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To put thing in perspective, US rail moves: 61 tons of freight per American each year 94 tons of freight per mile for each passenger-mile on rail 1
by rsj_hn 4y ago
To put thing in perspective, US rail moves:
61 tons of freight per American each year
94 tons of freight per mile for each passenger-mile on rail
1/3 of all export goods move by rail
1.7 trillion ton-miles of freight
40% of US long distance freight by volume uses rail
So you have a problem in that increasing the costs to freight will affect all Americans in making them pay more for goods, whereas it will only benefit those passengers using rail. So politically, this is a tough sell. I think you need to put down dedicated track for passenger rail if you want it to be prioritized in our existing rail system, as it's currently a rounding error compared to freight.
That said, I think you will find that there are transportation corridors where there is the political will to fund laying down dedicated track for passenger rail. The way to think about it is that rail maybe costs $X per mile of track, but provides 100000X benefit for freight, and maybe 10x benefit for passenger traffic, so while you would never prioritize passenger traffic over freight, or even treat them equally, it still makes sense to build dedicated tracks for passenger rail.
- ddevault 4y agoThese numbers are similarly misleading. Read up on induced demand. Rail passengers in the US are small in number because passenger rail sucks. If it were improved, ridership would go up.
- rsj_hn 4y agoYou don't know how much ridership would go up, or if it would go up enough to cover the cost of paying extra for the 94 tons of rail freight to be delayed when you prioritize your one additional passenger. That's problem -- yes, if you spent $X demand would go up, but would it go up enough to justify spending the $X or not? Merely observing that demand would increase in response to a higher quality of service is not an argument, it's just a truism that doesn't provide any new information. That is why I said elsewhere on this thread that passenger rail needs its own dedicated track. Because the rail we have is so valuable to freight that it's not plausible that passengers or the general public would be willing to pay the price necessary to deprioritize freight. That price is enormous, but it's much more than the price of building out new dedicated rail just for passengers. Go back and redo your argument from the point of view of whether the increased demand would justify building out new track. If that's not the case, there's no hope of it being large enough to justify reducing the focus on freight. I think, in a few places, it is enough to justify laying down dedicated track. But not in all places.