4 ms·

You don’t “simply” build new rail in America. Nothing is simple about constructing new rail.

by xyzzyz 5y ago

JadeNB 5y ago
Curiosity, not challenge: why not? Political issues, engineering issues, both, or other?
- breckenedge 5y ago
  Economics too. Rail mostly already exists where it can sustain itself, the rest of the country is just not dense enough.
  - Ericson2314 5y ago
    So an enlightened Fordist shipping conglomerate would try to densify urban cores, where it is most efficient to get people their cheap stuff.
  - ashtonkem 5y ago
    No, it's because rail doesn't get the massive subsidies that roads do. Roads are artificially cheap to use, especially for trucking that does the majority of the damage and pay minimal road fees, while rail has to pay for itself. It is very hard for rail, passenger or freight, to compete with the largess of federal tax dollars for road usage. If road fees were matched to the actual cost of road maintenance, like they are with rail, a lot of freight would shift over to barge and train overnight. Simply put, railways are much more efficient between two fixed points than roads. They require much less fuel per ton, and they require much less labor, land, and capital equipment per person mile or ton mile. If the costs were properly priced in, consumers of various different types would strongly prefer rail for transit between fixed points (e.g. city to city). But currently the inefficiency of road usage is paid for by the federal government. The density argument is massively overstated. Ohio has roughly the same density as France 282/mi^2 vs. 269/mi^2, and it's not even our most dense state. The fact that states like Ohio don't have anywhere close to the rail network that France has is a consequence of political decisions, not economics or the built environment.
    - xyzzyz 5y ago
      We are talking about freight rail here. Ohio already has more intrastate freight volume than France, and that’s only a small fraction of the remainder of inbound, outbound, or freight traffic passing through. It is France that would need to seriously shape up if it is to keep up with Ohio. Alas, it will not do so, because rail freight volumes in France have fallen by almost half over last 20 years, as France is moving away from rail to road freight. Don’t project differences between passenger rail systems to freight rail. It is by all means clear that US has the best freight rail system in the world.
      - ashtonkem 5y ago
        This is completely irrelevant to the point I was making: arguments about how America "isn't dense enough" for rail is ignoring the fact that America actually is quite dense ... where Americans actually live. Our tenth densest state is denser than a country famous for its usage of high speed rail for passenger transit. Any difference in infrastructure is down to political choices, not density.
    - breckenedge 5y ago
      Thanks for the info. It seems that Ohio is an outlier in being the largest U.S. state without a publicly funded rail system [1], which is unfortunate. I concede that the rail system in Ohio suffers from a lack of funding that the road system enjoys. I blame the politicians. [1] http://allaboardohio.org/ http://allaboardohio.org/
Ericson2314 5y ago
It's very enshrined in eminent domain. It is not adequately discussed how a sort of NIMBYism holds back growth on macro scale things.
ashtonkem 5y ago
And yet we "simply" build new highways all the time, which consume a lot more land than railways do.
- readams 5y ago
  Do you have an example of a new highway built recently?
  - ericmay 5y ago
    Eh it’s not just construction of entirely new highways but highway expansion. Plenty of examples of this.
    - throwaway0a5e 5y ago
      Expansion doesn't take land if the state already had reserved that land for itself. Many highways have huge rights of way beside them because the state had grand plans for expansion when they were built in the 50s-70s.
      - ericmay 5y ago
        Which is kind of like an accounting trick. The state already has the land, run a rail line through it instead of expanding it, etc. But ultimately the expansion of the highways has downstream effects - state will buy new land, build new roads, etc. as density flows out. If you have a two lane highway going into a city and it's congested, and then you expand it, more people move out of the city or more further away - obviously someone is building new roads or expanding existing ones as that occurs.
  - ashtonkem 5y ago
    According to the Bureau of Transport Statistics the US highway system went from 4,050,717 miles in 2009 to 4,171,125 miles in 2019. This is a delta 120,408 miles, or an increase of 2.9%. This is system miles, not even lane miles, so it will not include highway expansion. Actually correlating this down to individual routes in an exhausting endeavor, given all the places these could be recorded. But I found that we did designate 7 new highways in the past 10 years, including I-14, I-11, I-87, I-41, I-42, I-2, and I-22.

You don’t “simply” build new rail in America. Nothing is simple about constructing new rail.

by xyzzyz 5y ago

You don’t “simply” build new rail in America. Nothing is simple about constructing new rail.

JadeNB 5y ago

Curiosity, not challenge: why not? Political issues, engineering issues, both, or other?

breckenedge 5y ago
Economics too. Rail mostly already exists where it can sustain itself, the rest of the country is just not dense enough.
- Ericson2314 5y ago
  So an enlightened Fordist shipping conglomerate would try to densify urban cores, where it is most efficient to get people their cheap stuff.
- ashtonkem 5y ago
  No, it's because rail doesn't get the massive subsidies that roads do. Roads are artificially cheap to use, especially for trucking that does the majority of the damage and pay minimal road fees, while rail has to pay for itself. It is very hard for rail, passenger or freight, to compete with the largess of federal tax dollars for road usage. If road fees were matched to the actual cost of road maintenance, like they are with rail, a lot of freight would shift over to barge and train overnight. Simply put, railways are much more efficient between two fixed points than roads. They require much less fuel per ton, and they require much less labor, land, and capital equipment per person mile or ton mile. If the costs were properly priced in, consumers of various different types would strongly prefer rail for transit between fixed points (e.g. city to city). But currently the inefficiency of road usage is paid for by the federal government. The density argument is massively overstated. Ohio has roughly the same density as France 282/mi^2 vs. 269/mi^2, and it's not even our most dense state. The fact that states like Ohio don't have anywhere close to the rail network that France has is a consequence of political decisions, not economics or the built environment.
  - xyzzyz 5y ago
    We are talking about freight rail here. Ohio already has more intrastate freight volume than France, and that’s only a small fraction of the remainder of inbound, outbound, or freight traffic passing through. It is France that would need to seriously shape up if it is to keep up with Ohio. Alas, it will not do so, because rail freight volumes in France have fallen by almost half over last 20 years, as France is moving away from rail to road freight. Don’t project differences between passenger rail systems to freight rail. It is by all means clear that US has the best freight rail system in the world.
    - ashtonkem 5y ago
      This is completely irrelevant to the point I was making: arguments about how America "isn't dense enough" for rail is ignoring the fact that America actually is quite dense ... where Americans actually live. Our tenth densest state is denser than a country famous for its usage of high speed rail for passenger transit. Any difference in infrastructure is down to political choices, not density.
  - breckenedge 5y ago
    Thanks for the info. It seems that Ohio is an outlier in being the largest U.S. state without a publicly funded rail system [1], which is unfortunate. I concede that the rail system in Ohio suffers from a lack of funding that the road system enjoys. I blame the politicians. [1] http://allaboardohio.org/ http://allaboardohio.org/

Ericson2314 5y ago

It's very enshrined in eminent domain. It is not adequately discussed how a sort of NIMBYism holds back growth on macro scale things.

ashtonkem 5y ago

And yet we "simply" build new highways all the time, which consume a lot more land than railways do.

readams 5y ago
Do you have an example of a new highway built recently?
- ericmay 5y ago
  Eh it’s not just construction of entirely new highways but highway expansion. Plenty of examples of this.
  - throwaway0a5e 5y ago
    Expansion doesn't take land if the state already had reserved that land for itself. Many highways have huge rights of way beside them because the state had grand plans for expansion when they were built in the 50s-70s.
    - ericmay 5y ago
      Which is kind of like an accounting trick. The state already has the land, run a rail line through it instead of expanding it, etc. But ultimately the expansion of the highways has downstream effects - state will buy new land, build new roads, etc. as density flows out. If you have a two lane highway going into a city and it's congested, and then you expand it, more people move out of the city or more further away - obviously someone is building new roads or expanding existing ones as that occurs.
- ashtonkem 5y ago
  According to the Bureau of Transport Statistics the US highway system went from 4,050,717 miles in 2009 to 4,171,125 miles in 2019. This is a delta 120,408 miles, or an increase of 2.9%. This is system miles, not even lane miles, so it will not include highway expansion. Actually correlating this down to individual routes in an exhausting endeavor, given all the places these could be recorded. But I found that we did designate 7 new highways in the past 10 years, including I-14, I-11, I-87, I-41, I-42, I-2, and I-22.