I think the problem few people talk about is the small, in-city rail lines that used to exist that don't anymore. 100 years ago the city I live in had dedicated rail lines going to every major factory in the city - there was little need for last-mile trucking. AFAIK there are no western cities that are organized like this anymore, so the best you can do is deliver goods to a rail station and truck it from there - this requires a bunch of temporary storage space to transfer cargo and delays everything.

Here's another example - look at all the little rail branch lines servicing parts of 1944 Boston: https://ngmdb.usgs.gov/img4/ht_icons/overlay/MA/MA_Boston%20...

I don't know how you bring that back after decades of building for cars.

Same way you have excessive oversized lots/parking for 5 side-by-side fast food restaurants - zoning.

Just require distribution centers or warehouses to require a rail connection to the state's rail infrastructure to be approved for construction.

If no rail connection exists, then the state will negotiate who pays for what to extend the network to it.

Zoning is a problem, but it's not the only problem there. I think there are at least two more good ones we could discuss:

1. We actually do not have a market mechanic that exists in the United States that allows people to choose properly dense homes or neighborhoods because of a number of reasons. Search tools and things like that focus on metrics like square footage or number of bathrooms, and so people select for that "bigger is better" "more is better".

2. State departments of highways (they don't do anything besides that in most states) consist of individuals and contractor companies who have become adept and normal with building highways, and so all of the organizational inertia is on building anything that looks like a highway for the safety of drivers, to the detriment of everyone else. Since only highways get funded and built in most of the country, we end up having other companies like fast-food restaurants build in ways that cater to the driving demographic.

Sorry 1 does not make sense. It's not like I bid on a house based on its square footage, and then only find out the address when I win.

Even in the US, walkability scores, satellite photos, maps of transit and bike lanes, commute estimates, are all common enough on real estate sites. I think you just be seeing may be observing people's expressed preferences.

When you go online to use a search tool like Zillow, the main categories and features used to search are price, square footage, number of bedrooms, and number of bathrooms.

There are no filters or options for things like proximity to a park or coffee shop, neighborhood demographics, whether the neighborhood has events or a civic organization, or other relevant information. There is no scorecard for whether or not a home is architecturally sound (I.e. symmetrical, built with proper materials for the environment, etc.) either. You actually have to look through dozens or hundreds of homes yourself.

Items like walkability scores which are displayed on websites like Zillow are good, but they don’t really tell you much about how actually walkable an area is. They’re also not a primary feature in the search utilities.

I live in a city that has some of these going through it, and I can say that my opinions changed dramatically after moving here, with respect to this idea. Our real estate agent, in hindsight, had employed numerous subtle tactics to discourage us from taking serious interest in homes that were within a quarter mile or so of these lines, although I was completely oblivious to what they were doing at the time.

What I did not appreciate, but they did, is that these rails can bring an absolutely astonishing amount of noise into a town, and behind that a long trail of associated social ills. There is a gradual sifting of residents within a certain distance of these trains, based on who is either loud themselves and thus doesn't mind, or else must tolerate the amount of noise these things make.

Our town is old enough that some of the 'nicer' neighborhoods predate the introduction of the rails, so there isn't a strong confounding signal of 'bad' neighborhood correlation at work here. In at least one case there was a house we pushed past our agent's scheduling machinations to see for ourselves, and would likely have closed on had we not happened to visit at just the right time, when a multi-engined repositioning train (which we had no idea was a very common guest on what we thought was a mild mannered commuter rail line) came through. Though unseen and multiple blocks away, it still shook the floorboards as it passed.

Not all locomotives are equal, electric is much quieter than diesel

Both older DC and newer AC trains are effectively silent when coasting on a straight

The main sources of noise are cornering and braking. I live in a rare city that has narrow gauge for all of our rail, and am less than 200m from the busiest corridor in our state

I regret chosing an apartment on a tight bend (narrow gauge's bends are especially loud)

But if I were to live 500m away parallel to the track (as in, still 200m away from the track) the mostly AC electric trains going by every few minutes would be largely inaudible (<40dB)

My main point is tracks aren't loud, tight corners and areas around stops can be loud

I fear city planners aren't testing their decisions closely enough, though

On some urban rail lines, the main source of noise is the horn which they blow at every intersection.

Also, as a friend noticed when he bought a ver nice apartment next to the railroad is that they have to (at least in Sweden) maintain the tracks once a month. They do this by going very slowly with a special train that basically runs with the brakes on throwing sparks all over with all the noise you can imagine. And since it's going to slowly, they have to do it when there are the fewest number of other trains running, i.e. at three in the morning.

I grew up half a block from a freight train line, and you could hear it, but it wasn’t really an issue. Trains have gotten a lot louder in the US recently due to lack of rail maintenance. (Concretely, the transbay BART tube is screeches was above osha safety limits inside the car these days, but was quiet when new. The problem is that you need to grind rails to have a rounded top or they screech (and wear out train wheels), but BART doesn’t bother.

Anyway, noise pollution has a real impact on health, but so does particulate carbon and benzene from freeways. Before moving near a major road, find out what sort of PM 2.5 is typical, and check to see if everything is coated in black dust. If so, and you can afford some other place, move there instead.

> The problem is that you need to grind rails to have a rounded top or they screech (and wear out train wheels), but BART doesn’t bother.

I just Googled for <<does bart grind tracks and wheels?>>

Plenty of hits indicating that, yes, BART does grind tracks and wheels.

> was quiet when new

Do you mean in 1974 it was quiet? I tried to Google for any evidence of this and I can find nothing.

"does not screech horribly" isn't particularly noteworthy, to be fair

I got a friend who did the first grind ever in NZ a few years back, they borrowed the grinder locos from Aussie. Every train driver he talked to commented how amazingly better the rails were after grinding.

How many cities are split by a massive interstate highway? That noise is constant.

What kinds of noise do the trains produce? Do you think there are any ways to lessen it, and/or have any been implemented? (I'm thinking something like sound barriers).

I’ve lived near tracks a couple times and the loudest by far is the horn from at-grade crossings. If you are a heavy sleeper and a few blocks away it might not matter, but if you are nearby it is incredibly loud.

For what it’s worth, I lived 50 yards from an at-grade freight track in the city, where from 10pm-7am the trains did not blow their horns, relying on the crossing protective lights and gates only, and that worked for me. Charming train horns during the day (yes they occasionally interrupted me when speaking during video meetings, but it was quaint and no big deal), peace and quiet at night. Great neighborhood, quite desirable, and I would be happy to live there again in the future.

Not sure the safety track record, but if it’s favorable, perhaps this kind of program could be expanded.

https://www.sanjoseca.gov/your-government/departments-office...

Not a rail expert, not even a casual spectator. But my unstudied impression is that the noise that penetrates the most is the ultra-low frequency rumble that comes from the diesel side of the drivetrain, with a secondary source being steel on steel squealing of bogeys around bends at the minimal range of their tolerance. But the latter doesn't have the penetrating power of the former, not by a long shot, so to eliminate that I'm not sure if barrier would really have much of an effect. A lot of these in-town runs actually do have some sort of barrier already.

Instead powertrain would have to somehow switch entirely to battery while moving through sound propagating areas, and I'm assuming (maybe generously) that this is not already being done for some thorny technical reason and not just due to systemic inertia and complacency.

Japan puts tall fences around highways. I've assumed that's for the noise but never checked.

Example: https://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.webca...

Many states have those. If not barriers, then large trees.

Or just use electrified trains in the first place, like most of the modern world

Electric doesn't eliminate cornering and braking noises unfortunately, which I find as more pronounced open problems

That noise is far easier to mitigate with sound barriers

If you want especially quiet operations you can put rubber wheels on trains too.

I'm probably missing something, but why would an electric train need a battery?

What would the battery be used for?

The trains that make the most noise are diesel-electric, not electric; electric cross country freight trains aren't really a thing here. I don't DE engines have a battery in the conventional sense, although arguably their fuel tender full of diesel is a sort of battery. But in order for a train to be fully electric you would need to have a fully electrified infrastructure for freight rail, which we do not have and would be far-fetched as a solution compared to equipping such trains with a local battery tender when they come into town, in order to move them through the town (somewhat) quietly. after which they can switch back to diesel-electric power for the long cross country runs.

Electric freight trains make about as much noise as diesel electrics, since the vast majority of the noise either makes is the wheels hitting the rails and going screech. I had a hotel room in Switzerland next to a rail yard and learned this the hard way.

> But in order for a train to be fully electric you would need to have a fully electrified infrastructure for freight rail, which we do not have and would be far-fetched as a solution compared to equipping such trains with a local battery tender when they come into town, in order to move them through the town (somewhat) quietly. after which they can switch back to diesel-electric power for the long cross country runs.

Okay, I understand now.

An alternative proposition to installing batteries in DE engines is modifying them to be able to switch between electric lines (infrastructure) and the diesel engine.

This means that towns can lay down the infrastructure, so that the diesel is switched off when the engine is going through a town, and then switches on again when the infrastructure is no longer there.

The added benefit to this would be then that rolling out infrastructure gradually is not a problem: keep adding infrastructure over long distances and after a few decades the diesel engine won't be needed anymore.

> installing batteries in DE engines

Sadly I think even installing infrastructure for local electrification would not get out of the starting gate, because you need to both modify all of the engines involved, as well as add infrastructure to every affected town with all of the predictable pushback from people who will react negatively the notion of installing a bunch of extremely high power, highly visible catenary on already-dangerous rail paths.

But fortunately we can take advantage of a useful characteristic of trains, which is that it's quite natural to hook up a car called a tender, normally carrying fuel such as diesel or (in the old days) coal but in this case would be a giant battery on wheels that's been pre-charged and positioned on a siding outside of town at the crest of any convenient rise, ready for connection to incoming freight trains. These can then switch off (or idle) their diesel engines and draw on the battery for power as it passes into and out of town. Obviously a fee would be charged, but towns have all the leverage here- it's not as if the freight can just take some other set of train tracks that go around the town to avoid payong it.

This has the benefit of being extremely easy to get by in on, as it makes very little demand of both freight train operators and towns respectively. operators need to add nothing more than a simple transfer switch to the engine (which may already exist) and for the towns, the same high power electric circuit as catenary, minus all the catenar, and located on a short siding safely well out of town. And of course a couple great big batteries, but they are mobile and can go where the yrains are, thus far cheaper than putting poles in the ground everywhere the trains run.

I live about 150m from a line that goes over a bridge. Twice a day 4pm and 4am. It is not often the night train wakes me, often I wait to hear the click clacks before thinking it might be an earthquake.

The day train usually slows since coming the other way it is approaching a pedestrian crossing. I kinda love it because when it speeds up again you can hear it's giant turbo spooling... Sounds so good.

The rumbling also sounds kinda cool, sometimes it'll shake the house, I thought about setting up an accelerometer on and Arduino to swee what output I'd see.

Often however I think I hear the train but it's just the sea. Or I can hardly hear the train for the noise of the sea.

I live in a small town and the loudest sounds besides the train itself is the extremely loud horn it blows before every crossing. Apparently nobody wants to pay for automatic booms at the road crossings so it legally has to use the horn that blasts through the area.

We have booms and the horns still legally have to blast the entire neighborhood at 12am...or 4am.

I live next to an intermodal train yard. Literally outside my windows [1].

I love the noise and the trains. You get used to the sounds, and it becomes comforting. Like a loud rain on a rooftop. I feel strange when it's quiet.

There are some homes by Georgia Tech that are literally feet from the tracks [2], and I think those are awesome. I also hope these trains don't derail frequently like the ones in Hulsey Yard do.

[1] https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ZVX0KMTa8ZA

[2] https://www.redfin.com/GA/Atlanta/576-Marietta-St-NW-30313/h...

I've always found rail noises subjectively much less stressing than car noise.

A well maintained line and fleet would also not have that much screeching.

The Toyota plant in Georgetown, KY is built on a freight railway. It's a fairly new plant and still expanding.

There’s a local lumber yard near us with an operational rail line on site. They’ve survived the onslaught of big box stores and are thriving.

I imagine that rail line makes a big difference in being able to keep up with the logistics advantages of 6 big box stores within 30 minutes.

Hm. I did a quick search on freight percentages, EU vs US and google gave me this snippet off the top hit. "46 percent of European freight goes by truck while only 11 percent goes by rail, while in the United States more than 40 percent goes by rail while just 30 percent goes on the highway."

Seems US is doing pretty well on prioritising freight rail transport, despite brainwashing, at least compared to europe.

Which is probably a good thing. Until that figure is a lot higher, passenger rail is just one more thing reducing the efficiencies of freight.

That's 40% of "ton-miles" - trains disproportionately move heavy, cheap goods (i.e. aggregate, coal), which makes that number potentially misleading. The percentage of freight moved by rail by "value" is closer to 15% (trucking is ~65%).

https://www.bts.gov/newsroom/2017-north-american-freight-num...

https://www.aar.org/facts-figures#:~:text=Freight%20rail%20a....

Why would one want to emphasize value over weight? If I load up a train with extremely expensive metals, jewels, artwork, etc. couldn’t I raise a countries rail by value measurement overnight?

I agree it's good to consider the whole picture, but ton-miles are probably the most important to consider given the increased diesel required to truck heavy loads, correct?

Plus congestion and labour etc.

And how does that compare to Europe?

The number isn’t misleading if we’re talking about efficient movement of goods.

I’m unclear why you’d care about value at all in the context of this discussion. In context weight and volume are the most relevant metrics.

So perhaps a priority could be to build more medium/high speed passenger rail, and get it off the freight lines?

Travelers and commuters win, cargo wins!

It is funny though, the US built it's current freight network in a comparatively low tech era, yet I doubt it could do it again in the current era due to funding and beauracracy.

This is a weird post. Could any highly industrialised nation build a new freight network today? Probably not. Mostly, it would be blocked by noise complaints and lack of land. Most nation-sized freight rail networks were built more than 100 years ago when population density was far lower and noise controls barely existed.

Also, have you heard of the Alameda Corridor is Los Angeles County? That project is incredible. The amount of soil moved for that project must be staggering. The dimensions: <<The centerpiece of the new Alameda Corridor would be the "Mid-Corridor Trench" a below-ground, triple-tracked rail line that is 10 miles (16 km) long, 33 feet (10 m) deep, and 50 feet (15 m) wide.>>

Ref: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alameda_Corridor

Freight trains don't have to be louder than passenger trains. (Though from what I've heard, the US has incredible noisy trains, thanks also to lots of horn blaring?)

And quite a few industrialised countries around the world are building more rail lines.

The US already has an extensive freight rail network. It's the one part of their rail transport that works fairly well. Expanding that should be possible.

Especially because freight typically travels slower than passengers, so your track doesn't need to be as straight, so you have more leeway in planning.

> And quite a few industrialised countries around the world are building more rail lines.

Can you expound on this?

My own adopted home of Singapore is highly industrialised, and building more rail lines. China is reasonably industrialised and building more rail lines. Spain is building more, etc.

You can do some web searches. Alas, it's a bit hard, because Google seems to insists that I am only interested in new _high-speed_ rail lines, instead of all new rail lines. But if you are willing to only look at those, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proposed_high-speed_rail_by_co... has a list.

The original post suggested to build more passenger rails to reduce burden upon freight rails. Does Singapore move any freight by rail?

Also, the original post wrote:

> the US built it's current freight network in a comparatively low tech era, yet I doubt it could do it again in the current era due to funding and beauracracy.

My reply was specific to that. Saying: The original post says little because _no_ highly industrialised nation could build a freight network from scratch given current land and noise constraints.

> Does Singapore move any freight by rail?

Not as far as I know.

However, if you can build any rail at all, you can build freight rail, too.

It's mostly in the US that freight rail is noisier than passenger rail. As explained in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39023890

If you are building new freight rail in your country, you can avoid problems (1) and (2) from that comment. Freight rail doesn't take more land than other rail (if anything, it has lower requirements, because lower speeds mean tighter curves are possible). And freight rail doesn't have to be noisier than passenger rail.

Freight is noisy in the US for two reasons: (1) much heavier than trucks on poorly maintained tracks and (2) required horn blaring for safety at road crossings.

Yes, the horn blaring is really crazy.

Why is it weird?

It's certainly not a US only problem. My city tore up all it's rail and now there are houses in the way so we can't put it back. On top of that, labour and materials are so expensive we probably couldn't afford it anyway.

Thanks for showing me that project, I had not heard of it. I am also excited to watch what Bright Rail are doing and if that translates into a country wide approach to high speed rail.

The reason is probably because, in the EU, passenger rail transport is prioritised over cargo. For example in Switzwerland rail cargo is mainly transported during the night because thats the only time the network isn't working at it's limit for the passenger trains.

In Canada, to my understanding, it's the other way round where passenger trains have been reduced because of the need for more cargo train trips. The USA might be similar.

Yeah, I understand that in the US the rail is actually owned by cargo train companies, so they give their trains priority.

Which is against the law.

In the USA most railroad are owned by the railroad company. When Amtrak wants to use a piece of rail they pay the railway.

But the USA is VAST. Freight trains are LONG. Not much of America's West is actually double track. And when you have a shorter Amtrack and a long freight train the Amtrack loses. The Amtrack has to wait until the freight train has passed.

As the freight trains run on PSR [1] there is no fixed time as to when they pass and thus the Amtrack can not run reliable.

As such it is easier for me to drive from West Los Angeles to Las Vegas, or even to drive to LAX and then fly to LAS than it is to take the train.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Precision_railroading

Amtrak blames freight trains for not following the law and the DoJ for not enforcing the law. Which is just one side of the story.

https://www.amtrak.com/content/dam/projects/dotcom/english/p...

wendover did a good viedeo about that a while ago: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qQTjLWIHN74

the law says that passenger trains have priority, but nobody respects or enforces that.

I believe you, but why does your source claim otherwise?

"Under PSR, freight trains operate on fixed schedules, much like passenger trains, instead of being dispatched whenever a sufficient number of loaded cars are available."

So do they leave on a fixed schedule, or is there no fixed time? It sounds like the previous system had no fixed time (leave when ready) whereas in the PSR world - there is in fact a set schedule.

They don't leave on fixed time. This is a big part of the union complaints. The engineer needs to be on standby and be there in 2 (?) hours when the train is 'full'.

https://www.vice.com/en/article/5dgezn/the-worst-and-most-eg...

My issue is Wikipedia claims it does not work this way anymore. They do not leave when the train is full - they leave on a fixed schedule.

Why is everyone here claiming that is not true? Is Wikipedia wrong?

So I started to read more, and you're right.

I spend a lot of time reading to what the union members said.

E.g.: https://www.vice.com/en/article/qjkzbq/28-freight-rail-worke....

That sentence doesn't match with the idea of a fixed schedule. A fixed schedule doesn't require you to be on-call, because you know when the train will leave.

I'm confused now.

AFAIK, Amtrak discontinued passenger service between LA and Las Vegas years ago.

That doesn't change the fact they are transporting half their freight by truck while the US transports a small fraction of that.. Also, US does have rivers and canal transport as well. Mississippi and Erie canal.

I thought that trains is already hyper focused on cargo that's why the passenger experience is so terrible

For most heavy passenger rail like Amtrak and things like Caltrain in the Bay Area, it's because those trains use the same tracks as freight companies and the freight traffic takes priority.

That is not true for Caltrain .

Caltrain tracks and right of way was purchased in 1991 from Southern Pacific (now Union Pacific) by Peninsula Corridor Joint Powers Board which is basically Muni, SamTrans and VTA for most of the route.

Here is a detailed map of who owns what https://caltrain-hsr.blogspot.com/2009/01/caltrain-right-of-...

While it is true that Southern Pacific owned the line for most its history it was always built as commuter line. Union Pacific is only allowed to operate 3 freight lines per day on weekdays now.

Freight does not take priority, historically freight did not fund the development of the line, Characterizing it a freight line with passengers added on to it is not a fair representation.

--

I cannot speak for Amtrack, I don't know the network personally and it is also big and very composite a network to make any general statements like for Caltrain. However in general commuter heavy lines were built as commuter lines very early one because there was economic case to do so. It is the only the long distance lines which do not have the economic viability on their own that can only run on freight lines.

I stand corrected, thank you.

Yep.

No one (generally) bats an eye when voting at the city level for a $100mm road package.

But trains?

Freight should move mostly by train. We could build rail lines where there are already highways, just swap a vehicle lain for a train rail, all that 18 wheeler traffic can be reduced significantly.

Safer highways. Less congestion.

Not that simple, at least in the U.S. Rail has far stricter requirements on turn radius and grade. As an example the highways around here have 6%+ grade segments (after tunneling!) and rail is rarely over 1%. I haven’t even mentioned the incorrect subgrade and the massive safety envelope (approx 20x20 feet) which is about 2 highway lanes wide and far too tall for the thousands of highway overpasses.

Rail truly is a unique infrastructure concern and needs to be designed and laid on its own.

The requirements for rail depend also on how fast you want to run your trains.

Passenger trains typically (want to) run faster than freight, so the requirements are stricter.

>As a culture, we've been brainwashed not to fund trains.

The billionaires are surely investing heavily on trains and farms.

Some of them are.

Which goes to show that money doesn't have that much of an influence in politics, despite popular opinion to the contrary.

I don't understand why you think it shows that?

The billionaires in question (I think Warren Buffet is one of them) would benefit from more and better rail infrastructure. But the billionaires don't have enough influence to make that happen.

Similar for eg more open immigration, or not shutting down the US government down every so often.

Agreed but it can’t happen anymore. Rights to the now-unused tracks have reverted to property owners. Impossible to restore w/out massive eminent domain issues.

Freight railroads are alive and well in the US. Incidentally, it's also the side of the railroad business that is mostly deregulated and privatised. The passenger business is nationalised, and frankly a basket case.

(it's not a basket case because it's nationalised, it's nationalised because it's a basket case - thank the automotive industry - and it's a national security asset)

Freight railroads weren't always doing so well. They picked up a lot after deregulation.

Compare also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impact_of_the_privatisation_of... and see eg the share of rail in all transport.

You mean when they ditched their much-less-profitable passenger lines and forced the government to deal with them, then heavily consolidated?

Lobby to socialise or externalise all the costs. Work to privatise only the profits. Typical mode of operation.

Trucks deliver to individual warehouses. You’re still going to need trucks for last mile delivery.

We already have a great interstate transport network that reaches every address, and where this cargo already travels.

I don't know what building a second parallel railroad system to take over this task would cost, but I'd guess several Iraq Wars.

Making the trucks autonomous doubles their utilization, which means we need half as many trucks, and makes freight cheaper, which makes prices lower, benefitting everyone, especially the poorest.

> As a culture, we've been brainwashed...

This is never the start of a insightful argument!

That doesn’t seem like a fair comparison.

A rail line is single use, single destination. commuter and cargo cannot mix (one goes high speed and one goes super slow) if they do mix it shuts the entire segment of the track down until it’s off that track.

Roads are multi use , multi location. It seems unfair to compare the cost based on road maintenance vs track maintenance. I would expect something to account for the sheer difference in volume each does

Why not road trains ? One lead driver with few of autonomous trailers ? In a ideal world more rail roads in places it makes sense to develop and maintain dedicated track infrastructure, cheaper running costs ( fuel, tires, wear and tear etc ) justify the upfront costs.

Road trains are both intermediate solution everywhere and also can operate in routes where trains are not economical enough, even if there was a will to do it.

Been trying to do that in CA for the last 30 years with nothing to show for it. It seems like it's faster to invent AGI and let it drive the trucks.

Maybe the AGI will help the Californians workout how to build trains?

...or just kill everyone, problem solved :)

Having a railroad without a highway (and a highway won't come along and serve itself) will mean that you won't get to any city on your own. Wait for the train, maybe the railroad authorities will deign to launch a passenger train once a week, of such quality that you won't want to ride it. Like in some places in the Russian Federation. Or buy an off-road vehicle and go camping instead of traveling.

What sources do you have to cite on development costs and regular maintenance? Autonomous trucking is an add-on to existing trucks which are already being built regularly. We already perform road maintenance and account for it in local, state, and federal budgets as it services more vehicle's and destinations than just "autonomous trucks."