this post was submitted on 10 Dec 2023
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"Efficient" covers a lot of things. There are often reasons to avoid what is technically the most efficient solution by some measure. For trains, their high up front cost has to be made up by low marginal cost, which typically means having a high number of passengers for each stop.
And before you say it, no, I'm not demanding they be profitable, just that they be cost effective.
Trains and good public transport are one of the most productive things economically and the best tools for rising economically for individuals, it might have a higher up front cost (which I don't think it has, I highly doubt a mile of tracks costs more than a mile of road, especially long term), but it's absolutely worth it long term.
pretty sure a lot of US towns spawned from being railroad stops or railroad adjacent, if they can make that happen, they can also revitalize the local economy, meanwhile cars are woefully inefficient and serve more as a gatekeeping device, if you need a car to function you have basically put an entry fee on society.
It does. Highway costs around $10M/mile, and rail (without tunnels) close to $120M/mile. We also don't need to build many new highways, while our aging rail infrastructure needs a lot of work just to get what we have up to snuff before we even talk about new rail.
Mostly, this comes down to things that go away with experience. Get rail projects going en mass and the problem will go away. That said, hooking up every town along the route is only going to make the initial build out worse.
mile? see that's your problem.
rail doesn't cost that much in Europe.
Yes, I'm aware. That doesn't actually address the problem.
well the good news is that while you accounted for costs going down once projects are built, you also failed to consider the difference in capacity between railroad tracks and roads and also the maintenance costs that are gonna be much higher for roads.
so even if it's more expensive upfront which it really isn't, it's so much better long term
Of course it's more expensive up front. That's trivially true when we have highways and not high speed rail.