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Comment by hx87 | Hacker News Reader

Pretty simple actually--our rail system is optimized for freight, not passenger transport while our road and airway systems are the opposite. While this does mean rail transport is dreadfully slow and full of delays (since a car of wheat isn't particularly time-sensitive and doesn't need to go 300 kph), it also means that cargo transportation is incredibly efficient (both financially and energetically) and cheap.

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I was going to make exactly this point. If you look at Europe and say "their trains are so much better!" then you're missing half the picture. They're not better, they're just different. Better in some ways, worse in other ways.

Given the size of our country, I'm not at all sure we made the wrong tradeoff here. Being able to cheaply ship goods from coast to coast seems far more valuable than having high speed passenger trains that "only" take a day or two to make that same trip.

Certainly, there are some corridors where we ought to to better. DC-Boston and LA-SF, for example, would probably benefit greatly from high-speed rail. But I don't think the idea of ubiquitous passenger trains is really a good one for us, much as I might like to see it.

While an interesting observation, I'm not sure this really addresses the point. The conversation was implicitly about passenger rail, and the US is clearly bad at that.

Also I can think of a few practical reasons why Europe might have less developed long distance freight rail off the top of my head. Not least the fact that most of Europe is a lot better connected by sea than opposite coasts of the US (especially before the Panama canal was built).

Our freight system is a big part of why our passenger system sucks, though. Most of our cities see infrequent or nonexistent passenger service because the rails are all tied up with freight.

That doesn't really follow. If freight rail is getting in the way of passenger rail then the cause is insufficient capacity, not the existence of freight. And the solution is to build more track (or allocate more of the existing capacity to passenger services) but that costs money, and there's no political will behind it.

If anything it sounds like the freight rail is the only reason you have any passenger rail at all.

That doesn't really make sense. If we got rid of the freight trains the rails would just start to rust, it's not like there's a ton of money/interest/profit in passenger rail thats stymied by all the jam packed tracks.

Or I can just say "their passenger trains are so much better" and not miss any of the picture.

Which, plainly, was the original point.

A lot of the infrastructure is shared between the two types, so you can't just ignore one.

> Being able to cheaply ship goods from coast to coast seems far more valuable than having high speed passenger trains that "only" take a day or two to make that same trip.

Why can't we have both?

In order to have both we need segregated passenger and freight rail systems, which is extremely expensive. AFAIK, China is the only country to have both, and avoids the high costs through a mix of weak property rights, lax environmental regulation, and a strong domestic supply chain.

America has only about 5x the freight rail traffic of Europe, while Europe has over 100x the passenger ridership that America has. I don't think the freight advantage (if it can be called that) justifies the disadvantage of our relative passenger immobility.

By the way 40% of US rail freight traffic by weight is coal, which is nothing to be proud of. If you erase the fact that USA is still a massive coal consumer, it starts to look like Europe moves as much freight as America does.

> America has only about 5x the freight rail traffic of Europe, while Europe has over 100x the passenger ridership that America has. I don't think the freight advantage (if it can be called that) justifies the disadvantage of our relative passenger immobility.

It is "justified" if the American configuration (cars & trucks carry people, trains carry goods) uses less energy than the European one (cars & trucks carry goods, trains carry people), which I suspect it does when you do an apples-to-apples comparison and leave out metropolitan rail systems, where people-vs-freight tradeoffs don't apply.

> By the way 40% of US rail freight traffic by weight is coal, which is nothing to be proud of. If you erase the fact that USA is still a massive coal consumer, it starts to look like Europe moves as much freight as America does.

Again, to do a fair comparison you have to subtract coal from European transport systems.

I'm not sure how you arrived at your conclusion. US transportation energy consumption for all purposes (goods and passengers) is much higher per GDP per capita than for any European country. For example Germany has a per-capita GDP about 2/3rds at much as USA, but uses less than 1/3rd of the energy for transportation.

Not sure what you're getting at with ignoring metro rail systems.

The US has to transport goods and people longer distances, so all other things being equal US transportation will be more energy intensive. However, having the US switch over to the German mode of transportation, where goods move on trucks and people move on rails, will make the system more, not less energy intensive since goods contribute more ton-miles than people.

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.

Freight lines and passenger lines are usually (though not always) different, especially on the country-side where you have no electrification for freight lines and HSR-dedicated lines.

In the USA, all passenger rail outside the northeast is not electrified and freight lines are a strict superset of passenger lines.

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