a Train of thoughts

I am not an American citizen. But if I were, I would vote for the presidential candidate who cares about building a train network that connects at least top-ten populous cities in each state and connects all states (of course except for Hawaii) of the United States of America.

State College is the biggest town in central Pennsylvania. It is the 3rd biggest town of Pennsylvania during football weekends. The airport is, however, tiny, and not very connected to the outside world. No direct flight to New York City, Boston, or Chicago. The train station is, unfortunately, not existing.
Well, there are direct flights to Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, and D.C., but ordinary people (such as poor graduate students) cannot affort 300 dollars for those direct flights.
There is a train station in a nearby town, like 45 minutes away. One train a day to New York is simply not practical.
Chinese people are smart. They have started Chinatown buses, cheap and express, among New York, Boston, Philadelphia, and D.C. Since last summer, State College is included in the network of the Chinatown bus.
But Chinatown bus is not the solution. It is still not convenient to travel from one town to another. It is of course nice if you only want to go to New York City for example.

I drove to Newark to catch a flight to San Francisco. Of course, if there was a train to San Francisco from State College, I would not take the train but choose to fly. But if there was a train to Newark from State College, I would love to take the train instead of driving.
In order to catch the flight, I had to arrive in the terminal one to two hours in advance. In order to park in the long-term lot and to calculate the shuttle ride into the pre-flight time, I had to start off four to five hours in advance. And to take a risk of bad traffic, I simply decided to leave State College at 9:30am in order to take off on time at 3:55pm.

If there was a train from State College to Newark, I would not need to worry about the traffic for one. For two, I would not need to park 3 miles away from the terminal and take a shuttle in. For three, I would enjoy my breakfast much better.


Why is a train better than an airplane?
1. You don't have to be in a train station one to two hours before you step onto the train.
2. You can carry milk, coffee, water, tea, shampoo, hand lotion, and perfume on a train.
3. You don't need to take off your shoes at the check point of a train station.
4. You can open windows of a train.
5. Once you are sitted on a train, you know you are soon going to leave the station without waiting for other trains. Oh, let me share my most recent experience when flying off Newark: I with my many other passanger fellows were sitting in the plane and listening to the captain's greetings for the 500th time in one hour or one hour plus 59 minutes before finally the captain decided to fly us out of the airport.
6. Trains are more environment-friendly than airplanes.
7. For short distance, a train is more econimical, both in time and money.

How do you think?
Do you think a train is better than an airplane?
If you do, support me a reason of yours.
If you don't, try to convince me why I should embrace your idea.


Even Taiwan, such a small island, has two train systems: old and stops every single town, and new and high-speed and stops major cities.
Why can't America build a GREAT railroad service for its tax-paying people?
Why? I thought America is a great country.