4 ms·

No. Your error is in assuming that all extensions to villages are built as just to villages. There are trains between cities, which presumably have non-zero t

No. Your error is in assuming that all extensions to villages are built as just to villages. There are trains between cities, which presumably have non-zero traffic, or some mix of commercial/pedestrian traffic. That's where you garner the savings - you were already spending millions on intercity traffic. If you have your blinders on with this false-choice of city or city + villages, then you'd have a point, but this is not the case for rail between two cities. In Europe/US there are more than enough cities to make this feasible. A rail system doesn't solve the problem of truly remote regions where there are no nearby cities, but it does allow for intercity transport with stops at minor villages along the way. As for "providing the numbers", I'd encourage you to inspect the numbers for city rail systems, they operate on the same principle, albeit at a lower scale - trains operate on loops or lines through many neighborhoods, instead of a hub and spoke system that would require an exorbitantly expensive central hub and N lines, they can operate at a fraction of that cost with usually ~10 lines per city, servicing usually hundreds of stops (an order of magnitude savings). Compare that with the cost of vehicles with the same city (parking, fuel, licensing, insurance, road upkeep), its fairly obvious that the one system (line with many stops) is far superior to the other (individualized transport).

ImPostingOnHN 3y ago
We're discussing a marginal rail extension to a village, versus no marginal rail extension to the village. That means we can choose to have all the benefits of the city linkages without any downsides of village linkages, unless there's a good reason to add the village linkages to the city linkages. We can have a train going between cities, which is good. But as soon as you want to branch off and have another line going tens or hundreds of miles in a different direction, to reach that village in the middle of nowhere (maybe 'it's just off a straight line by a little bit' - ok, that will be several million), and make sure to reinforce and grade the land first, and of course the village needs a station, etc. It adds up. The city nearest me has paid billions over 20 years to lay 75 miles of track. They're trying to do exactly what we're discussing: adding smaller towns into the commuter rail network which already serves larger cities fine. Billions with a "B". And you better believe the funding prospects involve more than 4 tickets per hour. Compare this to the cost of 1 or 2 self driving cars which serve the entire village (currently 1 car serves their needs, but they might grow). The people in the two cities will happily go back and forth between, whether the branch-to-nowhere is built or not. So whoever wants the branch-to-nowhere, has to justify the marginal cost of building it, which, yes, costs millions. Even if the village was literally on existing inter-city commuter rail steel, which it likely isn't, the station and required changes alone would likely cost millions. Can fewer than 4 tickets per hour at least pay for the ongoing operational cost of a station and regular stops there? Maybe. Also, please be nicer.
- smaudet 3y ago
  > maybe 'it's just off a straight line by a little bit' - ok, that will be several million I understand your general point - diversions have realized material and labor costs. However, not all "diversions" need to be individually costly nor expensive. Partly, arguing over specific costs is political (varies by regional policies) or regional (costs of transporting goods/excavations into a particular geological region). However, again, as with any data set, it is possible to fit the line to the curve. If viewed strictly from a "point a to point b" situation, sure, you may incur costs by increasing the curvature of the line by routing through some village, however mother nature/politics sees fit to create those costs regardless (mountains, lakes, major roads, airport, etc). If you must make these million dollar "diversions" as you put it anyways (whether by tunneling, avoiding protected regions), then it should be possible to create low cost stations (the land should not cost much in excess of 40k$ and the station itself should be mostly concrete with possibly some electronic flagging mechanism, no need for fancy stations at every stop) within reasonably close vicinity to many villages on a route between two cities (not every station need run through a town center). This is still more economical than attempting to draw a straight line between two cities, which usually proves to be impossible anyways, due to the increased traffic from the additional rail network entry points. Regarding being nice, my apologies, "you" is not always intended as a personal attack, rather a pronoun closer to the somewhat archaic term "one".
  - ImPostingOnHN 3y ago
    > If viewed strictly from a "point a to point b" situation, sure, you may incur costs by increasing the curvature of the line by routing through some village That's just it: those costs incurred are millions to billions, no matter how strictly you view them. The line running between cities is already a straight-ish line, or as straight as it can be. It's already built to deal with geographic features, etc. Any additional routing or rerouting would cost millions to billions. Now, imagine someone wants to include in the rail network, a village that's 10-50+ miles off this existing line. You could: - Turn the straight-ish line into a "T", where at some point along the line, it branches off and veers towards the village. Cost: millions to billions for the land, zoning, approvals, terraforming, track buildout, environment assessments, safety assessments, probably legal issues. - Connect each city to the village with a new straight-ish line, forming a "V". Cost: millions to billions for the same. - Build no additions to the existing line between cities. Cost: nothing If there isn't already a line, then the decision is between a straight-ish line which ignores the village, and a "V" which doesn't, with the latter costing millions to billions more. If the latter is chosen, will those extra millions to billions be paid back with marginal tickets purchased as a result of the change? Probably not. As for the station, it alone would cost millions. Sure, you or I could build a concrete shelter for little money and no bureaucracy or rules or aesthetics, but that won't work for a government rail station. Examining the cost of recently built train stations should bring us closer to an accurate estimate. Here one[0]: £15,000,000 for a station built where there was infrastructure already (a decades-closed station). With all due respect to the architect, it looks like a pretty bare-bones station made from a bunch of concrete. [0]: https://www.transport.gov.scot/news/transport-minister-opens-new-15m-railway-station-for-east-linton/ https://www.transport.gov.scot/news/transport-minister-opens...

ImPostingOnHN 3y ago

We're discussing a marginal rail extension to a village, versus no marginal rail extension to the village. That means we can choose to have all the benefits of the city linkages without any downsides of village linkages, unless there's a good reason to add the village linkages to the city linkages. We can have a train going between cities, which is good. But as soon as you want to branch off and have another line going tens or hundreds of miles in a different direction, to reach that village in the middle of nowhere (maybe 'it's just off a straight line by a little bit' - ok, that will be several million), and make sure to reinforce and grade the land first, and of course the village needs a station, etc. It adds up. The city nearest me has paid billions over 20 years to lay 75 miles of track. They're trying to do exactly what we're discussing: adding smaller towns into the commuter rail network which already serves larger cities fine. Billions with a "B". And you better believe the funding prospects involve more than 4 tickets per hour. Compare this to the cost of 1 or 2 self driving cars which serve the entire village (currently 1 car serves their needs, but they might grow). The people in the two cities will happily go back and forth between, whether the branch-to-nowhere is built or not. So whoever wants the branch-to-nowhere, has to justify the marginal cost of building it, which, yes, costs millions. Even if the village was literally on existing inter-city commuter rail steel, which it likely isn't, the station and required changes alone would likely cost millions. Can fewer than 4 tickets per hour at least pay for the ongoing operational cost of a station and regular stops there? Maybe. Also, please be nicer.

smaudet 3y ago
> maybe 'it's just off a straight line by a little bit' - ok, that will be several million I understand your general point - diversions have realized material and labor costs. However, not all "diversions" need to be individually costly nor expensive. Partly, arguing over specific costs is political (varies by regional policies) or regional (costs of transporting goods/excavations into a particular geological region). However, again, as with any data set, it is possible to fit the line to the curve. If viewed strictly from a "point a to point b" situation, sure, you may incur costs by increasing the curvature of the line by routing through some village, however mother nature/politics sees fit to create those costs regardless (mountains, lakes, major roads, airport, etc). If you must make these million dollar "diversions" as you put it anyways (whether by tunneling, avoiding protected regions), then it should be possible to create low cost stations (the land should not cost much in excess of 40k$ and the station itself should be mostly concrete with possibly some electronic flagging mechanism, no need for fancy stations at every stop) within reasonably close vicinity to many villages on a route between two cities (not every station need run through a town center). This is still more economical than attempting to draw a straight line between two cities, which usually proves to be impossible anyways, due to the increased traffic from the additional rail network entry points. Regarding being nice, my apologies, "you" is not always intended as a personal attack, rather a pronoun closer to the somewhat archaic term "one".
- ImPostingOnHN 3y ago
  > If viewed strictly from a "point a to point b" situation, sure, you may incur costs by increasing the curvature of the line by routing through some village That's just it: those costs incurred are millions to billions, no matter how strictly you view them. The line running between cities is already a straight-ish line, or as straight as it can be. It's already built to deal with geographic features, etc. Any additional routing or rerouting would cost millions to billions. Now, imagine someone wants to include in the rail network, a village that's 10-50+ miles off this existing line. You could: - Turn the straight-ish line into a "T", where at some point along the line, it branches off and veers towards the village. Cost: millions to billions for the land, zoning, approvals, terraforming, track buildout, environment assessments, safety assessments, probably legal issues. - Connect each city to the village with a new straight-ish line, forming a "V". Cost: millions to billions for the same. - Build no additions to the existing line between cities. Cost: nothing If there isn't already a line, then the decision is between a straight-ish line which ignores the village, and a "V" which doesn't, with the latter costing millions to billions more. If the latter is chosen, will those extra millions to billions be paid back with marginal tickets purchased as a result of the change? Probably not. As for the station, it alone would cost millions. Sure, you or I could build a concrete shelter for little money and no bureaucracy or rules or aesthetics, but that won't work for a government rail station. Examining the cost of recently built train stations should bring us closer to an accurate estimate. Here one[0]: £15,000,000 for a station built where there was infrastructure already (a decades-closed station). With all due respect to the architect, it looks like a pretty bare-bones station made from a bunch of concrete. [0]: https://www.transport.gov.scot/news/transport-minister-opens-new-15m-railway-station-for-east-linton/ https://www.transport.gov.scot/news/transport-minister-opens...