Trains USA vs Europe

One reason I love Europe: Compare these train station departure boards.

This is from Flagstaff Arizona, the fourth-largest metropolitan area in Arizona, population about 78,000.

Yes, you read that right. There is one per day eastbound, leaving conveniently at 5:37 am. There is one per day westbound, also at a super-convenient time. Want to go north or south? Too bad.

Flagstaff is, sadly, the city with the best train connections in all of Arizona. Tucson has three per WEEK eastbound and westbound. The Phoenix metro area (capital and principle city, population about 5 million) doesn't have any train connections. Not any (unless you count having someone drive you into the middle-of-nowhere train station at Maricopa in the middle of the night three times per week--about a 50-minute drive from where I lived).

Compare that to Dresden's second-biggest train station's departure board:

Yes, each of those tiny lines in each of those six columns is a train. Some don't run every day (only weekdays, for example, or only weekends), but most are every day. Okay, that's totally not a fair comparison, I hear you say. After all, Europe's way better set up for trains than places like Arizona, and Dresden's population is about 565,000.

Okay, so look at Bystřička's departure board.

Bystřička is a small village in the Czech Republic (population about 1000) where the fast trains don't even stop. And it's like a 15-minute bus ride (and yes, the buses are frequent) to either Vsetin or ValMez, where there are more train connections. And it STILL has about 25 times more connections than Flagstaff.

I love Europe.