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Comment by crisopolis | Hacker News Reader

So can't a private railroad company build new tracks? For instance we know that traffic is bound by a interstate highway to get from City A to City B. It clogs with traffic due to a aging bridge and losing lanes.

Can my railroad company, acquire all the land necessary to build a station on both sides and track between them and then start to fan out from there?

Besides the property owners who can stop me?

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Getting mostly straight line access between A and B is going to be amazingly difficult, and more so as you get closer and the property owners get more and more stubborn, because you're invested. 99% of a rail route isn't very useful, and doing a jog around a stubborn parcel owner isn't very possible.

Realistically, you need eminent domain, a frontier environment, or a super motivated population.

To build a rail line (or extension) in the US, you must ask the Surface Transportation Board for authority [1]. They also conduct an analysis of environmental impacts.

[1] https://www.stb.gov/stb/public/resources_construct.html

> Besides the property owners who can stop me?

Lack of profitability.

Technically, yes, but in practice it is an enormous expense that will likely never pay for itself. In New Jersey, laying less than 8 miles of tracks on an existing (abandoned, de-tracked) right-of-way in the middle of nowhere and building one station cost more than $60 million:

https://www.njherald.com/20171221/train-station-restored-rai...

Environmental review.

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