If we invested as much into rail safety as we do into air safety, it'd be fair to compare them. Regardless, in the long term rail transportation is simply much more sustainable and increased investment is very much warranted
> And in the rare cases when things do go wrong your chances of survival are much higher.
That's a completely irrelevant metric.
The only thing that matters is my risk of injury/death per passenger mile. Trains are much worse. End of story.
What you're saying is that trains get into far more accidents, but that don't injure/kill you. On top of still being much more likely to injure/kill you.
Granted the lines are a natural monopoly. I don't see why the usual regulatory approaches shouldn't work. The government could even provide the infrastructure similar to highways.
> sometimes more expensive
Examples? Because that seems patently ridiculous on its face given the differences in energy requirements.
There are plenty of places with functional rail systems to compare to. This stuff isn't rocket science.
That is indeed absurd, and I would argue a clear regulatory failure. Thank you for the example though. That is pretty wild.
Still, there's a decent chance I'd personally choose to pay that premium for the comfort afforded by train travel while nonetheless being disgusted by the broader situation.
Doesn’t the Shinkansen and other HSR systems get rid of at grade road crossings? Yes, without people actually crossing in the tracks, you’ll get less deaths that way.
This seems like an awfully fanciful idea for anywhere but places with the most dense rail networks per sq km, at least if we're talking a full-scale refactor of existing infrastructure, in terms of financial, physical, logistics.
Is it not somewhat true that rail/freight companies have more authority over the land that their lines run through than the regions do? I may be talking out of my ass here, but I feel cities and provinces in Canada pretty much have to yield to CN or BNSF in some form or another; they operate their own police afaik. Railyards seem to be regarded as defacto permanent fixtures in terms of urban infrastructure.
It wouldn’t surprise me at all if aircraft can generally slow down faster than trains, assuming level flight and grade (or the same climb rate)
It’s not really fair though, because the aircraft has so much force acting against it from how fast it’s moving. If somehow a jet was moving at train speeds and could only use its aerodynamic surfaces to slow down, it would probably take a while.