- trains still need sidings, along with a bunch of marshaling infrastructure that doesn't really have an equivalent for cars
- yes the reason a rail line to take you directly from your house to your local convenience store wouldn't be profitable is because people would refuse to use it
- what argument are you making here? this was in response to how rare private roads are in comparison to private rail, and your response is that actually they're not rare? are you just trying to disagree with everything i'm saying for the sake of disagreeing?
Primarily0617
joined 1 year ago
it's also dishonest to insist that every road you build needs to be a four lane highway, so i thought it about averaged out
but that wasn't the case, so increasing rail use is going to be expensive and difficult
- all of the factors you just listed also apply to railways
- since railways are more expensive to construct and maintain than roadways, there are more cases in which a railway couldn't pay for itself versus a roadway
- why would a company build a private road when the government will do it for them?
railways are a lot more expensive than roadways per km
rail lines are also more expensive than roads to maintain
the cost of moving your items depends entirely on how many items you move—sometimes roads will be cheaper, and sometimes rails will be cheaper
why would a private company pay for a new road when the government will build that infrastructure for them? and even if they would, why on earth would they build a 5 lane highway solely for private use?
in either case, a rail line is still more expensive than a highway
None of that makes rail infrastructure cheaper to build.
The cost to construct a new rail connection is significantly higher than the cost to construct a new road connection. Subsidies don't enter into it.
If somebody says they have an easy and low cost solution for you, you'd be annoyed if it turned out that it was actually far harder and pricier until maybe 50 years down the line.
US rail freight is unironically some of the best in the world.
Part of the reason US passenger rail sucks so much is because the network is largely owned by freight companies, so priority always goes to freight over passengers.
I wouldn't call effective rail infrastructure "low-cost".