Company built its own rail terminal in NYC to avoid relying on trucks

Re:Company built its own rail terminal in NYC to avoid relyi... by ViscountPenguin on Thursday May 01, 2025 @03:05AM (#43854520)

One nice thing is that trains niches can expand slowly overtime, and the marginal expense of running a train is much lower than the fixed cost of laying rail. As long as your government isn't dumb enough to rip up preexisting rail (here in Australia we got hit really badly by this in the 60s), the amortised cost of rail should only decrease.

The positive externalities of rail also make it cost effective to subsidize. Here in Queensland, all public transport now only costs 50c a trip (about 30 eurocents), making travel between our two largest cities (a trip of about 71km) super fast and cheap.

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Re:Company built its own rail terminal in NYC to avoid relyi... by ViscountPenguin on Thursday May 01, 2025 @03:06AM (#43854525)

Side note: I ran the numbers, and a trip from the gold coast to Gympie is now one of the cheapest per km train trips on earth. Only beaten by free train zones, and lower class seats on the trans Siberian.

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Re:Company built its own rail terminal in NYC to avoid relyi... by robocat on Thursday May 01, 2025 @10:53PM (#43865709)

> One nice thing is that trains niches can expand slowly overtime

Trains have been around long enough to fill their niches. There's a reason if they haven't.

Some of the headwinds are bad reasons (like status games of showing off your expensive car). However some of the reasons are because trains suck.

There's a train I love to take from my city on holiday, but it's rather inconvenient and costly.

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