9 ms·

This is likely due to GA's extensive rail network[0]. [0] – https://opendata.atlantaregional.com/datasets/GARC::railroads/explore?location=32.721229%2C-83.2356

by megraf 3y ago

This is likely due to GA's extensive rail network[0]. [0] – https://opendata.atlantaregional.com/datasets/GARC::railroads/explore?location=32.721229%2C-83.235600%2C8.57 https://opendata.atlantaregional.com/datasets/GARC::railroad...

kfajdsl 3y ago
Man, if only we could use some of that for passenger rail... Being able to go from Atlanta to Savannah without a car would be awesome.
- Analemma_ 3y ago
  It's a nice idea but keep in mind that any freight which gets displaced from rail thanks to passenger cars would have to go by truck instead, probably with a massive increase in net emissions. Having passengers and freight share track in the US is probably not a win for the environment; passengers would need separate track instead.
  - babypuncher 3y ago
    So you build more rail
    - JumpCrisscross 3y ago
      > build more rail Passenger rail doesn't tend to break even on long-distance dedicated routes, even taking into account externalities.
      - iknowstuff 3y ago
        It doesn't have to. How much do our freeways cost us? esp with externalities?
        cyberax 3y ago
        Freeways are amazingly cheap. 1 mile of new 6-lane freeway on level terrain is about 3 million: https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2020/1/27/how-much-does-a-mile-of-road-actually-cost https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2020/1/27/how-much-does-... Amazingly, railroads are not much cheaper. The current costs of tracks are estimated at about $2 million per mile, and this is without taking into account all other necessary rail infrastructure (such as sorting yards, maintenance facilities, etc.). And CO2 emissions are being fixed by switching from gas cars to EVs.
        adgjlsfhk1 3y ago
        The problem is that 1 mile of rail can move a lot more passengers than 1 mile of road.
        sixstringtheory 3y ago
        What is the route capacity for a lane of freeway vs a rail line? I assumed it’s the opposite, since a freeway has continuous throughout while a rail line is discrete, but I don’t have a good intuition for comparing the scale of each mode.
        dragonwriter 3y ago
        > What is the route capacity for a lane of freeway vs a rail line? I assumed it’s the opposite, since a freeway has continuous throughout while a rail line is discrete According to this book (which provides assumptions and calculations supporting) [0], 10:1 in favor of rail, as a conservative estimate. https://eng.libretexts.org/Bookshelves/Industrial_and_Systems_Engineering/Book%3A_The_Art_of_Insight_in_Science_and_Engineering_(Mahajan)/01%3A_Part_I-_Organizing_Complexity/01%3A_Divide_and_Conquer/1.02%3A_Rails_vs_Roads#:~:text=How%20does%20the%20capacity%20of,capacity%20of%20a%20train%20line%3F&text=This%20capacity%20is%20ten%20times,single%20fast%2Dflowing%20highway%20lane https://eng.libretexts.org/Bookshelves/Industrial_and_System....
        3y ago
      - bluGill 3y ago
        But it does very well at medium distances while you find all over.
        JumpCrisscross 3y ago
        > it does very well at medium distances Depending on density. I'd wager the Atlanta metropolitan area is just about crossing that threshold, i.e. they should built it now.
        danielvf 3y ago
        Atlanta does have trains, and in fact has the 8th most annual riders of any US city, right behind the Bay Area. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MARTA_rail https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MARTA_rail
        JumpCrisscross 3y ago
        I guess MARTA is between municipal and regional rail, sort of like BART. I meant for connecting the Atlanta metropolitan area to its region, not intraconnecting.
        elif 3y ago
        91,000 daily riders according to that link 2,000,000 daily vehicles on this Atlanta transit system https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interstate_285_(Georgia) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interstate_285_(Georgia)
        bluGill 3y ago
        Roughly speaking the density of the US east of the Mississipi and the far west coast is dense enough. The rocky mountains and Alaska really bring our average density down.
        Symbiote 3y ago
        It's unfortunate that passenger rail has deteriorated so much in the USA. The city of Atlanta takes its name from the Atlantic railroad!
  - KennyBlanken 3y ago
    You have that backwards. Low occupancy vehicle travel is the most wasteful form of personal transit. Rail passengers displaced by freight become low occupancy vehicle trips. In my state, a commuter rail coach car has about 180 seats. Let's be cautious and assume 50% occupancy. That's 90 people, and based off the US passenger car fleet averaging 25mpg, they collectively would have used 3.6 gallons of gas per mile. An eighteen wheeler gets 5-10 miles per gallon. Even assuming just 5mpg, the passengers in that one coach car would have used eighteen times more fuel than the truck hauling a container would. Furthermore: freight and passenger use of rail are not mutually exclusive uses. Freight is in theory far less sensitive to scheduling, and like a lot of trucked freight, can happen during times passenger use is low. But because industry has squeezed their supply chains to the hair of breaking under "just in time delivery" to minimize warehouse space and the like...which bit us pretty severely in the pandemic...freight companies are optimizing for shareholder profits and own the tracks. So they prioritize their freight over passengers. Result? Passenger service is riddled with service issues, leading to less passenger use, which is fine as far as the freight companies are concerned, because they can move more freight. The core problem is that critical infrastructure is being run privately by for-profit publicly traded companies.
  - TYPE_FASTER 3y ago
    Adding passenger traffic does not necessarily require displacing freight traffic. Here's a document that contains a map of current rail density: https://www.dot.ga.gov/InvestSmart/Freight/GeorgiaFreight/Task%203_Georgia%20Rail%20Freight%20Modal%20Profile.pdf https://www.dot.ga.gov/InvestSmart/Freight/GeorgiaFreight/Ta...
    - elif 3y ago
      But things like "okay now wait on this random section of tracks for 3 hours because of a pass and traffic down stream" are routine on freight lines, but obviously not desirable for passenger rail.
      - uni_rule 3y ago
        Unless the train is overly long (an actual problem) passenger rail always gets priority.
      - Symbiote 3y ago
        They are routine on American freight lines, where there are a lot of single track lines and political issues between the freight companies and passenger trains. https://openrailwaymap.org/ https://openrailwaymap.org/ shows (if you zoom in far enough) that at least some lines around Atlanta are only single track. https://www.trains.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/multi-track-main-lines-map.pdf https://www.trains.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/multi-trac... suggests most of them are. It isn't a common issue in Russia or China (similar rail freight use to the USA). Double tracks means no waiting for opposing trains, and it's then straightforward to fit passenger trains, which stop at stations but go faster, between constant speed freight trains. It does mean twice as much track must be maintained to a higher standard than freight-only track.
- samstave 3y ago
  [flagged]
xeromal 3y ago
I grew up near one of those major lines, the one that goes along 515. We used to try to get a train to flatten a penny for us or race it on our fourwheelers. Never got a flattened penny though. lol
- redundantly 3y ago
  Gotta tape the coin to the track so it doesn't rattle off before the train gets to it, or use chewing gum.
  - xeromal 3y ago
    I was around 5 years old so my logic was pretty simple. I think I tried a heavy rock lol
- bluGill 3y ago
  I used to get lots of flattened pennies. The trains throw them so you have to spend a lot of time searching the gravel around the tracks. Be sure to watch for other trains so you don't get hit.

by megraf 3y ago

kfajdsl 3y ago

Man, if only we could use some of that for passenger rail... Being able to go from Atlanta to Savannah without a car would be awesome.

Analemma_ 3y ago
It's a nice idea but keep in mind that any freight which gets displaced from rail thanks to passenger cars would have to go by truck instead, probably with a massive increase in net emissions. Having passengers and freight share track in the US is probably not a win for the environment; passengers would need separate track instead.
- babypuncher 3y ago
  So you build more rail
  - JumpCrisscross 3y ago
    > build more rail Passenger rail doesn't tend to break even on long-distance dedicated routes, even taking into account externalities.
    - iknowstuff 3y ago
      It doesn't have to. How much do our freeways cost us? esp with externalities?
      - cyberax 3y ago
        Freeways are amazingly cheap. 1 mile of new 6-lane freeway on level terrain is about 3 million: https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2020/1/27/how-much-does-a-mile-of-road-actually-cost https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2020/1/27/how-much-does-... Amazingly, railroads are not much cheaper. The current costs of tracks are estimated at about $2 million per mile, and this is without taking into account all other necessary rail infrastructure (such as sorting yards, maintenance facilities, etc.). And CO2 emissions are being fixed by switching from gas cars to EVs.
        adgjlsfhk1 3y ago
        The problem is that 1 mile of rail can move a lot more passengers than 1 mile of road.
        sixstringtheory 3y ago
        What is the route capacity for a lane of freeway vs a rail line? I assumed it’s the opposite, since a freeway has continuous throughout while a rail line is discrete, but I don’t have a good intuition for comparing the scale of each mode.
        dragonwriter 3y ago
        > What is the route capacity for a lane of freeway vs a rail line? I assumed it’s the opposite, since a freeway has continuous throughout while a rail line is discrete According to this book (which provides assumptions and calculations supporting) [0], 10:1 in favor of rail, as a conservative estimate. https://eng.libretexts.org/Bookshelves/Industrial_and_Systems_Engineering/Book%3A_The_Art_of_Insight_in_Science_and_Engineering_(Mahajan)/01%3A_Part_I-_Organizing_Complexity/01%3A_Divide_and_Conquer/1.02%3A_Rails_vs_Roads#:~:text=How%20does%20the%20capacity%20of,capacity%20of%20a%20train%20line%3F&text=This%20capacity%20is%20ten%20times,single%20fast%2Dflowing%20highway%20lane https://eng.libretexts.org/Bookshelves/Industrial_and_System....
        3y ago
    - bluGill 3y ago
      But it does very well at medium distances while you find all over.
      - JumpCrisscross 3y ago
        > it does very well at medium distances Depending on density. I'd wager the Atlanta metropolitan area is just about crossing that threshold, i.e. they should built it now.
        danielvf 3y ago
        Atlanta does have trains, and in fact has the 8th most annual riders of any US city, right behind the Bay Area. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MARTA_rail https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MARTA_rail
        JumpCrisscross 3y ago
        I guess MARTA is between municipal and regional rail, sort of like BART. I meant for connecting the Atlanta metropolitan area to its region, not intraconnecting.
        elif 3y ago
        91,000 daily riders according to that link 2,000,000 daily vehicles on this Atlanta transit system https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interstate_285_(Georgia) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interstate_285_(Georgia)
        bluGill 3y ago
        Roughly speaking the density of the US east of the Mississipi and the far west coast is dense enough. The rocky mountains and Alaska really bring our average density down.
        Symbiote 3y ago
        It's unfortunate that passenger rail has deteriorated so much in the USA. The city of Atlanta takes its name from the Atlantic railroad!
- KennyBlanken 3y ago
  You have that backwards. Low occupancy vehicle travel is the most wasteful form of personal transit. Rail passengers displaced by freight become low occupancy vehicle trips. In my state, a commuter rail coach car has about 180 seats. Let's be cautious and assume 50% occupancy. That's 90 people, and based off the US passenger car fleet averaging 25mpg, they collectively would have used 3.6 gallons of gas per mile. An eighteen wheeler gets 5-10 miles per gallon. Even assuming just 5mpg, the passengers in that one coach car would have used eighteen times more fuel than the truck hauling a container would. Furthermore: freight and passenger use of rail are not mutually exclusive uses. Freight is in theory far less sensitive to scheduling, and like a lot of trucked freight, can happen during times passenger use is low. But because industry has squeezed their supply chains to the hair of breaking under "just in time delivery" to minimize warehouse space and the like...which bit us pretty severely in the pandemic...freight companies are optimizing for shareholder profits and own the tracks. So they prioritize their freight over passengers. Result? Passenger service is riddled with service issues, leading to less passenger use, which is fine as far as the freight companies are concerned, because they can move more freight. The core problem is that critical infrastructure is being run privately by for-profit publicly traded companies.
- TYPE_FASTER 3y ago
  Adding passenger traffic does not necessarily require displacing freight traffic. Here's a document that contains a map of current rail density: https://www.dot.ga.gov/InvestSmart/Freight/GeorgiaFreight/Task%203_Georgia%20Rail%20Freight%20Modal%20Profile.pdf https://www.dot.ga.gov/InvestSmart/Freight/GeorgiaFreight/Ta...
  - elif 3y ago
    But things like "okay now wait on this random section of tracks for 3 hours because of a pass and traffic down stream" are routine on freight lines, but obviously not desirable for passenger rail.
    - uni_rule 3y ago
      Unless the train is overly long (an actual problem) passenger rail always gets priority.
    - Symbiote 3y ago
      They are routine on American freight lines, where there are a lot of single track lines and political issues between the freight companies and passenger trains. https://openrailwaymap.org/ https://openrailwaymap.org/ shows (if you zoom in far enough) that at least some lines around Atlanta are only single track. https://www.trains.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/multi-track-main-lines-map.pdf https://www.trains.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/multi-trac... suggests most of them are. It isn't a common issue in Russia or China (similar rail freight use to the USA). Double tracks means no waiting for opposing trains, and it's then straightforward to fit passenger trains, which stop at stations but go faster, between constant speed freight trains. It does mean twice as much track must be maintained to a higher standard than freight-only track.
samstave 3y ago
[flagged]

xeromal 3y ago

I grew up near one of those major lines, the one that goes along 515. We used to try to get a train to flatten a penny for us or race it on our fourwheelers. Never got a flattened penny though. lol

redundantly 3y ago
Gotta tape the coin to the track so it doesn't rattle off before the train gets to it, or use chewing gum.
- xeromal 3y ago
  I was around 5 years old so my logic was pretty simple. I think I tried a heavy rock lol
bluGill 3y ago
I used to get lots of flattened pennies. The trains throw them so you have to spend a lot of time searching the gravel around the tracks. Be sure to watch for other trains so you don't get hit.