Glad my homestate is making decent strides towards building new things. We just had a nuclear reactor come online, a rivian EV truck factory is here, and now this. We do a bunch of naughty things but I can be proud of these at least.
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.
But things like "okay now wait on this random section of tracks for 3 hours because of a pass and traffic down stream" are routine on freight lines, but obviously not desirable for passenger rail.
They are routine on American freight lines, where there are a lot of single track lines and political issues between the freight companies and passenger trains.
It isn't a common issue in Russia or China (similar rail freight use to the USA). Double tracks means no waiting for opposing trains, and it's then straightforward to fit passenger trains, which stop at stations but go faster, between constant speed freight trains.
It does mean twice as much track must be maintained to a higher standard than freight-only track.
You have that backwards. Low occupancy vehicle travel is the most wasteful form of personal transit.
Rail passengers displaced by freight become low occupancy vehicle trips.
In my state, a commuter rail coach car has about 180 seats. Let's be cautious and assume 50% occupancy.
That's 90 people, and based off the US passenger car fleet averaging 25mpg, they collectively would have used 3.6 gallons of gas per mile.
An eighteen wheeler gets 5-10 miles per gallon.
Even assuming just 5mpg, the passengers in that one coach car would have used eighteen times more fuel than the truck hauling a container would.
Furthermore: freight and passenger use of rail are not mutually exclusive uses. Freight is in theory far less sensitive to scheduling, and like a lot of trucked freight, can happen during times passenger use is low. But because industry has squeezed their supply chains to the hair of breaking under "just in time delivery" to minimize warehouse space and the like...which bit us pretty severely in the pandemic...freight companies are optimizing for shareholder profits and own the tracks. So they prioritize their freight over passengers. Result? Passenger service is riddled with service issues, leading to less passenger use, which is fine as far as the freight companies are concerned, because they can move more freight.
The core problem is that critical infrastructure is being run privately by for-profit publicly traded companies.
>How much do our freeways cost us? esp with externalities?
Rail also has cost, including externalities. For example, as a wise person on the Internet once said, "Trains take you from a place you don't live to a place you're not going to." The "last-mile problem" is a non-trivial factor to building train networks which by definition is not solvable by more rail.
You're considering a cost analysis. A more complete analysis is the benefit-cost analysis (BCA). If the benefits outweigh the costs, the project is a net positive for society. Asking only how much our freeways cost us avoids consideration of the known benefits. Here's a BCA from 2021 which investigates a highway project, so you can see exactly how much freeways benefit and cost us: https://www.mdot.maryland.gov/OPCP/I-81BCA_Report.pdf
>It doesn't have to.
That's a nice sentiment, but sometimes the energy required to reform is higher than expected losses. The entire Amtrak network is kept afloat because of a handful of lines in New England between DC, New York, and Boston. Amtrak basically runs a loss everywhere else.
> The "last-mile problem" is a non-trivial factor to building train networks which by definition is not solvable by more rail.
The trivial answer is to build out last-mile services: trams, buses, actually usable bike lanes, and something that could perfectly well work in US suburbia hell (wide, but barely frequented streets): automated "people movers".
You say last-mile services are trivial, but they absolutely are not trivial in the slightest, and assuming they are demonstrates a fundamental lack of understanding of how change gets made in a democratic, even republican, manner.
Changing the primary transportation mode of a population requires a cultural shift to adopt the new mode. The population must be willing to forgo what they already have in favor of something new. You are saying that automated "people movers" (which is an emotional sketch rather than an defined policy item) will work well in car-ubiquitous US suburbia, but these folks live in suburbia specifically because of low population density and general quality-of-life. They explicitly enjoy being around people they know and not being around people they don't know. Any solution you're proposing must respect their existing values while providing an alternative option.
Your examples of last-mile services aren't really last-mile services, save for the final one:
>trams
Since it seems infeasible to allow anyone to board a tram at any point on its journey, tram stops will be necessary. Perhaps you now face a last-quarter-mile problem, which is better but still may not be good enough for that specific population. Track maintenance may be significantly lessened by using a "trackless tram", but such would have severe challenges in a snowy climate. Trams only work in dense urban environments.
>buses
Buses have been used in cities for many decades, so our understanding of them is that they work generally well. Buses are common in suburban environments with many low-income residents. The benefit of buses is their limited amount of supporting infrastructure and route adaptability. However, similar to the tram situation, a bus still does not get you directly to your home.
>actually usable bike lanes
Bike lanes in dense urban environments are almost always a net positive. What constitutes an "actually usable" bike lane depends on an individual's risk tolerance. As a last-mile problem, not all people are physically able to bike from a train station, though ebikes do help. Again, weather can impact people being willing to bike, let alone leave the house.
>automated "people movers"
This service is more conceptual, but I imagine you're thinking of a Waymo-style service, where you can summon an autonomous vehicle which will pick you up at home and take you to-and-from the station. The main issues here are availability and reliability. If addressed, you'll likely crack the suburban transportation nut, but such individualized transportation in cities isn't sustainable.
> You say last-mile services are trivial, but they absolutely are not trivial in the slightest, and assuming they are demonstrates a fundamental lack of understanding of how change gets made in a democratic, even republican, manner.
I"m not sure what point you are making here. The UK, Germany, and Japan have very good rail networks and were democratically governed the last time I looked.
> You say last-mile services are trivial, but they absolutely are not trivial in the slightest, and assuming they are demonstrates a fundamental lack of understanding of how change gets made in a democratic, even republican, manner.
We had an entire public transit system that included the "last mile." It was systematically destroyed by the automotive industry.
The reset of the developed world has much better public transit. Terrible public transit isn't quite a uniquely American problem, but it's close.
Do go on about how it's "absolutely not trivial in the slightest", though.
> As a last-mile problem, not all people are physically able to bike from a train station, though ebikes do help
Biking takes less energy and fitness than walking does, even at a faster speed. Before you argue with me, google it, please. Before you start whinging about the elderly: the people old enough to not be able to bike are about 10% or less of the population, and since bike lanes are not the only option, "the elderly can't do it" isn't even a valid counterpoint anyway.
>Do go on about how it's "absolutely not trivial in the slightest", though.
It's not trivial because, as you note, past efforts WERE systematically destroyed by the automotive industry. Getting better public infrastructure is an advocacy problem, and the political environment needs to be supportive of such efforts.
Also, you may be referencing the streetcars systems used by many cities about 100 years ago, which were destroyed by the auto industry in favor of their buses. Now that electric buses exist, I would much rather live in a city with a fleet of electric buses than electric streetcars. Some US cities are even implementing the point-to-point-charging supercapacitor buses, which is even more sustainable.
>Biking takes less energy and fitness than walking does, even at a faster speed.
No argument there. I bike multiple times a week in a large US city, even during rush hour and traffic jams. More people should bike, especially because of the health benefits, and most US cities will benefit from better bike infrastructure. We can look to Amsterdam and other European places for good examples of bike transportation and storage infrastructure.
That said, biking in Amsterdam is very different than biking in much of the US. The Wikipedia article on Amsterdam says the average high over a year ranges between 43F - 72F. What an ideal climate for biking; no wonder so many people there bike. I've biked in traffic in snowstorms in one of the most bike-friendly cities in the US, and I was usually the only person out there. People just don't like to bike in the cold and extreme heat. People just don't like to be out in the cold and extreme heat in general, which is why personal vehicles are so appealing in those places.
> Now that electric buses exist, I would much rather live in a city with a fleet of electric buses than electric streetcars
Nah, this just makes it obvious you never commuted using public transit tbh. Trams feel much more stable, have more room, and their routes are easier to reason about. Trams always end up more desirable than buses, which sway, feel crowded, and rattle due to uneven road surface.
If you make dedicated bus lanes and rewrite the traffic laws so that busses have right of way at all intersections, then busses could replace trams (or streetcars). But without these you allow individuals to block the public transport infrastructure which means there's no advantage to the far more space efficient public transport methods.
> You say last-mile services are trivial, but they absolutely are not trivial in the slightest
I'm German. Europeans in general have tons of experience with running public transport in constrained-budget scenarios. Just ask us if you need help.
> and assuming they are demonstrates a fundamental lack of understanding of how change gets made in a democratic, even republican, manner.
If democracy doesn't implement change on its own, rising prices of gasoline, changing attitudes of Gen X and demographic requirements (SAHMs with nothing to do but drive children around on errands won't be around for much longer given that these women will be part of the working class by necessity) will.
Those still thinking that they can keep on living like they did since the 50s are deluding themselves and their peers. Democracy can't override market forces or nature.
> However, similar to the tram situation, a bus still does not get you directly to your home.
You can make bus stops dense enough to achieve walking distances < 200m. Unlike trams, buses can stop very fast which makes dynamic stops (i.e. the bus only stops when people want to enter/exit) possible and most bus lines already operate that way.
> As a last-mile problem, not all people are physically able to bike from a train station, though ebikes do help.
You're constantly bringing up the "not everyone can use it" point, which is valid on its own but no one, even the most radical Greens, calls for banning people with disabilities from having a car as transportation. The goal is to get the remaining 99% of local/regional individual-transportation traffic to use shared services.
> This service is more conceptual, but I imagine you're thinking of a Waymo-style service, where you can summon an autonomous vehicle which will pick you up at home and take you to-and-from the station. The main issues here are availability and reliability. If addressed, you'll likely crack the suburban transportation nut, but such individualized transportation in cities isn't sustainable.
I rather thought of electric "micro buses", think like the size of a VW T4 van, that autonomously drive in a 5-minute schedule through the suburbs and people just can hop on and off wherever they want. Basically, just as flexible as a car, but usable by everyone. Your idea is also great, but I'd not say that it isn't sustainable in cities - to the contrary, especially cities will be going towards that route. Already, London drastically restricts driving into the city, a number of city cores in Germany are no-car, Barcelona plans to have 60% of it's streets car-free.
>I'm German. Europeans in general have tons of experience with running public transport in constrained-budget scenarios. Just ask us if you need help.
I'm sure some of us will. That said, Europe is only directly comparable to the Northeast in terms of geography, climate, and population density. The US is truly massive, and each part of the country has distinct cultural norms which may or may not support public transit development.
>About 5% of all U.S. workers in 2019 commuted by public transportation.
>Commuters use buses (46.3% of all public transportation commuters, or about 3.6 million people); subway or elevated rail (37.7%), long-distance train or commuter rail (11.8%); light rail, streetcar or trolley (3.1%); and ferryboat (1.0%).
>Roughly 3 million of the nation’s 7.8 million public transportation commuters lived in the New York metro area.
>70% of the nation’s public transportation commuters live in one of the seven largest metropolitan areas.
>The percentage of workers who commuted by public transportation varied by region. The Northeast had the highest share of workers who commuted by transit, at 14.3%, followed by the West (4.4%), the Midwest (3.0%), and the South (2.0%).
>The percentage of U.S. workers commuting by public transportation fell from 12.1% in 1960 to around 5.0% in 2019.
The most surprising statistic to me is that NYC accounts for roughly 40% of public transportation commuters in the country. The rest make general sense.
>The goal is to get the remaining 99% of local/regional individual-transportation traffic to use shared services.
Well, that is YOUR goal. The vast majority of Americans do not live in dense urban environments, so most will not support your goal. That's okay; we have our own mixture of geographic, climate, and population density realities which differ from your own. (Actually, you would be better served talking about measures in different states rather than the US as a whole, because we're built state-first, not federal-first like all European countries save for Switzerland.)
You might find it interesting that, in some parts of US suburbia, individuals and families roam around towns riding electric golf carts instead of cars using separate roadway infrastructure.
As an American who (1) generally supports mass transit and non-personal-car modes of transportation while (2) understanding the globally-unique geographic, climate, population density, and cultural realities of the US, here's how I envision mass transit will look in a few decades across the US:
>Planes: widely used everywhere, airports are linked to urban centers by rail or BRT
>Trains: same cross-country lines exist, Northeast network continues strong, train networks in Florida and on the Pacific Coast expand, lightly used for regular transit in 80% of states
>Light-rail/subway: most major US cities have one, existing networks see varying degrees of expansion, ridership increases handled by more frequent trains
>Trams: used in dense urban cores of major US cities which do not have extensive light-rail/subway network, sees strong ridership, trackless more prevalent than track
>Streetcars: limited use, electric trams or buses more preferred due to track and electrification infrastructure and maintenance costs
>BRT: widely deployed across major urban areas, used to either extend light-rail/subway reach or provide hub-to-destination travel
>Buses: still widely used, expanded service in both urban and suburban areas, direct home-to-station travel facilitated by autonomous microbuses
>Bike infrastructure: widely deployed across all major urban areas and most suburban areas, virtually all old railroads converted to bikeways, some new bikeway construction for commuters, protected bike lanes in all dense urban cores
>Cars: still used each and every day by the majority of Americans, many are electric, some are autonomous
Different model. Planes have much greater network effects. Consider a trip between New York and Dallas. A plane can fly a direct route, and will if there is much demand.
A train system can’t do that… in my example you’ll end up either going South along the coast and then west through New Orleans to San Antonio, and then back north to Dallas, or the same but reach Mew Orleans via Chicago.
Trains work well when there is a large central(ish) city that can act as a hub? Like London, Paris, or Berlin. Not so well in the US where the population is heavily biased towards the outer rim, with a relatively a gaunt desert of nothing in the middle.
Trains are too slow for long distance travel. They are useful for short and medium distance travel, but for such trips travel time to the station becomes more important. If this isn't made convenient people will quickly decide their car is better: it goes when they want to go, and goes directly to where they want to be.
>Airplanes have the exact same problem, but I don't see people saying we should stop investing in airports.
Fair point. We should then see if air travel holds a key advantage over rail travel in the USA. As I see it, the answer is in both space and time savings, both of which minimize cost and maximize benefit. The time savings are particularly pronounced, especially over distances greater than, say, a few hundred miles. Happy to elaborate on the savings in more detail, if you desire such.
>For long distance travel, I don't think it's a huge problem that you might need multiple modes of transit to get all the way from A to B.
That is, of course, your opinion. I'm sure there are tens, if not hundreds, of millions of Americans who will strongly disagree with you because they are, in no particular order: feeble, disabled, terrified of a particular mode of transit, hurried, cost-conscious, traveling with multiple young children, etc.
Amazingly, railroads are not much cheaper. The current costs of tracks are estimated at about $2 million per mile, and this is without taking into account all other necessary rail infrastructure (such as sorting yards, maintenance facilities, etc.).
And CO2 emissions are being fixed by switching from gas cars to EVs.
Two other factors that aren't coming up in this analysis are long term maintenance costs (highways in Ontario are constantly being resurfaced) and land use opportunity costs (it's simply not viable to run six lanes of freeway into most CBDs, and doing it with grade separation leads to raised highway eyesores or insanity like Boston's Big Dig).
In any case, as others have pointed out, we don't have to argue hypotheticals here— China, Japan, France, Germany, etc have all shown that frequent-service electrified passenger rail is perfectly possible and an incredible public good.
> And CO2 emissions are being fixed by switching from gas cars to EVs.
Not reall, rail is 9 times more energy efficient than road vechicles. Thats why its cheaper to have a diesel locomotove move freight than to pour the same diesel into trucks.
The whole reason rail exists is thsa its the most efficient form of tranportation on land.
There are a lot of assumptions in the idea that trains are more efficient than road vehicles. Trains tend to carry more heavy bulk goods like coal, if they had more light things the numbers would change. Trains get a lot of efficiency from running very long trains, but that only works out when you have a lot of things going the same way, if you had smaller trains from each warehouse (which now is done by truck) that would reduce th efficiency.
Yes trains have some efficiency advantages, but in similar service the difference is small. You only get those advantages when you use trains for things that trucks cannot do at all.
The very long trains of mostly goods like coal are not an inevitability, though— it's a result of rail companies implementing PSR in response to some pretty specific incentives, see:
A number of YouTube video essays argue the sides of this as well, here's one based around Sen. Sanders confronting a rail CEO in the wake of the recent Ohio derailment: https://youtu.be/e4w0q5NzCwA
That's comparing new cars (all EVs are fairly new) to the full range of passenger rail, including 40-year-old diesel trains trundling around Wales.
Look at "Eurostar", which is a not-even-that-new high speed electric train: 6g/km. Though the calculation probably also takes account of the number of people on the train, and Eurostar will have better utilisation than average.
(NB coal and ore is moved at about 60mph in the UK, to avoid slowing other trains.)
the problem is that cars have a much worse form of overhead: parking. A rail line that transfers 1M people's commutes per day doesn't use up any space in the city that people commute to. If the same 1M people commute by car, you end up needing roughly 15 square kilometers just for the parking.
You're comparing dollars-per-mile of infrastructure when the more important metric is dollars-per-passenger-mile. You can build 1 mile of freeway for not much more than 1 mile of rail, but that mile of rail can serve considerably more passengers.
What is the route capacity for a lane of freeway vs a rail line? I assumed it’s the opposite, since a freeway has continuous throughout while a rail line is discrete, but I don’t have a good intuition for comparing the scale of each mode.
> What is the route capacity for a lane of freeway vs a rail line? I assumed it’s the opposite, since a freeway has continuous throughout while a rail line is discrete
According to this book (which provides assumptions and calculations supporting) [0], 10:1 in favor of rail, as a conservative estimate.
Well, BART has no problem running 9-car trains. I don't know if that's rush hour or not, but I've seen them. If the rest of the math is right, that still gets you 4.5-to-1 in favor of rail.
How do you calculate capacity? Safety engineers keep yelling that drivers need to keep 3 seconds between cars, but in reality they most drive about .3 seconds from the car in front. There is nearly a 10x difference in freeway capacity between just those two.
Trains tend to maintain longer distances, but if you want to ignore safety we can follow a lot closer.
The big difference is that in a train, you fit 4 people wide and roughly 2-3 ft front to back per person while in cars which have average capacity of ~1.5 per car, you have 1.5 people wide and 50-200 ft front to back. Trains are farther apart than cars, but fit a ton of people per train.
The calculations on that page are not correct. First, the average car occupancy is not 1, it's 1.5 on average. Second, the lane capacity is 1900 cars per hour (that's maximum at around 45 mph, btw). So this works out to 8550 people per hour.
A realistic scenario for commuter trains (that would replace a freeway) is 1 train every 10 minutes, and even this is pretty tough. So you have 6 trains per hour, and to match the throughput you'd need 1425 people per train.
Most train platforms are maxed out at well below 10 cars (Caltrain is 6 cars), 20 car trains are just pure nonsense for commuting. So for 10 car trains it'll be around 150 people per car. Caltrain cars are 130 seats per car ( https://www.greencaltrain.com/2014/05/keeping-up-with-caltra... ), with another 40 standing places.
Basically, a perfectly run commuter train system is _just_ barely comparable with a regular 6-lane freeway.
Sorry train fans, but trains are not that great for commuting.
> Most train platforms are maxed out at well below 10 cars (Caltrain is 6 cars)
> a perfectly run commuter train system is _just_ barely comparable with a regular 6-lane freeway
Also look at any major route in Britain, like Manchester to London, no 6-lane highways anywhere in sight.
You are comparing some weak-ass train with a giant highway. It's easy to extend a rail platform to accomodate more train cars - you just need to knock down a few buildings in a local area. Now try widening a 3-lane highway into a 6-lane, that could be hundreds of building and NYMBY's across three cities.
Allegedly the Eurostar, which links Paris to London, does:
"Inter-Capital" sets consisting of two power cars and eighteen passenger carriages. These trains are 394 metres (1,293 ft) long and can carry 750 passengers: 206 in first class, 544 in standard class
I can't find info on the upcoming HS2. However I do testify that extremely long trains are common in Eastern Europe, Russia, India, etc. they might not be high-speed but they do move a lot of people at once.
20 car trains are a distraction here the important correction is 150 passengers per train is way low. 250 is common and going higher (e.g. double decker) is pretty easy if you need to
> Sorry train fans, but trains are not that great for commuting.
Quick comparison: more people (3.6m) go through Shinjuku Station in Tokyo than the daytime population of Manhattan, at 3.1m. Only half of those travel into Manhattan, using all modes of transport. When things get extreme it’s hard to just double the road network and parking into a single location.
So you'd need 6 of those highways converging on the middle of a city to compare to Tokyo's single train station. To make it really fun to solve, no rational city would allow that disastrous use of above-ground land, the parking for another 2m cars would be an engineering feat of note and you're dragging millions of tons of steel around for no reason. We haven't begun on emissions or need for fuel stops for those 2m cars.
Oh, and that's not the entirety of the Tokyo metro population, which is ~37m. The entire of Texas is ~29m-ish and that's spread out so far and wide they can afford to fuck around with 14 lane highways. The scale and solution are incomparable.
that's not 24 tracks. you need more tracks at the station since the trains are stopped, but you can probably do that with 4 to 6 tracks for the portions where the trains are up to speed.
BART has a capacity of 200 passengers per car in their legacy fleet, 241-256 for their new fleet, and regularly has 10 cars per train during peak hours [1] and travels 80mph.
Correction, trains specifically. Subways and light rail are immensely higher ROI (as in, benefit vs cost) within a city since it effectively forces people close together, while a 6-lane-on-each-side highway isn't economically feasible for all of the high-traffic areas.
I guess MARTA is between municipal and regional rail, sort of like BART. I meant for connecting the Atlanta metropolitan area to its region, not intraconnecting.
Roughly speaking the density of the US east of the Mississipi and the far west coast is dense enough. The rocky mountains and Alaska really bring our average density down.
I grew up near one of those major lines, the one that goes along 515. We used to try to get a train to flatten a penny for us or race it on our fourwheelers. Never got a flattened penny though. lol
I used to get lots of flattened pennies. The trains throw them so you have to spend a lot of time searching the gravel around the tracks. Be sure to watch for other trains so you don't get hit.
There's a bunch of new plants and factories going up in Georgia (maybe there's a comprehensive list somewhere). Definitely bodes well for Georgia's future in terms of economics.
Yeah, the news is pretty non-stop of new things opening up. Atlanta trying to become the new hollywood I think kickstarted all this at least in my head timeline but I'm sure some hardworking business owners and politicians really just focused on bringing in new work.
I think it goes a lot further back, one semi-serious data point: the "Chamber of commerce runs Atlanta" meme was satirized by the TV show Futurama in the year 2000:
