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> For some reason, our railroad are privately owned rather than owned by the states or the fed. Because we want them to work well? Look at how the government

> For some reason, our railroad are privately owned rather than owned by the states or the fed. Because we want them to work well? Look at how the government handles the infrastructure it owns.

velcrovan 3y ago
Which government? State-owned trains in Europe and Japan are amazing. The US could do fine too if it cared to actually fund infrastructure rather than letting it whither on the vine.
- jdminhbg 3y ago
  The problem isn't the amount of funding, the problem is competence administering the funding. California's HSR has tens of billions invested and no track laid. I'd love to import European or Japanese rail administrators so that the investment could result in trains actually running, but that doesn't seem to be in the cards.
  - creato 3y ago
    They'd run into the exact same problems getting rights of way. There may be incompetence in administration, but it's not the only problem.
    - njarboe 3y ago
      Brightline is a privately company building a bullet train from LA to Las Vegas opening in 2027. The same company recently completed a new bullet train from Miami to Orlando.
      - bobthepanda 3y ago
        An interesting feature of the Brightline West project is that it does not go deep into populated urban areas to save money. The terminus in Las Vegas is south of the airport and the Strip. The terminus in “LA” is in Rancho Cucamonga, 37 miles east of LA and in a whole different county. CAHSR was partially sold as a downtown revitalization project, and so has expensive full speed approaches into Fresno, Bakersfield, Merced, etc.
      - woodruffw 3y ago
        > The same company recently completed a new bullet train from Miami to Orlando. Brightline is an accomplishment, but this significantly oversells it: the Orlando-Miami route tops out at 125mph, which is barely HSR by any normal standard. A good chunk of the route is on pre-existing lines that top out at 79mph. For comparison, trains on the LGV Nord (31 years old) operate at 190mph[1]. I hope they continue to invest in HSR, but I don't think we should settle for marketing here. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGV_Nord https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGV_Nord
  - lamp_book 3y ago
    They did bring in a French HSR operator that built rail in Asia, but they bailed for projects in a less politically dysfunctional landscape… North Africa [1]. It’s our pork barrel political machinery that’s fucked up. [1] https://archive.is/2023.09.19-135838/https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/09/us/california-high-speed-rail-politics.html https://archive.is/2023.09.19-135838/https://www.nytimes.com...
eropple 3y ago
So we're talking about transportation, and I guess I have to ask exactly what transportation infrastructure you then mean? Because the only serious, broad, federally-managed transportation infrastructure I can think of are like, military airbases. Which tend to be pretty good! That's assuming, of course, you mean the US government--which does not own things like highways, for those unclear; it does have a controlling stake in Amtrak, but aside from the NEC (which is great IMO) Amtrak does not own the railways that actually serve as rail infrastructure. Because, of course, country governments elsewhere regularly own or have majority stakes in both railroads and railways, to pretty good success. Or, on the other other hand, maybe you mean non-transporation infrastructure? 'Cause frankly, the US Postal Service was pretty great 'til "the government doesn't work and we're going to prove it by ripping out big chunks of it" politicians got their hands on it.
- oatmeal1 3y ago
  > That's assuming, of course, you mean the US government--which does not own things like highways I was responding to a comment which said "states or the fed," so of course I was referring to those both. The states own the highways.
- AnthonyMouse 3y ago
  > Because the only serious, broad, federally-managed transportation infrastructure I can think of are like, military airbases. Which tend to be pretty good! I hope you're not putting forth the Department of Defense as a positive exemplar of government efficiency. > That's assuming, of course, you mean the US government--which does not own things like highways The federal government funds 90% of the interstate highway system. The job it does at this is kind of medium and has all of the usual problems that happen when you're spending somebody else's money, e.g. the roads are always under construction because the construction companies get paid if they're "working" (even if that means standing around) so finishing projects quickly is disfavored because they want the work to expand to fill the available budget rather than the other way around. The general problem with government projects in the US is that they put too much emphasis on false economies of scale and try to allocate contracts that are too large. For example, instead of contracting with one company for rolling stock and it maintenance, they should buy rolling stock as-needed from anyone who makes it broadly matching a required spec (e.g. the correct width of the track) and then contract with separate companies for maintenance. The most important thing, which they fail at utterly, is to make contracts small and simple and make it easy for companies that don't specialize in government contracting to bid on them. Because otherwise they only get companies that do specialize in government contracting, even when the contract is for some fungible commodity, and end up paying unreasonable rates for everything. > the US Postal Service was pretty great 'til "the government doesn't work and we're going to prove it by ripping out big chunks of it" politicians got their hands on it. The US Postal Service had a monopoly on first class mail at a time when lots of things were delivered via first class mail. It wasn't particularly cost efficient but it delivered the mail and it couldn't be outcompeted by someone else because competing with it was prohibited by law. Then first class mail got replaced by email while online purchasing increased enough to give UPS and FedEx enough economies of scale to outcompete USPS for package delivery even with the USPS having existing trucks delivering the mail. Then it actually had to compete on efficiency, which it failed to do and ran into problems. Then people started trying to reform it. Which never really worked because a government agency is constrained by political forces, e.g. public sector unions that capture legislators ("management") who are supposed to represent the general public against the unions representing the public's employees. If you then put it into competition with private companies, it will generally operate less efficiently and go bankrupt. Which is fine as long as the private companies continue to operate in a competitive market themselves, until someone decrees that we need to save the publicly operated business that failed in the market.
fwip 3y ago
I'd love if our railroads ran on time anywhere near as often as the postal service does. Or even as often as the city bus does.

> For some reason, our railroad are privately owned rather than owned by the states or the fed. Because we want them to work well? Look at how the government handles the infrastructure it owns.

velcrovan 3y ago

Which government? State-owned trains in Europe and Japan are amazing. The US could do fine too if it cared to actually fund infrastructure rather than letting it whither on the vine.

jdminhbg 3y ago
The problem isn't the amount of funding, the problem is competence administering the funding. California's HSR has tens of billions invested and no track laid. I'd love to import European or Japanese rail administrators so that the investment could result in trains actually running, but that doesn't seem to be in the cards.
- creato 3y ago
  They'd run into the exact same problems getting rights of way. There may be incompetence in administration, but it's not the only problem.
  - njarboe 3y ago
    Brightline is a privately company building a bullet train from LA to Las Vegas opening in 2027. The same company recently completed a new bullet train from Miami to Orlando.
    - bobthepanda 3y ago
      An interesting feature of the Brightline West project is that it does not go deep into populated urban areas to save money. The terminus in Las Vegas is south of the airport and the Strip. The terminus in “LA” is in Rancho Cucamonga, 37 miles east of LA and in a whole different county. CAHSR was partially sold as a downtown revitalization project, and so has expensive full speed approaches into Fresno, Bakersfield, Merced, etc.
    - woodruffw 3y ago
      > The same company recently completed a new bullet train from Miami to Orlando. Brightline is an accomplishment, but this significantly oversells it: the Orlando-Miami route tops out at 125mph, which is barely HSR by any normal standard. A good chunk of the route is on pre-existing lines that top out at 79mph. For comparison, trains on the LGV Nord (31 years old) operate at 190mph[1]. I hope they continue to invest in HSR, but I don't think we should settle for marketing here. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGV_Nord https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGV_Nord
- lamp_book 3y ago
  They did bring in a French HSR operator that built rail in Asia, but they bailed for projects in a less politically dysfunctional landscape… North Africa [1]. It’s our pork barrel political machinery that’s fucked up. [1] https://archive.is/2023.09.19-135838/https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/09/us/california-high-speed-rail-politics.html https://archive.is/2023.09.19-135838/https://www.nytimes.com...

eropple 3y ago

So we're talking about transportation, and I guess I have to ask exactly what transportation infrastructure you then mean? Because the only serious, broad, federally-managed transportation infrastructure I can think of are like, military airbases. Which tend to be pretty good! That's assuming, of course, you mean the US government--which does not own things like highways, for those unclear; it does have a controlling stake in Amtrak, but aside from the NEC (which is great IMO) Amtrak does not own the railways that actually serve as rail infrastructure. Because, of course, country governments elsewhere regularly own or have majority stakes in both railroads and railways, to pretty good success. Or, on the other other hand, maybe you mean non-transporation infrastructure? 'Cause frankly, the US Postal Service was pretty great 'til "the government doesn't work and we're going to prove it by ripping out big chunks of it" politicians got their hands on it.

oatmeal1 3y ago
> That's assuming, of course, you mean the US government--which does not own things like highways I was responding to a comment which said "states or the fed," so of course I was referring to those both. The states own the highways.
AnthonyMouse 3y ago
> Because the only serious, broad, federally-managed transportation infrastructure I can think of are like, military airbases. Which tend to be pretty good! I hope you're not putting forth the Department of Defense as a positive exemplar of government efficiency. > That's assuming, of course, you mean the US government--which does not own things like highways The federal government funds 90% of the interstate highway system. The job it does at this is kind of medium and has all of the usual problems that happen when you're spending somebody else's money, e.g. the roads are always under construction because the construction companies get paid if they're "working" (even if that means standing around) so finishing projects quickly is disfavored because they want the work to expand to fill the available budget rather than the other way around. The general problem with government projects in the US is that they put too much emphasis on false economies of scale and try to allocate contracts that are too large. For example, instead of contracting with one company for rolling stock and it maintenance, they should buy rolling stock as-needed from anyone who makes it broadly matching a required spec (e.g. the correct width of the track) and then contract with separate companies for maintenance. The most important thing, which they fail at utterly, is to make contracts small and simple and make it easy for companies that don't specialize in government contracting to bid on them. Because otherwise they only get companies that do specialize in government contracting, even when the contract is for some fungible commodity, and end up paying unreasonable rates for everything. > the US Postal Service was pretty great 'til "the government doesn't work and we're going to prove it by ripping out big chunks of it" politicians got their hands on it. The US Postal Service had a monopoly on first class mail at a time when lots of things were delivered via first class mail. It wasn't particularly cost efficient but it delivered the mail and it couldn't be outcompeted by someone else because competing with it was prohibited by law. Then first class mail got replaced by email while online purchasing increased enough to give UPS and FedEx enough economies of scale to outcompete USPS for package delivery even with the USPS having existing trucks delivering the mail. Then it actually had to compete on efficiency, which it failed to do and ran into problems. Then people started trying to reform it. Which never really worked because a government agency is constrained by political forces, e.g. public sector unions that capture legislators ("management") who are supposed to represent the general public against the unions representing the public's employees. If you then put it into competition with private companies, it will generally operate less efficiently and go bankrupt. Which is fine as long as the private companies continue to operate in a competitive market themselves, until someone decrees that we need to save the publicly operated business that failed in the market.

fwip 3y ago

I'd love if our railroads ran on time anywhere near as often as the postal service does. Or even as often as the city bus does.