this post was submitted on 29 Sep 2023
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Cheaper than highways. The reason why long haul trucking exists is because the construction of highways is highly subsidized. Even then, it's often more cost effective to use rail.
railways are a lot more expensive than roadways per km
Citation needed
I'm not that guy, and I'm all for rail, but here's an article that talks about it. https://seattletransitblog.com/2009/10/26/the-highway-vs-fixed-transit-debate/
"While a few rail-transit lines may have had a marginal effect on rush-hour congestion, the cost is exorbitant. The average light-rail line under construction or in planning stages today costs $25 million per mile ($50 million per mile in both directions). Heavy rail costs more than twice as much. By comparison, the average lane mile of freeway costs only about $5 to $10 million."
But the average freeway is not 1-lane, but has many lanes. Also roadways have much higher maintenance costs than rail.
Rail maintenance is more expensive than road maintenance
Where can I find those figures in the post you linked?
I might be mistaken, but by that quote and given that every motorway has three lanes in each direction, or at least two I assume in the USA, the cost of the road is at least comparable and at most a bit dearer. I'd even say it constitutes fudging the numbers to pull the wool over.
Only if you compare 3 roads to 1 track. If you're arguing about which costs more then it doesn't make sense to include the cost of the whole 3 lanes as all that traffic doesn't need to go by rail.
Well, the difference is that three lanes of traffic have about the same capacity for passengers as a single railway track, no?
I wonder if these high costs are due to it being passenger rail inside a major city. I'm curious if this cost applies to freight rail as well.
Out here in the countryside it seems that a mile of freight rail should be worth much less than a mile of highway. Everything from easement size to site prep, equipment needed and bill of materials seems a fraction of that required for highway construction.
As mentioned elsewhere the maintenance is minimal compared to a highway as well, with the trains plowing snow themselves and the rails being very hard-wearing. The only work we ever see them doing on the rail lines is occasionally replacing sleepers and fixing up the road crossings - and it's heavy trucks that ruin those, not the trains.
Yeah, I'd definitely be curious on more detailed numbers.
This is about light rail though, which is usually built in cities (or, at least between a city and its suburbs). So I wonder how much of the cost (for both rail and road) is for land rights.
I know that asking you to Google things is maybe a lot, but isn't the answer pretty obvious if you think about it for more than five seconds?
Roads are made out of what would otherwise be a waste product from refining oil, mixed with dirt. If you just leave it alone, it will basically just sit there.
Rails are made out of steel, which is both expensive and rusts. Tolerances have to be tight. And if you fuck about with maintenance in rail, you get a train derailment.
Idk why you got down voted. It makes sense to me!
Because people don't want facts and accurate information they want their team to win.
No, it's because your answer is overly simplistic. We don't build one lane roads, we tend to build 3 or 4 in each direction, at least in cities.
Also, leave a road alone, it does not just sit there. In cold climates you get frost heaves, in hot climates asphalt is never truly "solid" so it gets ruts... water causes damage, plants grow through it...
Add in some of the other responses and we have a more complete picture. I'm not convinced. At best it might be a wash.
*edit* just realized you're not the same person, sorry. My point still stands though.
They build roads going every direction because people and stuff needs to go every direction, people still need to go to those places if you replace them with trains.
Also the effort to fix and replace train lines is far more than fixing roads, I think a lot of Americans haven't really used trains much so they don't comprehend how complex it is, when you've had trains cancelled for a thousand dumb reasons like the wrong kind of leaves on the track then trains don't feel as reliable - and when the track is blocked for repair they can't go round so it's bus replacement service so if you scrap roads then you need redundancy so you end up with masses of tracks everywhere.
I love trains but people need to learn how they actually work and the costs involved so we can be reasonable in planning and build the most useful solution for each situation - just saying trains for everything doesn't make sense.