No it really doesn't, and even if it passes through a region, the routes are often pathological, like in the worst case a trip from Denver to Dallas having to pass through Chicago or San Francisco.
> If the station on the other end is five minutes drive or fifteen minutes doesn't really matter, because it's too far to walk either way.
That is very minor problem compared to the issue of the nearest Amtrak stop being literally hundreds of miles further away compared to the nearest greyhound stop.
> Low ridership is also the reason many cities with tracks don't have passenger routes.
There are other reasons, in particular that running freight and passenger trains on the same rails has many scheduling issues that makes the rails worse for both users.
> No it really doesn't, and even if it passes through a region, the routes are often pathological, like in the worst case a trip from Denver to Dallas having to pass through Chicago or San Francisco.
The west is why it's "most" rather than "all" regions. But the places Amtrak doesn't go are the same places where local mass transit is abysmal or non-existent and everybody has a car. The reason there is no direct passenger route from Denver to Dallas is that anybody going there would drive or -- because everything is so spread out in the west and that's still a 12 hour drive -- fly.
> That is very minor problem compared to the issue of the nearest Amtrak stop being literally hundreds of miles further away compared to the nearest greyhound stop.
But it usually isn't, especially anywhere that anybody would be using either of these modes of transport.
Okay, so Greyhound goes to Daytona Beach and Amtrak "only" goes to DeLand, but they're <25 miles apart, and your destination may be some other town in the region rather than one where either of them have a stop.
> There are other reasons, in particular that running freight and passenger trains on the same rails has many scheduling issues that makes the rails worse for both users.
It's all down to ridership. If more people used them then you could justify more sections of parallel track that allow trains to pass each other or travel in opposite directions at the same time.
>The west is why it's "most" rather than "all" regions
Not just the west. I live in Jacksonville, FL, an 8 hour drive to New Orleans, and just 6 to Atlanta, but I'd need to go through Washington DC to get to Atlanta or through Chicago if I wanted to get to New Orleans (on a train the whole way).
They still have routes through all of those cities, and the reason it's circuitous to get from Jacksonville to New Orleans is that there's a line that goes directly there but it's suspended. They're making efforts to restore it, but the process is unsurprisingly full of politics and bureaucracy.
The line is "suspended" since Hurricane Katrina hit NO and even with the new infrastructure funding is not set to be re-opened. 18 years later it's fair to say we've moved past "suspended".
No it really doesn't, and even if it passes through a region, the routes are often pathological, like in the worst case a trip from Denver to Dallas having to pass through Chicago or San Francisco.
> If the station on the other end is five minutes drive or fifteen minutes doesn't really matter, because it's too far to walk either way.
That is very minor problem compared to the issue of the nearest Amtrak stop being literally hundreds of miles further away compared to the nearest greyhound stop.
> Low ridership is also the reason many cities with tracks don't have passenger routes.
There are other reasons, in particular that running freight and passenger trains on the same rails has many scheduling issues that makes the rails worse for both users.