this post was submitted on 04 Feb 2025
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A more realistic future (lemmy.world)
submitted 1 day ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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[–] [email protected] -1 points 23 hours ago (1 children)

Light rail? What's the difference?

Where I'm at, the existing tracks are all freight rails, running through major industrial areas, for over 50 years, probably more.

I've never heard of 'light rail' before, and now you have me concerned, because they want to start using our freight rails for passenger trains soon..

So what the hell? What is a 'light rail'?

[–] [email protected] 4 points 23 hours ago (1 children)

Light rail is just that: it's still trains, but they are orders of magnitude lighter, since all you are moving are people. After some quick Googling, freight trains can be a mile long and weigh 20,000 tons, while a light rail train may only consist of 5 cars, totalling somewhere around 200 tons. The track you need to support freight trains is very much overkill for public transit.

Now there are heavier public transit trains that are designed to run on existing freight rail lines, but when people talk about trains for public transit, it's usually light rail that they are thinking of. Unless they are talking about high speed trains, which also require their own dedicated tracks.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 22 hours ago (1 children)

They're not planning on building new rails. Matter of fact, they're busy doing minor patches on the existing freight rails to dual-purpose them as passenger rails.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 22 hours ago (1 children)

So they are cheaping out, doing the least amount possible while still being able to say they "did something". This is not what people are usually talking about when they advocate for trains as a public transit solution, but unfortunately, it's what we tend to get.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 22 hours ago

There's not much else they even can do, without bulldozing thousands of buildings to build new tracks and stations. In an extremely sensitive spot no less, they'd have to do demolition and reconstruction in the only entrance and exit to the major multi billion dollar manufacturing facility.

TL;DR - Their money talks, our ideas walk (or even drown, they don't care).