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Complaining about inefficiency and suggesting transforming most of the US's very efficient private freight rail system into nationalized passenger rail in the s

Complaining about inefficiency and suggesting transforming most of the US's very efficient private freight rail system into nationalized passenger rail in the same comment is certainly an interesting position. The nationalized systems seen in the EU seem to be associated in dramatically higher cost for freight transportation, not lower[1]. The reason the rail companies stopped offering passenger rail services in the US was that nearly every one of them was absolutely hemorrhaging money by the end and the only reason they'd kept them that long is because the government made them do it. Transporting people by train in most of the US is laughably inefficient and inconvenient next to the car due to the low population densities across most of the country. There's a reason nearly the entire country switched to using cars for transportation almost the instant that it became possible for them to do so. [1]https://etrr.springeropen.com/articles/10.1007/s12544-013-0090-4 https://etrr.springeropen.com/articles/10.1007/s12544-013-00...

woodruffw 3y ago
I think the article addresses most of these points: the collapse of passenger rail in the US is largely attributable to inefficient line division and competition (the "Alphabet Route" between Chicago and Baltimore, for example[1]) as well as domestic policy shifts around subsidized transit (in favor of larger subsidies for automotive manufacturers, highway construction, etc. in correspondence with subsidies for suburbanization). Low population densities can be misleading; much of the US is highly urbanized, and dense urban centers would be very efficiently connected by rail service were we to improve it. I for one would almost certainly make more trips to cities in Ohio, Illinois, etc. if it was a < 6 hour high speed trip rather than an overnight one. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alphabet_Route https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alphabet_Route
- jcranmer 3y ago
  > Low population densities can be misleading; much of the US is highly urbanized, and dense urban centers would be very efficiently connected by rail service were we to improve it. I for one would almost certainly make more trips to cities in Ohio, Illinois, etc. if it was a < 6 hour high speed trip rather than an overnight one. The contours of a successful HSR system in the US and Canada are roughly as follows: The core linear corridors of DC-Boston (densest US population) and Detroit-Quebec City (that's 10/15 largest cities in Canada). Combine these with an east-west Boston-Toronto and north-south Montreal-NYC spine (timed interchange at Albany makes too much sense), as well as several other small feeder routes I'm not mentioning. A Midwestern knot centered on Chicago with lines to (in ccw order) Minneapolis, St. Louis (maybe to Kansas City), Louisville (and thence to Nashville I think), Cleveland, and Detroit (not sure how to squeeze in Cincinnati and Columbus). At this point, you might consider connecting the tendrils to the northeast system as well. CAHSR, with connections to Las Vegas and Phoenix. Texas Triangle. Maybe Portland-Vancouver. Nashville-Miami via Atlanta, and Atlanta-DC via Research Triangle in NC.
  - kneebonian 3y ago
    Wow so the entire Rocky Mtn. west is just left out in the cold. What about Denver and SLC? Guess no one needs to go to AZ either? Further I don't think you understand the cost, lot's of people out east think throwing a rail line together isn't more difficult than throw a couple of logs on the ground and some metal tracks. Let me tell you about what it is like trying to build a rail line through the west. There are mountains that make the Appalachins look mighty tiny that you've got to dynamite straight through, because you can't go up them, with the alternative being massive detours. If you want to go through the south you'll have hundreds of miles of tractless desert with temperatures being over 100 degrees on the regular, without water for miles.
    - kgermino 3y ago
      Are you complaining that the west was left out of their list of viable starter routes _and_ saying that the west isn’t viable due to high construction costs caused by the mountains/environment?
    - jcranmer 3y ago
      > Wow so the entire Rocky Mtn. west is just left out in the cold. What about Denver and SLC? Guess no one needs to go to AZ either? Connecting the 19th and the 46th largest city over ~400mi of mountainous terrain with no intermediate cities of note to pick up along the way is not a recipe for success. > Further I don't think you understand the cost, lot's of people out east think throwing a rail line together isn't more difficult than throw a couple of logs on the ground and some metal tracks. Let me tell you about what it is like trying to build a rail line through the west. That's why I didn't suggest any routes like that. The closest you get is Portland-Vancouver, which is questionable in large part because of the mountainous region (and Portland, OR is quite frankly not a large city). CAHSR does have to cross two or three mountain regions (depending on how you count), but you're connecting 40 million people in several large metropolitan areas with it, so it's actually worth it. And outside of those, I'm not connecting anything else--you're the one complaining that I'm leaving out Denver-SLC after all--so how do you think I'm ignoring the expensive costs of what I'm not proposing to connect?
dangus 3y ago
> Transporting people by train in most of the US is laughably inefficient and inconvenient next to the car due to the low population densities across most of the country. I get so tired of hearing this flawed argument, which places the cause and effect backwards. Ohio has the population of of Sweden, Indiana has the population of Denmark. Texas is almost twice as populous as The Netherlands, and its population is mostly confined to a triangle of urban areas that are within commuter rail distance. The Northeast Corridor is an uninterrupted urban development from Washington DC to Boston. The USA has numerous large population centers, many of which are completely unconnected by usable passenger rail despite close proximity. Over 80% of Americans live in urban areas, and most of the populations is confined to the coasts and the Midwest. If you think trains are too inefficient, all you have to do is observe the ridiculously huge short hop flight network in the USA. There are at least 6 daily non-stop flights from Charlotte, NC to Washington, DC, which is a 6 hour drive. There are at least 30 nonstop flights from San Francisco to Los Angeles, which is also a 6 hour drive. There are 3 non-stop flights from LA to San Diego, which is less than 3 hours away. There are at least 10 non-stop flights form Chicago to Columbus per day, a route that has no passenger train service and under 6 hour drive time. These short flights, which save effectively no time over high-speed train travel, exist because there is demand for non-car travel that is being unmet by the the trains that do not exist. Switching to cars was not an inevitability, it was a not an obvious choice, we actually went out of our way to destroy existing, functional rail infrastructure and neighborhoods to replace it with interstate highways, and a lot of it was motivated by a massive automotive manufacturing lobby exerting government influence. In the US, the automobile is also massively underpriced and subsidized as a policy choice, which pushes citizens toward choosing personal vehicles instead of alternatives: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tbEuaCCV-zg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tbEuaCCV-zg
- RyanAdamas 3y ago
  >Switching to cars was not an inevitability, it was a not an obvious choice, we actually went out of our way to destroy existing, functional rail infrastructure and neighborhoods to replace it with interstate highways, and a lot of it was motivated by a massive automotive manufacturing lobby exerting government influence. That is the often missed point of the movie Roger the Rabbit.
fransje26 3y ago
> The nationalized systems seen in the EU seem to be associated in dramatically higher cost for freight transportation, not lower The EU also has a dramatically lower accident rate.. https://imgur.com/CrzErQx https://imgur.com/CrzErQx From: https://d-rail-project.eu/IMG/pdf/DR-D1-1-F1-Summary_Report_and_Database_of_derailment_incidents_20120405.pdf https://d-rail-project.eu/IMG/pdf/DR-D1-1-F1-Summary_Report_...

woodruffw 3y ago

I think the article addresses most of these points: the collapse of passenger rail in the US is largely attributable to inefficient line division and competition (the "Alphabet Route" between Chicago and Baltimore, for example[1]) as well as domestic policy shifts around subsidized transit (in favor of larger subsidies for automotive manufacturers, highway construction, etc. in correspondence with subsidies for suburbanization). Low population densities can be misleading; much of the US is highly urbanized, and dense urban centers would be very efficiently connected by rail service were we to improve it. I for one would almost certainly make more trips to cities in Ohio, Illinois, etc. if it was a < 6 hour high speed trip rather than an overnight one. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alphabet_Route https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alphabet_Route

jcranmer 3y ago
> Low population densities can be misleading; much of the US is highly urbanized, and dense urban centers would be very efficiently connected by rail service were we to improve it. I for one would almost certainly make more trips to cities in Ohio, Illinois, etc. if it was a < 6 hour high speed trip rather than an overnight one. The contours of a successful HSR system in the US and Canada are roughly as follows: The core linear corridors of DC-Boston (densest US population) and Detroit-Quebec City (that's 10/15 largest cities in Canada). Combine these with an east-west Boston-Toronto and north-south Montreal-NYC spine (timed interchange at Albany makes too much sense), as well as several other small feeder routes I'm not mentioning. A Midwestern knot centered on Chicago with lines to (in ccw order) Minneapolis, St. Louis (maybe to Kansas City), Louisville (and thence to Nashville I think), Cleveland, and Detroit (not sure how to squeeze in Cincinnati and Columbus). At this point, you might consider connecting the tendrils to the northeast system as well. CAHSR, with connections to Las Vegas and Phoenix. Texas Triangle. Maybe Portland-Vancouver. Nashville-Miami via Atlanta, and Atlanta-DC via Research Triangle in NC.
- kneebonian 3y ago
  Wow so the entire Rocky Mtn. west is just left out in the cold. What about Denver and SLC? Guess no one needs to go to AZ either? Further I don't think you understand the cost, lot's of people out east think throwing a rail line together isn't more difficult than throw a couple of logs on the ground and some metal tracks. Let me tell you about what it is like trying to build a rail line through the west. There are mountains that make the Appalachins look mighty tiny that you've got to dynamite straight through, because you can't go up them, with the alternative being massive detours. If you want to go through the south you'll have hundreds of miles of tractless desert with temperatures being over 100 degrees on the regular, without water for miles.
  - kgermino 3y ago
    Are you complaining that the west was left out of their list of viable starter routes _and_ saying that the west isn’t viable due to high construction costs caused by the mountains/environment?
  - jcranmer 3y ago
    > Wow so the entire Rocky Mtn. west is just left out in the cold. What about Denver and SLC? Guess no one needs to go to AZ either? Connecting the 19th and the 46th largest city over ~400mi of mountainous terrain with no intermediate cities of note to pick up along the way is not a recipe for success. > Further I don't think you understand the cost, lot's of people out east think throwing a rail line together isn't more difficult than throw a couple of logs on the ground and some metal tracks. Let me tell you about what it is like trying to build a rail line through the west. That's why I didn't suggest any routes like that. The closest you get is Portland-Vancouver, which is questionable in large part because of the mountainous region (and Portland, OR is quite frankly not a large city). CAHSR does have to cross two or three mountain regions (depending on how you count), but you're connecting 40 million people in several large metropolitan areas with it, so it's actually worth it. And outside of those, I'm not connecting anything else--you're the one complaining that I'm leaving out Denver-SLC after all--so how do you think I'm ignoring the expensive costs of what I'm not proposing to connect?

dangus 3y ago

> Transporting people by train in most of the US is laughably inefficient and inconvenient next to the car due to the low population densities across most of the country. I get so tired of hearing this flawed argument, which places the cause and effect backwards. Ohio has the population of of Sweden, Indiana has the population of Denmark. Texas is almost twice as populous as The Netherlands, and its population is mostly confined to a triangle of urban areas that are within commuter rail distance. The Northeast Corridor is an uninterrupted urban development from Washington DC to Boston. The USA has numerous large population centers, many of which are completely unconnected by usable passenger rail despite close proximity. Over 80% of Americans live in urban areas, and most of the populations is confined to the coasts and the Midwest. If you think trains are too inefficient, all you have to do is observe the ridiculously huge short hop flight network in the USA. There are at least 6 daily non-stop flights from Charlotte, NC to Washington, DC, which is a 6 hour drive. There are at least 30 nonstop flights from San Francisco to Los Angeles, which is also a 6 hour drive. There are 3 non-stop flights from LA to San Diego, which is less than 3 hours away. There are at least 10 non-stop flights form Chicago to Columbus per day, a route that has no passenger train service and under 6 hour drive time. These short flights, which save effectively no time over high-speed train travel, exist because there is demand for non-car travel that is being unmet by the the trains that do not exist. Switching to cars was not an inevitability, it was a not an obvious choice, we actually went out of our way to destroy existing, functional rail infrastructure and neighborhoods to replace it with interstate highways, and a lot of it was motivated by a massive automotive manufacturing lobby exerting government influence. In the US, the automobile is also massively underpriced and subsidized as a policy choice, which pushes citizens toward choosing personal vehicles instead of alternatives: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tbEuaCCV-zg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tbEuaCCV-zg

RyanAdamas 3y ago
>Switching to cars was not an inevitability, it was a not an obvious choice, we actually went out of our way to destroy existing, functional rail infrastructure and neighborhoods to replace it with interstate highways, and a lot of it was motivated by a massive automotive manufacturing lobby exerting government influence. That is the often missed point of the movie Roger the Rabbit.

fransje26 3y ago

> The nationalized systems seen in the EU seem to be associated in dramatically higher cost for freight transportation, not lower The EU also has a dramatically lower accident rate.. https://imgur.com/CrzErQx https://imgur.com/CrzErQx From: https://d-rail-project.eu/IMG/pdf/DR-D1-1-F1-Summary_Report_and_Database_of_derailment_incidents_20120405.pdf https://d-rail-project.eu/IMG/pdf/DR-D1-1-F1-Summary_Report_...