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this post was submitted on 19 Dec 2023
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The amount of industry actively opposing this in Washington is the reason we have plenty of freight trains and rail but very limited passenger transport. In fact, so much of America’s rail system is private that public transportation would have to either be serviced by the freight companies or would have to pay for second-tier access to the rail systems, after negotiating with a plethora of private rail companies.
Here is one of the most significant train lobbyist groups, you can see their priorities in the first main paragraph: increase freight and maintain privatization of rail.
They pour about 3.5 million dollars a year into Congress.
If Richard Nixon had nationalized the infrastructure nationwide instead of just the passenger operations...
If Reagan hadn't re-privatized ConRail...
I'm guessing they don't put forward any arguments related to their climate impact, but out of curiosity do we know how prioritizing passenger trains in the US impacts the way these goods are transported ? Is this a minor inconvenience for the industry that's they're fussing about and nothing would actually change, or would the goods have to significantly shift to truck transportation ?
I live in a country where there's the opposite problem: we have a lot of passenger trains, but they're attempting to revive freight trains because truck transportation is quite CO2 costly. Reduced emissions are definitely only one advantage amongst many for public trains, but I'm wondering how much you save/lose by replacing(?) one freight train passing with passenger train.