3 ms·

But rail has issues of its own. The biggest may be the amount of land it takes up. While the rail lines are thin, they are very long. And if you want them to be

But rail has issues of its own. The biggest may be the amount of land it takes up. While the rail lines are thin, they are very long. And if you want them to be high speed, you can't have cars crossing them. So they're very expensive to build and they require taking plenty of land out of circulation.

dredmorbius 4y ago
Curious fact I discovered a few years ago: land use by airports and railroads in the US is roughly the same. Airports tend to be large sprawling regions of urban land. Rail tends to be linear. I'm not sure that the comparison is entirely fair: rail accounts for a small fraction of total passenger travel (though commuter rail is a surprisingly large portion). However there's an astounding amount of freight rail. It's also possible to dual-use land near rail, especially where it counts (urbanised regions), through elevated, trenched, or subway routing. Mind, even then there may be noise and vibration issues, so you'd probably want to keep rail at some distance from residential areas, though I hear airports may have similar issues as well. Freight rail also has a history of very large switching yards in areas. Compare the CSX yards near Chicago Midway Airport. Net direct land use appears roughly comparable. https://www.openstreetmap.org/search?query=41.7813916%2C%2D87.770125#map=14/41.7814/-87.7701 https://www.openstreetmap.org/search?query=41.7813916%2C%2D8... Mind that other transport modes also have large land-use demands. Private automobiles command a third or more of all land in many cities through streets and parking.
- xhkkffbf 4y ago
  Sure, Midway and the freight yards use about the same amount of space. The point is that the rail uses a thin strip between towns. And if a road is to cross it, you've got to build an underpass or an overpass. The topological challenges are big. Of course you're right about dual use and adjacencies and everything. It's the land between the towns that really is the issue. The airplanes are up at 30,000 feet.
  - dredmorbius 4y ago
    Yes, rail roads require rail roadways. And aircraft generate carbon emissions and a heck of a lot of noise. A bigger problem for rail in regions with strong private land-ownership regimes is that this cycle develops: - Undeveloped area is unsuitable for settlement due to lack of transportation. - Railroads are built providing transportation. Costs are low as land values are low. (Historically, land was often gifted to railroads as an incentive to build, with the bonus of getting into the land trade on the side.) - Railroads facilitate settlement, commerce, and industry. - Land values rise spectacularly. - Building new trackage / routes becomes nonviable due to high land values induced by previous cycle of rail development. The ribbon-of-land thing really is not an issue where that land has a low price, or where appropriation of land (by legal or other means) is an option. Yes, you've now got railroads tracking across the landscape, but relative to the volumes of cargo and passengers carried this really is a minor consideration. What is a massive problem is where routes cannot be expanded due to subsequent increased land valuation. Unless there's planning in advance for this, the problem is extreme. The US has seen effectively no new major rail construction in about a century, with a very few exceptions for a few regional transit systems (e.g., SF Bay Area's BART, DC's Metro). Those have relied heavily on the tunneling/subway & viaduct/elevated trackage. Thin strips of land between towns ... is a non-issue. That's cheap land, it's largely fungible (e.g., farming or pasture acreage, like substitutions can be made. And what rail doesn't have is the massive noise impacts of airport approach and (far more) departure flight paths. For overall impact, see this article on noise in the Chicago area generally: https://www.dnainfo.com/chicago/20170328/midway/chicagos-loudest-neighborhoods-map-national-bureau-of-transportation-statistics/ https://www.dnainfo.com/chicago/20170328/midway/chicagos-lou... The maps show both Midway and O'Hare airports, as well as several smaller airports, freeways and possibly rail lines. The site providing the maps has moved, this seems to be it: https://maps.dot.gov/BTS/NationalTransportationNoiseMap/ https://maps.dot.gov/BTS/NationalTransportationNoiseMap/ That shows data for road, rail, and air traffic, which can be viewed independently. There doesn't seem to be a way to link to a specific view, but if you zoom in on the Chicago are and compare rail, traffic, and aircraft noise, the relative impacts become clear. See also: https://xkcd.com/1138/ https://xkcd.com/1138/ For flight noise at Midway specifically: http://mediad.publicbroadcasting.net/p/wcbu/files/styles/medium/public/201505/ohare_noise_contour_october_2013.gif http://mediad.publicbroadcasting.net/p/wcbu/files/styles/med...

dredmorbius 4y ago

Curious fact I discovered a few years ago: land use by airports and railroads in the US is roughly the same. Airports tend to be large sprawling regions of urban land. Rail tends to be linear. I'm not sure that the comparison is entirely fair: rail accounts for a small fraction of total passenger travel (though commuter rail is a surprisingly large portion). However there's an astounding amount of freight rail. It's also possible to dual-use land near rail, especially where it counts (urbanised regions), through elevated, trenched, or subway routing. Mind, even then there may be noise and vibration issues, so you'd probably want to keep rail at some distance from residential areas, though I hear airports may have similar issues as well. Freight rail also has a history of very large switching yards in areas. Compare the CSX yards near Chicago Midway Airport. Net direct land use appears roughly comparable. https://www.openstreetmap.org/search?query=41.7813916%2C%2D87.770125#map=14/41.7814/-87.7701 https://www.openstreetmap.org/search?query=41.7813916%2C%2D8... Mind that other transport modes also have large land-use demands. Private automobiles command a third or more of all land in many cities through streets and parking.

xhkkffbf 4y ago
Sure, Midway and the freight yards use about the same amount of space. The point is that the rail uses a thin strip between towns. And if a road is to cross it, you've got to build an underpass or an overpass. The topological challenges are big. Of course you're right about dual use and adjacencies and everything. It's the land between the towns that really is the issue. The airplanes are up at 30,000 feet.
- dredmorbius 4y ago
  Yes, rail roads require rail roadways. And aircraft generate carbon emissions and a heck of a lot of noise. A bigger problem for rail in regions with strong private land-ownership regimes is that this cycle develops: - Undeveloped area is unsuitable for settlement due to lack of transportation. - Railroads are built providing transportation. Costs are low as land values are low. (Historically, land was often gifted to railroads as an incentive to build, with the bonus of getting into the land trade on the side.) - Railroads facilitate settlement, commerce, and industry. - Land values rise spectacularly. - Building new trackage / routes becomes nonviable due to high land values induced by previous cycle of rail development. The ribbon-of-land thing really is not an issue where that land has a low price, or where appropriation of land (by legal or other means) is an option. Yes, you've now got railroads tracking across the landscape, but relative to the volumes of cargo and passengers carried this really is a minor consideration. What is a massive problem is where routes cannot be expanded due to subsequent increased land valuation. Unless there's planning in advance for this, the problem is extreme. The US has seen effectively no new major rail construction in about a century, with a very few exceptions for a few regional transit systems (e.g., SF Bay Area's BART, DC's Metro). Those have relied heavily on the tunneling/subway & viaduct/elevated trackage. Thin strips of land between towns ... is a non-issue. That's cheap land, it's largely fungible (e.g., farming or pasture acreage, like substitutions can be made. And what rail doesn't have is the massive noise impacts of airport approach and (far more) departure flight paths. For overall impact, see this article on noise in the Chicago area generally: https://www.dnainfo.com/chicago/20170328/midway/chicagos-loudest-neighborhoods-map-national-bureau-of-transportation-statistics/ https://www.dnainfo.com/chicago/20170328/midway/chicagos-lou... The maps show both Midway and O'Hare airports, as well as several smaller airports, freeways and possibly rail lines. The site providing the maps has moved, this seems to be it: https://maps.dot.gov/BTS/NationalTransportationNoiseMap/ https://maps.dot.gov/BTS/NationalTransportationNoiseMap/ That shows data for road, rail, and air traffic, which can be viewed independently. There doesn't seem to be a way to link to a specific view, but if you zoom in on the Chicago are and compare rail, traffic, and aircraft noise, the relative impacts become clear. See also: https://xkcd.com/1138/ https://xkcd.com/1138/ For flight noise at Midway specifically: http://mediad.publicbroadcasting.net/p/wcbu/files/styles/medium/public/201505/ohare_noise_contour_october_2013.gif http://mediad.publicbroadcasting.net/p/wcbu/files/styles/med...