Japan and China are much more dense than the US will even pretend to be. A "small town" in China is something routinely a couple million people.

true. high speed rail might be profitable if it went over very large distances, but even then its rough

freight is about the only thing profitable, but even then its been rough

if there was better public transport at the destinations so a car was not needed, it might be profitable. but then you might want to bundle in the costs so a ticket gets you x amount of bus or subway rides at your destination

also self-driving cars might start to cut in on the profitability of railways for passenger traffic

or if elon's little experiment in car sized vacuum tubes works

the stupid thing is to try and get people into train. That's just bullshit.

While it makes sense in some cases, it shouldn't be the focus!

it makes more sense to try and get the Lorrys of the Street with Trains and let the people drive.

huh?

what?

the primary focus of passenger trains shouldn't be passengers?

With Wares/Things you can live with a scheduled transportaton, once per day is also enough for some things.

No, Trains should focus more on stuff than people

true, and that is most train traffic in the states

but the problem is that where stuff is needed and where it is produced changes too fast for how long and costly it takes to build new rail lines

The Deutsche Bahn seem to focus more on people and neglegt the transport of goods.

in most of Europe, the density makes sense.

the cost per mile of rail is very high.

You can have big hubs like we have in Germany where for example Hamburg is one of the biggest hubs for goods. The next one would be Amsterdam IIRC.

and its probably easier to turn a profit on passenger transit in dense areas than freight

what works for rail transit in most of Europe doesn't work in the US because of how empty most of the country is

i image Australia has a similar problem

Freight is slow, can't have as much volume. But when you have lots of space, you can run super long trains. So you can get a lot done with 1 train. when you have a lot of people around, and the distances are not that great, it doesn't work as well

Yeah but for example when I was little the big Farming goods companys (where you sell your grain to or get some other stuff) gotten their weres by train. But that stopped somehow.

Ever heard about Rape Oil? 😉

have you looked to see if where those goods are produced vs where they are consumed has moved?

Rape Oil, the number one export of Canada

i know in the US, frieght traffic has taken a major hit since when most of the rails were first place. that's because of the rust belt. Lots of places that consumed metal moved. and metal was something that made sense to move by train

since rail is very inflexible, it make more sense to ship things by truck rather than have rail lines running right into factories

now i think coal is the number 1 thing that rail transports outside maybe oil.

No, it makes sense to move the Trucks by Train 😛

or work with Containers

because most of the mines and power plants have lines going right to them

With the Eisenhower Interstate System, there are more lanes of communictation

the system should work like your circulatory system. Rail takes stuff to hubs, which then go by truck to their destination

but you need to really plan that. and nothing has been planned

so now everything is in the way, making it way expensive to fix things up and make them work again

you wouldn't see a return on that investment possibly in your lifetime

generally why people turn to the goverment for this stuff

That's something for Tim to rant about:
https://www.welt.de/politik/deutschland/article181390828/Polizei-bestaetigt-Anzeige-Kamerateam-vom-MDR-soll-in-Chemnitz-angegriffen-worden-sein.html