And yet it’s still more reliable and has higher efficiency than whatever Amtrak and the MTA are doing. It’s honestly kind of incredible just how much they have fucked up that even DB is ahead of them in efficiency.
Re:How Many Tracks Do Train Stations Need?
by mschuster91 on Friday June 17, 2022 @05:48AM
(#31776034)
The problem with Amtrak is that the US railway network belongs to freight train operators, and these prioritize their own freight trains over Amtrak despite the law prohibiting that [1] [2].
In Germany, most freight trains run at night because at daytime many tracks are at capacity with passenger trains.
[1] https://www.sfgate.com/opinion/article/Amtrak-has-priority-o...
[2] https://specialty-freight.com/2021/06/us-requires-railroads-...
>The problem with Amtrak is that the US railway network belongs to freight train operators
That doesn't generally apply to the Northeast Corridor though which I assume was being referenced by the mention of the MTA. That said, while it's certainly imperfect, Amtrak is actually pretty reasonable for the most part on that route. Certainly the epic delays that are fairly common on Amtrak long distance trains elsewhere are rare on that corridor outside of major infrastructure problems, such as power failures.
Meanwhile in Germany: a quarter [1] of the network's signal controller stations still runs on levers, wires and semaphore signals - some of these are from the 19th century and I wish I were joking. [2]
[1] https://www.zeit.de/2019/45/deutsches-schienennetz-signalwer...
[2] http://www.stellwerke.de/formen/seite2_2.html