mtgkajhit t1_jaby53g wrote on February 28, 2023 at 9:25 AM

Reply to comment by wordswillneverhurtme in How's your trains? by return2ozma

Can confirm. My town was doing historic rail rides to connecting cities for a summer when I was a kid. Modern locomotives with 1960s passenger cars. Because of the speed limits and having to yield to freight a normally 30-45 minute drive by car ended up taking 4-5 hours. It was a cool experience but holy fuck did it take forever.

nowaybrose t1_jaclh20 wrote on February 28, 2023 at 1:52 PM

It sucks that we have given freight railroads like CSX so much power here. If you know an attorney ask about how to get the railroad to do anything they don’t want to.

mtgkajhit t1_jaclq8x wrote on February 28, 2023 at 1:54 PM

Well they own the rail lines, which is part of the problem. I had a neighbor who retired from the railroad. He said it was a great job but the politics were ridiculous.

nowaybrose t1_jacopkz wrote on February 28, 2023 at 2:18 PM

Yeah I think if we are gonna get serious about rail travel in the US we need to build our own passenger lines. One thing I’ve always wondered is why we can’t just use the median/side road of interstates for new rail construction? Does anyone ever discuss this? You could wave at cars sitting in traffic! The land is already there for the taking. It would be a great project for job creation and jobs are also needed to maintain trains/rails and run the train service. Seems like a win. But hey let’s keep dumping trillions into concrete for cars…one more lane should do it

ankerous t1_jacrd4c wrote on February 28, 2023 at 2:37 PM

It would make sense to use the medians for something like that more often. I've seen it used that way in a couple places but it's very rare.

Pijany_Matematyk767 t1_jaehzya wrote on February 28, 2023 at 9:21 PM

Using the median might not be the greatest idea since then youll have to have train tracks cross the highway, and that will most likely require either a tunnel or an overpass (neither of which are cheap), Plus id guess the median isnt wide enough for 2 tracks. And theres also the risk of collision in case a bad driver fucks up. Trains would be nice but the median of a highway is probably not the place for them

nowaybrose t1_jaekwke wrote on February 28, 2023 at 9:39 PM

Most of our medians in rural areas are quite large. The tracks could be elevated in tighter spaces just like we elevate stupid highway ramps 100ft in the air whenever needed (houston). Train can go over whatever it needs to. Trains I’ve ridden in china have all sorts of elevated tracks since many areas are densely populated. No it won’t be cheap but neither are 15 lane highways

Pijany_Matematyk767 t1_jaeq4wv wrote on February 28, 2023 at 10:14 PM

One problem with this is getting the political will to make an elevated big highway is waaaay easier than getting the political will for a modern elevated train track

Depending on how straight the highway is, trying to have the track run parallel to it might require slowing down the trains on some turns

And we also have to ask if a track in the median with overpasses is cheaper than just running the rail track separate from the highway

nowaybrose t1_jaf3rrc wrote on February 28, 2023 at 11:50 PM

Yeah the political part is what needs to change. No party really seems to be interested in helping people who can’t afford a car get around in cities or between them affordably.

The idea of running the trains along existing interstates is to avoid having to buy land or claim imminent domain. We only do that for oil pipelines I reckon. Fighting to run tracks thru peoples land would take decades.