[jazzyjackson]

It really puzzles me, even as a rail fan, how it is said that America’s freight rail is the envy of the world, but in every town there are abandoned tracks pulling right up to downtown warehouses.

It just seems like we let good infrastructure go to waste. It’s probably a tax thing, iirc the rail companies pulled up half their mileage because they were on the hook for property taxes on all that acreage (turned lots of double tracks into single tracks, and old single tracks into recreational bike trails)

[WalterBright]

You're right. The railroads have to pay all the costs associated with the tracks, the truckers shifted those costs onto everyone else.

> old single tracks into recreational bike trails

This is rampant in Seattle. They've not only torn up the tracks and turned them into bike trails, in order to install light rail, they've had to blast new right-of-ways at incredible cost.

[srean]

Couldn't the government lay and maintain the network of tracks and lease them out to the freight companies ?

[loonster]

At least with a bike trail, its much easier to turn it back into rail if needed.