3 ms·

This is also a problem with IIRC the Acela and other Amtrak routes between Boston and New York, and probably on other routes too.

bluGill 3y ago
Amtrak owns most (all?) of the NEC track between New York and Boston. Most other routes are freight train owned and Amtrak has issues. Though the freights claim the issue is Amtrak is late for their assigned times and once that happens they lose priority, if Amtrak was on time they claim that they would let Amtrak through on time. (one fright that doesn't let Amtrak through on time will cascade to being late for all transfers, so the freights can overall be right and still wrong just because of the one exception) I don't know how to evaluate this claim.
- noirbot 3y ago
  My understanding is that the freight trains now are really long, and there's few places to pull off the tracks for such long trains, so the timetables are really tight for when trains can pass each other. This goes to what I was talking about in my initial post. Right now, part of why Amtrak is bad in the US is because we're getting pretty efficient use of the same rails for freight purposes. The ways around this would either be to somehow legally force freight to fully be lower priority than passenger, which presumably raises prices/lowers efficiency of freight on the rails or to build a mostly disjoint system of rails for passenger only. The costs required to build a passenger only system is high and the density of the US makes me question if it would get the use needed to be viable. In the meantime then, is it net positive for the US to prioritize freight use over passenger? Even if we gave passenger traffic maximum priority, would it defer enough flights to offset the freight efficiency losses?
  - bluGill 3y ago
    Passengers and freight have different constraints and so don't mix well on rail. We should build separate rail for each. Make them compatible rail but that is for emergencies you can mix not normal operations. (2am maintenance windows count as a good reason to mix) Don't be fooled by population density, the western states and Alaska have a lot of nothing and bring the density down. You can find overlays of France and the Midwest that have similar populations. Overall there are lots of potentially great rail routes east of the Mississippi, and along the west coast. (But of course only if you invest in local transit, otherwise everyone may as well drive as they will need their car when they get there.
    - noirbot 3y ago
      I'm not getting "fooled" by anything. I've spent most of my life in various parts of the Eastern US. The problem, to a big degree is that the parts of the US with the density for rail are both already big freight areas with major ports (LA, NYC, Baltimore, Boston, Savannah, Seattle) and have the good land already taken for freight rails, and also, because they're dense areas, are exceedingly difficult to find space to run new rails in that go to places people actually want to go. We're past the era where we could just put a highway or rail line through the poorest neighborhood of minorities we can find, pay them all $10 for their land, and pretend it's a net good for the country. Without some truly insane government intervention that is both unlikely to happen, and probably shouldn't happen, I don't see how we'd add a full new rail system.
- reactordev 3y ago
  Amtrak pays $145m a year to freight rail companies like CSX and UP to use their rails for passengers. This was the bargain struck for allowing deregulation and privatization of rail in the US. They own the rails between NY and Boston but everywhere else, they have to pay the toll booth. If you want to see the real Railways of North America, check out these interactive maps [1] [1] https://www.acwr.com/economic-development/rail-maps https://www.acwr.com/economic-development/rail-maps
noirbot 3y ago
It's arguably the problem with any attempt at high speed rail in the US. Or even low-speed passenger rail. There's so much freight moving on the rails that there's just not much slack in the system for things not running on time. As the parent says, the solution would be to add dedicated high-speed rails, but then you loop back to the US density issues. How fast would the Acela have to be for it to justify the price you'd have to charge to ever come close to paying back the cost to add a whole dedicated train line between Boston and Washington DC?
- shiroiuma 3y ago
  >How fast would the Acela have to be for it to justify the price you'd have to charge to ever come close to paying back the cost to add a whole dedicated train line between Boston and Washington DC? No faster than it already is, I would think. The experience is SO much nicer than taking an airplane that a little extra time is worth it. Don't forget how much time is wasted in airplanes just getting to and from the airports and waiting for security checks and sitting on the tarmac waiting to taxi. Trains travel directly between city centers with almost no waiting time. The Acela doesn't really need to be much faster, though it'd be nice; it just needs to be cheaper and more frequent.

bluGill 3y ago

Amtrak owns most (all?) of the NEC track between New York and Boston. Most other routes are freight train owned and Amtrak has issues. Though the freights claim the issue is Amtrak is late for their assigned times and once that happens they lose priority, if Amtrak was on time they claim that they would let Amtrak through on time. (one fright that doesn't let Amtrak through on time will cascade to being late for all transfers, so the freights can overall be right and still wrong just because of the one exception) I don't know how to evaluate this claim.

noirbot 3y ago
My understanding is that the freight trains now are really long, and there's few places to pull off the tracks for such long trains, so the timetables are really tight for when trains can pass each other. This goes to what I was talking about in my initial post. Right now, part of why Amtrak is bad in the US is because we're getting pretty efficient use of the same rails for freight purposes. The ways around this would either be to somehow legally force freight to fully be lower priority than passenger, which presumably raises prices/lowers efficiency of freight on the rails or to build a mostly disjoint system of rails for passenger only. The costs required to build a passenger only system is high and the density of the US makes me question if it would get the use needed to be viable. In the meantime then, is it net positive for the US to prioritize freight use over passenger? Even if we gave passenger traffic maximum priority, would it defer enough flights to offset the freight efficiency losses?
- bluGill 3y ago
  Passengers and freight have different constraints and so don't mix well on rail. We should build separate rail for each. Make them compatible rail but that is for emergencies you can mix not normal operations. (2am maintenance windows count as a good reason to mix) Don't be fooled by population density, the western states and Alaska have a lot of nothing and bring the density down. You can find overlays of France and the Midwest that have similar populations. Overall there are lots of potentially great rail routes east of the Mississippi, and along the west coast. (But of course only if you invest in local transit, otherwise everyone may as well drive as they will need their car when they get there.
  - noirbot 3y ago
    I'm not getting "fooled" by anything. I've spent most of my life in various parts of the Eastern US. The problem, to a big degree is that the parts of the US with the density for rail are both already big freight areas with major ports (LA, NYC, Baltimore, Boston, Savannah, Seattle) and have the good land already taken for freight rails, and also, because they're dense areas, are exceedingly difficult to find space to run new rails in that go to places people actually want to go. We're past the era where we could just put a highway or rail line through the poorest neighborhood of minorities we can find, pay them all $10 for their land, and pretend it's a net good for the country. Without some truly insane government intervention that is both unlikely to happen, and probably shouldn't happen, I don't see how we'd add a full new rail system.
reactordev 3y ago
Amtrak pays $145m a year to freight rail companies like CSX and UP to use their rails for passengers. This was the bargain struck for allowing deregulation and privatization of rail in the US. They own the rails between NY and Boston but everywhere else, they have to pay the toll booth. If you want to see the real Railways of North America, check out these interactive maps [1] [1] https://www.acwr.com/economic-development/rail-maps https://www.acwr.com/economic-development/rail-maps

noirbot 3y ago

It's arguably the problem with any attempt at high speed rail in the US. Or even low-speed passenger rail. There's so much freight moving on the rails that there's just not much slack in the system for things not running on time. As the parent says, the solution would be to add dedicated high-speed rails, but then you loop back to the US density issues. How fast would the Acela have to be for it to justify the price you'd have to charge to ever come close to paying back the cost to add a whole dedicated train line between Boston and Washington DC?

shiroiuma 3y ago
>How fast would the Acela have to be for it to justify the price you'd have to charge to ever come close to paying back the cost to add a whole dedicated train line between Boston and Washington DC? No faster than it already is, I would think. The experience is SO much nicer than taking an airplane that a little extra time is worth it. Don't forget how much time is wasted in airplanes just getting to and from the airports and waiting for security checks and sitting on the tarmac waiting to taxi. Trains travel directly between city centers with almost no waiting time. The Acela doesn't really need to be much faster, though it'd be nice; it just needs to be cheaper and more frequent.