Imagine taking, say, $50B that gets dumped into the quagmire that is Afghanistan and using that instead to modernize and expand the current rail system so that it can handle even more freight as well as performant passenger service.
The US freight rail network is the most efficient in the world for ton/mile/dollars. It crushes long-haul trucks for bulk/unit loads, manifest, intermodal...the list goes on.
It is in no need of nationalizing, and if you did that you'd end up with a vastly slower network built for something entirely different than what you're talking about.
Build a totally new network on better alignments/grades with higher speeds for passengers only. Leave the freight railroads to their work.
Right of ways are challenging. It's not about pushing freight off of existing lines, it's about investing in the rails we have now so that capacity and speed can be enhanced.
My own point: the freight rail system is optimized for freight. Nationalizing it does no good. Build a totally separate passenger rail network with different loading gauges, requirements and signaling that is designed for passenger trains.
moving all the freight to something less efficient would 1) have significant environmental impacts and 2) raise the cost of all consumer goods, disproportionally harming the poor.
Yes, it takes a back seat to freight and it should. Freight is very important to the US and a disruption of our freight system will have some seriously nasty effects. The current rail system serves this country quite well. It might go unnoticed by most people, but its important. Frankly, the under appreciation of how good the US logistic system (rail, truck, air, vessel, and barge) is a real shame.
> expand the current rail system so that it can handle even more freight as well as performant passenger service.
I never suggested sacrificing freight traffic in any way, actually the opposite.
Things like Positive Train Control (which is erratically and incompletely implemented), investing in parallel tracks to allow more interleaving of service and in more rigorous (but sensible and properly funded) safety measure are all relatively modest investments that could put a lot more cars on the rails.
> The private freight carriers are doing a fine job
Yes they are, for freight and they have zero incentive to share. If the costs for making it painless for them to share are mitigated, then everybody wins.
My original point is we're flushing money down the toilet in foreign lands and if it was redirected into an investment like this would be money better spent.
We're never going to have proper high speed rail, but at least we could have medium speed rail...
No everyone loses when you add cost because you want to add some passengers to a system that is expressly hostile towards passenger train needs. Cost add affects everyone including the poor who won’t benefit.
Do it new and stop trying to take from someone doing a damn good job.
I was arguing to make the system not need to be hostile to passenger needs by improvements of the existing infrastructure.
The other point that I failed to emphasize is that I'm working with the primary assumption that getting the necessary right of ways would prohibitively expensive and in some cases close to impossible.
They deserve it for encouraging the urban sprawl that created this mess in the first place.