Comment by panglott | Hacker News Reader

Comment by panglott | Hacker News Reader

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Intercity rail in the US was destroyed by an Iron Triangle. At present the passenger rail infrastructure is pitiful, since it hasn't had significant investment since about the 1950s. For example, back in 1999 Amtrak tried to resume passenger service between Louisville and Indianapolis by running freight and passenger cars on the same train. But since the track was so old, the trains were limited to 30 mph. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kentucky_Cardinal

Try to imagine what the market is like for intercity transportation that is more expensive than driving or taking a Greyhound and yet more than twice as slow, and doesn't connect you to an effective intracity transportation network once you arrive. There weren't many passengers.

Rail transportation is very important in the US, but it's all for freight, which takes up a similar proportion of rail as passenger does in other countries.

Amtrak does run some profitable passenger rail lines in the US, including some places you wouldn't expect, like the Oklahoma City-Dallas line IIRC. There is an interstate connecting those cities, and the population density isn't exactly really high there so IDK.

People transport and freight transport are typically segregated on different tracks in Europe and Japan, allowing for each to be optimized (you don’t need huge trains to carry people if you don’t have to worry about colliding with heavy freight trains!). The USA is messed up because we never did that.

This is only the case for the high-speed rail systems in Japan, France, Spain and possibly Germany.

Other countries (e.g. Britain) share most tracks between passengers and freight, and therefore need to maintain the track to a very high standard, and run freight trains at a much higher speed than is seen in the USA. (e.g. 80km/h or 55mph for a coal train isn't unreasonable, or 120km/h = 75mph for a container train)

How do they handle safety? The reason American passenger trains are so huge is that they have to be mass competetive with freight trains who they share tracks with (all the time, it isn’t even time multiplexed).

Links are to British resources, since I only read English, and the UK has the safest railways in the world.

* Upgrading signalling systems at technology progresses.

The latest systems use in-cab signalling, so the driver can't fail to see a signal due to fog etc, and the train's computer is aware if a signal is missed and will stop the train. (These systems are decades old, but I've read that they're not common in the USA. It took a couple of major accidents in the UK for them to be installed.) [Search ETRMS rail, or in-cab signalling].

GSM-R, i.e. the railway version of the original European mobile phone system, provides a big red button. If pressed, all trains in the area are immediately stopped. A driver would press this if the train is expected to crash, or has crashed. That can stop an oncoming train on the opposite track. [Search GSM-R]

* Maintaining the track to a high standard

Running a measurement train [1] over the whole rail network regularly, which accurately measures "the track geometry and other features such as overhead line height and stagger, and the track gauge, twist and cant". Changes in this can show where maintenance is needed much earlier than a visual inspection, and the data can be inspected retrospectively if there is a problem.

Machine learning is probably the newest/next step for this [2].

* Thoroughly investigating any accident or "near miss"

An independent group [3] investigates accidents, with the aim of preventing future accidents rather than assigning blame. The most recent report [3A], for example, finds problems with project management and recommends, "Network Rail should review its project assurance process as applied to the CASR scheme". The depth of these investigations is comparable to most western countries' investigations of aircraft accidents.

Investigations like this are what leads to posters in stations saying "don't run down the stairs" or "mind the gap" announcements. Falling down escalators or under a train in a platform is much more likely than being involved in a crash while a passenger on a train.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Measurement_Train

[2] http://www.vision-systems.com/articles/print/volume-20/issue...

[3] https://www.gov.uk/raib-reports

[3A] https://www.gov.uk/raib-reports/serious-irregularity-at-card...

Even in Germany, much of the distance covered by their high-speed services aren't on the dedicated passenger-only high-speed track.

The Amtrak Downeaster runs right outside my window. During a 24 hour period, about fifty cars go by, almost empty, usually six or less cars per train.

Every single freight train that goes by has at least fifty cars, and they roll all night....

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