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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 reall

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.

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.