I’m going to make the argument against trains for everything, despite being a huge fanatic for trains.
Trains are the most efficient transport method per tonne-km over land, yes. However from certain operational standpoints trains can make less sense than existing solutions.
When distance between stops for heavy rail becomes too short, you lose quite a bit of efficiency. Trains themselves aren’t a one-size fits all solution as there are various types that each need their own form of investment (which is a lot $), when roads are compatible with both personal transport and large trucks with little investment by the transporter (govt pays for road maintenance).
Rail companies right now are chasing profits and neglecting operational improvements. In the US, hauling a long, LONG, old and slow train loaded with bulk aggregate, oil, grain, chemicals is more profitable than aiming for JIT capability that is more feasible with trucks. A complete change in societal incentives is necessary to bring back the usefulness of railway in all types of transport. Second, the North American way of railroad companies owning the tracks dissuades a lot of innovation and new firms from entering the market, unlike the “open road” where there are many competing OTR freight companies. None of the Big Six would like my idea of a nationally controlled rail/track system.
Just to pick on one point, as a tangent, the government paying for roads with little cost to the freight carriers is a major, major problem. If the cost of transport is not factored into the cost of goods, it breaks the feedback mechanism of prices in the market affecting the supply of road transport, both per se, and in relation to other, possibly more efficient, means of transport. I came up with a reductio ad absurdum scenario to illustrate better: Imagine the government provided free air freight across oceans, without limit.
It’s pretty obvious what would happen: The logistics companies would abandon cargo ships, which cost them money, for the free air service. It would be horribly inefficient and wasteful, but that would not be their concern. We’d end up in the same situation that we are today with roads; our governments are going broke trying to pay for it. (In that world, I also imagine that people consider the service the normal baseline that they’ve structured their lives and businesses around, and can’t fathom ending it, just like roads in our world.
Anyway, passenger rail service has never been profitable. Railroads just operated passenger trains as a condition of being allowed to operate freight routes, which the government had subsidized with land giveaways. The question is whether passenger is more sustainable fiscally than roads for personal vehicles, and the survival of rail freight against massively subsidized road freight suggests that it would be. At least for longer, intercity routes.
Yes you’ve got a point. Part of this was an exercise to argue against something I really love and passionate about for the sake of “Change my Mind”.
But that’s part of the thing. If an organization paid for unlimited free air passenger and freight transport system, converting to better alternatives (on monetary cost, the environment and other bases) would be difficult to convince from people and logistics companies alike. If left alone, this sort of system would be unlikely to change until some devastating consequence made it unfeasible to switch at that point anyway. And in such a universe maybe we’d see more blimps in the sky.
So either road has to be regulated fairly and costs that were externalized get properly accounted for and renumerated, or railroad track has to be managed nationally, and provide fair access to communities large and small, in order for rail and wheeled vehicles to be on equal footing. Neither of these things I would expect to happen naturally, it must come from an organized effort somewhere.
Electric motors are now capable of >90% regen, so the braking energy argument against short stops doesn’t work anymore (and the energy during motion strictly less than a rubber tired vehicle with a worse aspect ratio so long as the trip is no longer).
The amount of rail needed for short distance distribution networks could still be prohibitive in regions designed for road though. Even then one could still argue that the total infrastructure costs are lower by moving the destinations slightly given how much roads cost to maintain.
Corporate has corrupted the train system in the US. People have become secondary to company profits. I watched this a while back and couldn’t believe the US has allowed this.
Well in the UK, considering that a return ticket to London for commuting hours costs me £140, no, it is not the future here. I could drive most of the way from home into London, pay the ULEZ charge, park in an expensive train station car park and get a short distance train for a third of that, including fuel.
If you aren’t willing to put your money where your mouth is, you’re just putting on a show. It’s a performative belief. Don’t criticize someone for a spending decision when you’re not willing to make it either.
The cost of commuting to London via train every day would be more than my entire salary lmao, what are you on about. I work remotely for the most part anyway, which is better for the environment than taking the train every day.
But that’s an issue with capitalism, not the technology itself. Roads and high(motor)ways are very heavily subsidized and tax funded, while rail in the UK is largely privatized. It’s just a sign of what is being prioritized by government and/or society, which is cars in this case. There are plenty of places where public transit is free or at least the definitive cheapest way to travel, also due to government funding.
Trains are directly linked to capitalism, not sure what you are getting at here. They require incredible amounts of capital to build, and incredible amounts of money to operate. They enabled the industrialization.
Communist countries also, in fact, received their trains from capitalist countries. Russia had hardly any before the US started supplying them during the industrialization process by Albert Kahn and associates.
The most train centric countries in the world are also the most capitalist. Whether that’s state run capitalism or private, state run generally provides more passenger rail service. However, Japan is an exception there with its JR Rail.
“The most train centric countries in the world are also the most capitalist.”
That’s because most countries in the world are capitalist mate.
Also, if you acknowledge that JR Rail is not capitalist, even if China is defined as a state capitalist country you still have to acknowledge that the rail system itself is not capitalist (it is also state owned like JR rail).
The fact is once profit is prioritised in something like mass public transportation, it starts to go to shit. That’s why American rail is so shit, that’s why every place in the UK has shit public transportation after privitisation bar a few cities like Nottingham, London and Manchester, and why it’s so expensive to get from city to city. Countries with largely state owned public transport tend to do better with their public transport.
No, I was actually pointing out that JR rail is not a state run passenger rail corporation, unlike Amtrak in the United States, DB in Germany and SNCF in France. It’s fully private and is only profitable due to Japan’s extreme population density and narrow shinkansen corridor between Tokyo and Osaka.
Same here. Trains are only cost effective in the SF area only if you don’t own a car. If you have a car, even traveling alone, almost every trip is cheaper even with $5 gasoline. For me I’d have to hit about $8/gal and pretend my time is free to have parity with a train. If I could not own a car, I would, but I don’t hate myself that much. And since I have a car, I only use public transit within the SF core (mission->north beach range)…which is funny because more often than not I just walk to my destination since SF is so fucking tiny.
given the talk of expensive trains, a resident would infer i live on the peninsula. bart is awful but not that pricy.
Berkeley is part of the core urban area on the other side, although as long as you don’t want to cross the bridge I’d argue east bay’s public transit has almost no value given the ubiquity of parking and abundance of freeways.
I tried transit up to berkeley once and it took 2 hours, so now i drive and my worst case time frame is 55 minutes. Bridge costs make it roughly the same as transit but at least twice as fast.
no shit about the bay bridge, though. I’ve not driven across that hellhole since 2018.
In Japan a train ticket on an express train to central Tokyo from the suburbs 50 miles away would cost you around $30. The local trains would be around $10-$15.
$110 will get you about 300 km by high speed shinkansen, say Tokyo to Nagoya.
Also, did everyone just forget about the pandemic we just went through? Haven’t we decided as a society stuffing lots of people in a small space is bad for our health?
Micro mobility is great if you plan on never leaving a 5 or 10 square mile area. The problem with that is the majority of Americas have at least 1 trip a month that’s 30+ miles.
No one is making that kind of trip with a micro mobility solution. Especially not in the heat and cold extremes we have now.
The problem with that is the majority of Americas have at least 1 trip a month that’s 30+ miles.
That trip is almost invariably traveling into a major city center. Like living in/near Buffalo and needing to go to NYC for a service that is not available in your closest city. Which will be extremely well connected by transit to everywhere in the peripheral area and paradoxically, will probably be very easy to make with a system of micromobility connecting into a rapid transit trunk line system.
Might go something like this: Say you live in one of the suburbs of Buffalo. You might bike to a local train station, get off at the main terminal and transfer for an intercity train to New York, get off at Grand Central Terminal, transfer for the subway, get off, and bike to your destination.
Might go something like this: Say you live in one of the suburbs of Buffalo. You might bike to a local train station, get off at the main terminal and transfer for an intercity train to New York, get off at Grand Central Terminal, transfer for the subway, get off, and bike to your destination. A transit system that integrates microbobility will let you bring your bike on the train.
So you just turned a 45 minute trip into at least a 3 to 4 hour one with layovers. Worse, you’re going to be exposed to the elements for a big leg of it.
You can put micromobility devices on a bus or train (or have one at either end). Or travel at 25km/h in a larger vehicle once a month until you get out of the micromobility path network. Or go to a car parked outside the network.
yup. point out how people can ride transit safely, they don’t want to hear it. cars are literally destroying the only ecosystem we have in the universe, and we’re letting the car chuds do it because…?
trust me, if the situation was reversed, they’d happily run everyone else down if it meant saving their way of life.
they don’t even fucking care about their own kids.
Oh, no! Looks like officials were bribed to spend money on stupid shit that is not useful in anyway! But our society needs these philanthropists. It just does.
I’m not as pessimistic as you. This venture will obviously fail but at least musk took care of the expensive part of drilling the tunnels. What’s do you think about the over/under of this being converted to train within 15 years?
A car can barely fit in those tunnels. They would have to make those several times bigger for trains + add emergency exits and vents the Musk didn’t bother to build
In Europe ( i mean Paris, France and Italy ) public authority had pushed hard on micromobility, but now they are, in reality banning it cause safety problems.
Not really, they are just regulating it. And a lot of those countries already had really well-developed metro systems, and micromobility and rental transport options have still taken off. Driverless cars haven’t because of the GDPR barrier that even brings up the legality of dashcam video usage in some of its countries, so basically only those with the hefty Euro parliament lobbyists like Tesla are allowed to some degree.
the main reason driverless cars haven’t taken off in Europe is that European road safety regulators require strong evidence that a technology is safe before it is used on roads, as opposed to the US, where new technology is largely allowed on roads by default until it kills enough people.
Things that aren’t a hazard, like automated delivery robots that go too slow to injure anyone, haven’t been allowed because of GDPR concerns, except within private property as waiter bots. In contrast, electric mobility solutions have spread all throughout the streets of Europe regardless of whether people leave them tossed in the street. But you make a good point, “safety regulators” requires another good set of lobbyists to push through.
Regulating in a manner to ban them. Driverless cars are not technologically ready right now. GDPR, is the bare minimum privacy protection, as a lot o citizens required.
Because companies don’t ever lie about not preserving and selling their data they have recorded in public, specially that being used for research purposes meaning it is beneficial to keep it a long time even without an interest in spying? It’s going to require a lot of lobbyists to get the “official seals of approval” that prove automated vehicles aren’t spying, and that’s all that matters in that regard. Well, that, and not being embarrassed by immediate leaks of it.
I agree. I just wanted to say that I really hope this meme completely replaces the original one, so we won’t have to look at Steven Crowder’s face as much going forward.
The more people try to “innovate” transportation the closer it gets to going back to trains. Driverless cars, for efficiency have them communicate with eachother, to accelerate and brake at the same time, for example. That’s just less efficient and more expensive trains.
There’s a massive failure condition for your example - sure, autonomous cars behave like trains when they communicate with each other to sync acceleration and deceleration, but they can also separate themselves from the collective to drive you to the door of your home. In the train metaphor this would be like you sitting in your own train car, and the train car separating from the rest of it and driving you to your doorstep.
Or you could have a train that drops you off either close to your home or close to a bus station that drops off near your home. This would require a walkable city, so it’s definitely not as simple as just building tracks and bus stations. The issue is that Americans are so used to car dependent infrastructure, that when they try to imagine what public transport would be like, they think of it in the context of where they live. That’s why I think so many are opposed to the idea. It’s not an impossible task, it’s just that it’d require money and effort, so it probably won’t happen.
It also won’t happen because not all of us live in cities. The “fuck cars” crowd never has any solutions for rural locations other than “don’t live there” as if rural areas serve no purpose. As long as farms are a thing there will be people out here, either farming themselves or supporting farmers,and things like scooters and trains either won’t work or only partially solve the problem.
Anyone who thinks getting rid of cars is a viable strategy in the US of all places is delusional.
You are talking about a minority of vehicles though. 77% of US personal vehicles are non-rural, hence, fuck them.*
I also don’t think many people want to get rid of every single car everywhere for every purpose. Most cars are personal vehicles in built up areas and that’s where they cause the most problems and make the least sense.
For some places rail is too expensive or inflexible. So you need driverless cars, but you can make them cheaper by not having so many of them, instead having really big ones, and since driverless is not ready we hire a human to drive for now.
I have a buddy that owns a big truck. It exists for one reason - to haul his trailer RV thing when he, his wife, and their FIVE kids go camping. Otherwise it sits there and looks pretty. He hates driving it, but the trailer is freakin’ yuge so yeah. It’s never, ever used as a commuter vehicle. The trailer has solar for power in addition to using an external generator that can use like, two or three different fuels.
He works from home, she doesn’t work and takes care of the kids/house. Their ‘commuter’ vehicle is a small hybrid SUV, again, to carry the five kids to and from school.
Their house is decked out in solar panels and they normally pay next to nothing for electricity, which they get from the grid via wind power because Texas.
EDIT: I need to stress the size of the trailer. The thing in it’s towable state is every bit as big as a semi trailer. If it was smaller, yeah, I’d agree (and so would he) that a smaller truck would be required. But he did his research and got a truck that can actually tow the thing properly. And again, he uses the thing maybe twice a year.
Do you know what people in Denmark, the Netherlands, and similar RV-heavy countries in Europe use to haul an RV with a family of four to six? Anything from a hatchback to a minivan depending on the amount of people. A truck is wildly inefficient for anything (except for the modest sized ones which hardly gets made anymore).
Not to dissuade your point or anything, but from reading their comment I’m picturing one of those large campers that you really only see in NA, like a tour bus that you have to tow. I’m no expert on towing capacity but I think one would actually have a use case for a large truck in that situation. Totally agree that they’re utterly overkill for just about any other situation though.
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