• erwan@lemmy.ml
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    6 months ago

    Trains suck if you don’t have frequency, and because of the population density with a good frequency more than half of the trains will be completely empty and the rest almost empty.

    • Maxe@feddit.de
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      6 months ago

      If you out half the funding from car infrastructure instead into train and bus infrastructure this would not be a problem. Induced demand works both ways.

      • Thevenin@beehaw.org
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        6 months ago

        Even with unlimited funding, you want to scale the size of the train to the population that could potentially ride on it.

        A P42 locomotive pulling 7 Amtrak superliner cars is 700 tons of steel getting 0.4 miles per gallon of diesel. That’s a crapton of mining and drilling and CO2, and it would be incredibly wasteful if it ended up carrying, like, two people at a time.