Next to said tracks though are millions of acres of land that wouldn’t have all the maintenance issues and would actually work?
It’s a similar issue with solar roadways - it’s a really impractical place to put solar; not even close to worth it maintenance wise or efficiency - and you pretty much always have better options literally 10 ft away.
Doesn’t matter. The engineering solution is known (as I type I am literally looking at overhead power cables above the street, powering one of Berlin’s tram lines). Use that class of existing solutions rather than asking me to reinvent it badly.
> Next to said tracks though are millions of acres of land that wouldn’t have all the maintenance issues and would actually work?
Great, so use that too, if you like. But the ask I was responding to was the idea we should use land which is already in an unnatural state.
USA has 257,722 km of 1,435 mm gauge track, so… about 3.9 billion square feet there.
The EU is a bit less, but similar (208,211 km).
Worldwide is 1,370,782 km, various gauges. Roughly 21 billion square feet?
Should be good for a combined nameplate capacity around 393 GW.
> How would you run electrical lines by and through the constantly moving (expansion/contraction, as well as vehicle weight) heavy steel elements?
The trains and trams around here are electrically powered, so that’s already solved technically, and in cases like mine the solution has already been implemented.
I have no idea how the other stuff might influence costs.