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Surprised rail is given a B- when you would think compared America's rail network against China, Europe, Japan etc. its more like a D or lower. Amtrak is good i
by ctkhn 1y ago
Surprised rail is given a B- when you would think compared America's rail network against China, Europe, Japan etc. its more like a D or lower. Amtrak is good in some regions but decades behind other similarly wealthy countries and even plenty or countries with much lower GDP per capita.
- AlgorithmicTime 1y ago[dead]
- SoftTalker 1y agoRail in America is dominated by freight, and they do a pretty good job.
- p_l 1y agoPart of what causes problems is that the freight rail is run in a way that does not allow any other use, including even other freight if something goes wrong (like regularly running trains longer than longest siding)
- hibikir 1y agoAmerica's rail faces significant challenges those other countries don't. An equivalent rail track in the US is vastly more expensive, new right-of-ways are much, much harder to acquire, especially near cities, and even when you do connect two metros that are in the happy medium where high speed rail can typically beat car and plane, you still find yourself that your terminals are low density sprawl, so the car will be more attractive in distances where in, say, Spain, it's just not. Some connection pairs are probably still worth doing anyway, but we won't get the multi million trips a year of a really successful line in many cases. So it's all a much harder sell
- 9cb14c1ec0 1y agoThe new right of way problem is hard to overstate. After all, literally no one wants the government taking their land, and there's usually a court judge willing to hear the case.
- VWWHFSfQ 1y agoFreight rail in USA is massively better than anywhere else in the world.
- Phenomenit 1y agoDon’t they have daily de-railings? I remember some YouTube video talking about derailings with hazardous materials.
- VWWHFSfQ 1y agoI don't know. We're talking about 10,000 trains operating over 150,000 miles of track. A few de-railings per day in train yards is probably within an acceptable error rate. But, I don't know.
- achierius 1y agoMost of those are minor incidents in rail-yards, the equivalent of bumping someone's car in the parking lot. From what I know the equivalent stat for the EU is one per two days, so better but still in the same ballpark.
- engineer_22 1y agoUSA has the largest freight rail network in the world