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Build more railroads. (I used to work for an autonomous truck company, and when you factor in the cost of roads in addition to the development of the trucks, i

Build more railroads. (I used to work for an autonomous truck company, and when you factor in the cost of roads in addition to the development of the trucks, it makes absolutely no sense to do autonomous trucking when you could do trains. As a culture, we've been brainwashed not to fund trains. We collectively spend billions and billions on roads but would not dare spend money to build more tracks. It is shocking and ludicrous, but that's what happens when you suck up a century of propaganda from the fossil fuel and automotive industry).

eru 3y ago
Freight railroads are alive and well in the US. Incidentally, it's also the side of the railroad business that is mostly deregulated and privatised. The passenger business is nationalised, and frankly a basket case.
- justinjlynn 3y ago
  (it's not a basket case because it's nationalised, it's nationalised because it's a basket case - thank the automotive industry - and it's a national security asset)
  - eru 3y ago
    Freight railroads weren't always doing so well. They picked up a lot after deregulation. Compare also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impact_of_the_privatisation_of_British_Rail https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impact_of_the_privatisation_of... and see eg the share of rail in all transport.
    - Eisenstein 3y ago
      You mean when they ditched their much-less-profitable passenger lines and forced the government to deal with them, then heavily consolidated?
      - justinjlynn 3y ago
        Lobby to socialise or externalise all the costs. Work to privatise only the profits. Typical mode of operation.
mcmoor 3y ago
I thought that trains is already hyper focused on cargo that's why the passenger experience is so terrible
- p_j_w 3y ago
  For most heavy passenger rail like Amtrak and things like Caltrain in the Bay Area, it's because those trains use the same tracks as freight companies and the freight traffic takes priority.
  - manquer 3y ago
    That is not true for Caltrain . Caltrain tracks and right of way was purchased in 1991 from Southern Pacific (now Union Pacific) by Peninsula Corridor Joint Powers Board which is basically Muni, SamTrans and VTA for most of the route. Here is a detailed map of who owns what https://caltrain-hsr.blogspot.com/2009/01/caltrain-right-of-way-maps.html https://caltrain-hsr.blogspot.com/2009/01/caltrain-right-of-... While it is true that Southern Pacific owned the line for most its history it was always built as commuter line. Union Pacific is only allowed to operate 3 freight lines per day on weekdays now. Freight does not take priority, historically freight did not fund the development of the line, Characterizing it a freight line with passengers added on to it is not a fair representation. -- I cannot speak for Amtrack, I don't know the network personally and it is also big and very composite a network to make any general statements like for Caltrain. However in general commuter heavy lines were built as commuter lines very early one because there was economic case to do so. It is the only the long distance lines which do not have the economic viability on their own that can only run on freight lines.
    - p_j_w 3y ago
      I stand corrected, thank you.
capitainenemo 3y ago
Hm. I did a quick search on freight percentages, EU vs US and google gave me this snippet off the top hit. "46 percent of European freight goes by truck while only 11 percent goes by rail, while in the United States more than 40 percent goes by rail while just 30 percent goes on the highway." Seems US is doing pretty well on prioritising freight rail transport, despite brainwashing, at least compared to europe. Which is probably a good thing. Until that figure is a lot higher, passenger rail is just one more thing reducing the efficiencies of freight.
- ederamen 3y ago
  That's 40% of "ton-miles" - trains disproportionately move heavy, cheap goods (i.e. aggregate, coal), which makes that number potentially misleading. The percentage of freight moved by rail by "value" is closer to 15% (trucking is ~65%). https://www.bts.gov/newsroom/2017-north-american-freight-numbers https://www.bts.gov/newsroom/2017-north-american-freight-num... https://www.aar.org/facts-figures#:~:text=Freight%20rail%20accounts%20for%20around,any%20other%20mode%20of%20transportation https://www.aar.org/facts-figures#:~:text=Freight%20rail%20a....
  - obmelvin 3y ago
    I agree it's good to consider the whole picture, but ton-miles are probably the most important to consider given the increased diesel required to truck heavy loads, correct?
    - eru 3y ago
      Plus congestion and labour etc.
  - irrational 3y ago
    Why would one want to emphasize value over weight? If I load up a train with extremely expensive metals, jewels, artwork, etc. couldn’t I raise a countries rail by value measurement overnight?
  - pitaj 3y ago
AlexandrB 3y ago
I think the problem few people talk about is the small, in-city rail lines that used to exist that don't anymore. 100 years ago the city I live in had dedicated rail lines going to every major factory in the city - there was little need for last-mile trucking. AFAIK there are no western cities that are organized like this anymore, so the best you can do is deliver goods to a rail station and truck it from there - this requires a bunch of temporary storage space to transfer cargo and delays everything. Here's another example - look at all the little rail branch lines servicing parts of 1944 Boston: https://ngmdb.usgs.gov/img4/ht_icons/overlay/MA/MA_Boston%20South_350033_1944_24000_geo.jpg https://ngmdb.usgs.gov/img4/ht_icons/overlay/MA/MA_Boston%20... I don't know how you bring that back after decades of building for cars.
- ThunderSizzle 3y ago
  Same way you have excessive oversized lots/parking for 5 side-by-side fast food restaurants - zoning. Just require distribution centers or warehouses to require a rail connection to the state's rail infrastructure to be approved for construction. If no rail connection exists, then the state will negotiate who pays for what to extend the network to it.
  - ericmay 3y ago
    Zoning is a problem, but it's not the only problem there. I think there are at least two more good ones we could discuss: 1. We actually do not have a market mechanic that exists in the United States that allows people to choose properly dense homes or neighborhoods because of a number of reasons. Search tools and things like that focus on metrics like square footage or number of bathrooms, and so people select for that "bigger is better" "more is better". 2. State departments of highways (they don't do anything besides that in most states) consist of individuals and contractor companies who have become adept and normal with building highways, and so all of the organizational inertia is on building anything that looks like a highway for the safety of drivers, to the detriment of everyone else. Since only highways get funded and built in most of the country, we end up having other companies like fast-food restaurants build in ways that cater to the driving demographic.
gepardi 3y ago
Yep. No one (generally) bats an eye when voting at the city level for a $100mm road package. But trains? Freight should move mostly by train. We could build rail lines where there are already highways, just swap a vehicle lain for a train rail, all that 18 wheeler traffic can be reduced significantly. Safer highways. Less congestion.
- cityofdelusion 3y ago
  Not that simple, at least in the U.S. Rail has far stricter requirements on turn radius and grade. As an example the highways around here have 6%+ grade segments (after tunneling!) and rail is rarely over 1%. I haven’t even mentioned the incorrect subgrade and the massive safety envelope (approx 20x20 feet) which is about 2 highway lanes wide and far too tall for the thousands of highway overpasses. Rail truly is a unique infrastructure concern and needs to be designed and laid on its own.
  - eru 3y ago
    The requirements for rail depend also on how fast you want to run your trains. Passenger trains typically (want to) run faster than freight, so the requirements are stricter.
factormeta 3y ago
>As a culture, we've been brainwashed not to fund trains. The billionaires are surely investing heavily on trains and farms.
- eru 3y ago
  Some of them are. Which goes to show that money doesn't have that much of an influence in politics, despite popular opinion to the contrary.
  - Dylan16807 3y ago
    I don't understand why you think it shows that?
    - eru 3y ago
      The billionaires in question (I think Warren Buffet is one of them) would benefit from more and better rail infrastructure. But the billionaires don't have enough influence to make that happen. Similar for eg more open immigration, or not shutting down the US government down every so often.
tomcam 3y ago
Agreed but it can’t happen anymore. Rights to the now-unused tracks have reverted to property owners. Impossible to restore w/out massive eminent domain issues.
huytersd 3y ago
Trucks deliver to individual warehouses. You’re still going to need trucks for last mile delivery.
BurningFrog 3y ago
We already have a great interstate transport network that reaches every address, and where this cargo already travels. I don't know what building a second parallel railroad system to take over this task would cost, but I'd guess several Iraq Wars. Making the trucks autonomous doubles their utilization, which means we need half as many trucks, and makes freight cheaper, which makes prices lower, benefitting everyone, especially the poorest. > As a culture, we've been brainwashed... This is never the start of a insightful argument!
georgeplusplus 3y ago
That doesn’t seem like a fair comparison. A rail line is single use, single destination. commuter and cargo cannot mix (one goes high speed and one goes super slow) if they do mix it shuts the entire segment of the track down until it’s off that track. Roads are multi use , multi location. It seems unfair to compare the cost based on road maintenance vs track maintenance. I would expect something to account for the sheer difference in volume each does
manquer 3y ago
Why not road trains ? One lead driver with few of autonomous trailers ? In a ideal world more rail roads in places it makes sense to develop and maintain dedicated track infrastructure, cheaper running costs ( fuel, tires, wear and tear etc ) justify the upfront costs. Road trains are both intermediate solution everywhere and also can operate in routes where trains are not economical enough, even if there was a will to do it.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
8f2ab37a-ed6c 3y ago
Been trying to do that in CA for the last 30 years with nothing to show for it. It seems like it's faster to invent AGI and let it drive the trucks.
- ChatGTP 3y ago
  Maybe the AGI will help the Californians workout how to build trains? ...or just kill everyone, problem solved :)
t917910 3y ago
Having a railroad without a highway (and a highway won't come along and serve itself) will mean that you won't get to any city on your own. Wait for the train, maybe the railroad authorities will deign to launch a passenger train once a week, of such quality that you won't want to ride it. Like in some places in the Russian Federation. Or buy an off-road vehicle and go camping instead of traveling.
ZeroSolstice 3y ago
What sources do you have to cite on development costs and regular maintenance? Autonomous trucking is an add-on to existing trucks which are already being built regularly. We already perform road maintenance and account for it in local, state, and federal budgets as it services more vehicle's and destinations than just "autonomous trucks."

eru 3y ago

Freight railroads are alive and well in the US. Incidentally, it's also the side of the railroad business that is mostly deregulated and privatised. The passenger business is nationalised, and frankly a basket case.

justinjlynn 3y ago
(it's not a basket case because it's nationalised, it's nationalised because it's a basket case - thank the automotive industry - and it's a national security asset)
- eru 3y ago
  Freight railroads weren't always doing so well. They picked up a lot after deregulation. Compare also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impact_of_the_privatisation_of_British_Rail https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impact_of_the_privatisation_of... and see eg the share of rail in all transport.
  - Eisenstein 3y ago
    You mean when they ditched their much-less-profitable passenger lines and forced the government to deal with them, then heavily consolidated?
    - justinjlynn 3y ago
      Lobby to socialise or externalise all the costs. Work to privatise only the profits. Typical mode of operation.

mcmoor 3y ago

I thought that trains is already hyper focused on cargo that's why the passenger experience is so terrible

p_j_w 3y ago
For most heavy passenger rail like Amtrak and things like Caltrain in the Bay Area, it's because those trains use the same tracks as freight companies and the freight traffic takes priority.
- manquer 3y ago
  That is not true for Caltrain . Caltrain tracks and right of way was purchased in 1991 from Southern Pacific (now Union Pacific) by Peninsula Corridor Joint Powers Board which is basically Muni, SamTrans and VTA for most of the route. Here is a detailed map of who owns what https://caltrain-hsr.blogspot.com/2009/01/caltrain-right-of-way-maps.html https://caltrain-hsr.blogspot.com/2009/01/caltrain-right-of-... While it is true that Southern Pacific owned the line for most its history it was always built as commuter line. Union Pacific is only allowed to operate 3 freight lines per day on weekdays now. Freight does not take priority, historically freight did not fund the development of the line, Characterizing it a freight line with passengers added on to it is not a fair representation. -- I cannot speak for Amtrack, I don't know the network personally and it is also big and very composite a network to make any general statements like for Caltrain. However in general commuter heavy lines were built as commuter lines very early one because there was economic case to do so. It is the only the long distance lines which do not have the economic viability on their own that can only run on freight lines.
  - p_j_w 3y ago
    I stand corrected, thank you.

capitainenemo 3y ago

Hm. I did a quick search on freight percentages, EU vs US and google gave me this snippet off the top hit. "46 percent of European freight goes by truck while only 11 percent goes by rail, while in the United States more than 40 percent goes by rail while just 30 percent goes on the highway." Seems US is doing pretty well on prioritising freight rail transport, despite brainwashing, at least compared to europe. Which is probably a good thing. Until that figure is a lot higher, passenger rail is just one more thing reducing the efficiencies of freight.

ederamen 3y ago
That's 40% of "ton-miles" - trains disproportionately move heavy, cheap goods (i.e. aggregate, coal), which makes that number potentially misleading. The percentage of freight moved by rail by "value" is closer to 15% (trucking is ~65%). https://www.bts.gov/newsroom/2017-north-american-freight-numbers https://www.bts.gov/newsroom/2017-north-american-freight-num... https://www.aar.org/facts-figures#:~:text=Freight%20rail%20accounts%20for%20around,any%20other%20mode%20of%20transportation https://www.aar.org/facts-figures#:~:text=Freight%20rail%20a....
- obmelvin 3y ago
  I agree it's good to consider the whole picture, but ton-miles are probably the most important to consider given the increased diesel required to truck heavy loads, correct?
  - eru 3y ago
    Plus congestion and labour etc.
- irrational 3y ago
  Why would one want to emphasize value over weight? If I load up a train with extremely expensive metals, jewels, artwork, etc. couldn’t I raise a countries rail by value measurement overnight?
- pitaj 3y ago

AlexandrB 3y ago

I think the problem few people talk about is the small, in-city rail lines that used to exist that don't anymore. 100 years ago the city I live in had dedicated rail lines going to every major factory in the city - there was little need for last-mile trucking. AFAIK there are no western cities that are organized like this anymore, so the best you can do is deliver goods to a rail station and truck it from there - this requires a bunch of temporary storage space to transfer cargo and delays everything. Here's another example - look at all the little rail branch lines servicing parts of 1944 Boston: https://ngmdb.usgs.gov/img4/ht_icons/overlay/MA/MA_Boston%20South_350033_1944_24000_geo.jpg https://ngmdb.usgs.gov/img4/ht_icons/overlay/MA/MA_Boston%20... I don't know how you bring that back after decades of building for cars.

ThunderSizzle 3y ago
Same way you have excessive oversized lots/parking for 5 side-by-side fast food restaurants - zoning. Just require distribution centers or warehouses to require a rail connection to the state's rail infrastructure to be approved for construction. If no rail connection exists, then the state will negotiate who pays for what to extend the network to it.
- ericmay 3y ago
  Zoning is a problem, but it's not the only problem there. I think there are at least two more good ones we could discuss: 1. We actually do not have a market mechanic that exists in the United States that allows people to choose properly dense homes or neighborhoods because of a number of reasons. Search tools and things like that focus on metrics like square footage or number of bathrooms, and so people select for that "bigger is better" "more is better". 2. State departments of highways (they don't do anything besides that in most states) consist of individuals and contractor companies who have become adept and normal with building highways, and so all of the organizational inertia is on building anything that looks like a highway for the safety of drivers, to the detriment of everyone else. Since only highways get funded and built in most of the country, we end up having other companies like fast-food restaurants build in ways that cater to the driving demographic.

gepardi 3y ago

Yep. No one (generally) bats an eye when voting at the city level for a $100mm road package. But trains? Freight should move mostly by train. We could build rail lines where there are already highways, just swap a vehicle lain for a train rail, all that 18 wheeler traffic can be reduced significantly. Safer highways. Less congestion.

cityofdelusion 3y ago
Not that simple, at least in the U.S. Rail has far stricter requirements on turn radius and grade. As an example the highways around here have 6%+ grade segments (after tunneling!) and rail is rarely over 1%. I haven’t even mentioned the incorrect subgrade and the massive safety envelope (approx 20x20 feet) which is about 2 highway lanes wide and far too tall for the thousands of highway overpasses. Rail truly is a unique infrastructure concern and needs to be designed and laid on its own.
- eru 3y ago
  The requirements for rail depend also on how fast you want to run your trains. Passenger trains typically (want to) run faster than freight, so the requirements are stricter.

factormeta 3y ago

>As a culture, we've been brainwashed not to fund trains. The billionaires are surely investing heavily on trains and farms.

eru 3y ago
Some of them are. Which goes to show that money doesn't have that much of an influence in politics, despite popular opinion to the contrary.
- Dylan16807 3y ago
  I don't understand why you think it shows that?
  - eru 3y ago
    The billionaires in question (I think Warren Buffet is one of them) would benefit from more and better rail infrastructure. But the billionaires don't have enough influence to make that happen. Similar for eg more open immigration, or not shutting down the US government down every so often.

tomcam 3y ago

Agreed but it can’t happen anymore. Rights to the now-unused tracks have reverted to property owners. Impossible to restore w/out massive eminent domain issues.

huytersd 3y ago

Trucks deliver to individual warehouses. You’re still going to need trucks for last mile delivery.

BurningFrog 3y ago

We already have a great interstate transport network that reaches every address, and where this cargo already travels. I don't know what building a second parallel railroad system to take over this task would cost, but I'd guess several Iraq Wars. Making the trucks autonomous doubles their utilization, which means we need half as many trucks, and makes freight cheaper, which makes prices lower, benefitting everyone, especially the poorest. > As a culture, we've been brainwashed... This is never the start of a insightful argument!

georgeplusplus 3y ago

That doesn’t seem like a fair comparison. A rail line is single use, single destination. commuter and cargo cannot mix (one goes high speed and one goes super slow) if they do mix it shuts the entire segment of the track down until it’s off that track. Roads are multi use , multi location. It seems unfair to compare the cost based on road maintenance vs track maintenance. I would expect something to account for the sheer difference in volume each does

manquer 3y ago

Why not road trains ? One lead driver with few of autonomous trailers ? In a ideal world more rail roads in places it makes sense to develop and maintain dedicated track infrastructure, cheaper running costs ( fuel, tires, wear and tear etc ) justify the upfront costs. Road trains are both intermediate solution everywhere and also can operate in routes where trains are not economical enough, even if there was a will to do it.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

8f2ab37a-ed6c 3y ago

Been trying to do that in CA for the last 30 years with nothing to show for it. It seems like it's faster to invent AGI and let it drive the trucks.

ChatGTP 3y ago
Maybe the AGI will help the Californians workout how to build trains? ...or just kill everyone, problem solved :)

t917910 3y ago

Having a railroad without a highway (and a highway won't come along and serve itself) will mean that you won't get to any city on your own. Wait for the train, maybe the railroad authorities will deign to launch a passenger train once a week, of such quality that you won't want to ride it. Like in some places in the Russian Federation. Or buy an off-road vehicle and go camping instead of traveling.

ZeroSolstice 3y ago

What sources do you have to cite on development costs and regular maintenance? Autonomous trucking is an add-on to existing trucks which are already being built regularly. We already perform road maintenance and account for it in local, state, and federal budgets as it services more vehicle's and destinations than just "autonomous trucks."