Quote:
Originally Posted by milomilo
What difference would it make if a train got hit by another train thats 400m long rather than 4km? I can't imagine there being much.
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There's a significant difference. While the destruction wroth by the kinetic energy of the impact alone wouldn't be reduced enough to prevent casualties that isn't the only thing your dealing with in the freight train collision. A reduction by 10 in the length of a freight train corresponds to an order of magnitude less total of dangerous goods possibly being involved in a derailment.
However there's a good reason why we don't do rail the way they do it in Europe. It's often because we simply can't or rather we would be at an economic disadvantage if we did. And the reason why we have these mile plus long freight trains in the first place is because of
our geography. Shipping is by far the most efficient form of freight transportation over longer distances. But unlike Europe we are largely a
land locked nation. That is, to move goods from east to west we must do it by land and most of our population centers are not accessible or easily accessible by sea. We have few port facilities unlike Europe. The next best alternative for moving large amounts of goods is rail transportation. And the railways have evolved over time to operate as efficiently as possible. Hence the reason for these massive trains and this is also why the freight railways are as powerful as they are, because as much as we may hate them for a multitude of reasons(believe me I do too), they are huge drivers of our economy.
Quote:
Originally Posted by swimmer_spe
If all lines were nationalized in Canada, would this make things better for VIA and any other passenger service?
Would this lead to less freight trains?
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There woulb be no point in nationalizing all the rail lines in Canada. Why should we nationalize a line where passenger trains does not and will not operate on? Less the half of the 30,000+ miles of mainline track in Canada have any kind of passenger service and if you were to discount the token VIA tourist services, really only about 10% is vital for passenger service. Again, we're not Europe. We only have a fraction of the population density that they have. Higher forms of transit do not make sense on the vast majority of our rail lines and again it would not be economically feasible. The only thing that needs to done is to purchase lightly used freight lines around and between large metro's as GO/ML has done in the GTA. If that's not possible then new track should be built around/between the our major cities i.e Toronto/Ottawa/Montreal, Edmonton/Calgary.
Quote:
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It's because they are properly regulated and the tracks and maintenance is nationalised.
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The situation is quite different in the GTA where Metrolinx, a crown agency of the province of Ontario, owns and operates and maintains nearly all the tracks(over 80%) in the GTA. These lines are by far the busiest in Canada by number of train movements.
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