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Comment by Maxion | Hacker News Reader

The problem with trains is that the infrastructure is very expensive, and also wildly unprofitable, and very slow to build.

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How does that work, though? Aren't highways crazy expensive?

In what world can 2 metal tracks plus some small foundations be cheaper than 20m width of concrete, asphalt and much bigger foundations?

The economics of rail versus roads don't make any sense to me.

The only way they do, I imagine, is if roads are crazily subsidized.

I studied civil engineering, with a focus on structural, but a heavy geotechnical element and some pavement design and rail desing.

Highways are cheaper and easier because they're usually less investment and planning at once. They have their own downsides, don't get me wrong, but no. Rail is long term, lots of property seizure, usually a single track across a vast distance, etc.

Rail makes sense for a lot of places, but for a country as large as America, it's hard to see the benefits as fast as highways and we need logistics to switch to electric quickly.

That said, to make highways more efficient more places should take a page off of the 407 in Ontario, Canada. The fluctuating pricing keeps the roads in high usage most of the time and it stops tragedy of the commons issues with sinks (the cities that highways dump their vehicles to) and keeps highway economic pricing honest against things like rail and sea.

> usually a single track across a vast distance, etc.

This is fairly short-sighted, isn't it? Make no mistake, highways are also long-term and involve lots of property seizure. We could build out railways with more than a single track, but rail is private and roads are public.

What about starting to use the rails we already have?

Aren’t most of our rails already used at capacity?

Much of the US rail system sees one train each direction a day or less.

The problem is those are feeder lines; the main lines can be at capacity even if they’re a relatively small percentage of the total rail.

>is if roads are crazily subsidized

That is very much reality.

Right but generally the argument goes that if subsidizing roads is worth it, it is probably worth it to subsidize trains as well.

One problem with market economies is that if you subsidize one thing, you have to subsidize everything else or there won't be a level playing field.

I suppose, but this hasn’t stopped us from doing this with roads, so I don’t see why we don’t do it with trains.

I'm 100% for subsidizing trains, or at least saying that train systems not turning a profit are for the greater good (as I do for public transportation).

Not just subsidized, but build and managed by the government!

By chance, not too long after reading this article, I ran across this article on Amtrak struggling to update even our existing tracks along the west coast to meet the challenges of climate change.

I am envious of the European and Asian train systems and wish we had the like in the US, but alas, we sunk trillions of dollars into our interstate system of highways. I don't think we should give up on trains in the US, and would dearly love to see some high-speed rail corridor investment toot suite, but it would be irresponsible to let our current investment go to ruin, even if we decided today to put all our chips on trains.'

I mean, we started with trains, right? And look what happened after we stopped investing in them. Just updating our current train system might be too heavy a burden for the US to bear these days.

What we really need is to prioritize investing in the US at every level, and finding better ways than borrowing against the future to pay for it. After all, it's not that the money isn't out there. Maybe we do need to make it investments rather than taxes. My personal politics are pretty far left, but in the US at least, leftist policies really struggle for traction. I'd rather see us making a better world, even if it doesn't follow my personal plan for getting there.

https://crosscut.com/environment/2023/05/when-it-comes-clima...

(lightly edited)

Trains aren't wildly profitable, but they are profitable when run correctly.

You can't just make an unicorn hockey stick curve train company, it's basic infrastructure like electricity and water.

Highways don't turn a profit. Why should trains?

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