Comment by pdabbadabba | Hacker News Reader

Comment by pdabbadabba | Hacker News Reader

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> These are the statistics underlying the reality that in San Francisco, Washington, D.C., Boston, Atlanta, and many other major cities in the U.S., not a single mile of rail transit is currently under construction.

Not true. In DC, the Purple Line is currently under construction to connect DC's Maryland suburbs to one another. (OK. This is technically just over the border in Maryland, but it is clearly part of the DC metro area and it interconnects with lines in the District proper.) And DC just finished (in November) adding another new line, the Silver Line, out to Dulles Airport and some of the further flung Virginia suburbs. (Similarly, I think a major project was completed in San Francisco last year.) And isn't the K under construction in LA? And what about East Side Access in New York? And the Skyline in Honolulu? I'm sure another 2 minutes of Googling could uncover more examples.

The general story might be true — cthet ities outside the U.S. are investing more in rail infrastructure — but this makes me question the research. The metric "mile of transit" is also probably misleading. Many U.S.cities (though not enough) already have robust mass transit systems. The primarily challenge in many places is therefore not just to build new lines, but to expand the use of what is already there. (A particular challenge after Covid wiped out ridership.)

In other countries, the amount of rail you already have is not really indicative of stopping new rail construction any time soon. Seoul, Paris, Moscow, Beijing, Shanghai etc. all have very large metro networks and are not stopping any time soon.

The problem is not really dollar amounts but effective spending. East Side Access ended up costing $12B for one additional station and a few km of track, where some of the tunnels already existed. Consider that in Paris, they just opened a 15km extension with 8 stations for about 3B EUR.

You kind of point to the reason why its so expensive to build in the US: we stopped building. Any new projects are unique which requires special orders on everything. When you're constantly building and upgrading, your overall costs keep dropping.

There’s that but there is also a lot being spent on the wrong projects. East Side Access has not really moved the needle on ridership, which is a very big contrast compared to say Crossrail in London which was built in the same time frame.

There's also a lot being spent on things that are not even transit, but are required/customary of transit projects. The consultant-class has to get their 10 pounds of flesh, and every project is needled to death by outreach, impact studies, environmental reviews, delays, more environmental reviews, etc. We pay a lot more for the stuff, sure, but we've already blown half the spend before we've even started the job of putting stuff together.

This is of course an over-correction to an equally bad world where you can just get some dopes together to slice up your city like a Christmas ham, usually by demolishing the poor and non-white parts, to build highways.

Rail and subway are distinct modes.

They aren't in Japan. Why would they be anywhere else?

Many subway-trains in Japan are trains for the first 20 stations, then "subways" for the next 10, then trains for the 20 stations after that. Same cars. They may have been 3 separate lines at one time but they got connected.

In the US, outside of a few special cases, if you're operating on the national rail network, you're operating on rail owned by a freight company, and they have priority. Amtrak often struggles to operate more than 1 or 2 trains an hour as "guests" on these routes. This is very UNLIKE Japan where the freights run on almost a totally different set of tracks.

Also, from a regulatory standpoint, freight and intercity railways (e.g. not subway/light rail/metro/trams) are subject to full FRA regulations, compliance with which would add even more costs, for little real benefit at the speeds they travel at.

Plus, in practice subway/light rail is electrified, and anything else (again with few caveats) is not. In towns with both it is very rare for them to use the same stations.

Rail freight and passengers mostly share the same tracks in Japan with the exception of the Shinkansen network* which is passenger only. The big difference is Japan sends way less freight by rail than the US and freight that does go by rail is scheduled at night when there are no passenger trains running.

*There’s probably an exception to the exception for the Akita / Yamagata branches that partially run on regular train lines.

On the one hand having passengers go by rail is not good for carbon. On the other hand replacing freight rail with trucks is also not good for carbon.

There are few rail networks that manage to serve both well.

Subways can be non-rail, as seen with the Montreal subway, but subways are usually a type of rail transit. Also, once you read the article, you'll see that the author is referring to subways.

>Subways can be non-rail, as seen with the Montreal subway

Yes, and it's terrible. The Montreal subway is by far the noisiest subway system I've ever used. Even standing on the platform is a terrible experience because it's so loud when the cars are moving.

How does the noise compare to the tube in London?

From my experience living in London, the tube is worse (at least the deep level lines which are much louder) but somewhat comparable to Montreal.

Both seem to come in around 80dBA average, but some of the tube lines peak at 90 or 100+dBA.

Sorry, I've never been there so I can't comment. But I thought London's system was a rail system; if that's the case, it should naturally be quieter.

London's system is very old so basically it's loud because it's built with much tighter curves than a modern system would be built with today, plus there are few platform doors isolating noise away from people on the oldest lines.

Oh, I see. That sounds like the Oedo line here in Tokyo: it has several very tight curves, so it's extremely loud inside when the train goes around those curves.

But that's not really what I'm talking about with Montreal: in Montreal, the subway system is loud for the people standing inside the station. (The trains are noisy inside too, but that's just in addition.) Every time a train enters or leaves the station, it's deafeningly loud, because of the rubber ties. You'd think it shouldn't be this way (after all, cars have rubber tires and are very quiet at low speeds; it's only at freeway speeds that rubber tires get loud on cars and trucks), but it is. It seems to be caused by the trackways: the tires are constantly rubbing on the sides of the track, so the cars are very noisy any time they're in motion, and it's really miserable just standing on the platform.

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