$8.2 Billion from the President’s Investing in America Agenda to Deliver Transformative Passenger Rail in America President Biden’s Investing in America Agenda – a key pillar of Bidenomics – is delivering world class-infrastructure across the country, expanding access to economic opportunity, and creating good-paying jobs. By delivering $66 billion from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law –…
Not just that, we also need to take back the physical rails from private freight companies.
We gave them to them because they said they’d maintain them, but they don’t because the insurance premiums are cheaper, and after major wrecks the taxpayers still have to pay to fix the worst sections to prevent a crash.
That’s why passenger rail is virtually non existent here.
Since freight owns the rails, they get priority. So a passenger train might have to pull over and wait a couple hours for a freight train going 5 mph to get past them.
If we don’t fix that, there’s no point in doing anything else
One rather comedic and unfortunate problem—rail tracks are designed to somewhat circumvent this problem by occasionally splitting into two parallel tracks. The slower train goes onto one track and then the faster train goes onto the other track to pass it.
Now, the biggest issue is that freight companies have realised it’s more profitable to run obscenely long trains rather than running more trains. As a result, the freight train is often longer than the entire section of parallel track, rendering it useless.
Yeah that sale never felt right at all, especially with the campaign having common administrators as the mayor’s own campaign and he got lots of TV ad time out of the push to pass the sale
I know that you mean “pull over” as in, onto another track, but I can’t stop picturing the conductor cranking a steering wheel to derail the train and huffing and puffing on the side of the railway while slow traffic passes him.
Not just that, we also need to take back the physical rails from private freight companies.
We gave them to them because they said they’d maintain them, but they don’t because the insurance premiums are cheaper, and after major wrecks the taxpayers still have to pay to fix the worst sections to prevent a crash.
That’s why passenger rail is virtually non existent here.
Since freight owns the rails, they get priority. So a passenger train might have to pull over and wait a couple hours for a freight train going 5 mph to get past them.
If we don’t fix that, there’s no point in doing anything else
One rather comedic and unfortunate problem—rail tracks are designed to somewhat circumvent this problem by occasionally splitting into two parallel tracks. The slower train goes onto one track and then the faster train goes onto the other track to pass it.
Now, the biggest issue is that freight companies have realised it’s more profitable to run obscenely long trains rather than running more trains. As a result, the freight train is often longer than the entire section of parallel track, rendering it useless.
Ugh, Cincinnati just voted to sell the last municipality owned rail line to Norfolk Southern. I agree with you completely.
Well, at least they didn’t sell it to a company who just had a crash spilling dangerous chemical is their state…
/s
Fuuuuuuuck. I voted against that but I didn’t have high hopes.
Yeah that sale never felt right at all, especially with the campaign having common administrators as the mayor’s own campaign and he got lots of TV ad time out of the push to pass the sale
Freight, by law doesn’t actually get priority, but that law is basically never enforced which amounts to the same thing.
sounds like the perfect use of eminent domain.
I know that you mean “pull over” as in, onto another track, but I can’t stop picturing the conductor cranking a steering wheel to derail the train and huffing and puffing on the side of the railway while slow traffic passes him.