Having multiple companies using the same state owned tracks would be even better. Competition is always good, and you really don’t want a monopoly, which is what you’d most likely get with everything being state owned.
We’ve got one big railway in Austria (ÖBB), which is owned by the government. And then we’ve got one smaller, private one (WESTbahn) which only goes to certain cities and in a certain direction. The private one’s prices are usually way better, even though they pay the government to be able to use the rails.
My programmer’s dream is to use a geodata map of the US with population and visitor statistics to make a slime mold map to use as the transit model.
Geodata because I want it to account for terrain in addition to population and visitor data.
I also want to include the national parks system in it just because it can revitalize the whole thing with stationside hotels for people to leave their junk at while they’re in the parks.
I don’t fully understand what all that means but I like the sound of it and hope your dream comes true
Thank you!
Basically a slime mold map is simulating a blob that forms a network of centers and bridges based on the location of “food”, and supposedly in the process demonstrates the most efficient network of transportation between those locations.
Its applications for public transit were realized when trying it out with an actual slime mold revealed a map very similar to the actual layout of the Tokyo metro system, hence the name.
So the theory is that you can simulate transit stations by putting “food” at those locations and the slime mold simulation will organically draw a map of an efficient transit network for you because it’s a stretchy little slime that just wants food.
Get me dat yellow line! Pop into NO in 2 hours, get hammered en Vieux Carre, nap on the ride back? SOLD.
6 hours to El Paso? And I could finally afford to visit the west coast?!
So many ways to pay for this. Haul for Amazon, UPS, FedEx, USPS, all of them. Use passenger fees for ongoing maintenance.
This could be the next iteration of the interstate highway system. Ya know, that thing that made America’s economy explode by connecting us?
And if we took many passengers, and at least some freight, off the interstates, less maintenance costs.
Keep freight and passenger trains on seperate tracks for the most part otherwise you end up like Canada where passenger trains have to yield (delay) to let the frieght pass.
why does florida get three lines?
Huge tourist hub and destination for a lot of flights. Need lines from both the northeast and Midwest to capture a majority of the air traffic going there.
Speaking as a former midwesterner who would drive down to Florida with their family for vacations this would be a god send, I’m sure most east coasters would agree too.
Because they are already building it.
“But America is too vast to have rail lines!!!”
