Trivia: worst-connected by rail large cities outside the UK?

[duncombec]

Or cases like Chemnitz or Derry~Londonderry, which are at least reasonably sized cities in countries with generally good coverage but a relatively limited or no intercity service themselves.

Derry/Londonderry has an hourly service to Belfast, though, which seems rather more frequent than many of the examples on this thread. I did see it claimed that it's the busiest (in terms of passenger numbers) stretch of single-track railway in the UK, and it does feel eye-wateringly slow (2 hours from Belfast), mind!


Does Luxembourg (city) have true intercity trains, or just regional services that happen to link bigger places?

 

[DanielB]

Does Luxembourg (city) have true intercity trains, or just regional services that happen to link bigger places?

It has an IC from Brussels, Liège (though it stops at the same stations as the domestic RE) and once a day from Koblenz (though that one serves as an RE as well). And to France there are TGVs as well.

 

[signed]

Does Luxembourg (city) have true intercity trains

It has direct TGV service to Paris, and Intercity to Belgium and Germany

 

[duesselmartin]

<city in America> or <City in Africa> is easy mode. What would be more interesting would be what city in Europe is worst connected. Sarejevo has a rail station but their network is pretty miserable with the main international line being 45mph speed limit. Tirana, Albania has no railway service currently , the only capital i can find with no service at all and the largest city

you can add Rekiavik, Nicosia and Valetta to that as well. Never had.
Tirana looks as it might re-gain its rail services.

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It has direct TGV service to Paris, and Intercity to Belgium and Germany

although the Lux-Germany services are advertised as RE in Lux.

 

[Sir Felix Pole]

Madrid to Lisbon. Tenous railcar link between Badajoz and Entroncamento after several years absence, or very indirectly via Vigo and Porto. New link (heavily delayed) to Evora will improve matters.

 

[blueberry11]

Canada comes into mind. A very limited service from London to Toronto, not to mention that it operates as if it were an airline (limiting baggage in both weight and the number. See Not Just Bikes on YouTube for a recent video about this). Plus almost zero electrification outside of metro and tram systems and no high-speed rail systems (speeds over 200 km/h).

 

[Gordon]

The titles of the thread was 'worst connected by rail' - but most answers have fixed on the phrase 'inter city'. A city does not necessarily have to have 'intercity' rail services to be well served by rail transport. Some cities in very large countries are so far from other places that, whether we like it or not - the only 'reasonable' way for people to travel between the two is by air.

Perth WA is a good example. Perth is up to 100km from and other urban area of any size, so ridership on any line is likely to be highly dubious economics.

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. Tirana, Albania has no railway service currently , the only capital i can find with no service at all and the largest city

Asuncion, Paraguay is a capital city with no passenger railways

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Outside of the UK, which cities are the worst-connected by rail for their size? Las Vegas, Columbus, Nashville, Louisville, Tulsa and (more permanently) Honolulu are urban areas with over a million people without any long-distance passenger rail transport. Chemnitz has a quarter of a million people and I think the two trains per day to Warnemünde via Berlin are its only intercity services. Tallinn has around half a million people and I think Valga (~150 miles) is the furthest it's possible to get on direct trains from there.

Chemnitz should be discounted in this discussion. There is no way that it can be described as having a poor railway links - it has a Regional Express hourly service to and from Dresden journey time 1 hour.

 

[BazingaTribe]

Don't know whether it's true now but when they were occupied by the USSR, the capitals of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia had services between them cut back. Soviet authorities thought it was easier to keep tabs on them by making people who wanted to travel within that geographic area travel via Moscow or with connections to Minsk and Leningrad etc. I certainly had an old railway magazine article about Vilnius during the Soviet years but it was probably highly censored due to the writer wanting to be invited back.

I went quite a bit before the Ukraine war kicked off and found it nicer to travel by bus anyway (and increasingly made separate trips to each city to stay in one place) so I've never had cause to use the railways there. But I find it really sad for a foreign power to come in and mess about with transport infrastructure in that way -- on a par with the sadness I felt at the destruction of Kharkiv University or the library in Liverpool set alight during the riots earlier in the summer. Obviously the loss of life in those countries was also phenomenal, but it's like the way cultural destruction is considered a form of genocide -- our identity and freedom are more than just the sum of our parts.

 

[61653 HTAFC]

Heraklion's in Greece, which does have railways. Heraklion, Nicosia and Reykjavik are all ~250,000 and, counting the island of Malta as one urban area, Valletta's ~400,000, so good suggestions.

However if you don't count the island of Malta as one urban area, the capital of Valletta has a population of just over 5,000 and a land area of 0.61km².
It's also a bit silly (in my opinion) to talk about InterCity or long distance rail on a densely-populated archipelago which is smaller than Rutland.

 

[BazingaTribe]

However if you don't count the island of Malta as one urban area, the capital of Valletta has a population of just over 5,000 and a land area of 0.61km².
It's also a bit silly (in my opinion) to talk about InterCity or long distance rail on a densely-populated archipelago which is smaller than Rutland.

The phosphate mines of Nauru had a small railway: (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rail_transport_in_Nauru ) island is about the size of my home town. Stranger things have happened...

I take your point though.

 

[parkender102]

Does Perth, WA have any long distance services?

Services to Bunbury, Kalgoorlie, Northam, Meredin etc. Other than that it's the Indian Pacific to the East Coast - Adelaide, Sydney etc. Unfortunately now a super expensive Tourist Service but back in the day when I lived in Perth you could get relatively cheap tickets (Seat Only for the 3 day journey for 100 Aus$ Sydney to Perth). The guys I worked with spent most of the journey in the Bar / Dining Car (probably spent 3 times the ticket cost on booze!). All other longer distance Destinations in WA and Interstate you have to revert to Coach Travel

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Yes, Houston is probably the largest US city with only trivial service.

For nothing at all in the US I would guess the largest metro areas are Phoenix (5 million), Nashville and Las Vegas. They all have huge airports.

Back in 1991 we took the regular train from Los Angeles to Las Vegas but I assume the service was discontinued after that as it doesn't run any more. You alighted at Union Plaza Hotel and Casino Station straight into the Casino. I remember the glow of Las Vegas as it emerged from the Desert in the distance as the train snaked through the canyons. Think it was The Desert Wind service.