PJ, As others have noted, there are roads and there are dirt tracks and ox cart paths.
Compared to an ox cart path, a railroad right of way is expensive. It takes 2 steel rails, cross ties set in a gravel roadbed, ditching and a subsoil to support the roadbed and carry the weight. Modern paved roads are even more expensive. They require a wider right of way, the same or better subsoil and ditching preparation, then several layers of materials to distribute the weight back down to the ground, finishing with several inches of concrete. (The US has heavier trucks than Europe and can require 10 inches of concrete.) But it all comes down to cost per ton of traffic handled. A dirt path is fine for 5-10 horses a day but would never do for the 10 million tons of coal that pass me on the railroad track on a daily coal train (100 cars at 100,000+ tons each). Imagine trying to get 10 million tons of coal into Chicago on a dirt path in the rain. Regards, Bob S. On Mon, May 25, 2009 at 10:00 AM, P. J. Alling <[email protected]> wrote: > Roads are cheaper and easier to maintain than railways, starting with the > fact that the minimum standard for a road is a dirt track, the minimum > standard for a railway is damn near the maximum standard for a railway. The > people who use the roads usually own their own means of transport. Unless a > large corporation owns the trains then the government owns the trains. > Anything the government owns is an operating expense, anything the > individuals own is a source or revenue, (it can be taxed and the government > doesn't have to pay for it's maintenance). Need we go into the fact that > Large corporations can buy legislatures to get preferential tax treatment, > something much harder for individuals to do? You don't need a road lobby, an > enlightened government will pick roads over rails any time they do a > reasonable analysis. Then there's the fact that reasonably well off people > seem to prefer to travel in their own cars, they like privacy, they like to > control their own schedules, they don't want to sit next to this guy > > http://www.spock.com/i/H01ljdNSw/The-Scary-Guy.jpg > > Bob W wrote: >>> >>> John, >>> The arguement breaks down on the cost to build rail service to every >>> small town in order to feed the big towns. >>> Regards, Bob S. >>> >> >> In the mid 60s here there was a wholesale and much-lamented closure of >> small, unprofitable railway lines that linked tiny communities. Many of >> them >> were turned into walking and cycling tracks through beautiful and fairly >> remote country (but no train to take you there!). My schoolmates and I >> helped with the building of one in Derbyshire called the Tissington Trail. >> The railway station in the town where we boarded was pulled down and >> redeveloped as a swimming pool, which was a great improvement over the >> awful >> unheated outdoor pool we had previously had to use. >> >> If you read literature of the early 20th century you notice that these >> small >> lines were quite embedded into the social fabric of the day, even if they >> were unprofitable. Some of the stations were built solely to serve the >> local >> big house, and in PG Wodehouse's books you see Wooster and Jeeves and the >> like making extensive use of them for weekend country house parties. >> >> It's considered to be an inevitable tragedy that so many were closed, >> because of the impact on rural communities, and it's quite possible that >> many of them could have been made payable, or subsidised to keep them open >> for social reasons. The distribution of support for different transport >> schemes has been unfairly loaded in favour of roads for decades. >> >> Most of the lines were probably never profitable even when they were >> built. >> The early railway boom in this country turned into a bubble rather like >> the >> dot.com boom. The railway lines were built as vanity or speculative >> projects >> off the back of inflated share prices. When the bubble burst a lot of >> people >> lost a lot of money and we were left with a wonderful infrastructure that >> could rarely pay for itself and which was dealt the death blow after WW1 >> when road transport came into its own. >> >> I'm still convinced that if the government spent as much money on the >> railways and had the level of commitment to them that they have now to the >> road lobby we would all be a lot better off, and so would the environment. >> >> Bob >> >> >> >>> >>> On Sun, May 24, 2009 at 2:08 PM, John Sessoms <[email protected]> >>> wrote: >>> >>>> >>>> From: Bob Sullivan >>>> >>>>> >>>>> It's the distance between cities that kills rail here. >>>>> Except on the east coast, travel times between big cities >>> >>> require an >>> >>>>> >>>>> overnight ride. >>>>> Planes are so much faster for anything over 200 miles. >>>>> Been that way since 1947... >>>>> Regards, Bob S. >>>>> >>>> >>>> There are a couple of flaws I find with that argument ... >>>> >>>> Who says service has to be only between big cities? Seems >>> >>> to me local >>> >>>> >>>> services are what makes rail transportation viable. Feed >>> >>> from the small >>> >>>> >>>> towns into the big cities and back again; and take the high >>> >>> speed expresses >>> >>>> >>>> between big cities. >>>> >> >> >> -- >> PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List >> [email protected] >> http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net >> to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and >> follow the directions. >> >> >> > > > -- > -- > > The free man owns himself. He can damage himself with either eating or > drinking; he can ruin himself with gambling. If he does he is certainly a > damn fool, and he might possibly be a damned soul; but if he may not, he is > not a free man any more than a dog. > > --G. K. 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