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> USA's lacking rail commutes come down to the fact that America's leaders made the deliberate decision to destroy its own rail network and force people onto pl

by bluGill 1mo ago

> USA's lacking rail commutes come down to the fact that America's leaders made the deliberate decision to destroy its own rail network and force people onto planes This is utterly 100% false! The US made the decision to focus rail roads on freight. You never think about freight because you never use it for anything personal, but it is still there. The US beats any place in Europe for Freight and few countries even come close to US for freight rail. There was a decision made to get rid of passenger rail. However most of those destroyed routes are routes that nobody sane would put passenger rail on today even in high rail mode share countries. There are only a small number of routes should return - for most of the lost routes a bus is better. That isn't to say passenger rail is bad. However the routes we had were bad.

kmeisthax 1mo ago
No, the freights are NOT OK. US freight railways are responsible for the "precision scheduled railroading" brainworm that makes freight genuinely worse for anything that can be carried by truck and isn't good for anyone: 1. Freight customers spend longer waiting for their deliveries, and pay more money for them. As a result, a lot of mid-size freight customers have moved to trucking instead, and the market has shrunk. 2. To save money as less-valuable cargo is pruned from their networks, freight railroads have been downgrading their infrastructure from double- to single-track with sidings. This would be acceptable, except... 3. Freight trains have gotten longer and longer in order to reduce the crew needed to attend to a given amount of freight. Sidings on single-track routes are rarely long enough to accommodate mainline freight trains, so passenger rail gets delayed, and grade crossings stay closed for way longer. That last bit is actually why I personally complain about freight railroads. I am someone who has spent a good chunk of his 2026 lobbying Utah's state representatives to adopt the Rio Grande Plan[0]. You see, Salt Lake City is divided in thirds by UP freight mainlines, which get hourly freight through-traffic that paralyzes car and pedestrian traffic across the various sides of the city. The railroads themselves don't inconvenience passenger train traffic[1], but they absolutely make it miserable to walk, bike, or drive across the city, and we can't run any transit services parallel to the railroad for obvious reasons. Everything that has to cross the tracks reliably has to go over one of two rail-crossing bridges in the entirety of downtown. The reason why you are saying "a bus would be better" is primarily a matter of federal infrastructure spending. Buses get to ride on the Interstate Highway System for cheap, and government-provided highway infrastructure is significantly better for both freight and passenger traffic than the privately run railroads can offer. But at the same time, buses are a demonstrably worse answer to the question of "how do we get a bunch of people from one city to another" than trains or planes. Personally, if money was no object, I'd call for the government to run intercity rail corridors along highway rights of way with open interconnection, overhead catenary, passing tracks, and passenger-priority dispatching. These would specifically be open to both passenger and freight rail, specifically because both are suffering under the weight of hedge funds that moonlight as Class I freight railways. [0] The Rio Grande Plan is a citizen-led initiative that calls for building a train box in downtown Salt Lake City along 500 West and burying all heavy rail freight and passenger traffic inside of it. [1] ...because we built our own railroad parallel to the UP mainline. Amtrak's California Zephyr service is absolutely inconvenienced by Union Pacific, though - in fact, it's the worst delayed route in the entire network!
- bluGill 1mo ago
  Best in the world is fully compatible with sick in several ways such as you named. They really should improve. However the results of what they have done are still really good... A bus is better because you still need roads for last mile freight, trades and other things that can't run on transit. May as well also run a bus when those roads are not congested anyway.
sien 1mo ago
Freight modal share by country is interesting. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_rail_usage#Freight_modal_share_for_rail https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_rail_usag... Latvia, Rusia, Estonia and Switzerland have a higher modal share of freight than the US. But the US is higher than the countries many people think about when they think about Europe in Germany, Italy, France, the UK and others. Which is really significant. US freight rail is also super efficient and cost competitive. US freight rail is definitely unappreciated.

by bluGill 1mo ago

kmeisthax 1mo ago

No, the freights are NOT OK. US freight railways are responsible for the "precision scheduled railroading" brainworm that makes freight genuinely worse for anything that can be carried by truck and isn't good for anyone: 1. Freight customers spend longer waiting for their deliveries, and pay more money for them. As a result, a lot of mid-size freight customers have moved to trucking instead, and the market has shrunk. 2. To save money as less-valuable cargo is pruned from their networks, freight railroads have been downgrading their infrastructure from double- to single-track with sidings. This would be acceptable, except... 3. Freight trains have gotten longer and longer in order to reduce the crew needed to attend to a given amount of freight. Sidings on single-track routes are rarely long enough to accommodate mainline freight trains, so passenger rail gets delayed, and grade crossings stay closed for way longer. That last bit is actually why I personally complain about freight railroads. I am someone who has spent a good chunk of his 2026 lobbying Utah's state representatives to adopt the Rio Grande Plan[0]. You see, Salt Lake City is divided in thirds by UP freight mainlines, which get hourly freight through-traffic that paralyzes car and pedestrian traffic across the various sides of the city. The railroads themselves don't inconvenience passenger train traffic[1], but they absolutely make it miserable to walk, bike, or drive across the city, and we can't run any transit services parallel to the railroad for obvious reasons. Everything that has to cross the tracks reliably has to go over one of two rail-crossing bridges in the entirety of downtown. The reason why you are saying "a bus would be better" is primarily a matter of federal infrastructure spending. Buses get to ride on the Interstate Highway System for cheap, and government-provided highway infrastructure is significantly better for both freight and passenger traffic than the privately run railroads can offer. But at the same time, buses are a demonstrably worse answer to the question of "how do we get a bunch of people from one city to another" than trains or planes. Personally, if money was no object, I'd call for the government to run intercity rail corridors along highway rights of way with open interconnection, overhead catenary, passing tracks, and passenger-priority dispatching. These would specifically be open to both passenger and freight rail, specifically because both are suffering under the weight of hedge funds that moonlight as Class I freight railways. [0] The Rio Grande Plan is a citizen-led initiative that calls for building a train box in downtown Salt Lake City along 500 West and burying all heavy rail freight and passenger traffic inside of it. [1] ...because we built our own railroad parallel to the UP mainline. Amtrak's California Zephyr service is absolutely inconvenienced by Union Pacific, though - in fact, it's the worst delayed route in the entire network!

bluGill 1mo ago
Best in the world is fully compatible with sick in several ways such as you named. They really should improve. However the results of what they have done are still really good... A bus is better because you still need roads for last mile freight, trades and other things that can't run on transit. May as well also run a bus when those roads are not congested anyway.

sien 1mo ago

Freight modal share by country is interesting. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_rail_usage#Freight_modal_share_for_rail https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_rail_usag... Latvia, Rusia, Estonia and Switzerland have a higher modal share of freight than the US. But the US is higher than the countries many people think about when they think about Europe in Germany, Italy, France, the UK and others. Which is really significant. US freight rail is also super efficient and cost competitive. US freight rail is definitely unappreciated.