USDA Frontier and Remote (FAR) (less densely populated) areas, and Amtrak

[Matthew H Fish]

I've mentioned this concept a few times in the past, but I got the idea to do some research and make a post about it specifically.
The word "rural" gets used a lot, so often that it isn't always useful, because for people from different areas of the country, rural can mean very different things. If you are from New York City, Poughkeepsie is a tiny, distant rural hamlet. And if you are from Lakeview, Oregon, Klamath Falls is a towering metropolis.
About a dozen years or so ago, the statistics arm of the USDA decided to make a formal definition of the most rural areas of the country: Frontier and Remote, which is defined by the USDA as areas that are more than an hour by car from the border of a metropolitan area of at least 50,000 people.

https://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/frontier-and-remote-area-codes/Using this definition, which is pretty strict (most people in NYC or LA, for example, would not consider a city of 75,000 to be a "metropolis"), there are 12.2 million people in the US, at last count, or around 3% of the population, that live in these areas.
But the reason I am talking about it here is that I wondered how many Amtrak train stations were in those areas, and how much of Amtrak's riderships they represented.

Of Amtrak's 500+ stations, 43 of them are located in FAR areas. As could be imagined, long distance routes in the west account for the majority of these, although there are also stations in FAR territory in Mississippi, Vermont and New Hampshire. Many of these stations have very few passengers (including the least used station in the network, Sanderson, Texas), but some of them, such as Whitefish, Montana, are quite busy. Added together, the stations account for 1% of Amtrak's passenger rides (in 2019). This seems like a small number, but since the entire population of all FAR areas is only around 3%, and these stations represent only a small percentage of the FAR territory, they actually represent a disproportionate share of Amtrak's ridership. (Although in many cases, those stations are not primarily serving residents.)
There are a lot of technical questions about the methodology that determines what areas are "FAR", but even if we have a few questions (Chemult isn't FAR??), the basic idea seems to be a good one.
My central thesis would be that for train passengers, the two parts of the country are the most urban and the most rural. In areas like the NEC, economies of scale make trains very convenient. And in areas like the Highline, train travel is indispensable---passengers need it to access basic needs. But Amtrak seems to be the least popular in the middle. If you are in a small metropolis, while you might have limited access to certain cultural experiences, but you don't need to travel to access basic goods. If you live in Toledo, Ohio, travel isn't convenient or absolutely necessary.
(I just realized I can't attach spreadsheets to this thread)

Does any of that make any sense? Even if there are exceptions or questions, does the basic idea make sense?

 

[Matthew H Fish]

I realized I could make a link to a Google Spreadsheet:



With a long URL, but such is the way of Google Spreadsheets.

A few interesting notes that can be gathered from this spreadsheet: the train with the most FAR stations is The Empire Builder, which also has the longest stretch---between Libby, Montana and Devils Lake, North Dakota, there are no stations that are closer than an hour to an urban area of more than 50,000 people. The other long distance routes have that in patches, but the Empire Builder is the one where you can literally ride a day in FAR territory.
Also, another obvious point: most of the FAR stations outside of the long distance routes in the west are in Category 1 FAR. Many of the stations on the Empire Builder are in Category 3 and 4 (meaning that along with being further than an hour from a city of 50,000 people, they are also 30 minutes away from cities of 25,000 people, and 15 minutes away from cities of 10,000 people). This makes sense, anyone who has been to both Montana and Mississippi knows that the definition of "country" is very different in these two places.

 

[JamesWhitcombRiley]

By Highline, you mean northern Montana? This is the Wikipedia page listing various uses of the term: Highline - Wikipedia

I see the argument for Amtrak as an essential service. The federal government supports such airports, and most notably these days, rural broadband. In my area rural fiber internet was kick-started by an electric co-op, whose region interleaves with two big commercial utilities. The co-op, after a balky attempt at broadband-over-powerline two or three decades ago, and notching out frequencies that interfere with ham radio, turned to the idea that fiber to every customer would help with data collection on electric usage. Then other government funding, local and whatnot, came along to run the fiber to rural users outside the co-op service areas. Very reasonable at $50/month.

The reason I'm going into this story is because of funding. Assuming I have the history right, electric co-ops date back at least to the 1935 Rural Electrification Administration (REA) we learned about in American History. It's now called Rural Utilities Service (RUS) in the USDA. Assuming I have the current (ha ha) situation right, electric co-ops are supported by RUS, and that's where the initial grant for the fiber came from. In fact, broadband-over-powerline was, and fiber is, provided by a contractor, and for all I know the contractor sold the idea, and how to get the grant, to the co-ops. USDA's web site indicates the independent FCC agency plays a role.

Transportation is not listed as a component of USDA. But it seems to me a policy-driven approach to supporting rural Amtrak would be better than particular Congressional mandates, like the one about re-staffing certain stations. Bureaucrats over pork barrel, to use two negative terms. Or, engineers over spenders. But since that is unlikely, how about a railroad co-op?

I'm fairly obsessed by the map at your link. Thanks!

 

[Matthew H Fish]

By Highline, you mean northern Montana? This is the Wikipedia page listing various uses of the term: Highline - Wikipedia

I see the argument for Amtrak as an essential service. The federal government supports such airports, and most notably these days, rural broadband. In my area rural fiber internet was kick-started by an electric co-op, whose region interleaves with two big commercial utilities. The co-op, after a balky attempt at broadband-over-powerline two or three decades ago, and notching out frequencies that interfere with ham radio, turned to the idea that fiber to every customer would help with data collection on electric usage. Then other government funding, local and whatnot, came along to run the fiber to rural users outside the co-op service areas. Very reasonable at $50/month.

The reason I'm going into this story is because of funding. Assuming I have the history right, electric co-ops date back at least to the 1935 Rural Electrification Administration (REA) we learned about in American History. It's now called Rural Utilities Service (RUS) in the USDA. Assuming I have the current (ha ha) situation right, electric co-ops are supported by RUS, and that's where the initial grant for the fiber came from. In fact, broadband-over-powerline was, and fiber is, provided by a contractor, and for all I know the contractor sold the idea, and how to get the grant, to the co-ops. USDA's web site indicates the independent FCC agency plays a role.

Transportation is not listed as a component of USDA. But it seems to me a policy-driven approach to supporting rural Amtrak would be better than particular Congressional mandates, like the one about re-staffing certain stations. Bureaucrats over pork barrel, to use two negative terms. Or, engineers over spenders. But since that is unlikely, how about a railroad co-op?

I'm fairly obsessed by the map at your link. Thanks!

It is an interesting map! It also might have some surprises for some people, especially in that states like Ohio that many people think of as rural have no territory that is in FAR areas. North Carolina and Indiana also have very little.
And all of this is very relevant to issues of rural development and infrastructure, including train service. Traditionally, rural policy has been directed at areas where mosts of the rural people live, which therefore are not the most rural areas. There are a lot more people living in suburbs and small metros in states like Ohio, North Carolina, Tennessee and Michigan than there are in places like Montana and Nevada. If you look at the Senate Committee that supervises the USDA, there are no representatives from California (the nation's biggest agricultural producer), Washington, Oregon, Montana, Idaho, Alaska, Hawaii, Arizona, or Wyoming. This is despite the fact that by historical accident, the US Forest Service is part of the USDA, and millions and millions of acres of national forest land are supervised, in the Senate, by Senators from states like New Jersey and Arkansas. Most rural programs are aimed at a certain definition of "rural".
But on the other hand, as we all know, Glasgow, Montana has daily train service, which Columbus, Ohio does not. Mostly, I suspect, because of overrepresentation on lesser populated states in the Senate.
But to return to your final point, it would make sense if a national train system was made with the idea in mind of serving the most people, and the most people who needed transportation, and not a piecemeal stitching together of routes by whoever has the chair of a house or senate committee.

 

[Matthew H Fish]

(...and one more thing...)


One thing that got me thinking about this again was this map, and variations on it, that has been going around. And it shows perhaps a change in direction. Most of these routes seem to address the "Missing Middle", offering train travel between medium-sized metros with a generally high population density throughout. Although, in some cases, like Cincinnati to Cleveland, those are really urban areas that are not that much smaller than the NEC, and its a little odd that they don't have train service already. I don't know how deliberate it is, but these corridors seem to interwork in a way that a lot of the medium sized cities will be connected. The exception being the route parallel to the Empire Builder through ND and MT.

 

[Willbridge]

(...and one more thing...)

View attachment 34906
One thing that got me thinking about this again was this map, and variations on it, that has been going around. And it shows perhaps a change in direction. Most of these routes seem to address the "Missing Middle", offering train travel between medium-sized metros with a generally high population density throughout. Although, in some cases, like Cincinnati to Cleveland, those are really urban areas that are not that much smaller than the NEC, and its a little odd that they don't have train service already. I don't know how deliberate it is, but these corridors seem to interwork in a way that a lot of the medium sized cities will be connected. The exception being the route parallel to the Empire Builder through ND and MT.

A lot of the "missing middle" was in terrible shape in the period when Amtrak was set up, so ridership was weak. Some of the lines got worse in the early years of Amtrak, so there were further cutbacks.

 

[Matthew H Fish]

A lot of the "missing middle" was in terrible shape in the period when Amtrak was set up, so ridership was weak. Some of the lines got worse in the early years of Amtrak, so there were further cutbacks.

There are a lot of technical reasons, I am sure, why those cities started with bad service, and cities in less populated parts of the country had good service. But overall, it seems that if there was demand, and political/social advocacy, it wouldn't have been that hard to repair and maintain track between, say, Cleveland and Cincinnati, or Memphis and Atlanta. I think there are demographic and social factors that made areas like that abandon rail.

 

[jis]

A lot of the "missing middle" was in terrible shape in the period when Amtrak was set up, so ridership was weak. Some of the lines got worse in the early years of Amtrak, so there were further cutbacks.

It has always seemed to me that what we are calling the "missing middle" is the area of the country that shed their passenger trains more efficiently than the rest of the country. It may have had to do with the folklore of railroads being the bad guys and therefore worth shunning ASAP. The railroads who wanted to get rid of passenger service fed into that trope and succeeded in getting help from local politicians in many places to get themselves kicked out. In many places where passenger trains survived, they did so because of strenuous objection from the local powers that be to their discontinuance. Where there was no such objection things went away. This was also true as a principle guiding what survived as Amtrak on A Day.

 

[Matthew H Fish]

It has always seemed to me that what we are calling the "missing middle" is the area of the country that shed their passenger trains more efficiently than the rest of the country. It may have had to do with the folklore of railroads being the bad guys and therefore worth shunning ASAP.

I think it does have to do with folklore, in a way. Or at least, that is half of it.
The first part is more tangible---those cities were big enough that there wasn't a pressing need for people to travel outside of them, but didn't have high enough population densities to give economy of scale.
The folklore part of it is that sometimes, being "rural" is a big part of the identity of those states, and sometimes there is antipathy towards transit, (local or long distance) as being something that is too urban, associated with the "East Coast". One of the reasons I started researching the concept of FAR is that when I talked to people from east of the Mississippi, (unless they were actually from northern Maine or the UP of Michigan), we would usually be talking about two very different things when it came to rural areas. "I am from a tiny little town out in the middle of nowhere" someone from Indiana and Ohio would say, and then I would find out for them, that meant that they were from a town of 10,000 people on a freeway 40 miles from the capital. Obviously, people here who have ridden the Empire Builder or the California Zephyr know how different Montana or Nevada look than Ohio or North Carolina.
So if it isn't too controversial of a statement, I think that the psychological aspects of being "rural" have made a lot of people in states like Ohio and Tennessee, etc., reject train travel and transit in general.

 

[Willbridge]

There are a lot of technical reasons, I am sure, why those cities started with bad service, and cities in less populated parts of the country had good service. But overall, it seems that if there was demand, and political/social advocacy, it wouldn't have been that hard to repair and maintain track between, say, Cleveland and Cincinnati, or Memphis and Atlanta. I think there are demographic and social factors that made areas like that abandon rail.

One factor that varies in different parts of the country is the relative convenience/inconvenience of driving. Years ago, it was noticed that northern transit systems, on into Canada, did better than southern systems. There are a lot of factors, but driving in ice fog is stressful.

Minneapolis Great Northern Station in December 1975.


A lot of the mid-America one-night trains covered distances that customers were ready to drive. The two and three night trips were affected by regulated air travel, but not so much by driving.

I have vivid memories of watching the last remnant of the Southwestern Limited on the Big Four line Cleveland > Indianapolis passing my barracks window at Fort Benjamin Harrison -- a lightweight NYC coach and a TrailVan trailing. It lasted till Amtrak, but was invisible to my 1969 Hoosier contacts. The only area of Indiana that seemed to be concerned with the loss of rail passenger service was the South Shore corridor. The only train that my contacts knew enough about to consider riding was the James Whitcomb Riley.

Another factor in Mid-America compared to the Mountain and West Coast regions is that it was too easy to build railways in Mid-America and much of the network was built when that did not seem unreasonable. By comparison, some major projects in the Mountain and West Coast regions were not completed until after highway construction was well underway. The Empire Builder California Section came so close to being added to the network that a public timetable was released -- and then canceled. The direct Santa Fe line from Pueblo to Texas never had a through train to compete against the Texas Zephyr. Both of those projects were completed during the Depression. Other projects, like linking the Oregon Electric Railway with the Sacramento Northern via Medford were dropped as highways were paved. So, some of the duplication that siphoned off rail revenues in the Midwest and East did not exist in newer regions of the country.

I posted this photo before you were on this forum, so some people have seen this before. It's very relevant to the Corridor ID program in the Midwest. It's December 1975. and state rail planners are up late on the phone with congressional staff members drafting the 4-R Act to deal with the near collapse of the U.S. rail system. States represented were from the ICC Eastern Region, plus Wisconsin, Minnesota, South Dakota, and Oregon. That was the environment that early Amtrak was set up in and attempting to operate. It's hard to visualize how bad things were.

 

[Matthew H Fish]

One other thing to mention about this...in part because I think the moderators changed the name of my thread to add the word "rural".
Which is clear enough, and when I explain the concept casually, I do usually just refer to FAR areas as "extremely rural".
But there is a wrinkle--because not all FAR areas are rural. It is possible to have urban areas that are in FAR territory, as long as they are not large enough to pass the 50,000 residents threshold. And sometimes there will be a number of urban areas that are close to each other, but not close enough to form a conglomeration.
So sometimes this seems like a technicality, but it can be very important. Especially for planning in things like education, health care, and especially transit.
Take, Butte, Montana, for example. Butte, Montana is a city with a large downtown full of three and four story brick buildings, a university, a hospital, an airport, a shopping mall, and in general, as many facilities as most people would normally need. But its population is around 35,000 people, so it is considered urban but also FAR, because the closest metropolitan area with more than 50,000 people in Missoula, about two hours away. So the residents of Butte normally have many options for day to day life, but if they want something not found in Butte---it is quite a daunting task to get it. If a graduating high school student wants to go the University of Washington, that is at least eight hours, non-stop.
Compare that to an area that is rural but not FAR...someone living off of a freeway exit on one of the many freeways going between Indianapolis or Chicago, or St. Louis and Nashville, or Detroit and Great Falls, etc. On a day to day level, those people might have to go a bit further to get certain things, and might live in towns with less services...or not live in towns at all. But then, if residents of areas like that do want to go further, they might have to drive an hour or so and they are in a city of millions of people with a choice of world-class universities.
This is also obviously relevant to transit planning. Along with aesthetics, it is one reason I am a fan of the reinstatement of the North Coast Hiawatha. The population across I-90 in Montana and North Dakota isn't very big, but it is surprisingly urban. In a city like Butte, for example, most of that population lives within a walking distance of a possible train station! So it might be possible to generate more ridership in an urban, FAR place like Butte than in a rural, not FAR place like Ohio.

 

[Willbridge]

If I remember correctly, the Bureau of Transportation Statistics has some numbers that show mileage traveled by residents of various regions. The longer trips taken "out west" to get to services or retailing help explain the interest in rail travel.

On the other extreme, a friend in the army in Berlin was a New Yorker. Before being drafted, he and his father had been to Niagara Falls once. That was the extent of his travel outside of the metropolis.

 

[Anderson]

I realized I could make a link to a Google Spreadsheet:



With a long URL, but such is the way of Google Spreadsheets.

A few interesting notes that can be gathered from this spreadsheet: the train with the most FAR stations is The Empire Builder, which also has the longest stretch---between Libby, Montana and Devils Lake, North Dakota, there are no stations that are closer than an hour to an urban area of more than 50,000 people. The other long distance routes have that in patches, but the Empire Builder is the one where you can literally ride a day in FAR territory.
Also, another obvious point: most of the FAR stations outside of the long distance routes in the west are in Category 1 FAR. Many of the stations on the Empire Builder are in Category 3 and 4 (meaning that along with being further than an hour from a city of 50,000 people, they are also 30 minutes away from cities of 25,000 people, and 15 minutes away from cities of 10,000 people). This makes sense, anyone who has been to both Montana and Mississippi knows that the definition of "country" is very different in these two places.

So, as a note - Whitefish is the most obviously tourist-driven station on the list. I think the only other one that is really deep into that is one of the SWC stations (I forget if it's Trinidad or another one) with a lot of traffic from Boy Scouts going to Philmont. The rest are driven by either locals, visitors, or temporary residents (e.g. Williston).

 

[Anderson]

Another factor in Mid-America compared to the Mountain and West Coast regions is that it was too easy to build railways in Mid-America and much of the network was built when that did not seem unreasonable. By comparison, some major projects in the Mountain and West Coast regions were not completed until after highway construction was well underway. The Empire Builder California Section came so close to being added to the network that a public timetable was released -- and then canceled. The direct Santa Fe line from Pueblo to Texas never had a through train to compete against the Texas Zephyr. Both of those projects were completed during the Depression. Other projects, like linking the Oregon Electric Railway with the Sacramento Northern via Medford were dropped as highways were paved. So, some of the duplication that siphoned off rail revenues in the Midwest and East did not exist in newer regions of the country.

I posted this photo before you were on this forum, so some people have seen this before. It's very relevant to the Corridor ID program in the Midwest. It's December 1975. and state rail planners are up late on the phone with congressional staff members drafting the 4-R Act to deal with the near collapse of the U.S. rail system. States represented were from the ICC Eastern Region, plus Wisconsin, Minnesota, South Dakota, and Oregon. That was the environment that early Amtrak was set up in and attempting to operate. It's hard to visualize how bad things were.

View attachment 34965

Empire Builder California section? This is the first I've ever heard of that. What was the plan with it?

 

[Willbridge]

Empire Builder California section? This is the first I've ever heard of that. What was the plan with it?

"Another casualty of the Depression was the often-discussed through passenger service over the new route to California. The plan, as it turned out, was to be an idea whose time never came."

Gaertner, John T.; North Bank Road; Washington State University Press; Pullman; 1990.

Long before the book came out, I heard it from my dad, who had friends in the SP&S traffic department. That was the era of the annual Western Pacific Caribou Country Special from the SF Bay Area into British Columbia and Alberta. Someone would always ask why there was no regular train, and this Depression story would emerge.

There are hints in print. A 1932 GN timetable carried ads promoting travel to the LA Olympics via Glacier Park. Of course, that could and can be done via Portland, but they gave it more attention than usual. A 1937 timetable shows mixed train service between Bend and Bieber. In the October 1944 Official Guide there is a blank table in the GN pages for Bend to San Francisco with a note that it was freight only.

 

[Jdub]

I once wrote a discussion of how the US was organized around rail connections--focused on Chicago. Rails and history are deeply interconnected. Amtrak inherited passenger services that had a lot of variety--good, bad and indifferent.

Amtrak is the recipient of those historic conditions. Amtrak deployed its efforts to optimize returns (the only way to convince Congress to stay on board). The results are predictable. The middle states were given short shrift.

Thinking forward is the only antidote. What viable smaller cities ought to be connected by good rail connections. Why on earth is Cincinnati served once a day in the middle of the night? And there are a dozen other middle-sized cities that are attractive to travelers...many of whom would rather not fly. Makes zero sense to me. And why is service N/S along the Mississippi so weak?

Look at a good map of the US and try to detect how you can travel by train N/S other than along the east and west coast?

People want to easily travel. This is 2023--a different time and world from what the situation was when freight lines gave up on passenger rail.

 

[Tlcooper44]

I once wrote a discussion of how the US was organized around rail connections--focused on Chicago. Rails and history are deeply interconnected. Amtrak inherited passenger services that had a lot of variety--good, bad and indifferent.

Amtrak is the recipient of those historic conditions. Amtrak deployed its efforts to optimize returns (the only way to convince Congress to stay on board). The results are predictable. The middle states were given short shrift.

Thinking forward is the only antidote. What viable smaller cities ought to be connected by good rail connections. Why on earth is Cincinnati served once a day in the middle of the night? And there are a dozen other middle-sized cities that are attractive to travelers...many of whom would rather not fly. Makes zero sense to me. And why is service N/S along the Mississippi so weak?

Look at a good map of the US and try to detect how you can travel by train N/S other than along the east and west coast?

People want to easily travel. This is 2023--a different time and world from what the situation was when freight lines gave up on passenger rail.

The reasons for this have far more to do with development patterns, hypocritical transportation policy, and general lack of investment in anything other than cars rather than Amtrak management or one single scapegoat.

It’s extremely difficult for trains to work in the US outside the NEC and if we want that to change, tell your town or city to ditch minimum parking requirements - and a host of other policies that make it near impossible to improve rail. Oversimplification, yes. But not untrue.

 

[west point]

Other big rail connection cities were Cincinnati, St Louis. & Atlanta. other minor cities were WAS, JAX, NOL, DFW, DEN, LAX, OKJ, SEA / PDX.

 

[railiner]

So, as a note - Whitefish is the most obviously tourist-driven station on the list. I think the only other one that is really deep into that is one of the SWC stations (I forget if it's Trinidad or another one) with a lot of traffic from Boy Scouts going to Philmont. The rest are driven by either locals, visitors, or temporary residents (e.g. Williston).

Close...it's Raton...

 

[Willbridge]

Close...it's Raton...

Raton also had the Denver Thruway connection from 1997 until the pandemic and the wild Trains 3 and 4 delays. One reason for connecting in Raton was to avoid trains sold out in coach for the Scouts.

 

[Matthew H Fish]

I once wrote a discussion of how the US was organized around rail connections--focused on Chicago. Rails and history are deeply interconnected. Amtrak inherited passenger services that had a lot of variety--good, bad and indifferent.

Amtrak is the recipient of those historic conditions. Amtrak deployed its efforts to optimize returns (the only way to convince Congress to stay on board). The results are predictable. The middle states were given short shrift.

Thinking forward is the only antidote. What viable smaller cities ought to be connected by good rail connections. Why on earth is Cincinnati served once a day in the middle of the night? And there are a dozen other middle-sized cities that are attractive to travelers...many of whom would rather not fly. Makes zero sense to me. And why is service N/S along the Mississippi so weak?

Look at a good map of the US and try to detect how you can travel by train N/S other than along the east and west coast?

People want to easily travel. This is 2023--a different time and world from what the situation was when freight lines gave up on passenger rail.

Well, these are all complicated questions, but they are also the questions that get to the heart of the matter. But there is a different answer for different questions, and sometimes they are contradictory.
For the question of why there is no N/S service between the the West Coast and Chicago...while I've said that FAR areas have disproportionately high ridership, it is still low overall. The areas of the map that make the most sense for the network are sparsely populated. A N/S line from El Paso to Denver and then north to the Empire Builder makes sense for the network---but on some of that route, it is going to be going for hundreds of miles where the largest town is 50,000 people.
The same is actually true for Mississippi River service. One of the few FAR areas east of the Mississippi is in the state of Mississippi, along the river. For the population densities that the City of New Orleans passes through, it is actually quite good service.
And then we get to the question of areas like Ohio.
And this is the question that mystified me, because coming from the West Coast, when I talked to people from areas like Indiana, Ohio or North Carolina, they would often talk about having a strong identification with being rural, and sometimes having antipathy to cities. Bu then I would start talking to them, and they would talk about being a half hour from Columbus, but viewing themselves in a totally different world. And of course, coming from Montana, that didn't make sense to me. How does someone living a half hour or an hour outside of a city of a million people view themselves as being in a different world? So that is how I started researching and finding the idea of FAR.
Ohio is one of the most densely populated states in the US, and it is more than 2/3rds as densely populated than New York. It is more densely populated than California or Illinois. But for whatever reason, a lot of those states in the midwest tend to view themselves as fundamentally rural.
So, in conclusion, sometimes rail and transit is not possible because areas actually have low population densities and difficult terrain. But other times, and indeed much of the time, it seems to be that areas are denying being urban, even when objectively they are.

 

[John Bredin]

And then we get to the question of areas like Ohio.
And this is the question that mystified me, because coming from the West Coast, when I talked to people from areas like Indiana, Ohio or North Carolina, they would often talk about having a strong identification with being rural, and sometimes having antipathy to cities. Bu then I would start talking to them, and they would talk about being a half hour from Columbus, but viewing themselves in a totally different world. And of course, coming from Montana, that didn't make sense to me. How does someone living a half hour or an hour outside of a city of a million people view themselves as being in a different world? So that is how I started researching and finding the idea of FAR.
Ohio is one of the most densely populated states in the US, and it is more than 2/3rds as densely populated than New York. It is more densely populated than California or Illinois. But for whatever reason, a lot of those states in the midwest tend to view themselves as fundamentally rural.

I'm curious if these people who live within reasonable range of large cities but consider themselves rural in places like Ohio:
*actually avoid the city/cities because they consider them a different world and assume there's nothing there for them,
or
*go to the nearby city/cities for medical care, sports, concerts, social events, etc. but just tell themselves and others its another world from where they live?

If it's the former, that sorta explains the lack of demand for rail travel. (The objective need is probably still there, but not the subjective active demand.) If the latter, they can be persuaded that the train is the better option for their city trips if the train is convenient and their destination is convenient (by walking or good transit) from the station; "why deal with city driving and parking?"

 

[west point]

The apparent loss of intercity bus service around the US is going to require some kind of change. What IMO not sure?

 

[Barb Stout]

This is also obviously relevant to transit planning. Along with aesthetics, it is one reason I am a fan of the reinstatement of the North Coast Hiawatha. The population across I-90 in Montana and North Dakota isn't very big, but it is surprisingly urban. In a city like Butte, for example, most of that population lives within a walking distance of a possible train station! So it might be possible to generate more ridership in an urban, FAR place like Butte than in a rural, not FAR place like Ohio.

A minor detail to correct: I-90 does not go through North Dakota; it goes through South Dakota. I-94 goes through North Dakota. Both interstates are in Montana and Minnesota though.

 

[Barb Stout]

I'm curious if these people who live within reasonable range of large cities but consider themselves rural in places like Ohio:
*actually avoid the city/cities because they consider them a different world and assume there's nothing there for them,
or
*go to the nearby city/cities for medical care, sports, concerts, social events, etc. but just tell themselves and others its another world from where they live?

If it's the former, that sorta explains the lack of demand for rail travel. (The objective need is probably still there, but not the subjective active demand.) If the latter, they can be persuaded that the train is the better option for their city trips if the train is convenient and their destination is convenient (by walking or good transit) from the station; "why deal with city driving and parking?"

Perhaps they consider themselves rural because they live on a farm or near farms. That's how I view rural vs urban.