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by O_nlogn
791 days ago
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I agree completely. I am baffled by the support that this and other "rails to trails" initiatives get around the world. At a time when we are trying to decarbonize, we should be investing in modernizing and upgrading the existing railway infrastructure, not scrapping it for recreation. This is a vanity project. California has enough hiking trails. It has too many cars and not enough public transport. A similar project is underway in Ireland [0], where they decommissioned a large number of former passenger lines in the 1970s, and are now spending millions of euros converting them to "greenways". To give one example, the Youghal to Midleton "greenway" replaced a former commuter rail line connecting commuter towns to Cork City. Every day, thousands of people drive between those towns, resulting in traffic jams and unnecessary CO2 emissions. Re-opening the train line would be a no brainer, they have more commuters today than ever before. Instead, residents now have the option of cycling or walking along a desolate trail through a bog. [0] https://www.corkcoco.ie/en/resident/greenways/midleton-to-yo... |
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So a key question is: are there a lot of people trying to move between SF and Humboldt Bay? Does the carbon from transportation along this line warrant the renovation of the rail line (which itself produces emissions)? And if you build a train and no one rides that train, then that's probably even worse for emissions.
> California has enough hiking trails
This is pretty subjective. You can probably get rid of several of America's national parks and say "yeah we have enough national parks".