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> 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

> 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...
- smaudet 3y ago
  Your last comment is not actually a retort, but I'll play along for now... Some hard numbers. We can talk about "millions" of dollars in train costs as if that's some bad thing, actually some back of the envelope math reveals this is a pittance. Average cost of a vehicle (generous) 30000 (actually much higher after repairs, maintenance), lets say 35000, our drivers all experience great luck and need very few repairs over the life of their vehicles. Average number of vehicles, per person, lets say, 5. So about 17500$. Lets maybe round that up for easy math, the consumer needs to also pay for insurance (150 USD a month for 12 months and about 40 years of driver time, another 72000 USD). Already, 5 consumers then cost about 1 million in car costs. Average lifetime of a train, 40 years. Average cost of a (traditional) train track about 1 million per mile. So the number here is already pretty low per mile (of track, we are assuming for simplicity the mile of track is paid for for 40 years - actual life time is usually 50-60 years, so we are about safe here). Lets say we cost fit, lets say, 20 villages along a route. Each one causes average 2 miles of track divergence (about 2 million cost per village), and because of politics/regulation, each 40k$ plot of land is closer to 100k$. Roughly 42$ million cost of fitting the track along these routes between two cities. Using our numbers from earlier, we need about 5*42 or ~210 customers over 40 years to just break even with the automobile cost(s). If we assume we just want to break even, no profit, over those 40 years, that's about 5k$ per consumer per year, or assuming weekly trips, about 96$ per trip. For 20 villages at ~1k population, I'm gonna bet a lot more than 210 consumers are going to want to use these tracks. Lets assume best case, all 20 villages of 1k average populations are utilizing these trains now, we have 20000k users now, or 95x times the room for growth. That 96$ ticket? It can be a dollar and still break even. Charge 10$ and you've covered the cost. And we haven't even gotten into amortizing the costs due to regular city traffic, or talked about real cost of ownership, energy inefficiencies, maintenance costs (hint, much much lower). The benefits are absurdly high, even after a quick back-of-the-envelope run of the numbers. You have to have some absurdly high costs or do something really dumb, like install T junctions that lead to nowhere, for a rail system to become unfeasible.
  - ImPostingOnHN 3y ago
    Your numbers seem to assume a lot that isn't supported by the data or by the use case we're discussing. For example: > Lets say we cost fit, lets say, 20 villages along a route. Each one causes average 2 miles of track divergence Let's say, instead, they aren't along the route, because they likely aren't, and let's say it's closer to 10-20 miles of track divergence each. Even at the super, super low estimate of $1m/mile (the real numbers from recent commuter rail expansions tend to be at least an order of magnitude or two larger), that adds up to $28-38m for the track and station. Remember, the use case is a village whose taxi needs are satisfied by 1 car per village, so I don't know where you got 5 cars per person or five people per car. That means the self-driving option costs 1 self-driving car per village. Maybe 2. Additionally, this is a village whose train needs add up to fewer than 4 passengers per hour. But then you mention, > 20 villages of 1k average populations are utilizing these trains now, we have 20000k users now Here you're conflating train riders with literally everybody who lives in the village, which is a huge red flag. The demand is fewer than 4 rides per hour per village, so 20 villages adds up to fewer than 2,000, an order of magnitude smaller. Plus, now that it's 20 villages, the cost is 20*(millions to billions) instead of just (millions to billions). Those numbers just don't break even, especially when you add in the cost of maintaining those 20 stations and the additional track. Going back to the example, at an optimistic cost of $28-38m per additional station, and a ridership of 4/hr, and let's say a ticket price of $10. The math says each additional station would take 80 years to pay off, and that's if the station and rails don't cost anything to maintain. But they do, so it'd likely take hundreds of years.

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...

smaudet 3y ago
Your last comment is not actually a retort, but I'll play along for now... Some hard numbers. We can talk about "millions" of dollars in train costs as if that's some bad thing, actually some back of the envelope math reveals this is a pittance. Average cost of a vehicle (generous) 30000 (actually much higher after repairs, maintenance), lets say 35000, our drivers all experience great luck and need very few repairs over the life of their vehicles. Average number of vehicles, per person, lets say, 5. So about 17500$. Lets maybe round that up for easy math, the consumer needs to also pay for insurance (150 USD a month for 12 months and about 40 years of driver time, another 72000 USD). Already, 5 consumers then cost about 1 million in car costs. Average lifetime of a train, 40 years. Average cost of a (traditional) train track about 1 million per mile. So the number here is already pretty low per mile (of track, we are assuming for simplicity the mile of track is paid for for 40 years - actual life time is usually 50-60 years, so we are about safe here). Lets say we cost fit, lets say, 20 villages along a route. Each one causes average 2 miles of track divergence (about 2 million cost per village), and because of politics/regulation, each 40k$ plot of land is closer to 100k$. Roughly 42$ million cost of fitting the track along these routes between two cities. Using our numbers from earlier, we need about 5*42 or ~210 customers over 40 years to just break even with the automobile cost(s). If we assume we just want to break even, no profit, over those 40 years, that's about 5k$ per consumer per year, or assuming weekly trips, about 96$ per trip. For 20 villages at ~1k population, I'm gonna bet a lot more than 210 consumers are going to want to use these tracks. Lets assume best case, all 20 villages of 1k average populations are utilizing these trains now, we have 20000k users now, or 95x times the room for growth. That 96$ ticket? It can be a dollar and still break even. Charge 10$ and you've covered the cost. And we haven't even gotten into amortizing the costs due to regular city traffic, or talked about real cost of ownership, energy inefficiencies, maintenance costs (hint, much much lower). The benefits are absurdly high, even after a quick back-of-the-envelope run of the numbers. You have to have some absurdly high costs or do something really dumb, like install T junctions that lead to nowhere, for a rail system to become unfeasible.
- ImPostingOnHN 3y ago
  Your numbers seem to assume a lot that isn't supported by the data or by the use case we're discussing. For example: > Lets say we cost fit, lets say, 20 villages along a route. Each one causes average 2 miles of track divergence Let's say, instead, they aren't along the route, because they likely aren't, and let's say it's closer to 10-20 miles of track divergence each. Even at the super, super low estimate of $1m/mile (the real numbers from recent commuter rail expansions tend to be at least an order of magnitude or two larger), that adds up to $28-38m for the track and station. Remember, the use case is a village whose taxi needs are satisfied by 1 car per village, so I don't know where you got 5 cars per person or five people per car. That means the self-driving option costs 1 self-driving car per village. Maybe 2. Additionally, this is a village whose train needs add up to fewer than 4 passengers per hour. But then you mention, > 20 villages of 1k average populations are utilizing these trains now, we have 20000k users now Here you're conflating train riders with literally everybody who lives in the village, which is a huge red flag. The demand is fewer than 4 rides per hour per village, so 20 villages adds up to fewer than 2,000, an order of magnitude smaller. Plus, now that it's 20 villages, the cost is 20*(millions to billions) instead of just (millions to billions). Those numbers just don't break even, especially when you add in the cost of maintaining those 20 stations and the additional track. Going back to the example, at an optimistic cost of $28-38m per additional station, and a ridership of 4/hr, and let's say a ticket price of $10. The math says each additional station would take 80 years to pay off, and that's if the station and rails don't cost anything to maintain. But they do, so it'd likely take hundreds of years.