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Why not a national interstate rail system? Roads can still be used for flexible local transportation while railroads are used for mainline logistics and transpo
by kiba 2y ago
Why not a national interstate rail system? Roads can still be used for flexible local transportation while railroads are used for mainline logistics and transportation of passengers.
- dboreham 2y agoAssuming you're talking about the USA: it's very big. No other country (except China) uses trains for US-size-wide passenger transport. Aircraft are more appropriate.
- alistairSH 2y agoMixed answer. One driving factor in the creation of the interstate system was military - we wanted the ability to easily move troops/supplies across the US without airlift or rail. Not sure that's still a valid need (as in, I don't know - would need to ask a general). Also, the US is huge. We do need some sort of road system to get across it. Building rail to everywhere is prohibitively expensive. That said, we should/could have good high speed rail in the densest areas. Like expand the Acela corridor CityNerd does a nice summary of city pairs that should have high speed rail based on population and distance... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wE5G1kTndI4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wE5G1kTndI4 tl;dr - DC-NYC tops the list (and include Philly and Balt). LA to SF is near the top. Chicago-DET-Toronto is up there. And on down the list. Basically, there's no good reason (other than momentum/history) to not build out solid rail networks over parts of the US. I don't think anybody reasonably expects an LA-NYC link any time soon because flying is a better option for now.