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We condensed redundancies in the 80’s to improve profit margins for rail. Those lines could have supported more cargo and passenger trains but they’re gone now.

We condensed redundancies in the 80’s to improve profit margins for rail. Those lines could have supported more cargo and passenger trains but they’re gone now. It’s difficult to add rail through populated areas. And some population centers are big enough that going around them is not feasible. Like you could go around Portland Oregon to add new west coast routes without much high profile eminent domain, but can you still do the same in New England?

dylan604 1y ago
You can't do that through Texas which is why the plan for a high speed rail making the triangle between DFW, Houston, Austin/San Antonio never succeeds. There's so much wide open space in Texas, but it's privately owned so eminent domain is a huge issue.
- hinkley 1y ago
  Even in the Midwest you see little doglegs in county and state highways where it’s obvious one farmer would not part with a 40 ft slice of land at the edge of his property so the road has to swing into his neighbors and then back.
  - chrisco255 1y ago
    That's not how eminent domain works. The government can always take land for public use provided just compensation. Now, was the farmer some influential person who could convince the city or state to route around? Probably. It's never the case that the government couldn't do it if they wanted to though.
- const_cast 1y ago
  When we built the interstates in the 50s and 60s nobody really gave a flying fuck about that. We destroyed a lot of towns and eminent domain'd a lot of property. Naturally the regulatory and political landscape of now is quite different, and in a lot of ways for the better. But it is unfortunate that we've more or less forgotten how to do things.
  - dylan604 1y ago
    In the 50s and 60s, the population was smaller. Towns/cities were smaller and not as developed as now. It would have be so much easier to build that infrastructure than it would be today. As it is now, to add rail cities are having to lose some streets to replace with rail or have some mixed use rail/car type of use. It makes no sense to compare today to the 50s/60s
    - hinkley 1y ago
      We also just plowed through black and Hispanic neighborhoods and we are less cavalier about such things now.
      - chrisco255 1y ago
        We plowed through anything in the way, as is necessary to build roads, including vast amounts of white neighborhoods and farmland. But nonetheless, the idea of a black or hispanic or white neighborhood is increasingly antiquated.
- chrisco255 1y ago
  Eminent domain for public transport is a nonissue. State and Federal government does it all the time for new roads or road widening. Plus Texas has extremely wide state-owned corridors that have plenty of width to implement a rail line. There is a private company trying to make this happen in Texas, which it may be able to pull off.

dylan604 1y ago

You can't do that through Texas which is why the plan for a high speed rail making the triangle between DFW, Houston, Austin/San Antonio never succeeds. There's so much wide open space in Texas, but it's privately owned so eminent domain is a huge issue.

hinkley 1y ago
Even in the Midwest you see little doglegs in county and state highways where it’s obvious one farmer would not part with a 40 ft slice of land at the edge of his property so the road has to swing into his neighbors and then back.
- chrisco255 1y ago
  That's not how eminent domain works. The government can always take land for public use provided just compensation. Now, was the farmer some influential person who could convince the city or state to route around? Probably. It's never the case that the government couldn't do it if they wanted to though.
const_cast 1y ago
When we built the interstates in the 50s and 60s nobody really gave a flying fuck about that. We destroyed a lot of towns and eminent domain'd a lot of property. Naturally the regulatory and political landscape of now is quite different, and in a lot of ways for the better. But it is unfortunate that we've more or less forgotten how to do things.
- dylan604 1y ago
  In the 50s and 60s, the population was smaller. Towns/cities were smaller and not as developed as now. It would have be so much easier to build that infrastructure than it would be today. As it is now, to add rail cities are having to lose some streets to replace with rail or have some mixed use rail/car type of use. It makes no sense to compare today to the 50s/60s
  - hinkley 1y ago
    We also just plowed through black and Hispanic neighborhoods and we are less cavalier about such things now.
    - chrisco255 1y ago
      We plowed through anything in the way, as is necessary to build roads, including vast amounts of white neighborhoods and farmland. But nonetheless, the idea of a black or hispanic or white neighborhood is increasingly antiquated.
chrisco255 1y ago
Eminent domain for public transport is a nonissue. State and Federal government does it all the time for new roads or road widening. Plus Texas has extremely wide state-owned corridors that have plenty of width to implement a rail line. There is a private company trying to make this happen in Texas, which it may be able to pull off.