06-16-2021, 12:06 PM
(06-16-2021, 09:33 AM)ijmorlan Wrote:(06-16-2021, 08:43 AM)ac3r Wrote: It would be great if we could, but would likely be very hard to accomplish. Nationalization of the railways in the United Kingdom was an absolute mess for example and they still debate whether or not their rail system was better as a national or private service.
Also don’t forget that it’s not all bloody-mindedness: they want their freight traffic to move smoothly, and so do the rest of us; making railway freight work more poorly so that shippers end up shifting even more to trucks would not be an improvement.
That being said, my impression is that right now they basically just say “no” rather than actually applying their creativity to figuring out how to accommodate passenger traffic better.
I'm not disagreeing, but ultimately, we need to get our passenger rail moving. I didn't necessarily say that they need to be nationalized, but they shouldn't be able to say "no".
In either case, the real solution was for us to actually build and own tracks, but thanks to our current government, it's pretty clear we won't be building anything but roads for a long time.