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Never thought of that. Just replace the roads with rails. Remove redundant links in the highway network. Sounds like a job for a graph algorithm straight out of

Never thought of that. Just replace the roads with rails. Remove redundant links in the highway network. Sounds like a job for a graph algorithm straight out of CS 261.

philwelch 8y ago
I'm not sure you can just replace highways with railroads. Changing modes isn't completely free--you have to have enough parking for passengers, freight handling equipment for freight, and in some cases, you might have to load entire vehicles onto railcars. This cancels out a lot of the benefits of rail. But, you can definitely reuse or expand the same right-of-way you had for some of the trunk highways and run rail alongside it.
- shereadsthenews 8y ago
  “enough parking for passengers, freight handling equipment for freight, and in some cases, you might have to load entire vehicles onto railcars.” There is no successful rail station anywhere on Earth that has any of that junk.
  - philwelch 8y ago
    Which is why you can't just replace links in the highway network with rail.
  - rad_gruchalski 8y ago
    There is Eurotunnel but that’s not exactly a rail station.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
Theodores 8y ago
> Just replace the roads with rails. Elsewhere in this thread and in previous discussions there has been this notion that there isn't the room for rail, buying up the land would be too expensive and so on. For a lot of the US interstate there is this huge median between the two directions of the highway. In Europe you are lucky if the median is the width of a lane, in the US it can be a vast distance to the opposing traffic. Why they didn't build the interstate system with rail lines down the middle just for service reasons is a reflection on the car mad thinking that went with the era. If you are driving in a car then you have to hold this steering wheel thing the whole time. Any moment of inattention and your number is up. Rail just automates that problem away, no Elon Musk needed. It should be a no-brainer. You should be able to hop onto the interstate and put your car on a flatbed railcar and zip along at 125mph until your destination, halving your drive time and being able to read the paper for a couple of hours instead of spending our hours holding that round thing. Even if you had to wait half an hour or an hour for the next flatbed train thing then it would still be worth it. There is usually some power line following an interstate highway. I know that power gets sent along at 100's of thousands of volts but why can't the train tracks be the power 'cables' too? With some redundancy built in. As it turned out America has just rubber wheeled V8 things trundling along at 55 mph between cities, at every opportunity for efficiency this was denied. The aero of cars in America during the last century made bricks look like the perfect aerodynamic shape. As a European the state of the railways is shocking. We know from our history books about the golden spike somewhere in Utah and how amazing the transcontinental railroad was. But then, until you go to America, you don't realise that they haven't updated the network since. The smallest branch line in Europe has two sets of tracks, commuter towns have four to let the fast trains through. But then in America you have thousands of miles where it is just the one set of tracks. The land is not a shortage problem and you just wonder why over the last century or so they haven't bothered to put in an extra set of tracks so train traffic can be 'bi-directional'. It makes no sense at all. Then, through the Rockies the train slows down to something like ten miles an hour to inch over some trestle bridge that looks like it is a prop from an old Western movie. But that is fast. The train - Amtrak - will stop off for an hour to let some coal train chunter through on the single line. That would never happen in Europe. Once I waited 8 hours for a train in America. There were no other trains on the track of the passenger variety during that time. In the rest of the world 8 minutes of delay means you have been badly let down and deserve a ticket refund. 8 hours - really? No wonder nobody travels on Amtrak. It is a joke, a bit like they only put it on for disabled people and didn't get the memo about accessibility.
- selimthegrim 8y ago
  I sat for two hours outside New Orleans last week watching freight trains cross the bridge ahead of us when we were just 10 unobstructed minutes from arrival. Right now passenger service to Chicago is suspended for the near future because the trestle (which is single track wooden but being replaced by a double-track concrete one of similar height (!)) is at risk of being overtopped by the flood relief spillway - there’s a rail replacement bus to Jackson (which itself had a fire enroute last month). Oh, and good luck finding out about this from Amtrak’s website - all it tells you is the train is cancelled and they’ve laid on a bus.

Never thought of that. Just replace the roads with rails. Remove redundant links in the highway network. Sounds like a job for a graph algorithm straight out of CS 261.

philwelch 8y ago

I'm not sure you can just replace highways with railroads. Changing modes isn't completely free--you have to have enough parking for passengers, freight handling equipment for freight, and in some cases, you might have to load entire vehicles onto railcars. This cancels out a lot of the benefits of rail. But, you can definitely reuse or expand the same right-of-way you had for some of the trunk highways and run rail alongside it.

shereadsthenews 8y ago
“enough parking for passengers, freight handling equipment for freight, and in some cases, you might have to load entire vehicles onto railcars.” There is no successful rail station anywhere on Earth that has any of that junk.
- philwelch 8y ago
  Which is why you can't just replace links in the highway network with rail.
- rad_gruchalski 8y ago
  There is Eurotunnel but that’s not exactly a rail station.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]

Theodores 8y ago

> Just replace the roads with rails. Elsewhere in this thread and in previous discussions there has been this notion that there isn't the room for rail, buying up the land would be too expensive and so on. For a lot of the US interstate there is this huge median between the two directions of the highway. In Europe you are lucky if the median is the width of a lane, in the US it can be a vast distance to the opposing traffic. Why they didn't build the interstate system with rail lines down the middle just for service reasons is a reflection on the car mad thinking that went with the era. If you are driving in a car then you have to hold this steering wheel thing the whole time. Any moment of inattention and your number is up. Rail just automates that problem away, no Elon Musk needed. It should be a no-brainer. You should be able to hop onto the interstate and put your car on a flatbed railcar and zip along at 125mph until your destination, halving your drive time and being able to read the paper for a couple of hours instead of spending our hours holding that round thing. Even if you had to wait half an hour or an hour for the next flatbed train thing then it would still be worth it. There is usually some power line following an interstate highway. I know that power gets sent along at 100's of thousands of volts but why can't the train tracks be the power 'cables' too? With some redundancy built in. As it turned out America has just rubber wheeled V8 things trundling along at 55 mph between cities, at every opportunity for efficiency this was denied. The aero of cars in America during the last century made bricks look like the perfect aerodynamic shape. As a European the state of the railways is shocking. We know from our history books about the golden spike somewhere in Utah and how amazing the transcontinental railroad was. But then, until you go to America, you don't realise that they haven't updated the network since. The smallest branch line in Europe has two sets of tracks, commuter towns have four to let the fast trains through. But then in America you have thousands of miles where it is just the one set of tracks. The land is not a shortage problem and you just wonder why over the last century or so they haven't bothered to put in an extra set of tracks so train traffic can be 'bi-directional'. It makes no sense at all. Then, through the Rockies the train slows down to something like ten miles an hour to inch over some trestle bridge that looks like it is a prop from an old Western movie. But that is fast. The train - Amtrak - will stop off for an hour to let some coal train chunter through on the single line. That would never happen in Europe. Once I waited 8 hours for a train in America. There were no other trains on the track of the passenger variety during that time. In the rest of the world 8 minutes of delay means you have been badly let down and deserve a ticket refund. 8 hours - really? No wonder nobody travels on Amtrak. It is a joke, a bit like they only put it on for disabled people and didn't get the memo about accessibility.

selimthegrim 8y ago
I sat for two hours outside New Orleans last week watching freight trains cross the bridge ahead of us when we were just 10 unobstructed minutes from arrival. Right now passenger service to Chicago is suspended for the near future because the trestle (which is single track wooden but being replaced by a double-track concrete one of similar height (!)) is at risk of being overtopped by the flood relief spillway - there’s a rail replacement bus to Jackson (which itself had a fire enroute last month). Oh, and good luck finding out about this from Amtrak’s website - all it tells you is the train is cancelled and they’ve laid on a bus.