"History is a wonderful thing, if only it was true"
-Tolstoy

Sunday, August 01, 2010

Which is best? freight or people

American freight is best, but passenger rail is not
European freight is much worse, but passenger rails is excellent

American railways: High-speed railroading | The Economist

"But the problem with America’s plans for high-speed rail is not their modesty. It is that even this limited ambition risks messing up the successful freight railways. Their owners worry that the plans will demand expensive train-control technology that freight traffic could do without. They fear a reduction in the capacity available to freight. Most of all they fret that the spending of federal money on upgrading their tracks will lead the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA), the industry watchdog, to impose tough conditions on them and, in effect, to reintroduce regulation of their operations. Attempts at re-regulation have been made in Congress in recent years, in response to rising freight rates. “The freight railroads feel they are under attack,” says Don Phillips, a rail expert in Virginia."

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