131
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 02 May 2025
131 points (99.2% liked)
Technology
73731 readers
1330 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related news or articles.
- Be excellent to each other!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, this includes using AI responses and summaries. To ask if your bot can be added please contact a mod.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
- Accounts 7 days and younger will have their posts automatically removed.
Approved Bots
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
Why not make automated trains with their own dedicated right of way?
But that would require investment in infrastructure...
Bet that semi trucks are more expensive due to road damage and congestion alone.
I've already commented on road damage, but yeah, trucking firms bear no costs for the congestion and other road hazards they bring with them. Society, as is so often the case, sucks up those externalities.
Efficiency, pollution too (even when electric, because tires and break dust are a thing)
Yes, but that’s all subsidized by taxpayers, so it’s more expensive overall but cheaper for YOU.
Privatize gains, socialize losses. The Capitalist^TM^ way!
*** everyone but the lobbyists liked that ***
They already are automated trains on freight only routes like mines.
It's absurd to suggest running a railway to every warehouse in East Bumfuck, Missouri.
Oh. But a road is famously cheap.
The road already exists
Just one more road and the traffic will get better /s
Compared to building and maintaining a railway, yes, by orders of magnitude.
Citation needed
A cursory search shows rail in rural areas is $2 million per mile and a highway is $4-10 million per mile.
Yeah but it'd be fucking insane to build a state highway to each and every destination in every hamlet, just like it would be for rail.
And it's not just cost of initial construction, it's also cost of maintenance. If the ground shifts slightly under the road, it's a bump. If it shifts under a railway, it's a derailment for the first train that finds it and a couple million dollars in recovery and repair, plus the downtime while that section is out of service. And that doesn't even start to account for overhead like signal operation, whereas on a road you just use a stop sign.
I like trains more than the next guy, but you absolutely cannot just replace every road with a railway.
A road built and maintained by taxpayers is much cheaper (to a shipping company) than building, maintaining, and operating a railway. Making taxpayers responsible for the infrastructure you use is one way to make your business much more profitable.