The real problem here is that freight trains have so much priority in the US, unlike every other major country in the world.
It doesn't matter how many or what kinds of trains we have. This sort of policy will always makes trains an unreliable and therefore impractical mode of transportation.
And this is a major reason for the US leading the world in carbon consumption per capita.
I think another issue is that we move 72% of our freight (by weight) by truck. This causes a ton of wear and tear on roads by comparison to normal cars. It would be much better to send these things by rail, but the US is unwilling to invest in its aging century-old rail infrastructure
It just seems like for the quantity of stuff we move around, we should have more rail. We have massive wide open flat spaces to build rail lines, yet, we don't.
Transport by car or truck accounts for 20% of US carbon emissions, while freight rail is just 0.5%, and the freight rail is moving 28% of all cargo "ton-miles".
Unfortunately not all goods are going to the same places. Nor are all goods moving at the same pace. Freight trains are a great piece of logistics infrastructure, but they can't just be US logistics infrastructure.
The US rail system is very well established and has been well built out since before the rise of the automobile. But goods need to get from the rail depot to the end destination and right now the best we have is enormous 18-wheelers and as long as those are on the road, it's too dangerous for me to want to take a smaller car
Other countries need to use trains for bulk like the US does.
Rail is just a lot more complex to plan for. You still need trucks for last-mile transport, so for the typical short haul it sometimes makes more sense to just drive to the destination directly. Then transporting by train just takes longer which isn't always acceptable. Sometimes you just need things there today/tomorrow.
Interestingly these cuts always affect social things that exist for the benefit of all: healthcare, education, environmental protection, art.
Meanwhile we truck our goods around while trains would be much more efficient. Trucks are only cheap because we subsidise them through the roads they are using. Few people are aware that road wear increases to the fourth (!) power with axle weight. That means cars or bicycles are even ignored in the calculation because they do so little damage, while trucks are responsible for nearly all of it. But they don't pay for nearly all of it – we do.
In the meantime trains have to maintain their own rail system.
American actually has the largest freight rail network in the world. In theory electric trucks would pair great with our freight rail network though. Still need to get from rail to stores and homes
I still think you are presenting a false choice. It isn't necessary for the US to put goods on trucks in order for us to put people on trains. Nobody today drives their cars from the coal field in Gillette, Wyoming to the electric power plant in Montrose, Missouri. Adding trains for people will not somehow make the coal-hauling railroads of America more congested or less effective.
That's a nice little take to hide the fact we can't build or run anything as competently as we used to do. Our trains aren't the fastest, or haul the most commuters, or the most extensive, or the safest, but we sure do haul some tonnage of coal. FYI 70% of goods, ie cargo, in the US are transported by trucks. Our trains suck in the US and need massive investments to become more relevant.
The US have a well-developed and really busy network of freight trains. Trains already carry a lot of stuff that's economical to carry by train, especially bulk goods.
It's a nice idea but keep in mind that any freight which gets displaced from rail thanks to passenger cars would have to go by truck instead, probably with a massive increase in net emissions. Having passengers and freight share track in the US is probably not a win for the environment; passengers would need separate track instead.
Freight currently makes better use of US rail infrastructure than passengers do, because freight is less time-sensitive than passengers and the geography of the US makes that a problem for rail. It does not make sense to penalize the most efficient user of a resource to benefit one of its least efficient users.
Your not wrong, but we sort of did. Road infrastructure gets the funding. We need to nationalize our train infrastructure. And change our zoning laws to prioritize rail freight instead of trucks.
The amount of land saved from this alone would be huge. Trains are also just way more energy efficient
It already exists for freight. We have a large train network that is extremely efficient. Decreasing carrying capacity while vastly increasing energy costs isn't worth it just for a gain in speed.
By Ton-Miles the US leads the world in freight hauled. But for a variety of reasons, railroads are more interested in extracting profits from existing large customers than they are in increasing mode share. A couple of reasons for this, railroads are natural monopolies with industrial facilities needing to be connected to a single rail line. The railroad companies are much more interested in hauling large bulk from single sources that are time insensitive than a heterogeneous mix of freight that needs to be switched and is competitive on timing with trucks.
This results in RR policies like precision scheduled rail (PSR), that tries to precisely utilize rail and crews to shuttle long trains across territory. PSR is only oriented to reduce RR costs. If a PSR train is late, every other train is delayed. PSR has also come alongside regularly running trains that are much longer than sidings, which makes it impossible for other trains to pass.
Everyone responds to incentives, and there are a couple of regulatory changes that could fix this.
1. Some level of regulation that penalizes RRs for delayed trains. PSR results in lower operating costs but the externality of delays isn't properly paid for by the RRs.
2. Increased technology investment like signalling improvements, positive train control and automatic couplers.
3. Some level of regulation of freight interchange along with timing and price regulations. You can send freight from an RR in Kansas to Louisianna, but you would have to go through two or more controlling RRs that would rather go point to point on their own network. I don't know what this regulation would look like.
4. Land value tax for tracks. Railroads are disincentivized from improving tracks, particularly with electrification. LVT would be hard to pass generally, but it makes a lot of sense to tax railroads less for electric tracks. Electrified tracks allow faster acceleration and electric locomotives are much more reliable than diesel locomotives.
The railroads in the US make immense profits (BNSF makes $6B in profits a year). There are severe regulatory capture problems that prevent these advancements.
I have read the Switzerland in particular has excellent freight rail that is speedy and used for smaller loads. I don't know their operating techniques that allow this.
> The US overuses highways for long haul trucking because trucks pay a lower percentage of infrastructure and externalities costs than trains do.
Source? The US has a massive freight train industry. We have more railroad than any other country - and almost double second place (China). I guess "overuses" is subjective, but we use commercial freight way more than anyone else.
It doesn't matter how many or what kinds of trains we have. This sort of policy will always makes trains an unreliable and therefore impractical mode of transportation.
And this is a major reason for the US leading the world in carbon consumption per capita.
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