Can Freight & Passenger Rail Coexist?
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- čas přidán 27. 06. 2022
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You need to understand that trying to make passenger and freight rail coexist is bad because you end up with a network that sucks at both of them. The North American freight rail network is optimized for very efficient haulage of *freight.* A shipping container of t-shirts or ball bearings doesn’t care how long it takes to get where it’s going, but the shipper does care quite a bit about cost. As a result, freight rail networks tend towards slower lines designed for very heavy loads and long trains. These lines tend to be focused on industrial areas and ports. This is precisely the opposite of what you want with passenger rail, which is lots of relatively lightweight but fast and frequent service to areas full of housing and offices. These differences are why passenger services that are run over rail lines intended primarily for freight tend to suck. Likewise, a good passenger railroad hits downtown and residential areas, but doesn’t go anywhere near container ports or heavy industry, or really any industry that would make effective use of rail freight. They also tend to be lightly built and have smaller loading gauges which make it difficult to operate modern freight equipment. One of the quintessential examples of this is the fact that the VRE can’t have NEC-compatible high-level platforms because they would prevent CSX double stack freights from using the line.
Also, the rail infrastructure in North America isn’t decaying or “a skeleton of its former self.” It got more efficient because advances in technology allowed higher traffic densities. The “light touch regulation” is actually a result of the recognition back in the late 70s that the combination of the ICC’s absurd over-regulation and federally-subsidized competition from highways were going to cause the complete collapse of the American rail network of something wasn’t changed. Large sections of it were abandoned because it simply didn’t make any sense to operate, since the cost of maintaining the tracks was more than whatever benefit the line provided. Before the deregulation, 20% of the track produced 80% of the revenue. Once the railroads were allowed to abandon track, they used the opportunity to cut off much of the unprofitable track to reduce their costs so they could compete with trucks.
If you go back to the start, is the current problem created by the fact that most railways in the US have always been privately owned?
@@michaelimbesi2314 You can make them coexist if you use the French TGV approach -- have separate tracks for the high-speed trains in most segments of the routes.
@@michaelimbesi2314 I mostly agree. It's hard to truly optimize rail for both passenger and freight, there is always some level of compromise. Even where infrastructure allows joint operation, it becomes difficult to schedule freight and passenger together because of their opposing operational natures. It generally requires twin track or often triple and quad track to allow passing in multiple directions.
The problem with Amtrak, Via Rail, and other North American passenger railroads is that because many of the routes they run over freight rail are through places that can't really provide the passenger traffic needed to let the service pay for itself. It's not financially viable to invest in improvements, so they're stuck with routes optimized for freight traffic. That hurts travel times and on-time performance, and the service remains unattractive.
Really what needs to be done is only to focus on areas that see lots of traffic (like the NEC area or potentially Florida's east coast) where the infrastructure to run both passenger and freight rail at such a sort of 80% solution is justified, and cut costs (or trains) elsewhere, where passenger operates such large losses.
@@Lucius_Chiaraviglio You need to understand that a lot of this is informed by terrain. For example, the route from Washington DC through Pittsburgh to Chicago goes over the Appalachian Mountains. To get freight trains up and over the mountains, the route is quite winding. Even if you separated the tracks, the right of way has so many tight turns that you couldn’t operate more than 60kph even on separated tracks. This is exactly the kind of thing that I mean. For a freight railway, it will never make sense to spend billions of dollars to try to tunnel through the mountains, since the extra couple of hours don’t matter to a carload of coal or intermodal freight. Even straightening the curves isn’t favorable, because the lower gradients and tighter curves help keep heavy coal trains from running away. It also Carrie’s a lot of coal from the many coal mines in the area. This is the sort of thing that I mean when I say the line is optimized for freight traffic. It doesn’t pay for what it doesn’t need to carry freight, it works very well for carrying big, heavy freight trains, it’s safe, and it collects lots of business from the mines in the area.
It will never make sense for a freight railroad to spend fortunes trying to speed up coal trains. However, if you’re running an intercity passenger train, it makes plenty of sense to spend $5 billion dollars to build some tunnels and cut two hours off the travel time. For an intercity passenger train, it makes sense to accept higher gradients in exchange for straighter curves because the lighter passenger train can handle those steeper slopes. And it makes more sense to cross a river to cut out a long loop of track, because the passenger trains weigh less, so the bridge you need is less expensive and you also care a lot more about saving time. This is what I mean. Don’t waste your time trying to run an intercity train over 50-60kph track through the mountains. If you want good passenger rail, **build a passenger line**. Don’t try to shoehorn passenger rail onto a freight line. You end up with really bad passenger service, because the train is still on freight tracks only doing 50kph up and over the mountains.
In regards to the removal of rail lines, it's my understanding there are some perverse government insentivizes like charging property taxes per Km of track, meaning doubling tracks doubles cost.
Absolutely, stuff like that is clearly NOT creating good incentive structures.
I don't think cutting taxes would be the answer, since those are probably insignificant compared to the overall costs of maintaining more infrastructure. Nationalization of the entire country's rail infrastructure really should be the goal, with tolls charged to private companies who want to use it. Those tolls could then provide a more secure way to fund expansion than merely relying on the good graces of whichever political party happens to be in power at the time
canadian gov being scummy? whats new
@@HenryLeslieGraham This is a discussion about Canada.
@@Yuvraj. corrected now *
In the UK we almost have the opposite problem to the US, the network is already so congested with passenger services, it's really difficult to squeeze freight in, even at night because that is when Network Rail likes to take possession and do inspections and maintenance (especially since regulations have been increasingly tightened to make live line working harder to approve).
I'd also add, bypass lines are very useful. Ideally you don't want freight traffic clogging up your busy city center stations. So having them able to avoid the most congested passenger areas is very useful.
Yes, that's one of the main reasons for HS2
By-pass lines are the biggest potential uplifted of passager rail. Most passanger service will always be regional or lower, and the ability to build 50-200km of track through Greenfield around a city to open up hundreds of km of intracity track can't be understated. Particularly when most of that freight is moving through the city, and considering the safety advantage of moving frieght out of population centers.
Kinda.
Although my town has a track that leads right to the docks but it never gets used.
And we got mainly intermobile traffic these days ontop of the nuclear flask aka the most dangerous cargo our tracks can ever move.
Don't forget passign loops so passenger trains can overtake
We have the same problem in The Netherlands. The passenger rail traffic is so busy that only a few freight trains can be squeezed in the schedule. That’s why there was dedicated freight line to Germany was built.
They can co-exist and they must. The need for climate action means we need more passengers and more freight carried on the rails we have. We need the federal government, who regulates the freight railways, to step in and actively manage the situation!
Active management is the key!
We need to nationalize the railroads, like most other industrialized countries, and build an Interstate Rail System on the scale of the Interstate Highway System. Business will ALWAYS give the worst service it can get away with giving in return for the most money. Transportation needs to be handled as a public utility.
I don’t trust the government to run more than it must, especially not a critical industry like freight rail. The current system mostly works well, there’s not enough reason to change it. For an example of how nationalization went badly, look at Britain. Heavy political pressures and agendas on the railway management meant massive amounts of waste and failure, ultimately resulting in the closure of large parts of the network. It took several decades to recover from that. Even now the politically-run, disjointed system limits what the rail industry can accomplish.
@@andrewreynolds4949 Last I checked, their partial privatization didn't work and they had to re-nationalize due to the companies not maintaining the track, eventually leading to accidents.
@@andrewreynolds4949 I don't think the system works well. There are many cases where certain freight railways will not allow passenger trains, or else not very many passenger trains. In Canada, the federal government is already involved in regulating privately-owned railways. I am just saying that it needs to encourage the sharing of the rails with passenger trains (intercity and regional) when regulating.
When we focus on longer distance intercity sharing, we need more double tracking for better passing section. When we want local regional rail we need new by-pass routes to keep the Frieght trains on the periphery of the city.
Indeed, what enabled GO transit to ramp up service so much in recent decades was exactly that!
Double track or just flat out quad track.
@@davidty2006 Honestly on the really long routes through the interior of Canada/USA, you likely only need passing sections of side spur. They may have to be 20km long, but as Amtrak shows even "busy" sections of single track are rarely in use. A small section of passing track in the center of two points 200km apart will have a huge impact at a fraction of the cost. I'm sceptical passange rail through the interior will ever become a main transport option, so I would hesitate double tracking to much. Local/regional rail though ya I want dounbe tram tracks and double local service track and double express service track, and maybe a frieght line.
@@neolithictransitrevolution427 With double track you not only get the potential for better passenger service, but also better freight service for customers that aren't humongous companies. We already had a problem (even before the pandemic) that farmers have trouble using the railroads to deliver their harvest because the freight railroads were too busy hauling oil (especially Bakken Crude).
I have watched busy lines like the BNSF Transcon through Arizona and New Mexico where there is a constant stream of rail freight, often multiple trains in view at any one time and always at least one except for the odd minute or two. BNSF has been quadruple tracking significant lengths of it just to deal with the freight traffic. So while many lines may be quiet, there are a lot of places where freight rail companies really are stretched on capacity. Single line running is especially restricted, and putting in a second track isn’t always practical. In my city there are places where they can’t double track or grade separate the lines because of other infrastructure crowding it in.
On a different note, Brightline in Florida looks (so far) like a good example of freight and passenger rail coexisting. I look forward to seeing if Brightline can sustain itself going forward.
Good job mentioning the Lehigh line, which I just rode over this morning, and which supports around 60 NJT Raritan Valley trains per weekday while also being heavily used by both NS and CSX freight. NJT doesn’t just run over the Lehigh line between its own rails on one end and Amtrak’s on the other, but it even has two island platform stations along it, with gauntlet tracks giving freight trains a some more lateral space as needed.
If India's experience with running passenger and freight trains on their rail lines simultaneously teaches you anything, it is that passenger and freight trains can run on the same track until a certain point. Once the line crosses the 150% occupancy mark, it's time to roll out separate passenger and freight tracks.
And you are basing this on what source ? Cross subsidization of passenger rail at the expense of freight is monumental blunder that still costs the country's economy. Plus DFC's might provide some reprieve but none of the lines have been completely operationalized from start to port.
@@YoY664 what are you on about? the indian economy is already seeing a lot of benefits from the dedicated freight corridor
Here on the Seattle Terminal, we have four main railroad: BNSF (owns most, if not, all, of the mainline trackage, also dispatches line), UP (trackage rights on the BNSF to access Argo Yard and Harbor Island), Amtrak, and Sounder. In the afternoon commute hours (~2:00-~7:00pm), on the section of the Terminal south of King Street Station, Amtrak and Sounder trains generally operate 20 min apart, with most trains headed south towards Tacoma and onwards.
During this time, BNSF and UP generally do not run trains until the larger breaks in service or until before and after the commute hours. The intriguing part is that this area of the Terminal has 3 main tracks, which last until it narrows down to 2 at the South Portal of the Great Northern Tunnel, and several long sidings (which are typically used for trains awaiting crews), yet BNSF seems to never run any trains, even during the 20 min gap in service, which is typically enough time for a train to make it from Georgetown, where freights usually “tie down,” to Interbay Yard, where there is space for them to stop and wait, if needed, before Bridge 6.3 (Salmon Bay) and the currently single tracked section at Edmonds. While passenger trains do need to be on their current track at Tukwila, there are several crossovers where freights and passengers can switch tracks, and also, in my opinion, an underutilized triple track mainline.
One of the great "coexisting" corridors of running freight and passenger trains in the same ROW is the Frontrunner in Utah. The UTA bought out the right of way and built their track alongside existing freight tracks, so its not uncommon to see freight trains. Although, the coexisting on the same tracks problem exists just to the north, where issues between the UTA and UP lead to the limiting, the closure of the Pleasant View station (which had a decent amount of TOD). But hopefully in the future coexistence or parallel trackage can return service and even bring service to other points like Brigham City, Logan, or Tremonton.
They need that double track tho! Hour frequencies are weak
I'm a passionate rider of Frontrunner. I like the model of building tracks adjacent to the already existing ones so that freight and passengers don't need to interrupt each other. Maybe there could be rewards to freight companies that assist in building passenger priority tracks.
My favorite example of frieght and passenger rail using the same tracks happened about 15 years ago. I was standing on the platforn of Kowloon Tong station in Hong Kong when a pig train went through. Live pigs. The smell was overpowering! Thank goodness it is an open air station!
Wasn't the problem solved in 2000 when Sheung Shui Slaughterhouse near the Hong Kong-Mainland China border opened?
@@vincentng2392 Yes, this sounds right. It is still a good (and jarring, at the time) example of sharing tracks between passengers and freight.
Lots to unpack. Starting with the last comment, Open Access railways with infrastructure separated from operation is essential for the provision of the rial service we need. It's not just a matter of freight vs passenger. Keeping this to the US, the "freight railroads" discourage lightweight shipments, time sensitive shipments, and shipments of less than about 750 miles. That is why measured by weight (what US railroads claim to be good at), trains carry 9.3 percent of the shipments, trucks 72%. Measured by value (typically light weight and time sensitive), trains carry 1.4 percent of the shipments, trucks 73 percent.
Before May 1 1971, there were no "freight railroads," just railroads. Passenger and freight trains generally coexisted well. One line I worked had 14 passenger trains and 20-30 freight trains per day. Passenger trains were almost always within minutes of on time. Another line I worked only had eight passenger trains, but ~200 freight trains, and crossed other rail lines at grade in a distance of 30ish miles with a total of over 70 passenger trains. It all almost always ran smoothly.
The US has the most underutilized rail network in the developed world. Yes, it is high in ton miles, the chosen measurement for demonstrating prowess. Since the US has the largest rail network in the world, and the third largest land area (and railroads discourage shipments under a distance of 750 miles-a distance that would span the length or width of some countries), the ton miles distinction is easy to achieve. However, when measuring train miles per mile of track, the US is 40th, down below Mozambique. OK, fine, US freight trains are much bigger. Adjusted for that, the US is 11th, behind the Czech Republic. The US railroads are in the strange situation of being a virtually empty network with local immense congestion.
That is largely due to mismanagement. US freight railroad operation is almost entirely improvised. Operation is figured out as it is happening. Sure, there are "schedules" that typically consist of a set of desired times, whether they can be achieved or not, or whether it is possible to run all of the trains on time simultaneously.
That is related to the monopoly position to which deregulation has led. That brings us back to open access being the solution for freight and passenger.
You're right about the freight railroads, but the reason they've become more "lean" by removing infrastructure is because of taxes. Idk about Canada but in most US states taxes are levied on railroads based on track mileage, so railroads have an explicit and aggressive incentive to cut track they're not using (which is bad!) so I don't fully blame them for the situation
It's worth mentioning that Precision Scheduled Railroading (just-in-time, essentially unscheduled train formation) causes plenty of problems for the freight business too. Customers have no idea how long the transit will take, and RR staff are forced to work unpredictable schedules. The freight railroads have lost a lot of business because of it. PSR only looks good if you want the minimum number of trains and crew operating at any given time, with the minimum amount of capital investment.
Great discussion. I'd love a follow-up where you can list some "obvious" location choices where having this integration could be most useful for passenger service. You often hear the "there isn't demand to go from A to B and/or via this route" which gets into the whole argument of whether there is insufficient demand or that the supply is non-existent, so people just find alternatives. I believe we should both meet current and future needs, and create new demand, but that's often a hard balance to sell when lots of money is at stake.
I agree, it’s really interesting to consider how much the lack of demand for SO many services really is just as you mention the lack of sufficient supply
I believe this is a problem of induced demand, and I would argue that most who argue the demand point don't understand that transit demand is fundamentally different from regular supply and demand. So as you increase supply and capacity on your network, you also increase demand for that network.
That's not to say that demand is infinite and that we can build massive passenger rail everywhere, just that the demand question is often misunderstood.
Also, we should note that one of the main barriers to demand for rail is car infrastructure. If we constantly make it easier to drive than take rail by building lots of highways and roadways, then it'll always be hard to get passengers on trains.
I think the Amtrak accident in Missouri illustrates why it's important for freight railroads to perform upgrades to infrastructure that also supports passenger trains. Ultimately, they are held responsible for any accident involving infrastructure that happens on their rails.
It's more than passenger trains that should be considered as well. Some trains carry toxic chemicals, and any accident there has impacts that are just as severe for the surrounding community.
Honestly, I've thought about this dilemma before, and wondered if something like a Network Rail solution could work. Rather than nationalise the whole freight railroad companies, nationalise just the infrastructure and maintenance of every class I railroad into one consolidated rail corporation. (hmm, where have I heard that one before)
Charge the companies a fee to use it, like Interstates are in the united states. Amtrak would love it, as this new Conrail would be a hell of a lot more friendly to them, and would loosen up a bit more capital for them to do more, Freight companies wouldn't have pay for all their infrastructure costs at all, and Conrail would be incentivized to make much better track corridors than previously (maybe even electrify?) It might even be easier for cities to think about implementing halfway decent regional rail in their cities if a hypothetical Conrail was willing to assist them and the city to construct it.
I'm not saying this would be easy to do or anything, but it would be a nice compromise that could leave everyone happy, and might maybe help induce some genuine growth in American Passenger Rail?
This is the most popular model in the EU, which ought to count for something
Part of the problem is that in the 1970s when Conrail was created, freight rail companies were falling apart, and couldn't afford to maintain their own infrastructure. Now that they're doing quite well for themselves, freight companies would not take kindly to their track being nationalized, and would charge the feds a pretty penny for the privilege.
Railway nationalization might be nice if money were not an issue, but since it is, it makes much more sense to just create regulations that require freight rail companies to accommodate Amtrak for a reasonable price, something that already exists and is getting enforced more & more in recent years.
@@derpmansderpyskin Nationalize (and/or the state/local equivalent) the rail system completely. No more corporate ripping off of the public.
@@Lucius_Chiaraviglio The corporations are the ones who built the rail in the first place, and they do a perfectly good job at moving freight.
@@derpmansderpyskin They do a good job for the huge companies, but not so much for others. We already had a problem (even before the pandemic) that farmers have trouble using the railroads to deliver their harvest because the freight railroads were too busy hauling oil (especially Bakken Crude).
Interesting video. But overall, I think one of the best places to look for inspiration might just be Sweden, I mean they have one of the most succesful rail freight industries in all of Europe, as well as some pretty high quality and fast passenger rail through most of the country with speeds of 200km/h on everything from high speed expresses, to the regional commuter trains. Plus having a similar population density to much of North america helps a lot too.
And as of how Sweden works, well yeah it has trafikverket, the national infrastructure manager of not just railways but also national roads and highways, deciding the facts on most of the country's rail infrastructure (with only a few exceptions. IDK if Inlandsbanan for instance is managed by Trafikverket or Inlandsbanan themselves)
Isn't this a similar system to the British one?
Sweden is definitely good, but it’s perhaps a middle ground, much less freight traffic still when compared to NA
Inlandsbanan… it’s complicated. The southern side is maintained by Trafikverket, the rest by Inlandsbanan themselves. Therefore the future of it is discussed. The line is too weak to use with heavy freight (which makes it quite pointless especially to Trafikverket) and too ineffective to use with regular passenger services. The company Inlandsbanan wants to maintain and develop it to become a freight route alternative to Malmbanan and coastal or through Ånge, while Trafikverket thinks it’s too expensive.
@@RMTransit Since Sweden is a much smaller country than USA, Canada or Mexico of course there is less freight traffic. But if yoy compare the volume of freight traffic in Sweden with for example Pennsylvania (about the same population) I'm not shure that the Keystone state will come out as a winner...
How about Japan? I saw a freight train zooming past my station while I was waiting for the train for the branch line.
Full nationalisation would be a challenge. But if you nationalise only the interstate main lines and important corridors and have the government timetable services similar to Australia it could give priority back to passenger trains.
Actually here in cologne, some of the Stadtbahn tracks on the edge of the city are shared with freight. Both types of rail are comparatively slow (
Also Germany mainly deploys bi-directional double track so passenger trains can overtake slower freight when necessary.
@@aapjeaaron Well in theory. In praxis most track is one way and in the 2000s a lot of sidings and switches were ripped out to reduce maintinance.
@@aapjeaaron Germany not so much. There running on the "wrong" track is still a major operation in most places. Austria and Switzerland on the other hand basically only have "bi-directional single-track lines that happen to run parallel" - i.e. they are mostly (Switzerland) or completely (Austria) signalled for bi-directional operation on all tracks.
Thanks for such a well-presented and knowledgeable post Reece. I truly hope that some of the many obvious truths that you've articulated so well, are heeded by those who can make these changes come to pass.
That’s always my hope too! We shall see!
Here in Sydney we have many corridors where freight and commuter rail coexist. I went to a school that was adjacent to a railway station and you'd get to see a nice mix of grain/coal/milk and intermodal freight trains along with the commuter rail.
Love the video. "Well There's Your Problem" highlighted many of the issues with the American rail system, in their Penn Central Bankruptcy series. What alarmed me, and helped me to understand many of the problems with regional and national passenger rail service, was that by and large, US rail operators (and I assume CN and CP), don't have timetables. They just build a train and send it out. Whereas passenger rail needs timetables so people can make use of it. On top of that, the US operators didn't see passenger rail as profitable as cars came into vogue, so they didn't invest, and ended up spinning long-distance rail into Amtrak (vs the alternative of just stopping all passenger service), and the regional/commuter rail was transferred to cities and states, who had no interest at the time, of operating any transportation systems. Unfortunately for us, with the elimination of these local and regional services, and the consolidation of the rail companies, many of the tracks that would have been of great use for new services are being claimed for other uses. Some have just been incorporated into other properties, eliminating the ROW, in whole or part, and other have become walking/riding trails, which would be exceedingly difficult to convert to passenger use. As a result, the rail operators sort of have Amtrak and regional commuter rail over a barrel, in terms of track access, and times of operation.
Look at the Seattle Area, there is a great State Funded (along with Oregon and BC) Amtrak service, called "Cascades". It is a handy service, but only runs 4-8 trains a day, most of which don't even run the full length of the service, and it is very difficult to get one train to go from Eugene to Vancouver, let alone Bellingham or Everett to Portland. On top of that, with people moving further east in the state, it would behoove the states to look at expanding eastward, a train from Everett/Seattle to Spokane would be great, as well as Spokane to Tri-cities to Portland, or even Bend to Salem or Portland. But due to infrastructure issues (largely the Cascade tunnel), it is a non-starter, even with new technologies that would allow smaller gaps between trains, producing little to no exhaust when in the tunnels.
Then Seattle has the Sounder. A great commuter rail, wasted by BNSF. It is only allowed to run 4 trains North of Seattle in the morning, and 6 South of Seattle, during each commuting period. As a result, it doesn't get nearly as much ridership as it would if it 7 days a week, all day, in both directions. On top of that, the expensive rolling stock is idle most of the time because of this restriction. And, there are a few places where stops are needed or would be useful, but just aren't there, and BNSF balks at additional stops or extending service (especially north) to the other communities where it would be useful.
So, as a result, Sound Transit has to build it own tracks, in new ROW, for the Link Light Rail, which has been an expensive feat. There is an even more suitable route for light rail, or even metro service near SR 99 (rather than I-5), and along I-405 that would have been easier and cheaper to build in, but both corridors were abandoned, critical infrastructure removed, and they were converted to trails, making their use a non-starter.
Yes, Passenger and Freight Rail can co-exist, but it will only happen when everyone gets their signaling modernized, passenger rail is given the same priority, and we start to use it as it is built, we can see the scale move toward equality in service, and perhaps, just perhaps, we can get some decent investment in new rail infrastructure for mixed uses.
In Auckland and Wellington in New Zealand both the passenger networks in the regions co-exist with freight networks. In Auckland they are even separating the freight lines from the passenger network with a third main between Quay Park and Wiri
Also reece thanks for showing an indian freight train in your video at 3:55, the type of wagon shown in the video is classified as a BOXN wagon. A BOXN wagon means "bogie open high sided with air breaks" and are commonly used to carry varied forms of general freight that can be left uncovered, from gravel to iron ore to even electric cable reels.
After this conclusion i am a little bit confused. What exactly is "american level of sucess" in freight service? I would argue, that Switzerlands railways already achieves a great cooperation between freight and passenger services by having a deeply integrated company and achieving a significant higher modal split for rail in freight than the US. Which results in exactly, what you said. For example, the Gotthard base tunnel would have never been possible just for passenger services or freight services. But because the line sees heavy usage by both of them, this tunnel was possible. They run now at peak 2 passenger services and 6 freight services per hour per direction through the tunnel.
Also, if you are in the area which is serviced by the RhB, you will quite often spot passenger services with freight attached to them. I think this looks quite funny - a small Stadler EMU with several freight cars casually driving through a snow storm on top of a mountain. Also, such a service has quite the advantage by running often. You don't need long trains, if one runs anyway every hour (which also applies to regular freight trains in Switzerland).
I believe he means cost of shipping by rail and share of freight on train vs road.
@@TAWithiam Cost of rail freight shipping in all of Europe is starting to drop currently (spearheaded by Switzerland) because of finally starting with automated couplers.
Definitely agree that the point of "American level of success" in freight service is a bit of a hogwash. In comparison both India and China manage to do both 1billion passenger kms every year and in-addition China does over 3000 billion tonnes of freight and India does about 1500billion tonnes of frieght. Most of the rail network in these two countries is mixed traffic. Even in terms of modal share both these countries fare better in terms of share of rail in freight.
@@julupani sure such countries move a lot of freight, but it's important to remember that doesn't mean American freight railroads aren't highly successful.
If you want to simply go by statistics a better way to compare would be modal share, where America is quite high but also not dominant, but again there is a lot more to it that such stats. China, for example, has a huge amount of industry and despite that is more dependent on trucking, they just ship a lot more goods total so of course their rails move a lot of freight. Take this with a grain of salt, but ostensibly China has been neglecting their freight lines in favor of their high speed passenger lines, which are important to the CCP as a symbol of economic success.
Anyways really what a lot of people mean by freight rail success in the US is how competitive it is over other modes. That's not all down to business management and good policy, mind you. Europe has far higher usage of cargo ships for shipping within Europe simply because of geography, and cargo ships are the one mode of transportation cheaper than trains (should probably mention pipelines for liquids are usually even better). What's also impressive about US rail is how well it competes with trucking despite government funding subsidizing trucking far more (Truck taxes do not cover road maintenance at all, even if you exclude infrastructure costs from personal vehicles).
Of course private business success doesn't mean that it's good for the country, I'd argue that a good example of Policy setting up good freight rail is Switzerland who have driven rail freight adoption quite hard. Mind you US railroads probably achieve greater cost efficiency (I have not checked this) and US railroads certainly benifit from the much larger loading gauge, but in terms of total beifit to the country as a whole, Switzerland has proportionally displaced a lot more trucking than the US and has a great passenger network at the same time, and I'd argue Switzerland's approach has a greater net benifit to society.
The above rant is probably somewhat incoherent, it's 3AM here and I should go to bed.
Oh also there can be more than one country exemplifying freight rail success.
Both are very important which is why we should be trying to make sure both are up to standard in whichever country we live in
I agree!
The Amtrak routes in the US with the best OTP are not NEC routes but ones in shared freight corridors. They accomplish this with double track mainlines and multiple crossovers that allow faster passenger trains to overtake slower freight.
CSX owns some ROW in my area that they refuse to sell. The line hasn't been used in 20+ years, it is completely disconnected from any main or trunk line. The industry that CSX used the track for ceased operations 35+ years ago and the area is all residential. Yet they refuse to sell it. The tracks are completely buried in dirt, grass and trees now.
CSX is very draconian about anyone else using their tracks, abandoned or not and want 6 to 8 figures for it.
In india we are building new tracks along old lines which will exclusively be freight train to resolve this dispute they are called dfc (dedicated freight corridors)
All excellent points, as someone from a town with a bunch of freight rail crossings I genuinely appreciate you mentioning how they can divide up a town. It's a complaint that can feel so silly to voice aloud because it's just sitting and waiting, but it really does have measurable consequences. especially since freight rail is both noisier and much less considerate about operating at night than passenger rail, two things that in combination still make zero sense to me. Carbon emissions from idling cars, disturbed sleep, distressed animals, and lost school time all have real impacts. Thanks for the video, keep up the great work!
I used to read train magazines and this was definitely a topic. The day-to-day scheduling is planne d when adding passenger, but decisions are made in a freight rail network management center. Some decisions won't be favorable for everyone. I think capacity is tight and doesn't accomodate failure nicely when it happens.
To me, western Canada had an incredible network of freight and passenger. Look at an old rail network map of the prairies and imagine grain and people hauling using people to control traffic. Cities can't plan want to adopt/adapt whatever solution buys them time.
I just have LoL, North America rail ines when they were first built carried everything on the same train. Had passenger cars, freight cars and mail cars. They didn't have dedicated lines or networks. This all ended with interstate infrastructure that started to go up in the 1950's, as well as passenger airlines at the same time. The major decline in the rail use can be largely blaimed on the oil industry which highly pressure the auto industry and local governments to make the personal car more disirable then the train. If it wasn't for oil industry, the US would still be use rail for most all state-state transit of any kind.
I don't think this will be fixed until, at minimum, the railroad infrastructure becomes publicly owned (or separated)
Such an interesting video. I remember seeing a freight train on my first trip to canada and it felt like being in a movie because it was passing a crossing for so long and it was so huge. Never seen anything like it before
You're doing a great service by making your audience aware of this stuff. Most rail foamers are not, and they will recite the pronouncements of the rail cabal verbatim when they get into an argument with someone more enlightened, i.e. me.
I live in the other London, on one of the busiest passenger lines in the UK, the Brighton Line. Where I live there are four tracks, all with low Voltage third rail electrification. There are frequent passenger trains, but also freight trains on the slow lines. The majority of these seem to carry stone, some to a terminal just a few km North of me. These generally consist of about 20 high capacity hopper wagons, so are shorter than typical North American freight trains. There are no problems with them striking platform edges or conductor rails.
They are hauled by class 66 Diesel locomotives, built in North America, in London I think, these have to be smaller than those built for the home market due to the more restricted British loading gauge.
EMD 66 is american built from the Class 59 that was a SD 40 but in british body.
And they are the backbone of our system.
Although GBRf is planning on getting some new Bi mode freight loco's from Stadler eventually.
Ah so your on the lovely quarry line section of BML. I'm on the Redhill Line that is mostly just passenger services stopping at Redhill
Another great video Reece - thank you! I agree with your thoughts. Rail infrastructure is expensive, and if it can be shared between passenger and freight, that has to be a good thing.
I think it's a win win for everyone if they work together. Passenger trains gets more rails to do more trips and have new stations. The Goods/product trains can still operate their large trains and earn money on the side by lending their trails w/o much of a problem. And the government gets a better train system. We could be the first 🥺
Being the first to do it well is an exciting prospect . . .
I feel like the more important question isn't whether freight and passenger rail _can_ coexist, but whether they _should._ I think it's telling that no country in the world has been able to achieve both a profitable rail network and a usable passenger network at the same time. While it may be possible to come up with solutions and workarounds to allow passengers and freight to coexist, I can't help but feel like it's a "jack of all trades, master of none" situation, and that we might be better off with two separate rail networks that are optimized for their specific use cases, with only a minimum of interoperability for use in emergencies.
Yes they can, we have been doing so in Switzerland for over 100 Years, also nice Crocodile in the background, it is even nicer to see driving up the Gotthard :P
There are train CZcamsrs in the US too. I enjoyed the video. The United States is a large country, so I know that planes are mostly used. I look forward to the next good video.
Of course they can and they should, the problem in the US is that the owner of the tracks are the freight companies.
In Europe even some high speed rails are used by passenger and freight trains.
Hi from Spain, amazing video!!
Good video. The over-arching "neutral arbiter" model works well in Australia and Türkiye where railways have been mostly in public hands for decades. Rail freight in Türkiye is limited to the lower-speed legacy system which is steadily being upgraded, alongside construction of more high-speed lines (which are purely for Intercity passenger traffic). In Australia many parts of our heavy rail "suburban" networks manage to run quite high-frequency passenger services, despite much line-sharing with freight, because the specifications for freight trains are not that different (due to the long history of that over-arching model of regulation - even though Victoria, WA and Queensland have non-standard gauge passenger services). In a way, the huge historical success of freight rail in North America is the main obstacle to allowing sharing infrastructure with passengers as you point out, but without a strong independent arbiter the freight companies get to have their cake and eat it too. Thanks Reece very enlightening.
Is there any reason you didn't write _Turkey_ as you're writing in English? Do you write _Rzeczpospolita Polska_ too, or they're not brown enough for a virtue signal?
The tracks in Waterloo are kinda of cool. There is a track switch before the platform to move it 6-12 inches away from the platform. There is another section that has the dedicated light rail tracks plus a freight line next to it. Granted these are local freight lines but still really nice to see.
If I look at Belgium and line 50A I can say they definitely can co exist. At just a double bi-directional track you have 96 passenger trains a day on top of unit trains moving cars form the port of Brugges. Although they are now expanding the line to 4 lanes. Interestingly though is that they still wont split freight and passenger. In stead the inner two lines will have a speed of 200 kph for the IC trains and the outer will have 160 kph speed for local and freight running. Still all bi directional. Meaning local trains running on the outside can use the inner lines for overtaking freight.
Here in Guadalajara, Mexico metro line 4 is currently under construction. It's going to share the freight tracks that go south of the city through some densely populated suburbs and industry hubs. SITEUR (the Guadalajara metro operator) said it was the best option to provide transport to that zone of the city that really needed it. We'll see if it truly was the best option when enters in service in 2024.
Although passenger and freight services can co-exist, it becomes really difficult to operate both of them together in an efficient manner in countries with massive passenger train rider-ship. Being in India, we can see the government prioritising dedicated grade-separated passenger and freight corridors at the same time.
In Sydney, you've got coal trains to Wollongong and grain trains to Nowra, plus ballast trains from Bombo. Some of the steepest track in Sydney is Hurstville to Sutherland. 7 passenger trains per hour (6 local, 1 regional). The freight trains wait on the quad track (only needed for passengers in peak hour) for 1 window per hour for the rest of the week, when they can jump onto the double track, and get a reasonable southbound path to grind up Como Bank with a full load. They follow an express train that diverges at Sutherland, and are followed by an all stations train 12 minutes behind the express. They're tabled to arrive at Sutherland 15 minutes apart. That 12-15 minute window is enough for a slow goods to grind up Como Bank every few hours without delaying the all stations train behind it.
another great video
In the UK we do this all the time. The freight goes where it needs to go, and the passenger trains go where they need to go, but if they both go via the same stretch of rail, they do. Passenger rail and freight combine into 1, with freight branching off into their sidings and passengers doing the same
If you go to Germany at any major station you will see practically non stop passenger and freight traffic.
But then they tend to run much shorter single stack container trains at 100kph+
I enjoy seeing that ancient Swiss ‘crocodile’ freight lovomotive on the cabinet behind you - hi from Switzerland (formerly Vancouver).
Nice use of the tactical turtleneck
Here in Melbourne, we have multiple metropolitan suburban railway lines which share the same track with freight. I WISH we had the same as Sydney where there is dedicated freight that parallels these lines, but now most of the land adjoining the railway are far too built up. That being said, for the most part we still run 10-minute or better headways and manage to squeeze in freight operations in between. The big priority now is giving intercity V/Line trains even greater separation from suburban services (possibly on these aforementioned separate freight lines). Glad to see this is a worldwide problem that we can look to one another to fix
This sounds like a great case for nationalizing rail infrastructure.
Simple answer: of course (as they do) and somehow, freight train drivers also need passenger trains to get to their job ;-)
Detailed answer: it can be a difficult relationship. From a European railway transport planner's perspective, we have more and more trouble with increasing passenger service frequencies on often 19th century infrastructure like some single track lines with sidings too short for nowadays block freight trains, so that you can only run long freight trains at night what then defines your whole timetable and production scheme although it's only a 24 km section of the 1.000 km way from the alps to the North Sea ports and makes it quite inflexible.
There were already law suites in Switzerland were SBB Cargo lost its path on day time because stable frequencees of passenger service were seen as higher valuable for the country's economy than this one freight train, that from the judge's perspective could also run at night. But you can't only let run freight trains at night if they have to cover a long distance. And a concentration on rail freight corridors like in the EU also causes the problem of not having a good usable alternative in case of construction works or incidents as the 2017 Rastatt incident showed and we already struggle to organise economically feasable alternatives for a month long closure at the same place in 2024 although working on it for more than a year also due to a lack of international coordination of construction works across Europe's infrastructure managers because everyone wants to have his big measures in the summer period or won't be able to significantly reduce passenger service to let pass more freight trains on deviation routes.
This challenge between freight and passenger service often on a regular basis for the annual timetable and especially while construction works take place has even become worse the last years and probably will become worse the next years making it difficult to run the freight concepts you based your calculation on, so it becomes difficult for some freight train companies to survive if not subsidised or compensated as it's already being started in the Netherlands or to be in Switzerland. A truck can easily change to another road, a freight train can't.
In Japan, passenger rail dominates lines to the point where it’s difficult to schedule more freight services. In fact, less than 1% of freight in Japan is shipped by rail.
Growing up in Lakefield Ontario, a small town NE of Peterborough, there once was a rail line that serviced that town. The old station building is still there as well as the ROW which is now a trail. CN operated the line up to its final days. The significance of that was lost on me when I was younger but now I find it crazy that we had rail service to even small towns in Canada. Like, it is legitimately mind blowing to me now as it is hard to imagine today. Such a shame so much of our rail infrastructure is lost now.
I’m from Peterborough proper and when I learned that the passenger train only stopped in the 1990 I was amazed. because of how relatively recent that is. I’m very excited for the new Windsor to Montréal corridor though so that soon the Peterborough station will be used again. Until then our closest station is Cobourg.
BNSF does some great work with Metra to help get high frequencies. Metra even has a line (BNSF Line) named after them.
It’s alright, but the frequencies of passenger trains are severely limited
@@RMTransit I suspect that part of the problem is that the BNSF mainline is triple, rather than quadruple, tracked. If it was fully quad-tracked, capacity would shoot up dramatically. There apparently was a plan to quad-track it in the 20th century, but it never happened.
Then again, part of it is just Metra/BNSF not running passenger trains any more frequent than half hourly/hourly outside of rush hour. The line definitely has some spare capacity that could be used up even outside rush hour in its current three-track form.
@@andrewlucia865 BNSF trains were leaving Union every 3 to 5 minutes during rush hour pre-pandemic. Although Metra is trying to improve the gaps during off hours, they don't have a lot of budget to work with and outside of commute hours, they simply aren't as convenient for leisure riders due to not having expresses. I don't see nearly 100 Metras a day as ”severely limited”.
@@txquartz Yeah, for sure. If he was talking about the entirely of Metra's network, he'd have a point given how few trains run on some of the other lines (Heritage Corridor being the worst offender there), but the BNSF line is still pretty good, even with lots of room for improvement.
AFAIK the primary reason why the freight railroads ripped out their infrastructure was to reduce their property tax burden. The reduction in the capacity for decent passenger service is just a bonus.
Apparently the government decided to tax rail infrastructure per km of laid rail, so if you had double tracks you had to pay twice the tax burden. What a great incentive to tear out as much track as possible!
It really is a matter of priorities. In Europe, generally passenger rail takes priority to the relative neglect of freight, and in North America freight rail usually takes priority to the neglect of passenger service.
Freight rail is most efficient with long, relatively slow trains moving large amounts of freight, while passenger rail is most efficient running regular, fast, relatively short services. It’s not impossible to integrate the two but it can be very difficult, especially in very congested, high-traffic areas. Creating enough capacity to do so can also be very expensive.
They surely can, only thing is you need to get the blend correct. I'd say the way UK and Germany share tracks between freight and fast intercity trains (or even ICE lines in Germany's case) is not a good idea, as it hurts capacity of both. If you have freight and 'slow' local/commuter services and a segregated fast intercity setup (which the UK WOULD have had, if not for the gutting of HS2), that's probably ideal, and only build freight corridors (like the Betuwelijn here in NL) when needed.
Although the HS2 cutbacks will cause some problems if the reduced scope forms the full extent of the project, the phase 1 and 2A elements will nevertheless provide significant traffic relief for the WCML (west coast main line), Britains busiest long distance freight corridor, by removing the fastest express trains, creating room for more slower regional expresses as well as freight. The truncated East leg of Ph 2 will also take some of the fastest trains from the East Midlands and South Yorkshire to London, relieving the south end of the MML for freight and slower passenger service growth. The Golbourne Link in the North West and the remainder of Ph 2 East towards Leeds and the North East are supposed to be under reconsideration with alternative routes mooted, better aligned to also improve travel BETWEEN key northern cities, something that was outside the remit for HS2 when the route was developed initially. The UK government's mishandling of the project saw no detail published about these alternatives before the announcement of the cutting of the previously planned legs. This has destroyed any trust that they're actually serious about developing such proposals.
I don’t think HS2 has been cutback to the extent it won’t provide substantial value still! Blending speeds and traffic types is definitely not good!
Here in Australia I saw freight trains running along the suburban rail lines quite regularity
This reminds me of the cargo train for the postal service running through the S-Bahn tunnel in Zürich at about 12:30 Noon, while 18 trains/h serve the 3 platform-station at Stadelhofen.
Hello from Austria where it's not unusual if you come to the station a few minutes before your train arrives that one or two freight trains come through before your passenger train arrives and departs perfectly on time. The system in most cases can avoid having passenger trains stop anywhere between stations (except on single track lines where in some places trains pass each other without stopping to let passengers in and out).
Passenger trains operate on a predictable rhythm, every one or two hours, and freight trains can go between. When I look at it I find it's a marvel how well this can be managed, though sometimes things still go wrong, such as a train having to stop in front of a station while the connecting train departs without waiting.
In the UK, passenger and freight trains often operate on the same line together, so in some countries passenger and freight rail can conexist and it doesn't affect the passenger trains
I know that in some places like China for example, they're experimenting with high speed freight service by modifying a bullet train with massive cargo doors. I assume they fill the roll of express service like cargo planes transporting perishable goods like fruits and vegetables quickly across vast distances. In that case, there's little conflict between freight and passenger rail as they use the same, high speed train which I find to be pretty nifty.
In The Netherlands, the line between Rotterdam and Hoek van Holland used to be a railway line, but was converted to a metro line in recent years.
But they had to find a sloution so that the freight trains to Vlaardingen still could use the line.
Inspired!
Haha, I’m happy to hear it!
Yeah, my region encounters many issues with running the Tyne and Wear Metro for about 10km over the heavy rail line between Gateshead and Sunderland
Then single track sections for the metro parallel to single track for the frieght. Between Gateshead and South Shields.
It is interesting, that two Canadian railways are in the Class 1 grouping in the USA
Being from Canada and occasionally visiting Taiwan, I am envious at how well the latter manages to make their rail system work, with a mix of express passenger, local passenger and freight traffic on the same tracks. They even do it successfully in the mountainous east coast, with just one dual track main line and a few sidings. North America definitely has more than enough space to do something similar. It's just a matter of priorities
Doesn’t the Taiwanese Railways network have limited goods traffic? ISTR that it’s mostly military/bulk trains, without liners.
Here in Sydney Australia, on some lines we have a separate ARTC freight line for freight to run alongside the suburban rail & bypass stops. The lines also connect back on to the mainline connecting the states after the catenary & suburban services terminal stations
Personally where I live in South west Sydney there is a seperate track for freight trains running south towards Wollongong and Canberra which sees a lot of traffic, even on the suburban tracks we get freight trains running, mostly to the inland dock at Minto
I forgot to add, the ARTC is the Australian Rail Track Corporation
@@JayJayGamerOfficial yeah that's the line I'm making an example
We need to figure out a mix of freight and passenger rail in Vancouver, as the status quo heavily benefits freight. Passenger rail is on only one corridor (West Coast Express, with the right of way owned by CP), and only in peak hour directions, drastically reducing its usefulness. There are other rail rights of way in the region, including South of Fraser and up the Sea to Sky to Squamish and Whistler, but no passenger rail exists at all now on these lines.
In Germany this seems a very strange question. I live and work next to the main Basel-Karlsruhe line which carries freight from Italy and southern Europe to the ports and industrial regions of the north. We get mixed treight and passenger trains every few minutes.
I like what you said at the end - you can't get all those perks from the public and then shun the public
Capacious!
I know this is an older video, but you should talk about the absolutely wild sale of BC Rail in the 90's. The whole story is incredible
It’s something that’s being already done in Victoria in Australia where all of the railway infrastructure is owned and maintained by the state government! So a large majority of regional and even some metropolitan train lines in Melbourne are already being used by both passenger and freight trains! :)
Same here in Sydney, even the tracks going up to Newcastle which are mostly only double tracked have a lot of freight traffic with little or no passenger disruptions
In western Australia regional rail and freight share tracks, though when the tracks were privatised freight was given right of way over passenger services, which causes significant delays on some services.
Melbourne has freight trains running on both the metro system and V/Line system with the Hanson's Quarry train running from either Brooklyn (on the Newport - Sunshine freight line via Sunshine and the Albion - Jacana freight line) or Westall (on the Pakenham/Cranbourne lines and goes through the city centre and the Craigieburn line) to Kilmore East (on the Seymour line), the Dandenong South cement train from North Dynon to a siding on the Cranbourne line, The APM Maryvale Paper train from Morwell to the Docks (on the Gippsland/Pakenham line) and the Hastings Steel train that runs to Hastings (on the Stony Point line via the Frankston line) and all these run between the peak periods and everything
Another benefit of having shared infrastructure for passengers and freight managed by a seperate entity is much more efficient use of the infrastructure, spreading the cost between multiple operators and therefore bringning the cost for each single operator down.
for example here in Italy Trenitalia use the hsr line during the night for hight speed freight
In the city İzmir, İZBAN (İzmir Suburban System) does this. The izban, tcdd and freight trains use the same rails
One country doing that very well is Switzerland (as always). They even have trains to transport trucks, because there isn't as much capacity in the neighboring countries to do the entire trip on rails. And their new tunnels are also very helpful
Trucks on a train don't have to pay tolls for driving through Switzerland. So shipping just the trailer from Rotterdam to Milan is cheaper than driving it all the way there.
A RoLa is for the shorter routes through the alps (load in Germany, unload in Italy for example ) where the drivers do travel with the vehicles.
With freight and passenger rail in Queensland it works extremely well with passenger trains with right of way
In North America, not on the same lines. Railways in North America are primarily privately-owned-and-operated, and freight is much more profitable for these railways than passenger service is. Government-owned railways are practically unheard-of in North America. And people who want to ride a train, well, the private sector simply points them to the road network and tells them to "just shut up and drive".
In NSW Australia, part of the problem is that we cannot double-stack east of the Great Dividing Range, due to bridge heights and overhead wiring. Double-stacking is key to competing against trucking. Between Sydney and Brisbane, there is a busy commuter route between Sydney and Newcastle and country service to the North Coast and Brisbane 3 times per day. The North Coast line from Maitland to Coffs Harbour and Brisbane is single track and is very windy. Consequently, it takes about 16 hours for a goods train to travel from Sydney to Brisbane. If there were no passenger trains, a freight train would take about 12-14 hours. This was demonstrated during the Covid lockdowns when freight trains were running up to two hours early. Hence, while they can a do co-exist, one tends to dominate the other. For instance, in Europe, passenger traffic tends to dominate, whereas in Nth America, passenger traffic is clearly compromised for the sake of freight traffic. The best example is where you have two different systems one for freight and the other for commuter rail.
About railroad crossings,sometimes it takes over an hour to clear freight trains and if this happens multiple times a week,then the first responders get pissed off and eventually the civilians
Just to add to your point about private railways being the beneficiaries of government largesse, a lot of US railways' antecedents got their start via government charter and/or government funding.
Yeah they can but only on less dense routes or at night to use capacity that already exists. If there's an empty section of active railway, you may as well put a train of some sort on it for as long as there are people or goods that need to be moved.
The real difference between NA and the EU is that in NA freight railroads own the tracks they run on, while in the EU the tracks are owned by the governments and operated by freight and passenger companies as toll railways.
This means that the freight railway I work with (RCC-Italy) doesn't have to worry about maintenance, capacity or whatnot, they just pay track access fees and we'll be going on with our business while a third-party company, which doesn't operate trains at all, manages the infrastructure and dispatches the trains.
The problems seem to be more acute in the US than here in Canada where there is already more cooperation between the government and railroads.
Government regulation forcing freight railroads to operate passenger lines that prodigiously lost money were a large part of what drove the US railroads nearly out of business in the 50's through 70's. This also created an adversarial relationship between the government and the surviving railroads which still lingers and gets in the way of them cooperating. For example on passenger rail, and also unsnarling the current transportation and supply chain issues.
Ramping up passenger rail in North America will require large government subsidies and accepting that it might never be profitable and self-sustaining. Amtrack and Via Rail have been operating on meager budgets and need more money to provide a level of service more people will want to use. Probably the best way to smooth relations between passenger and freight operators would be for the government subsidized passenger rail networks to pay premium prices that make them valued customers of the freight railroads. The government could then look at reducing some of the other rail subsidies.
In the USA I believe there can be twice daily both directions of fast Amtrak travel at 110 mph along many freight railroad corridors. Freight rail corridors have federal eminent domain freeing them from individual state eminent domain and can be profitable with government cooperation. Desirable passenger train travel has always been made possible by their associated freight railroads that was greatly done to promote freight service as a form of advertising and brand recognition. That is still helping freight railroad's today even though they haven't run passenger trains with a few exceptions since Amtrak started in the early 1970s.
The upgrade to 110 mph track speed on freight railroads will cost a bit more than current tracks, but it will also very likely make for faster and more reliable freight service because freight trains will benefit from the higher level of track service and may travel near to passenger train speeds as happened in the 1950s. What would be long term goals would be grade separated rail corridors in some areas which can then be sealed for speeds over 110 mph and likely 155 mph (250 kph). Being able to traverse much of the USA in Amtrak Superliner coaches and sleepers with prepared meal in the dinner typically near 110 mph and occasionally at 155 mph with twice daily service would address many needs.
There is no real need to electrify railroads with speeds to 110 mph. Amtrak couldn't provide faster trains by having more locomotives on them. The Charger Amtrak locomotive based on a Sieman electric catenary locomotive is schedule to come out with a new double hybrid version with the hp of the catenary version at over 8,000 hp while on catenary on the NEC, but switches to a Cummins Diesel away from the catenary. This will eliminate the locomotive change taking for some reason 25 minutes when entering and leaving the NEC which always seemed should be able to take place in under 5 minutes. The BIGIST aspect is it will come with two fast acting 0.4 MWh battery packs! That will allow the train to accelerate about the same as when on catenary! Once at speed the batteries should be able to recharge before being needed again. When climbing prolonged grades the locomotives will run out of steam.
Yes, they can. In Italy it's been this way for, like, ever.
I wish you could have supplied some examples, especially for infrastructure negligence of freight railways.
I'm sitting on Amtrak right now. So many delays where we have to pull to the side and wait for fright to passby.
Clapham Junction in London is a great place to see passenger and freight working together in super high frequency. It is definitely possible!
I live in Waterloo, and tbf there isn’t a huge % of goods traffic at CLJ!
@@lrt_unimog8316 No, but my point is that it's able to fit in with huge volumes of passenger traffic without causing chaos.
05:10 as someone who railfans the Mactier sub from time to time, I can confirm this
As a swiss person, I kind have to shake my head at the whole discussion.
I agree we need to do a better job of utilizing what we already have in addition to building new lines. Brightline is case in point.