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These articles are a good reminder of a bittersweet truth: the US has an incredibly advanced and dense rail network, paid for with federal land grants[1]; we ju

These articles are a good reminder of a bittersweet truth: the US has an incredibly advanced and dense rail network, paid for with federal land grants[1]; we just choose not to use it to benefit travelers. That isn't to say that we need a system that's as good as most European countries have; having these railroad companies follow the laws around Amtrak's priority would be a good start[2]. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Railroad_land_grants_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Railroad_land_grants_in_the_Un... [2]: https://www.amtrak.com/content/dam/projects/dotcom/english/public/documents/corporate/HostRailroadReports/mythbusters-enforcing-amtraks-legal-right-to-preference.pdf https://www.amtrak.com/content/dam/projects/dotcom/english/p...

nocoiner 1y ago
It was also paid for by ripping the face of 19th century bondholders who went bust many, many times.
jcranmer 1y ago
> the US has an incredibly advanced and dense rail network, paid for with federal land grants Note that only a small portion of the US rail network was built with land grants, about 18k miles out of ~250k miles in the peak of the US rail network. Also, most of the land-grant railroads are in the Western states, which is actually generally the least-dense portion of the rail network (in large part because the population density of that area is quite low--which is a large part of the reason for the land grants in the first place!).
- woodruffw 1y ago
  That's true, but I'd argue that the land grants are what made it economically worthwhile to develop and maintain the denser parts of the network. You correctly observe that the network itself tracks with population density, but the value of the network is in its completeness: it wouldn't be nearly as valuable if there was a 1000 mile hole in it in the middle of the country.
  - jcranmer 1y ago
    I strongly disagree with that argument. The main dichotomy in political geography you have in the US is the opposite sides of the Mississippi River. You do have a transitional zone in Illinois (which nowadays as migrated to Chicago), but to a coarse approximation, even the rail magnates of the Gilded Age are unable to build systems that truly cross the transitional zone. In the West, the big prize is connecting the ports on the West Coast with ultimately Chicago, with lesser prizes for feeder lines to bring the products to Chicago. One of the big purposes of the land grants, after all, is to encourage settlement of agricultural lands in the area. But in the East, the prizes are connecting to the Northeast ports (or Chicago, or to a lesser degree, the other major cities in the Mississippi River). And most of these lines aren't affected by the existence of the Western US. The commercial center, say, an Ohioan is looking towards isn't San Francisco, it's New York City. Rip out the land grant system, and you wouldn't reduce the viability of all of the lines being added in Ohio; although the lines people are working in, say, Indian Territory, will suffer mightily. But the latter are already in the not-dense portion of the network, whereas the former are in the dense part of the network. It's really not until the mid-20th century that the Pacific Coast takes on the commercial significance that it has nowadays, by which time the railroad trackage of the US is beginning to decline as consolidation takes place.
    - woodruffw 1y ago
      > Rip out the land grant system, and you wouldn't reduce the viability of all of the lines being added in Ohio; although the lines people are working in, say, Indian Territory, will suffer mightily. But the latter are already in the not-dense portion of the network, whereas the former are in the dense part of the network. I wasn't just thinking of the far West; I mean also the Southwest. To take an example: I don't think the centralization of meatpacking in the Midwest would have happened to nearly the same degree without land grant-subsidized railroads through Texas, New Mexico, etc. Same for the Gulf Coast with refineries. But also, I think you're understating the "why" of Chicago being the "big prize" for the West. It's because it opened up California's bread basket to the rest of the country, including the East Coast and European markets represented on the East Coast. The US didn't carry beef, corn, and wheat across the country just to dump it in Lake Michigan; it got carried to Chicago so that it could be sold to points beyond. Period fiction played on this: Frank Norris never finished The Epic of the Wheat[1], but it was supposed to end in Europe's wheat markets, having started in the San Joaquin valley in the first book. Already in that book, from 1902, is the European market well established: > “The result is over-production. We supply more than Europe can eat, and down go the prices. The remedy is NOT in the curtailing of our wheat areas, but in this, we MUST HAVE NEW MARKETS, GREATER MARKETS. For years we have been sending our wheat from East to West, from California to Europe. But the time will come when we must send it from West to East." (Norris confusingly says "East to West" as in "Western Europe.") [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Epic_of_the_Wheat https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Epic_of_the_Wheat
bluGill 1y ago
Europes rail network is far worse - but it appears better because you see passanger traffic and don't think what else. That and europe mostly can't see beyond national borders (there is a language barrier with most) and so they fail to create good eu wide rail of any sort.
- Aloha 1y ago
  Notably most of the BN part of BNSF was not built with land grants.
- woodruffw 1y ago
  I meant specifically from the perspective of passenger rail, yes. I don't doubt that the US has significantly better freight rail. (I've crossed borders several times on European trains, and it was never a problem. By contrast, crossing the US-Canada border by train is an exercise in boredom and frustration.)
- cycomanic 1y ago
  Far worse in what sense? More tracks, sure the US rail network is about 1.5 times the size of the European network for the same landmass. But then, I don't think quality wise I don't think you'd encounter a track like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9X2A2f6E5DI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9X2A2f6E5DI anywhere in Europe. Or the comparison of high speed tracks 9600km in Europe vs 70 km in the US. The reason for this is obviously the completely different priorities US is freight, Europe is passenger. So I don't think you can really compare the two networks and say one is clearly better.
  - dylan604 1y ago
    > track like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9X2A2f6E5DI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9X2A2f6E5DI I can't believe that the train can actually travel down that track. If I had just come upon that track, there's no way I would have ever thought that it was still an operational track. I'm sure the engineers navigating that track have a lot of colorful opinions about it as well
KennyBlanken 1y ago
Incredibly advanced? Bullshit. Among the G8 we probably have the least-electrified, slowest rail network with the worst Positive Train Control. Probably the most dangerous, too, given how disastrous Precision Railroad Scheduling has been for safety. We also likely have the highest crash and derailment rates. This is a sad joke: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Positive_train_control#Deployment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Positive_train_control#Deploym... ASES, ACSES, ETMS, CBTM, CBOSS, E-ATC, ITCS, and whatever Union Pacific is using. That's over half a dozen different systems and none of them are inherently compatible with each other - specialized systems are required to tie the systems together on railways that might have trains with different systems. I'm guessing no other country in the G8 has issues with freight train movement such that trains routinely bisect towns and entire counties for hours or more and force police, fire, and medical services to reroute, as well as require children to crawl underneath the trains (which could start moving without warning) to get to/from school. Why? Because the feds are not regulating train lengths nor mandating that trains cannot block road intersections for more than a certain amount of time, so the railways do whatever they please. I'm guessing no other G8 country has problems with the government (federal, state, or local) having no idea what hazardous materials are being shipped and where...no way to look it up, not noticed by the railroad, nothing.
- jazzyjackson 1y ago
  I grew up in a town of 20k that freight trains would park in the middle of. No one crawled under the train to get to school, you were just late.
dehrmann 1y ago
> we just choose not to use it to benefit travelers The Northeast Corridor is the only viable rail corridor in the US. It could be better, but we absolutely use it. Comparing the US to Europe is a mistake because cities aren't dense enough and are too far apart for European style rail to work.
- spauldo 1y ago
  There's also the fact that American towns aren't dense and are poorly walkable. I'd love to be able to catch a train to the next town over, but once I get there I'd have to walk at least a mile or two to get where I want to go. Not that big a deal for me if the weather was nice and I wasn't in a hurry, but I couldn't rely on that for commuting and I couldn't do it at all if I had a disability. In cities big enough for a bus service it'd be all right, but you don't usually see that until you get 100k or so people.

nocoiner 1y ago

It was also paid for by ripping the face of 19th century bondholders who went bust many, many times.

jcranmer 1y ago

> the US has an incredibly advanced and dense rail network, paid for with federal land grants Note that only a small portion of the US rail network was built with land grants, about 18k miles out of ~250k miles in the peak of the US rail network. Also, most of the land-grant railroads are in the Western states, which is actually generally the least-dense portion of the rail network (in large part because the population density of that area is quite low--which is a large part of the reason for the land grants in the first place!).

woodruffw 1y ago
That's true, but I'd argue that the land grants are what made it economically worthwhile to develop and maintain the denser parts of the network. You correctly observe that the network itself tracks with population density, but the value of the network is in its completeness: it wouldn't be nearly as valuable if there was a 1000 mile hole in it in the middle of the country.
- jcranmer 1y ago
  I strongly disagree with that argument. The main dichotomy in political geography you have in the US is the opposite sides of the Mississippi River. You do have a transitional zone in Illinois (which nowadays as migrated to Chicago), but to a coarse approximation, even the rail magnates of the Gilded Age are unable to build systems that truly cross the transitional zone. In the West, the big prize is connecting the ports on the West Coast with ultimately Chicago, with lesser prizes for feeder lines to bring the products to Chicago. One of the big purposes of the land grants, after all, is to encourage settlement of agricultural lands in the area. But in the East, the prizes are connecting to the Northeast ports (or Chicago, or to a lesser degree, the other major cities in the Mississippi River). And most of these lines aren't affected by the existence of the Western US. The commercial center, say, an Ohioan is looking towards isn't San Francisco, it's New York City. Rip out the land grant system, and you wouldn't reduce the viability of all of the lines being added in Ohio; although the lines people are working in, say, Indian Territory, will suffer mightily. But the latter are already in the not-dense portion of the network, whereas the former are in the dense part of the network. It's really not until the mid-20th century that the Pacific Coast takes on the commercial significance that it has nowadays, by which time the railroad trackage of the US is beginning to decline as consolidation takes place.
  - woodruffw 1y ago
    > Rip out the land grant system, and you wouldn't reduce the viability of all of the lines being added in Ohio; although the lines people are working in, say, Indian Territory, will suffer mightily. But the latter are already in the not-dense portion of the network, whereas the former are in the dense part of the network. I wasn't just thinking of the far West; I mean also the Southwest. To take an example: I don't think the centralization of meatpacking in the Midwest would have happened to nearly the same degree without land grant-subsidized railroads through Texas, New Mexico, etc. Same for the Gulf Coast with refineries. But also, I think you're understating the "why" of Chicago being the "big prize" for the West. It's because it opened up California's bread basket to the rest of the country, including the East Coast and European markets represented on the East Coast. The US didn't carry beef, corn, and wheat across the country just to dump it in Lake Michigan; it got carried to Chicago so that it could be sold to points beyond. Period fiction played on this: Frank Norris never finished The Epic of the Wheat[1], but it was supposed to end in Europe's wheat markets, having started in the San Joaquin valley in the first book. Already in that book, from 1902, is the European market well established: > “The result is over-production. We supply more than Europe can eat, and down go the prices. The remedy is NOT in the curtailing of our wheat areas, but in this, we MUST HAVE NEW MARKETS, GREATER MARKETS. For years we have been sending our wheat from East to West, from California to Europe. But the time will come when we must send it from West to East." (Norris confusingly says "East to West" as in "Western Europe.") [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Epic_of_the_Wheat https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Epic_of_the_Wheat

bluGill 1y ago

Europes rail network is far worse - but it appears better because you see passanger traffic and don't think what else. That and europe mostly can't see beyond national borders (there is a language barrier with most) and so they fail to create good eu wide rail of any sort.

Aloha 1y ago
Notably most of the BN part of BNSF was not built with land grants.
woodruffw 1y ago
I meant specifically from the perspective of passenger rail, yes. I don't doubt that the US has significantly better freight rail. (I've crossed borders several times on European trains, and it was never a problem. By contrast, crossing the US-Canada border by train is an exercise in boredom and frustration.)
cycomanic 1y ago
Far worse in what sense? More tracks, sure the US rail network is about 1.5 times the size of the European network for the same landmass. But then, I don't think quality wise I don't think you'd encounter a track like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9X2A2f6E5DI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9X2A2f6E5DI anywhere in Europe. Or the comparison of high speed tracks 9600km in Europe vs 70 km in the US. The reason for this is obviously the completely different priorities US is freight, Europe is passenger. So I don't think you can really compare the two networks and say one is clearly better.
- dylan604 1y ago
  > track like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9X2A2f6E5DI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9X2A2f6E5DI I can't believe that the train can actually travel down that track. If I had just come upon that track, there's no way I would have ever thought that it was still an operational track. I'm sure the engineers navigating that track have a lot of colorful opinions about it as well

KennyBlanken 1y ago

Incredibly advanced? Bullshit. Among the G8 we probably have the least-electrified, slowest rail network with the worst Positive Train Control. Probably the most dangerous, too, given how disastrous Precision Railroad Scheduling has been for safety. We also likely have the highest crash and derailment rates. This is a sad joke: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Positive_train_control#Deployment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Positive_train_control#Deploym... ASES, ACSES, ETMS, CBTM, CBOSS, E-ATC, ITCS, and whatever Union Pacific is using. That's over half a dozen different systems and none of them are inherently compatible with each other - specialized systems are required to tie the systems together on railways that might have trains with different systems. I'm guessing no other country in the G8 has issues with freight train movement such that trains routinely bisect towns and entire counties for hours or more and force police, fire, and medical services to reroute, as well as require children to crawl underneath the trains (which could start moving without warning) to get to/from school. Why? Because the feds are not regulating train lengths nor mandating that trains cannot block road intersections for more than a certain amount of time, so the railways do whatever they please. I'm guessing no other G8 country has problems with the government (federal, state, or local) having no idea what hazardous materials are being shipped and where...no way to look it up, not noticed by the railroad, nothing.

jazzyjackson 1y ago
I grew up in a town of 20k that freight trains would park in the middle of. No one crawled under the train to get to school, you were just late.

dehrmann 1y ago

> we just choose not to use it to benefit travelers The Northeast Corridor is the only viable rail corridor in the US. It could be better, but we absolutely use it. Comparing the US to Europe is a mistake because cities aren't dense enough and are too far apart for European style rail to work.

spauldo 1y ago
There's also the fact that American towns aren't dense and are poorly walkable. I'd love to be able to catch a train to the next town over, but once I get there I'd have to walk at least a mile or two to get where I want to go. Not that big a deal for me if the weather was nice and I wasn't in a hurry, but I couldn't rely on that for commuting and I couldn't do it at all if I had a disability. In cities big enough for a bus service it'd be all right, but you don't usually see that until you get 100k or so people.