[sjsamson]

>The US picked a different optimization. The combination of transportation modes from Rail, Truck, and Barge are amazingly important to the health of the country. Passenger rail had a brief time of importance but was passed by plane and car travel.

The US could have “chosen” to do both (there’s no single policy decision or document to point to), as it had done in its railroad heyday, and as other countries do (e.g. Switzerland, China, Russia, etc.). It was and continues to be a failure of public policy and political system that passenger rail is so bad, and even freight rail is as underinvested in. That’s not a knock on the other forms of transport, all of which form a vital part of a larger interconnected, intermodal transportation network, but rail should be an important trunk of that system given its capacity and efficiency. Yet rail has had the least amount of public financial and policy support. By comparison, the US has invested trillions of taxpayer dollars in building and maintaining millions of miles of publicly owned roads (almost all non-tolled), airports and Air Traffic Control (ATC) system, and seaports, canals, dredged harbors and navigable inland waterways, Vessel Traffic Service (VTS).

>When the fully automated, electric car and buses arrive, I would imagine that passenger rail in the US will disappear entirely except for nostalgia operations and metro systems already in operation. It is much easier to be B2B or B2G than deal with individual customers for any of the railroads, and getting passengers off the rail will be a bonus for them. The nodal nature of rail will always be a handicap compared to roads.

We do need autonomous, electric buses and trucks, but fully automated, electric railway technology exists now and has for many decades, and well over century in the case of electrification.[1][2] Standards-based electric trains and related technology are available for purchase off the shelf from multiple vendors, do not need to carry large battery packs in the vehicle, and no pie in sky hope for future automation of an insanely hard problem. Electric railways are the most optimized form of land-based transportation, and arguably the most overall.

“The first rule of any technology used in a business is that automation applied to an efficient operation will magnify the efficiency. The second is that automation applied to an inefficient operation will magnify the inefficiency.” - Bill Gates

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automatic_train_operation

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_automated_train_system...

[protomyth]

The US could have “chosen” to do both (there’s no single policy decision or document to point to), as it had done in its railroad heyday, and as other countries do (e.g. Switzerland, China, Russia, etc.). It was and continues to be a failure of public policy and political system that passenger rail is so bad, and even freight rail is as underinvested in. That’s not a knock on the other forms of transport, all of which form a vital part of a larger interconnected, intermodal transportation network, but rail should be an important trunk of that system given its capacity and efficiency. Yet rail has had the least amount of public financial and policy support. By comparison, the US has invested trillions of taxpayer dollars in building and maintaining millions of miles of publicly owned roads (almost all non-tolled), airports and Air Traffic Control (ATC) system, and seaports, canals, dredged harbors and navigable inland waterways, Vessel Traffic Service (VTS).

I don't really think that was in the cards. The car was already prevalent before the interstate system was built, and the military was much more about a road solution than rail.

As to cost, look at California trying to add high speed rail, as they have failed badly for what was a very modest set of served areas.

Rail does cargo very well. It's very easy to setup the factories and elevators on the rail line. Rail has some serious problems with terminal delivery of people in the US. You still need another form of transportation to get people home. Without fundamentally changing where people live or work, it needs something else.

We do need autonomous, electric buses and trucks, but fully automated, electric railway technology exists now and has for many decades, and well over century in the case of electrification.[1][2] Standards-based electric trains and related technology are available for purchase off the shelf from multiple vendors, do not need to carry large battery packs in the vehicle, and no pie in sky hope for future automation of an insanely hard problem. Electric railways are the most optimized form of land-based transportation, and arguably the most overall.

Electric, Automated trains still don't reach people's homes. You are not going to change the fundamental idea of living in suburbs or the country. In fact, current events make living away from the cities a good option. The cost of rail in the USA is too high even for states that really want it. It will be much easier to alter how the USA builds roads to add cues for automation than try to add rail everywhere. Electric, automated buses will replace passenger rail and be much more flexible for changing trends in where people are going. Automated cars will make personal transport to individual destinations much more efficient and easy. Other than the metro systems that exist, there won't be much place for passenger rail.

[sjsamson]

>I don't really think that was in the cards. The car was already prevalent before the interstate system was built, and the military was much more about a road solution than rail.

These are policy decisions. Other countries chose to invest in rail. The US chose to invest in other forms of transportation and created adverse policy conditions in which rail largely withered and nearly died. I made another comment [1] where I talk about the political milieu that likely contributed to this.

I would also call out the fact since WW2, the US has lost more than half its railroad route-miles (300,000+ to ~147,000 today). Other countries had to rebuild their infrastructure after the destruction of the war. No bombs were dropped on American railroads. Aside from figurative bombs of bad policy by political leaders, competitors in automotive/airlines, and the deeply ignorant idea that railroads and trains are an obsolete 19th century technology.

>As to cost, look at California trying to add high speed rail, as they have failed badly for what was a very modest set of served areas.

I am well aware of the California HSR project and its many failings. It has nothing to do with anything inherent to rail technology. I view it as symptomatic of and the inevitable result of a broken political system, poor project management, a Transportation/Construction-Industrial Complex (similar to the Military-Industrial Complex), monied special interests like construction and engineering contractors run wild with no oversight, capturing the agencies they work for and transferring as many public dollars into their bank account.

Alon Levy’s blog Pedestrian Observations [2] covers transportation construction costs extensively, and generally calls out Anglo countries (UK, USA, CAN, AUS) as the most troubled. There’s also the Caltrain-HSR Compatibility Blog [3], Systemic Failure [4], and others in the technical transportation commentary space.

>Rail has some serious problems with terminal delivery of people in the US. You still need another form of transportation to get people home. Without fundamentally changing where people live or work, it needs something else. >Electric, Automated trains still don't reach people's homes. You are not going to change the fundamental idea of living in suburbs or the country. In fact, current events make living away from the cities a good option. The cost of rail in the USA is too high even for states that really want it. It will be much easier to alter how the USA builds roads to add cues for automation than try to add rail everywhere.

There is an access problem or first/last mile problem, but rail does not exist in a vacuum. It can work in concert with buses, taxi/rideshare, friend/family pickup/dropoff, biking, walking, etc. as part of a larger comprehensive transportation network. Rail can act as the high capacity core of the network. A pair of optimized, electric, modern signaled rail tracks with has the transportation capacity equivalent of a 8-10 lane highway. This should be taken advantage of, then use lower capacity/higher flexibility transport for the first and last mile problem. Otherwise we continue have a congestion problem with transportation network centered around single occupant vehicles (SOVs), or even zero occupants with autonomy. Autonomous vehicles do not fix that, if anything it makes it worse.

Without getting into third rail politics unique to post-WW2 American suburbs/rural life and notions of “freedom,” historically trains were one of the primary form of mechanized land transport for about century, from the mid 1800s to well into 1900s. Suburbs were originally enabled by rail during this period (e.g. NYC, Boston, Chicago, LA metro areas), many of suburbs grew up around a local railroad or streetcar system, and their historic downtowns are often next to a rail station [5][6]. It was only later, we got auto oriented suburbs where you need a car to get anywhere. These were decisions, we could choose to create transit oriented communities, including suburbs.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24651127 [2] https://pedestrianobservations.com/ [3] http://caltrain-hsr.blogspot.com/ [4] https://systemicfailure.wordpress.com/ [5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streetcar_suburb [6] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Railway_town