
necessarily there's a high demand for it, but if there is, that would
be really cool, you know,if you guys got a route. Just
saying. Alaska is not served byAmtrak, but does have a passenger rail
service called Alaska Railroad, which handlesboth freight and passenger services. I thought
that was really cool, too.Fine. Apparently there's plans to eventually connect

(43:29):
it to Canada and then therefore connectingit to the wider North American sort of
rail network, but that hasn't beenrealized as far as I can tell.
So I think these are long hialready. Yeah, probably not, but
I was I'll say this, Iwas poking around on the Alaska Railway I
think dot com whatever the website,and I'm like, oh, these look

(43:52):
like fun. They have like littlelike trip packages you could take, like
this trip that goes along the Alaskacoast, like takes two days and you
know, you can be in ahotel or something. I was like,
oh, I think I might wantto do this one day. That sounds
super interesting. Yeah, very cool. Amtrak services roughly fall into three groups.
There are short haul services. Thiswould be you know, things such

(44:15):
as the Northeast Corridor right the Acella. Then there are states supported short haul
services that sort of are outside ofsort of that that area, which would
be things like the Cascades, whichyou also talked about area that runs from
Eugene, Oregon, through Portland andup to Seattle. And then there are
the medium and long haul services,which it would be you know, this

(44:37):
sort of national network and this wouldbe something that connects you know, for
example, here in Portland, wecan take one of these long hauls from
Portland down to San Diego. Ithink it's called the Coast Starlight runs from
actually, sorry, the Cascade runsall the way up to Vancouver, BC.
Right, the Coast Starlight runs fromSeattle down to San Diego, so
it's not international Cascade is. Youcan also take one here from Portland over

(45:00):
to Chicago called the Empire Builder.These take a long time. As you
can imagine, we're gonna talk alittle about some of the pretty revealing name
for the I know, right,yeah, absolutely. Amtrak receives federal funding
for the vast majority of its operations, including the central spine of the Northeast

(45:22):
Corridor. However, again it's stillrequired to, you know, make make
up its own money, right,so it receives federal funding, it's required
to supposed to coverage costs exactly.In addition to the federally funded routes,
Amtrak partners with transportation agencies in eighteenstates to operate other short and medium hall
routes outside of the Northeast Corridor,and so just other things sort of going

(45:45):
around. I believe they're trying toestablish one along the Front Range Corridor in
Colorado that would formally connect Wyoming intothe network because I think it would start
in Cheyenne, go down through debt, I think, and in Puebloblo,
Colorado. All of this came tobe in nineteen seventy with the Rail Passenger

(46:06):
Service Act of nineteen seventy, andso leading to this moment, inner city
passenger rail around the country was reallystruggling, and so they were kind of
going out of business. There we'regoing to talk a little bit about this,
but you know, this is comingout of time when planes are sort
of the new, you know,hot transportation item, right, it's becoming

(46:27):
like an actual thing for people toboard train or planes. And then it's
also coming out of time when theinterstate highway system is finally being real.
Yeah right, you know that thataccelerated through the nineteen fifties, and so
that's well established, and passenger traintook a hit because of that, right,
And so as these ones were,as these passenger rail services were sort

(46:49):
of going out of business, Amtrakwas founded to sort of collectively grab all
these things and pull them into asingle, federally sort of run service.
And it was originally opt in,right, inner city rail transportation services didn't
have to you know, say we'llhand over our stuff, but most did
because again they weren't profitable. Therewas like, Okay, we can either

(47:12):
do this or we can just kindof stop existing. There's basically the railroads
that chose not to join this systemwere required to continue operating their existing passenger
service until nineteen seventy five, andthen they could go through a process to
sort of be allowed to continue,you know. Further, most did not,

(47:36):
and so today we don't really haveany independent passenger rail services aside from
what we've already mentioned, which was, well it's really just bright Line that
would be Inner City, right andthat runs from Miami up to Orlando,
Florida. Now they're trying to doa service between Las Vegas and Los Angeles.

(47:58):
Okay, they'll be others, Yeah, same company Brightline. Yeah,
there'll be others that, you know, our idea are going through the process
of being constructed, right, Sothe California High Speed Rail that'll be independent
from Amtrak. But broadly most thevast majority of passenger rail in the United
States is Amtrak today right right ofthe twenty six passenger rail service rail services

(48:22):
that were in operation at the time, so around this early nineteen seventies,
twenty of them opted to join anAmtrak. Now, in some respects,
Hunter, I would argue, we'vesort of already made this point. I
would argue that the United States isa little bit of a victim of its
own geography. You know, whenwe start to think about when rail transportation,

(48:44):
inner city rail transportation was coming online, you know, back in the
early part of the nineteen hundreds,even in the late eighteen hundreds, it
was kind of the only way toget around, and so we built this
vast network of rail systems that werebuilt on sort of older technology that would
connect various cities to each other.But at some point the country's vast expanse

(49:09):
got upgraded with the interstate highway systemand better and more efficient and cheaper airfare.
And this all sort of happened ata sort of a pivotal time when
all these rail companies weren't able toupgrade their systems at cost to start making
way for better technologies such as whatwas happening in you know, the Japan,

(49:31):
such as the shinconsin which started comingonline sort of in the seventies as
well. And that's a set ofdecisions that were made, so things could
have played out differently, and therecould have been basically some kind of way
to subsidize the passenger rail system ifthat was seen as a priority. But

(49:52):
as you mentioned, the automobile reallybecame very attractive to people here. In
particular, the interstate highway system gavepeople venue in order to get different places
and then air travel. Like again, we did this whole episode on it
and talking about how suddenly you canyou can people are increasingly able to afford

(50:15):
to go long distances, and sothat's what they opt to do. Absolutely,
and we talked about this already,so we talked a little bit about
sort of the the amount of timethat it gets takes to get from place
to place by by train. Right, So again we've established that those sort
of mid distance trips are really thesweet spot for trains, even when you're

(50:37):
talking about high speed rail. Yes. Now, of course for freight rail,
long distances doesn't doesn't really matter.Uh, freight trains, they they
have obviously they have schedules to keep, but they don't have to compete with
time in the same way that thatthat that passengers you know that the passenger

(50:59):
rail does, right, You're right, I mean, the freight people might
complain about getting their stuff late,but the freight itself isn't complaining, right,
it's not complaining about the experience wherepassengers they're going to do that exactly.
And I would argue that most peopledon't even recognize if there's been a
delay for their freight, right,right, you might go to Ikea here

(51:20):
here in Portland, and you know, they might be out of stock and
you know some items that maybe thatyou were looking for, but you're probably
not going to blame You're not goingto blame the freight rail line for that
because you're just so far disconnected fromit. You might just be like,
oh, that really sucks. Whenare they gonna get this back in stock?
Blah blah blah blah blah. Gumble, grumble, grumble. I have
an example here sort of that illustratessort of the this time time gap difference

(51:43):
that really makes this challenging for Amtrakto compete. Right, So, a
flight from Portland again, so wherewe're located here to San Francisco, it
is about one hour and fifty minutestotal flight time with airport time, you
can pad a few hours you knowbefore and after, right before gone from
my house in Portland to a friend'splace in San Francisco in about four hours

(52:07):
door to door. It can bedone, right, Yeah, it can
be done. Yeah. It addsa little bit of time, but not
an excess amount of time an Amtraktrain. So if you board that Coast
Starlight in Portland, you take thatdown to San Francisco, that's going to
be nineteen hours, nearly nineteen hours. Yeah, that's that's a hard sell.

(52:29):
That's a hard sell for I mean, if you're going for the weekend,
then you pretty much have to getback on the train and go home.
I mean there's it takes up theentire time exactly. Yeah. Yeah,
And I kind of just want topoint this out as well. The
cost difference is not really on Amtrak'sside either. In fact, and unfortunately

(52:50):
Amtrak is often more expensive than airfare, which I think is kind of wild.
Yeah, that's amazing that that's thecase. So you'd have to be
somebody who just refuses to fly orwho wants the train experience, right,
and then then it's sort of likethen they lean into sort of the luxury
aspect of it, and you canget these sleeper cars and you can have

(53:12):
like a really nice like sort oftrip, and it becomes that becomes sort
of the the train trip is sortof the trip, right, it's out
of the part of the pressure whenyou're flying, you're just going there.
Yeah, right. So for allthese reasons, the United States, I
think is, you know, anAmtrak are sort of you know, inside
this weird area where it's really hardfor them to compete. And like you

(53:37):
would pointed out, during the nineteenseventies, when all this money was being
invested in the interstate highway system,into modernizing airports around the country as people
were flying more, there was asignificant lack of any sort of investment into
rail transportation. In fact, atthat time, the federal government was trying
to consolidate all of them and justkeep them, keep the lights on base.

(54:00):
So I would argue the United Statessort of had missed a crucial period
of time that other places did notmiss, and that's part of the reason
why it's just lagged so far behindto that. But let's turn our attention
to our northern neighbors. So Canada, their passenger train service via so Viya

(54:22):
has a very similar story to Amtrak. As it turns out, it was
established in nineteen seventy seven, andthe creation of via Rail was initiated by
the Canadian government to consolidate and manageinner city passenger rail services previously run by
Canadian National Railway and Canadian Pacific Railway, which we're also facing issues with staying
solvent. In the late nineteen seventies, the Canadian National and Pacific Railway were

(54:45):
primarily freight operators that basically didn't wantto do passenger rail anymore because again they
weren't it was a money loser forthem, and so like Amtrak, the
service pulled everything in and started managingit to themselves. And also like Amtrak,

(55:05):
the service largely has struggled and sloggedalong with underfunding, difficult routes,
poor service, reliability, and allthat kind of stuff. So today via
rail operates a network of inner city, regional and long distance routes across Canada.
So you can take a route fromVancouver, BC to Toronto or Montreal
if you wanted to. That ispossible, just like it's possible for you

(55:28):
to take a route train route fromyou know, Portland to Chicago or New
York. Totally possible to do those. I think the longest one in the
United States might be from Seattle toWashington, d C. I believe like
a singular route. I think there'sone that's that's a big trip. Yeah
yeah, long trip, long trip. It's most VIA's most notable service is

(55:52):
kind of similar to the United States, right, So Acela is the most
notable and most profitable service in unit. Say, it connects Washington, d
C, Base Keift of Boston andall the cities in between. VIA's is
the Quebec City Windsor Corridor, andso this is its most popular route,
which makes sense because it connects theCanada's two largest cities to each other,

(56:15):
Toronto and Montreal, as well asthe cities of Windsor, which is kind
of I mean, it's an internationallyborder there, but it's basically within the
Detroit metro area, so there's alot of people there. Yep, at
Sarnia, London, Kingston, Ottawa, which is Canada's capital, and then
Quebec City. Obviously. In twentyseventeen, so it's my latest stats,

(56:40):
the corridor service. This corridor serviceaccounted for ninety five percent of VIA's ridership
and seventy seven percent of its revenue, so showcasing that this is probably the
Northeast Corridor because there's very It's verysimilar for Amtrak, right, Northeast Corridor
is basically the only profitable route andAmtrak, Yeah, and this is where

(57:00):
the population is concentrated. In bothcases, right via Rail's flagship long distance
service is the Canadian which runs betweenToronto and Vancouver, BC Okay, And
that's very scenic, right. Youcan go through some areas of for example,
the Canadian Rockies bamf area that you'rejust not going to see anywhere else

(57:21):
in the world unless you're on thattrain. So now, just as we
conclude our episode today, Hunter,I want to talk a little bit about
Mexico because Mexico is kind of itswhole other thing and I didn't really want
to leave them out of this discussion. So Mexico does have some very limited
passenger rail transportation systems, but nothingtoo extensive, and it's almost entirely focused

(57:43):
on tourism as it turns out.So is that what you're saying There is
freight, Yes, there is,but we're talking about the passenger system of
North Okay. Yeah, there's great, right, So there's right, that's
sort of criss crosses. It's notas as extensive as either of the United
or Canada. Canada has a bigextensive system as well. Mexico has has

(58:04):
some of that going on as well, but tourists than as opposed to people
who live locally in the trains,okay, right. For example, like,
there's not really a route that connectsGuadalajara to Mexico City, which would
be I would assume would be primarilya you know, Mexican citizen sort of
you know service rather than any sortof tourists service. So there's a few

(58:27):
lines that run. There's the Chihuauaal Pacifico, which is a tourist train
that runs through Copper Canyon, whichis a magnificent canyon if you ever get
a chance to see it, verysimilar to in sort of depth, and
then you know, grandioseness to theGrand Canyon inside Arizona. There's the Tequila
Express, a tourist train which runsfrom Guadalajara, Jalisco to a tequila distillery

(58:52):
in a matted lawn. Yeah,that could only be a tourist train.
Yeah with a name like that.Uh. There there's Line Z, which
is a passenger train service on thetrend Interoceanico, which connects the Gulf of
Mexico to the Pacific Ocean on theisthmus of to Wadipak. I think is

(59:13):
how it's pronounced. Apparently, accordingto sort of what I can find,
this train service actually uses old Amtrakam fleets and ex British rail inner City
one twenty five. So I thoughtthat was kind of interesting that some of
the older Amtrak trains are still runningdown there connecting that. That is interesting.

(59:34):
Yeah, this is this By theway, the trend Inner Oceanico is
primarily a freight route, right,It's it's kind of creating a parallel to
the Panama Canal, only you know, ships will unload their stuff onto a
train there and they'll take them tothe Pacific side or vice versa. I
see. Kind of interesting. Andthen finally there's the trend Maya. Have

(59:59):
you ever heard about the trend MayaHunter, I've not heard of the trend
Maya, but I'm intrigued's what's goingon? It is interesting. So the
trend Maya is an inner city railwayin Mexico that traverses the Yucatan Peninsula.
And so that construction of this isthe Mayon area. Yeah, yes,
So construction began in twenty twenty andthe operation of it began in twenty twenty

(01:00:25):
three. Now it doesn't go toofar. It sort of just it sort
of creates like a little route withinside that area. The railway begins in
Cancun International Airport, travels southwest towardsPlunk and Kiyapas via two routes that sort
of encircle this peninsula. And that'skind of it. But I kind of
want to talk about this line becauseit's it was quite the construction of it

(01:00:47):
was quite contentious. And I thinkwhen you when most of us, you
know, those of us who aretransportation nerds anyway, think about trains,
we often like them. We oftenlike like, oh, this is really
good. Let's get let people outof their cars, get people have planes
because those are not as efficient,and trains are kind of cool, X,
y Z, myriad of reasons.So I think on paper, most

(01:01:15):
people will probably look at this trainMaya and think, oh, that's kind
of nice, even if that itwas just for tourists, you know,
it does all of these things thatI just just ran through. However,
as it turns out, the trainroute because it's trying to get people to
you know, various places of touristyinterest. It had to bulldoze a lot

(01:01:37):
of jungle area and jungle area thatwas particularly inhabited by by the endangered jaguar
species down there. So yeah,there was a lot of a lot of
environmental issues going around about that.Obviously, you know, losing jungle in
this day and age not necessarily seenas a good thing anymore. A long

(01:01:58):
time ago, it was know,clearing out jungle was definitely preferred. So
that's kind of an interesting we haveI think we talked about this inside our
Amazon Rainforest episode. Yes's just howmanaging it. Yeah. Uh. But
then also the other big part ofthis is that the area it's traveling on
is still i mean, per itsname, it's it It takes place sort

(01:02:22):
of in the home of the ancientMayan culture, which means there's still a
lot that hasn't been discovered around thisMayan culture that this train might very well
be bulldozing over. So there wasa lot of archaeologists and anthropologists basically,
you know, from within Mexico andwith and from from outside basically saying you
don't know what you're potentially destroying andespecially you know, starting construction in twenty

(01:02:46):
twenty and ending in twenty twenty three, that's a fast construction time, it
is. There's just a lot there. So yeah, I thought it was
really fun. The tensions of tourismis something that's come up in a lot
of our episodes, and this isyet on their illustration that you increasingly people
in different parts of the world,and it could be wealthier or poorer parts

(01:03:07):
of the world are dependent on tourismand so there's a lot of changes that
happen in places to facilitate that,but it comes at some real costs,
and you've just pointed out what someof those are. Absolutely. I mean,
so I've not been to the yukTampanis, I've not been to Kancun.
I think if I were to go, would I want to board the

(01:03:30):
trend Maya and like have it takeme into the jungle and see all this
really brad stuff. Yeah, obviouslyI think that would be really really cool.
As somebody who is a you know, a bona fide train nerd,
I don't know if I could passup the opportunity. It actually and it
also travels at a pretty decent clipof around one hundred miles per hour.
Wow. Yeah, that said,I can also understand sort of, you

(01:03:54):
know, especially for a lot ofthe Mexicans of the area who are like,
hey, this is this is areasthat we cherish and are we value
as part of our heritage, especiallymaybe some of the Indigenous people who still
live in the area. I couldn'tfind too much information about them that,
you know, maybe I felt likethey were getting bulldozed a little bit,

(01:04:15):
which is not helping us out.Really probably weren't the choice we would have
made. Yeah. Absolutely, Sothat's that's about it. That's about all
I have for trains Hunters. There'sa lot more I could say. I
feel like there's always more to say, but I guess with that's Hunter.
Who are you? Tells people,tell people where they can find you.

(01:04:38):
Thanks, Jeff. I'm Hunter Shoby. I'm a professor of geography at Portland
State University. I'm co author ofPortland Is a Cultural Atlas and Upper Left
Cities, a Cultural Atlas of SanFrancisco, Portland, and Seattle. Those
are done with David Bannis, andI'm co co host of this podcast,
Geography Is Everything. Yeah, andmy name is Jeff get Send a co

(01:05:00):
hosts of this podcast with Hunter.Obviously, you can also find me on
YouTube that's Geography by Jeff. Justgo over there search for it. Be
fine. If you liked what youheard today, you thought it was interesting
learning about trains and all the differenttrain systems around the world, please like
subscribe to us on YouTube or goto you know, Apple Podcasts, Spotify,
you know, pocketcasts, whatever,and rate and review us there.

(01:05:21):
We really appreciate seeing those. Wehave pretty good ratings, so you can
add to it and make us feelhappy a little bit. If you want
this delivered straight to your email inbox, you can do that. It's just
Geography as Everything dot substack dot com. You don't need to pay anything.
Just go over there. Subscribe comesto your email box every Tuesday. Easy
way to get access to it,and I include both an audio link and

(01:05:45):
the YouTube link, so you cansort of pick and choose whatever you want,
whatever you're feeling for the day.Next week, Hunter, what are
we doing next week? I thinkI'm gonna call it an audible on that
one, because there's an episode comingup that been working on for a while
that I just have to do agreat job on and so I think that
has to get put off a littlebit further. So I think we're going

(01:06:08):
to move up Easter Island. Ithink Easter Island, that's that's going to
be a really interesting one. Yeah, it's it's a place that's captured my
imagination for a long time. Uh, and I think not everybody knows too
much about it. They maybe heardof it, they know some of the
uh the really famous statues, themoi that that are that were built there.

(01:06:33):
But yeah, well we'll get intosome detail and talk about geography's Easter
Island. I think it's going tobe a fantastic episode. It's also you
know, we occasionally we do theseones that are like really situated on a
place, which I think is alwaysreally fun. Yeah, but we've never
I don't think we've done a placeand we've did that, we did Hawaii,
but we haven't done a place that'sI think as small and as kind

(01:06:57):
of mysterious as Easter Eyland. Yeah. No, this will be focusing on
a much smaller place and there's alot of interesting stories that come into play
with this place, so we'll getto explore some of those. Great Well,
come back next week. To learnall about Easter Island, and I
guess until then, we'll see younext time. Thank you,