Random Mode Keyboard shortcut: Command/Ctrl + Shift + R
thumbnail

Countries with the Most Rail Travel

Which countries have the greatest total amount of rail travel, as measured by number of passengers times distance traveled?
For 2018 or latest available year
Quiz by Quizmaster
Rate:
Last updated: March 14, 2021
You have not attempted this quiz yet.
First submittedMarch 13, 2021
Times taken25,562
Average score80.0%
Rating4.82
4:00
Enter answer here
0
 / 20 guessed
The quiz is paused. You have remaining.
Scoring
You scored / = %
This beats or equals % of test takers also scored 100%
The average score is
Your high score is
Your fastest time is
Keep scrolling down for answers and more stats ...
km
country
1346 bil
China
1161 bil
India
437 bil
Japan
130 bil
Russia
108 bil
France
98.0 bil
Germany
90.0 bil
South Korea
km
country
80.5 bil
United Kingdom
55.5 bil
Italy
40.8 bil
Egypt
32.0 bil
United States
28.7 bil
Ukraine
28.4 bil
Spain
24.9 bil
Pakistan
km
country
21.5 bil
Taiwan
21.0 bil
Poland
20.9 bil
Switzerland
19.1 bil
Kazakhstan
18.9 bil
Netherlands
17.6 bil
Australia
+2
Level 69
Mar 13, 2021
Great Quiz! Missed one... oh well. Nice test of rail knowledge!
+10
Level 76
Mar 14, 2021
According to Wikipedia ("Rail Transport in Taiwan"), Taiwan has 21.5 billion passenger km per year.
+10
Level ∞
Mar 14, 2021
Good eye, Jerry! The quiz has been updated.
+7
Level 68
Jun 25, 2021
Rail is the predominate form of travel between cities in Taiwan. Every Friday evening workers push south towards their home cities and every Sunday evening they migrate back to Taipei where they work during the week.
+3
Level 66
Dec 6, 2021
I'm sorry
+4
Level 74
Dec 15, 2021
u better be
+8
Level 74
Dec 15, 2021
that was mean
+2
Level 21
Mar 14, 2021
good quiz, some unexpected countries
+1
Level 58
Mar 15, 2021
Nice!
+1
Level 59
Mar 25, 2021
Never would've guessed Pakistan
+4
Level 75
May 13, 2021
The Raj.
+1
Level 56
Jul 19, 2023
how
+3
Level 79
May 30, 2021
Surprised to see Egypt above the United States.
+7
Level 53
Jun 25, 2021
People in US prefer flights more than any other means of transport. Flight tickets are actually less expensive compared to trains.
+12
Level 54
Jun 25, 2021
US public rail infrastructure is designed to be bad to benefit Automotive and Aerospace corporations. The only reason they even make this list is because of high population and area.
+1
Level 72
Jun 25, 2021
Per Capita is even more interesting. Because here, most of the countries are mostly the most populated + Europe
+7
Level 83
Jun 25, 2021
Genuinely astounds me how bad rail infrastructure is in the Americas. Such an obsession with cars and planes, especially in North America.
+2
Level 64
Jun 25, 2021
In the times of the Old West trains were popular. I wonder what caused the shift of interest in the US.
+1
Level 90
Jun 25, 2021
Well would you rather take a train from St Louis to San Francisco and get there in 3 or 4 days and travel in relative safety and comfort or take a covered wagon and get there in 3 or 4 months and deal with awful weather, multiple river crossings and potential bandits and hostiles? Even if you took the best stage coach that was a 10 day trip and you were a lot more likely to run into bad things.
+1
Level 80
Sep 14, 2022
And you were likely to lose several people to dysentery and broken legs
+2
Level 90
Jun 25, 2021
Passenger interest is what's truly abysmal. Travel by train except for the northeast corridor is huge hassle and per passenger extremely expensive when compared to other forms of travel. I live in the Houston area. Amtrak tickets to New Orleans roughly 350 miles is 57 dollars and takes 9 hours. I can drive that in 5 hours and spend 30 dollars in gas. Even better I can take an entire carload of people for the same price and have transportation for the trip. If I don't want to drive or don't have a car I can take a flight for roughly the same price as the train ticket and I get there in 50 minutes not 9 hours. Most car rentals give you 500 miles a day for free. You can get cars especially on the weekend for 40 dollars a day. So for a three day trip it's not much of a difference 120 rental 70 dollars gas vs 120 for train tickets and 50 to 60 dollars in taxis etc.to do that for a weekend trip.
+2
Level 90
Jun 25, 2021
What astounds me is how many people still use trains in Europe. I have in-laws in Germany and every couple of years we go see my wife's family. Multiple times we've tried to figure out a side trip to some place where taking the train makes economic sense for our family of 4. Even with 8 dollar a gallon gas it's usually half the price to rent a car than to take the train for a 3 or 4 day excursion.
+2
Level 64
Jun 25, 2021
I live in a village between Rotterdam and Gouda in the Netherlands, using the train, in ten minutes, I am right in the centre of Gouda, in 15 minutes, I am right in the centre of Rotterdam, and in an hour, I am right in the centre of Amsterdam. All without switching trains. The distances in Europe usually permit the use of trains for going to work or school. You can be very mobile here, even without a car.
+3
Level 71
Jun 28, 2021
You can usually get family tickets which cut the cost of groups of tickets. For the car, it's not just a 'tank of gas', even if you are renting, you still have to pay for parking and any tolls (which are comment in some places) and usually in Europe you are encouraged to park outside the city centre (ie few parking spaces in the city centre and if there are it's very expensive) and get public transport into the centre which is another expense.
+1
Level 71
Jun 25, 2021
That surprised me too. I know that long distance travel by train is much more popular in Europe than America, but I still expected America to be higher given the millions of commuters who travel by train every workday (especially in New York, but also some other major cities like Chicago, Boston, etc.). I would've thought that all those miles would add up more, but perhaps I've just overestimating it.
+1
Level 82
May 2, 2023
I think it has to do with the history of the infrastructure. Since so much of the US was built up and urbanized after cars became popular (as opposed to Europe, where much of the urbanization came before), they were built with cars in mind instead of trains. Train travel does exist in the US, but it doesn't have as many users because they aren't in actually helpful areas because the infrastructure wasn't integrated in the same way. We Americans now have a negative perception of train travel because the trains we have are usually not great, and so we don't want to invest in new infrastructure even if it would make things better overall.
+2
Level 36
Jun 25, 2021
I missed Kazakhstan, I never thought of it
+1
Level 53
Jun 25, 2021
I never would've guessed Kazakhstan.
+1
Level 57
Jun 25, 2021
Got em' all but still surprised to see Switzerland there
+4
Level 57
Jun 25, 2021
I got so desperate that I typed vatican.
+1
Level 59
Jun 25, 2021
Egypt and Pakistan surprised me, but got them all first try.
+1
Level 67
Jun 29, 2021
Both have over 100 million people, this quiz favours countries with higher populations
+1
Level 66
Dec 28, 2023
I'm not sure how many of these states have the capability to collect & organize this information.

But it's interesting to see the overlap of population density with Egypt's rail network.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egyptian_National_Railways

https://64.media.tumblr.com/9fae0a1b93c4a34f858d2725f5ee1c00/4713d19a30de812e-0a/s1280x1920/eb2b2c92ba9870c9d2cfce67237f5f0d92f204a2.jpg

(Basically down the Nile. From Alexandria on the coast, to Cairo, to the Southern cities of Luxor/Aswan).

I'm not sure what the breakdown is between commuter, military transport, and travel.

The government apparently offers some type of socialism/free/discounted tickets as well.

There appears to be a high rate of accidents/breakdowns/fatalities

I was surprised to see the absence of maybe Mexico, Brazil, Chile, Arg, Colombia, Nigeria, SA. Yet Kazakhstan, Ukraine, and Poland make the list. I would've thought rail was one of the easier transport systems to build & maintain; esp when imported in 2023.

+1
Level 32
Jun 25, 2021
Missed a lot of obvious ones.
+1
Level 51
Jun 29, 2021
Easy, got them all...
+1
Level 67
Dec 3, 2022
Is this quiz based on both metro transit (e.g.-New York city subway) and long-distance trains (e.g.-Trans-Siberian railway), or is it just based on one or the other?
+1
Level 46
Aug 17, 2023
Surprised Iceland isn't on here
+1
Level 38
Jan 8, 2024
surprised vatican city isnt on here
+1
Level 67
Feb 23, 2024
I ran out of time, I must have been on an American train.