In 2022, this is what the United States spent on trains and cars
In 2022, this is what the United States spent on trains and cars
Source: https://youtu.be/von_IMi97-w?t=456
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My understanding is that the train system and automotive sector are kind of opposite.
For automotive, the government does the roads and private industry does the vehicles.
Conversely, the rails are largely private industry excluding Amtrak, and Amtrak is mostly responsible for the trains with their government granted monopoly on passenger rail.
It's part of what really limits passenger rail, the companies that own the rail mostly want to rail from places like ports, and negligible value for rail between population centers. Also Amtrak has to suck it up if a rail is busy (wasnt supposed to be the case, but cargo operators were allowed to make trains too long to fit on bypass spurs so they can't get out of the way like they were legally required to).
Lol! Rail servives in my little shitstain country of Belgium get 3.2B ā¬ a year.
Not only are the proportions really misguided, but the thing is even the road funding is too low. Weāre way behind in infrastructure, and yes we still need to be able to get around with personal vehicles
Ironically the reason we can't keep up with car infrastructure is because there's too much of it.
It much more costly to maintain, especially when scaling to more lanes.
Reducing space given to cars and giving more to bikes/buses/trains would make it easier to upkeep our current roads.
Amtrak relies on other companies to run their trains, how much do they spend on infrastructure? Probably not as much as for roads, but the comparison isn't great.
If it would have included state/local would that make the relative distance bigger or smaller?
Larger
Not wanting to critizise, but is there a breakdown of those numbers by ton/kilometers and people/kilometers?
If roads transported 30 times more people and goods than trains, these numbers would basically OK.
No. This is what determines what goes where. How many miles there are. Where those miles go. How many goods get moved on them.
Also, how much of that money did amtrak make back?
About to lose the OKC/Dallas route.
To take Amtrak anywhere else, I have to ride a bus to Kansas.
The US can use federal highways to rapidly move soldiers.
[The National Highway System] NHS consists of five parts...
...The fourth component is major Strategic Highway Corridor Network connectors. They consist of more than 3,000 km of roads linking major military installations and other defense-related facilities to the STRAHNET corridors.