"Freight Rail Pays For Its Own Safe, Efficient Network" says freight industry ad

[M II A II R II K]

Originally Posted by Politico

Freight Rail Pays For Its Own Safe, Efficient Network
02/04/2019
By ADRIAN ARNAKIS
Read More: http://www.politico.com/sponsor-cont...icient-network

[Mister Uptempo]

Why are you posting and linking to sponsor-generated propaganda? This is not news or editorial, but a commercial from the AAR.

[jtown,man]

Originally Posted by Mister Uptempo

Why are you posting and linking to sponsor-generated propaganda? This is not news or editorial, but a commercial from the AAR.

Does that offend you? Can it not still spark debate or an interesting conversation?

[Cirrus]

Mod interjection: This is borderline acceptable. The article is a paid advertisement but it's a legitimate topic and Politico is a legitimate (and respected) paper. Since it's borderline, I'm going to leave this thread open, but edit the post to include less of the ad, and change the thread title to reflect its source. Carry on.

[Mister Uptempo]

Originally Posted by jtown,man

Does that offend you?

Yes, it does.

Originally Posted by jtown,man

Can it not still spark debate or an interesting conversation?

In about the same measure as "sponsored content" like this...

[M II A II R II K]

I guess freight rail receives fewer government subsidies and pays and profits for itself.

[accord1999]

Originally Posted by M II A II R II K

I guess freight rail receives fewer government subsidies and pays and profits for itself.

Yeah, it shows how useful rail can be when it's not hampered by trying to move unprofitable people around.

[hammersklavier]

It's not inaccurate but it's definitely propaganda. But for what purpose? The article isn't just touting the freight railroads' (exaggerated) infrastructure credentials, it's contrasting freight rail infrastructure with the highway network. So strange ... I almost feel like the goal is to advocate for transport infrastructure privatization, with freight rail being touted as the exemplar of successful privately-own transportation infrastructure.

(Of course, an intelligent observer might notice that the rail network could become more efficient still with off-the-shelf European tech such as mainline electrification and ERTMS. But these things are massively capital-intensive.)

Finally, let me remind youse of my theory that the Brightline project was a trial balloon by the freight rail industry to see if a passenger rail play was viable. With Branson buying Brightline up (along with the Vegas HSR project BTW), the trial balloon evidently seems successful, and this might be the spearhead of a push to start Brightline-like projects on various amenable corridors around the country. That is, this fluff piece touts freight rail's superiority to road infrastructure because the industry's gearing up to offer an alternative.

[mhays]

Rail companies got sweet deals that might have sounded fair at the time (?) but are today unfair. Try building a pedestrian bridge or anything else over a railroad and see what happens...the railroad has the power.

[jtown,man]

Originally Posted by mhays

Rail companies got sweet deals that might have sounded fair at the time (?) but are today unfair. Try building a pedestrian bridge or anything else over a railroad and see what happens...the railroad has the power.

My old college shut down the main road going into the campus that crossed about 5 rail lines. The school tried to allow pedestrians to still use the path because it would cut off about 15 minutes of walking. The railroad said NO.

Yes, they are powerful.

[M II A II R II K]

Perhaps long distance passenger rail could each carry several cars of freight to make it more profitable and the freight would also be transported at high speed.

And with combined services freight trains and passenger trains wouldn't get in each others way to cause delays since there's only be one service.

[Busy Bee]

Ot just throwing this out...I don't know...Express mail perhaps? What a groundbreaking idea...

[Busy Bee]

Originally Posted by accord1999

Yeah, it shows how useful rail can be when it's not hampered by trying to move unprofitable people around.

I didn't know Randall O'Toole was so witty

[accord1999]

Originally Posted by Busy Bee

I didn't know Randall O'Toole was so witty

Well, Europe shows that you can't have both high passenger-km and freight ton-km.

[Busy Bee]

Originally Posted by mhays

Rail companies got sweet deals that might have sounded fair at the time (?) but are today unfair. Try building a pedestrian bridge or anything else over a railroad and see what happens...the railroad has the power.

In my opinion short of nationalization with leased access, which only makes sense on a handful of corridors with strong passenger travel demand, one of which (NEC) is already gov owned, the government should have partial domain over all freight railroad right of way, with a strict requirement to prove legally that requests like those mentioned are an unreasonable burden to their operations. Probably 90% of the time they wouldn't be and this thing called progress could actually occur in this country.

[Busy Bee]

Originally Posted by accord1999

Well, Europe shows that you can't have both high passenger-km and freight ton-km.

Man, that's correlation not causation.

[SIGSEGV]

My impression is Russia has lots of both freight and passenger volume on its railways, but I don't really know.

[hammersklavier]

Originally Posted by accord1999

Well, Europe shows that you can't have both high passenger-km and freight ton-km.

And Russia and China show you can. The reason Europe's freight ton-km's are so low is that the freight railroads have to compete against the sealanes ... and freighters will always beat freight trains for sheer bulk haulage.

By contrast, Russia and China have plenty of inland population centers. The US has basically four regions (the East and West coasts, Great Lakes, and Gulf of Mexico) where sea haulage can compete against rail freight, none of which affects lucrative transcontinental haulage; China one (its eastern seaboard); and Russia de facto none (yes, it has tons of seacoast, but relatively few coastal population centers: St. Petersburg, Rostov-on-Don, and Vladivostok function more as gateways to inland population centers).

[Busy Bee]

^ That's what I meant to say