251–260 of 316 posts
I’d kind of like real-time tracking of freight trains. There’s a BNSF grade crossing between my home and my parents’ and it would be nice to know whether I should take the 1 mile detour to get to the tunnel beneath the rail yard if there’s a train going to be blocking (I suppose it would also help to have info on the length of the trains so I’d know if the train in front of me is almost clear or if there’s another mi…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I assume it would be less about the dominance of passanger displacing freight and more about scale/distance. Germany is smaller than Texas (half the area). How often is it economical to put stuff on trains before loading them on trucks again for distances sub 1000km?
Oh sure, but the "haha the US isn't even a third world country with its train system" people already are ignoring scale/density when they're laughing at the US rail systems. I'm past even bothering dealing with that bad faith take. My curiosity is if the US has just traded off having better passenger rail for better freight rail, and if that's maybe a somewhat environmentally justified choice. How much more freight i…
Europe moved lots of freight by rail. But building of motorways shifted a lot of freight to roads. If your company moves just a few trucks of goods per week across Europe, road will be faster and cheaper.
Rail is now used mostly for bulk goods, but increasing conterisation is enabling easier use of rail even for smaller shipments (less than a full train length, which in Europe is max 700 m).
Earlier quoted context omitted.
You might consider the climate and carbon impact of those flights vs rail. Many of the rail lines are subsidized in countries with extensive rail travel. So they don’t have to be economically viable, it’s viewed as a public good, contributing to general economic development.
Air travel is 2% of global CO2 emissions. Making air travel carbon neutral (by capturing carbon) would increase ticket prices by around 20%. That would be much cheaper than switching from planes to high speed rail. I'm not saying that countries with lots of rail are wrong. I'm saying that passenger high speed rail doesn't make sense in the US (at least, not outside of the northeast). We're too spread out.
And unfortunately carbon offsetting is rather unreliable (companies buying offsets don't have any incentive for the offsets to be actual savings). I'd be wary of climate change solutions that consist of continuing business as usual and assuming that decarbonation will happen in some other sectors. I also suspect the 20% price increase estimate works for a specific price of carbon, but that price could increase if carbon offsets started becoming widely used (and the demand increases).
Anyway, I don't know what's the right way for the US to reduce travel emissions, whether that's electric coaches, cheaper rail, taxation to increase prices and reduce demand... But I don't think the solution can be "just keep planes and add carbon capture".
I love these maps. Here is one from Switzerland: https://maps.vasile.ch/transit-sbb/ , just a tad bit busier than the US
Yandex has it for (mostly Russian) trains that it has on schedule.
Wow, I don't know why I thought there would be... Way, way more trains active at a given time. I suppose I overestimated passenger rail popularity in this country.. I knew it wasn't relatively huge, but there's several hundred miles in some cases between trains.
Do you have any estimation of what percentage of passenger train traffic is currently displayed vs. still to be implemented? As others have mentioned, I also was little bit surprised of the (small?) amount of trains on the map.
Similar map for Finnish trains: https://www.vr.fi/en/live-train-tracker-map
I’d kind of like real-time tracking of freight trains. There’s a BNSF grade crossing between my home and my parents’ and it would be nice to know whether I should take the 1 mile detour to get to the tunnel beneath the rail yard if there’s a train going to be blocking (I suppose it would also help to have info on the length of the trains so I’d know if the train in front of me is almost clear or if there’s another mi…
That sounds like something a three-letter agency would get all stuffy about.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> “Given the density of the corridor, Amtrak should be trying for 150-220mph speed limits, but even 125mph is generally agreed upon to be the lowest end of HSR.” In the UK and Europe, 125mph (~200 km/h) is considered the top speed limit of conventional rail. Legally, operating speeds beyond that require full in-cab signalling, positive train control, upgraded safety and structural requirements, and whatever else is r…
> In the UK and Europe UK is part of Europe. It's like writing "In California and the USA", or "In Mexico and North America".
Without such qualifiers, the meaning is clearly "continental Europe", which is a meaningful distinction when it comes to the rail, because they have two almost entirely disjoint rail systems.
Ok, yes, technically the European rail system does actually physically connect to the UK main lines at a few places on HS1 between London and the tunnel at Dover, but no public train uses such connections. Functionally, European and UK rail are essentially entirely separate in terms of operation, regulation and technology. Whereas on the Continent, trains regularly cross between countries and the whole system is much more-but far from entirely -integrated, politically and physically (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Rail_Traffic_Manageme...).