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Comment by pengaru | Hacker News Reader

> Why doesn't Amtrak simply pay UP adequately to get priority? UP is prioritizing freight because it pays better. Fix that.

Is it really that simple?

Freight trains are _long_, Amtrak passenger trains are relatively short. It's far easier to sideline an Amtrak train to let a multi-mile-long freight train pass than it is to sideline that same freight train for Amtrak to pass.

It's not my area of expertise at all, but I assume there aren't huge quantities of such long parallel rails scattered throughout the network for freight trains to move over and wait.

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To put thing in perspective, US rail moves:

    61 tons of freight per American each year
    94 tons of freight per mile for each passenger-mile on rail
    1/3 of all export goods move by rail
    1.7 trillion ton-miles of freight
    40% of US long distance freight by volume uses rail

So you have a problem in that increasing the costs to freight will affect all Americans in making them pay more for goods, whereas it will only benefit those passengers using rail. So politically, this is a tough sell. I think you need to put down dedicated track for passenger rail if you want it to be prioritized in our existing rail system, as it's currently a rounding error compared to freight.

That said, I think you will find that there are transportation corridors where there is the political will to fund laying down dedicated track for passenger rail. The way to think about it is that rail maybe costs $X per mile of track, but provides 100000X benefit for freight, and maybe 10x benefit for passenger traffic, so while you would never prioritize passenger traffic over freight, or even treat them equally, it still makes sense to build dedicated tracks for passenger rail.

These numbers are similarly misleading. Read up on induced demand. Rail passengers in the US are small in number because passenger rail sucks. If it were improved, ridership would go up.

You don't know how much ridership would go up, or if it would go up enough to cover the cost of paying extra for the 94 tons of rail freight to be delayed when you prioritize your one additional passenger.

That's problem -- yes, if you spent $X demand would go up, but would it go up enough to justify spending the $X or not? Merely observing that demand would increase in response to a higher quality of service is not an argument, it's just a truism that doesn't provide any new information.

That is why I said elsewhere on this thread that passenger rail needs its own dedicated track. Because the rail we have is so valuable to freight that it's not plausible that passengers or the general public would be willing to pay the price necessary to deprioritize freight. That price is enormous, but it's much more than the price of building out new dedicated rail just for passengers. Go back and redo your argument from the point of view of whether the increased demand would justify building out new track. If that's not the case, there's no hope of it being large enough to justify reducing the focus on freight. I think, in a few places, it is enough to justify laying down dedicated track. But not in all places.

The interesting part is that freight companies are intentionally running trains longer than the sidings. Amtrak trains are legally supposed to have priority, but they made it physically impossible for freight trains to pull over.

Yep. Amtrak runs the longest passenger train in the world in the Auto Train, traveling the Virginia to Orlando route. It's usually about 45 cars long, while a UP freight train can be 100 cars or more.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bjmkVy6UbY4

I agree that the freight companies need to invest in their tracks and right-of-way if they want to ship more. They need to double-track, electrify, and upgrade bridges & tunnels to handle double-stack container cars. India's dedicated freight corridors are a good example.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uGJJLwJK0PU

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