Not wanting to critizise, but is there a breakdown of those numbers by ton/kilometers and people/kilometers?
If roads transported 30 times more people and goods than trains, these numbers would basically OK.
Amtrak relies on other companies to run their trains, how much do they spend on infrastructure? Probably not as much as for roads, but the comparison isn’t great.
Isn’t the infrastructure mainly for industry, not people transport?
They’re the same tracks in most places as far as I know.
Prioritized for freight, yes.
Lol! Rail servives in my little shitstain country of Belgium get 3.2B € a year.
Language! We don’t say the B word without a trigger warning.
It’s not considered the rudest word in the universe for no reason.
And it still manages to suck anyways!
I hear that a lot, but as a regular train commuter, I have very few complaints.
It isn’t the DB so it can’t be that bad.
The only time the S-Bahn shows up on time, is when you are late.
Sadly, that’s not limited to the S-Bahn only.
About to lose the OKC/Dallas route.
To take Amtrak anywhere else, I have to ride a bus to Kansas.
My understanding is that the train system and automotive sector are kind of opposite.
For automotive, the government does the roads and private industry does the vehicles.
Conversely, the rails are largely private industry excluding Amtrak, and Amtrak is mostly responsible for the trains with their government granted monopoly on passenger rail.
It’s part of what really limits passenger rail, the companies that own the rail mostly want to rail from places like ports, and negligible value for rail between population centers. Also Amtrak has to suck it up if a rail is busy (wasnt supposed to be the case, but cargo operators were allowed to make trains too long to fit on bypass spurs so they can’t get out of the way like they were legally required to).
Not only are the proportions really misguided, but the thing is even the road funding is too low. We’re way behind in infrastructure, and yes we still need to be able to get around with personal vehicles
Ironically the reason we can’t keep up with car infrastructure is because there’s too much of it.
It much more costly to maintain, especially when scaling to more lanes.
Reducing space given to cars and giving more to bikes/buses/trains would make it easier to upkeep our current roads.
Just saw the video from “Not Just Bikes” a few days ago on this exact topic.
The biggest middle finger is that everyone of the people behind these projects knew it would become too expensive to maintain but they all decided it wasn’t their problem to solve cause by then they would be long since retired from their position by the time it became a relevant issue.
Not only that but suburban areas are actually built using loans that can’t be paid back bc suburban areas produce so little taxes they aren’t self sustaining
That’s the thing that gets me about the “but I want to live in a single-family house, not an apartment” people: it’s like, sure, that’d be fine if you were willing to actually pay for the true cost of it instead of forcing society to subsidize your lifestyle!
But then they cant just afford it with a single working adult in the family like that was ever long term viable instead of a short period of specifically american history that was never gonna last because that’s just not possible without either completely rolling over the environment or other countries. The horror!
Not that there aren’t plenty of issues with the cost and time requirement of having a family, but my god this whining like life isnt worth living if you can’t buy a single family home is annoying me.
If it would have included state/local would that make the relative distance bigger or smaller?
Larger
