You need to understand that trying to make passenger and freight rail coexist is bad because you end up with a network that sucks at both of them. The North American freight rail network is optimized for very efficient haulage of *freight.* A shipping container of t-shirts or ball bearings doesn’t care how long it takes to get where it’s going, but the shipper does care quite a bit about cost. As a result, freight rail networks tend towards slower lines designed for very heavy loads and long trains. These lines tend to be focused on industrial areas and ports. This is precisely the opposite of what you want with passenger rail, which is lots of relatively lightweight but fast and frequent service to areas full of housing and offices. These differences are why passenger services that are run over rail lines intended primarily for freight tend to suck. Likewise, a good passenger railroad hits downtown and residential areas, but doesn’t go anywhere near container ports or heavy industry, or really any industry that would make effective use of rail freight. They also tend to be lightly built and have smaller loading gauges which make it difficult to operate modern freight equipment. One of the quintessential examples of this is the fact that the VRE can’t have NEC-compatible high-level platforms because they would prevent CSX double stack freights from using the line. Also, the rail infrastructure in North America isn’t decaying or “a skeleton of its former self.” It got more efficient because advances in technology allowed higher traffic densities. The “light touch regulation” is actually a result of the recognition back in the late 70s that the combination of the ICC’s absurd over-regulation and federally-subsidized competition from highways were going to cause the complete collapse of the American rail network of something wasn’t changed. Large sections of it were abandoned because it simply didn’t make any sense to operate, since the cost of maintaining the tracks was more than whatever benefit the line provided. Before the deregulation, 20% of the track produced 80% of the revenue. Once the railroads were allowed to abandon track, they used the opportunity to cut off much of the unprofitable track to reduce their costs so they could compete with trucks.
@@michaelimbesi2314 You can make them coexist if you use the French TGV approach -- have separate tracks for the high-speed trains in most segments of the routes.
@@michaelimbesi2314 I mostly agree. It's hard to truly optimize rail for both passenger and freight, there is always some level of compromise. Even where infrastructure allows joint operation, it becomes difficult to schedule freight and passenger together because of their opposing operational natures. It generally requires twin track or often triple and quad track to allow passing in multiple directions. The problem with Amtrak, Via Rail, and other North American passenger railroads is that because many of the routes they run over freight rail are through places that can't really provide the passenger traffic needed to let the service pay for itself. It's not financially viable to invest in improvements, so they're stuck with routes optimized for freight traffic. That hurts travel times and on-time performance, and the service remains unattractive. Really what needs to be done is only to focus on areas that see lots of traffic (like the NEC area or potentially Florida's east coast) where the infrastructure to run both passenger and freight rail at such a sort of 80% solution is justified, and cut costs (or trains) elsewhere, where passenger operates such large losses.
@@Lucius_Chiaraviglio You need to understand that a lot of this is informed by terrain. For example, the route from Washington DC through Pittsburgh to Chicago goes over the Appalachian Mountains. To get freight trains up and over the mountains, the route is quite winding. Even if you separated the tracks, the right of way has so many tight turns that you couldn’t operate more than 60kph even on separated tracks. This is exactly the kind of thing that I mean. For a freight railway, it will never make sense to spend billions of dollars to try to tunnel through the mountains, since the extra couple of hours don’t matter to a carload of coal or intermodal freight. Even straightening the curves isn’t favorable, because the lower gradients and tighter curves help keep heavy coal trains from running away. It also Carrie’s a lot of coal from the many coal mines in the area. This is the sort of thing that I mean when I say the line is optimized for freight traffic. It doesn’t pay for what it doesn’t need to carry freight, it works very well for carrying big, heavy freight trains, it’s safe, and it collects lots of business from the mines in the area. It will never make sense for a freight railroad to spend fortunes trying to speed up coal trains. However, if you’re running an intercity passenger train, it makes plenty of sense to spend $5 billion dollars to build some tunnels and cut two hours off the travel time. For an intercity passenger train, it makes sense to accept higher gradients in exchange for straighter curves because the lighter passenger train can handle those steeper slopes. And it makes more sense to cross a river to cut out a long loop of track, because the passenger trains weigh less, so the bridge you need is less expensive and you also care a lot more about saving time. This is what I mean. Don’t waste your time trying to run an intercity train over 50-60kph track through the mountains. If you want good passenger rail, **build a passenger line**. Don’t try to shoehorn passenger rail onto a freight line. You end up with really bad passenger service, because the train is still on freight tracks only doing 50kph up and over the mountains.
In regards to the removal of rail lines, it's my understanding there are some perverse government insentivizes like charging property taxes per Km of track, meaning doubling tracks doubles cost.
I don't think cutting taxes would be the answer, since those are probably insignificant compared to the overall costs of maintaining more infrastructure. Nationalization of the entire country's rail infrastructure really should be the goal, with tolls charged to private companies who want to use it. Those tolls could then provide a more secure way to fund expansion than merely relying on the good graces of whichever political party happens to be in power at the time
In the UK we almost have the opposite problem to the US, the network is already so congested with passenger services, it's really difficult to squeeze freight in, even at night because that is when Network Rail likes to take possession and do inspections and maintenance (especially since regulations have been increasingly tightened to make live line working harder to approve). I'd also add, bypass lines are very useful. Ideally you don't want freight traffic clogging up your busy city center stations. So having them able to avoid the most congested passenger areas is very useful.
By-pass lines are the biggest potential uplifted of passager rail. Most passanger service will always be regional or lower, and the ability to build 50-200km of track through Greenfield around a city to open up hundreds of km of intracity track can't be understated. Particularly when most of that freight is moving through the city, and considering the safety advantage of moving frieght out of population centers.
Kinda. Although my town has a track that leads right to the docks but it never gets used. And we got mainly intermobile traffic these days ontop of the nuclear flask aka the most dangerous cargo our tracks can ever move.
We have the same problem in The Netherlands. The passenger rail traffic is so busy that only a few freight trains can be squeezed in the schedule. That’s why there was dedicated freight line to Germany was built.
They can co-exist and they must. The need for climate action means we need more passengers and more freight carried on the rails we have. We need the federal government, who regulates the freight railways, to step in and actively manage the situation!
We need to nationalize the railroads, like most other industrialized countries, and build an Interstate Rail System on the scale of the Interstate Highway System. Business will ALWAYS give the worst service it can get away with giving in return for the most money. Transportation needs to be handled as a public utility.
I don’t trust the government to run more than it must, especially not a critical industry like freight rail. The current system mostly works well, there’s not enough reason to change it. For an example of how nationalization went badly, look at Britain. Heavy political pressures and agendas on the railway management meant massive amounts of waste and failure, ultimately resulting in the closure of large parts of the network. It took several decades to recover from that. Even now the politically-run, disjointed system limits what the rail industry can accomplish.
@@andrewreynolds4949 Last I checked, their partial privatization didn't work and they had to re-nationalize due to the companies not maintaining the track, eventually leading to accidents.
@@andrewreynolds4949 I don't think the system works well. There are many cases where certain freight railways will not allow passenger trains, or else not very many passenger trains. In Canada, the federal government is already involved in regulating privately-owned railways. I am just saying that it needs to encourage the sharing of the rails with passenger trains (intercity and regional) when regulating.
Lots to unpack. Starting with the last comment, Open Access railways with infrastructure separated from operation is essential for the provision of the rial service we need. It's not just a matter of freight vs passenger. Keeping this to the US, the "freight railroads" discourage lightweight shipments, time sensitive shipments, and shipments of less than about 750 miles. That is why measured by weight (what US railroads claim to be good at), trains carry 9.3 percent of the shipments, trucks 72%. Measured by value (typically light weight and time sensitive), trains carry 1.4 percent of the shipments, trucks 73 percent. Before May 1 1971, there were no "freight railroads," just railroads. Passenger and freight trains generally coexisted well. One line I worked had 14 passenger trains and 20-30 freight trains per day. Passenger trains were almost always within minutes of on time. Another line I worked only had eight passenger trains, but ~200 freight trains, and crossed other rail lines at grade in a distance of 30ish miles with a total of over 70 passenger trains. It all almost always ran smoothly. The US has the most underutilized rail network in the developed world. Yes, it is high in ton miles, the chosen measurement for demonstrating prowess. Since the US has the largest rail network in the world, and the third largest land area (and railroads discourage shipments under a distance of 750 miles-a distance that would span the length or width of some countries), the ton miles distinction is easy to achieve. However, when measuring train miles per mile of track, the US is 40th, down below Mozambique. OK, fine, US freight trains are much bigger. Adjusted for that, the US is 11th, behind the Czech Republic. The US railroads are in the strange situation of being a virtually empty network with local immense congestion. That is largely due to mismanagement. US freight railroad operation is almost entirely improvised. Operation is figured out as it is happening. Sure, there are "schedules" that typically consist of a set of desired times, whether they can be achieved or not, or whether it is possible to run all of the trains on time simultaneously. That is related to the monopoly position to which deregulation has led. That brings us back to open access being the solution for freight and passenger.
Yes they can, we have been doing so in Switzerland for over 100 Years, also nice Crocodile in the background, it is even nicer to see driving up the Gotthard :P
Good job mentioning the Lehigh line, which I just rode over this morning, and which supports around 60 NJT Raritan Valley trains per weekday while also being heavily used by both NS and CSX freight. NJT doesn’t just run over the Lehigh line between its own rails on one end and Amtrak’s on the other, but it even has two island platform stations along it, with gauntlet tracks giving freight trains a some more lateral space as needed.
It's worth mentioning that Precision Scheduled Railroading (just-in-time, essentially unscheduled train formation) causes plenty of problems for the freight business too. Customers have no idea how long the transit will take, and RR staff are forced to work unpredictable schedules. The freight railroads have lost a lot of business because of it. PSR only looks good if you want the minimum number of trains and crew operating at any given time, with the minimum amount of capital investment.
One of the great "coexisting" corridors of running freight and passenger trains in the same ROW is the Frontrunner in Utah. The UTA bought out the right of way and built their track alongside existing freight tracks, so its not uncommon to see freight trains. Although, the coexisting on the same tracks problem exists just to the north, where issues between the UTA and UP lead to the limiting, the closure of the Pleasant View station (which had a decent amount of TOD). But hopefully in the future coexistence or parallel trackage can return service and even bring service to other points like Brigham City, Logan, or Tremonton.
I'm a passionate rider of Frontrunner. I like the model of building tracks adjacent to the already existing ones so that freight and passengers don't need to interrupt each other. Maybe there could be rewards to freight companies that assist in building passenger priority tracks.
You're right about the freight railroads, but the reason they've become more "lean" by removing infrastructure is because of taxes. Idk about Canada but in most US states taxes are levied on railroads based on track mileage, so railroads have an explicit and aggressive incentive to cut track they're not using (which is bad!) so I don't fully blame them for the situation
When we focus on longer distance intercity sharing, we need more double tracking for better passing section. When we want local regional rail we need new by-pass routes to keep the Frieght trains on the periphery of the city.
@@davidty2006 Honestly on the really long routes through the interior of Canada/USA, you likely only need passing sections of side spur. They may have to be 20km long, but as Amtrak shows even "busy" sections of single track are rarely in use. A small section of passing track in the center of two points 200km apart will have a huge impact at a fraction of the cost. I'm sceptical passange rail through the interior will ever become a main transport option, so I would hesitate double tracking to much. Local/regional rail though ya I want dounbe tram tracks and double local service track and double express service track, and maybe a frieght line.
@@neolithictransitrevolution427 With double track you not only get the potential for better passenger service, but also better freight service for customers that aren't humongous companies. We already had a problem (even before the pandemic) that farmers have trouble using the railroads to deliver their harvest because the freight railroads were too busy hauling oil (especially Bakken Crude).
I have watched busy lines like the BNSF Transcon through Arizona and New Mexico where there is a constant stream of rail freight, often multiple trains in view at any one time and always at least one except for the odd minute or two. BNSF has been quadruple tracking significant lengths of it just to deal with the freight traffic. So while many lines may be quiet, there are a lot of places where freight rail companies really are stretched on capacity. Single line running is especially restricted, and putting in a second track isn’t always practical. In my city there are places where they can’t double track or grade separate the lines because of other infrastructure crowding it in. On a different note, Brightline in Florida looks (so far) like a good example of freight and passenger rail coexisting. I look forward to seeing if Brightline can sustain itself going forward.
Here on the Seattle Terminal, we have four main railroad: BNSF (owns most, if not, all, of the mainline trackage, also dispatches line), UP (trackage rights on the BNSF to access Argo Yard and Harbor Island), Amtrak, and Sounder. In the afternoon commute hours (~2:00-~7:00pm), on the section of the Terminal south of King Street Station, Amtrak and Sounder trains generally operate 20 min apart, with most trains headed south towards Tacoma and onwards. During this time, BNSF and UP generally do not run trains until the larger breaks in service or until before and after the commute hours. The intriguing part is that this area of the Terminal has 3 main tracks, which last until it narrows down to 2 at the South Portal of the Great Northern Tunnel, and several long sidings (which are typically used for trains awaiting crews), yet BNSF seems to never run any trains, even during the 20 min gap in service, which is typically enough time for a train to make it from Georgetown, where freights usually “tie down,” to Interbay Yard, where there is space for them to stop and wait, if needed, before Bridge 6.3 (Salmon Bay) and the currently single tracked section at Edmonds. While passenger trains do need to be on their current track at Tukwila, there are several crossovers where freights and passengers can switch tracks, and also, in my opinion, an underutilized triple track mainline.
My favorite example of frieght and passenger rail using the same tracks happened about 15 years ago. I was standing on the platforn of Kowloon Tong station in Hong Kong when a pig train went through. Live pigs. The smell was overpowering! Thank goodness it is an open air station!
I think the Amtrak accident in Missouri illustrates why it's important for freight railroads to perform upgrades to infrastructure that also supports passenger trains. Ultimately, they are held responsible for any accident involving infrastructure that happens on their rails. It's more than passenger trains that should be considered as well. Some trains carry toxic chemicals, and any accident there has impacts that are just as severe for the surrounding community.
I feel like the more important question isn't whether freight and passenger rail _can_ coexist, but whether they _should._ I think it's telling that no country in the world has been able to achieve both a profitable rail network and a usable passenger network at the same time. While it may be possible to come up with solutions and workarounds to allow passengers and freight to coexist, I can't help but feel like it's a "jack of all trades, master of none" situation, and that we might be better off with two separate rail networks that are optimized for their specific use cases, with only a minimum of interoperability for use in emergencies.
Honestly, I've thought about this dilemma before, and wondered if something like a Network Rail solution could work. Rather than nationalise the whole freight railroad companies, nationalise just the infrastructure and maintenance of every class I railroad into one consolidated rail corporation. (hmm, where have I heard that one before) Charge the companies a fee to use it, like Interstates are in the united states. Amtrak would love it, as this new Conrail would be a hell of a lot more friendly to them, and would loosen up a bit more capital for them to do more, Freight companies wouldn't have pay for all their infrastructure costs at all, and Conrail would be incentivized to make much better track corridors than previously (maybe even electrify?) It might even be easier for cities to think about implementing halfway decent regional rail in their cities if a hypothetical Conrail was willing to assist them and the city to construct it. I'm not saying this would be easy to do or anything, but it would be a nice compromise that could leave everyone happy, and might maybe help induce some genuine growth in American Passenger Rail?
Part of the problem is that in the 1970s when Conrail was created, freight rail companies were falling apart, and couldn't afford to maintain their own infrastructure. Now that they're doing quite well for themselves, freight companies would not take kindly to their track being nationalized, and would charge the feds a pretty penny for the privilege. Railway nationalization might be nice if money were not an issue, but since it is, it makes much more sense to just create regulations that require freight rail companies to accommodate Amtrak for a reasonable price, something that already exists and is getting enforced more & more in recent years.
@@derpmansderpyskin They do a good job for the huge companies, but not so much for others. We already had a problem (even before the pandemic) that farmers have trouble using the railroads to deliver their harvest because the freight railroads were too busy hauling oil (especially Bakken Crude).
Great discussion. I'd love a follow-up where you can list some "obvious" location choices where having this integration could be most useful for passenger service. You often hear the "there isn't demand to go from A to B and/or via this route" which gets into the whole argument of whether there is insufficient demand or that the supply is non-existent, so people just find alternatives. I believe we should both meet current and future needs, and create new demand, but that's often a hard balance to sell when lots of money is at stake.
I agree, it’s really interesting to consider how much the lack of demand for SO many services really is just as you mention the lack of sufficient supply
I believe this is a problem of induced demand, and I would argue that most who argue the demand point don't understand that transit demand is fundamentally different from regular supply and demand. So as you increase supply and capacity on your network, you also increase demand for that network. That's not to say that demand is infinite and that we can build massive passenger rail everywhere, just that the demand question is often misunderstood. Also, we should note that one of the main barriers to demand for rail is car infrastructure. If we constantly make it easier to drive than take rail by building lots of highways and roadways, then it'll always be hard to get passengers on trains.
If India's experience with running passenger and freight trains on their rail lines simultaneously teaches you anything, it is that passenger and freight trains can run on the same track until a certain point. Once the line crosses the 150% occupancy mark, it's time to roll out separate passenger and freight tracks.
And you are basing this on what source ? Cross subsidization of passenger rail at the expense of freight is monumental blunder that still costs the country's economy. Plus DFC's might provide some reprieve but none of the lines have been completely operationalized from start to port.
Here in Sydney we have many corridors where freight and commuter rail coexist. I went to a school that was adjacent to a railway station and you'd get to see a nice mix of grain/coal/milk and intermodal freight trains along with the commuter rail.
Interesting video. But overall, I think one of the best places to look for inspiration might just be Sweden, I mean they have one of the most succesful rail freight industries in all of Europe, as well as some pretty high quality and fast passenger rail through most of the country with speeds of 200km/h on everything from high speed expresses, to the regional commuter trains. Plus having a similar population density to much of North america helps a lot too. And as of how Sweden works, well yeah it has trafikverket, the national infrastructure manager of not just railways but also national roads and highways, deciding the facts on most of the country's rail infrastructure (with only a few exceptions. IDK if Inlandsbanan for instance is managed by Trafikverket or Inlandsbanan themselves)
Inlandsbanan… it’s complicated. The southern side is maintained by Trafikverket, the rest by Inlandsbanan themselves. Therefore the future of it is discussed. The line is too weak to use with heavy freight (which makes it quite pointless especially to Trafikverket) and too ineffective to use with regular passenger services. The company Inlandsbanan wants to maintain and develop it to become a freight route alternative to Malmbanan and coastal or through Ånge, while Trafikverket thinks it’s too expensive.
@@RMTransit Since Sweden is a much smaller country than USA, Canada or Mexico of course there is less freight traffic. But if yoy compare the volume of freight traffic in Sweden with for example Pennsylvania (about the same population) I'm not shure that the Keystone state will come out as a winner...
Also reece thanks for showing an indian freight train in your video at 3:55, the type of wagon shown in the video is classified as a BOXN wagon. A BOXN wagon means "bogie open high sided with air breaks" and are commonly used to carry varied forms of general freight that can be left uncovered, from gravel to iron ore to even electric cable reels.
@@aapjeaaron Germany not so much. There running on the "wrong" track is still a major operation in most places. Austria and Switzerland on the other hand basically only have "bi-directional single-track lines that happen to run parallel" - i.e. they are mostly (Switzerland) or completely (Austria) signalled for bi-directional operation on all tracks.
After this conclusion i am a little bit confused. What exactly is "american level of sucess" in freight service? I would argue, that Switzerlands railways already achieves a great cooperation between freight and passenger services by having a deeply integrated company and achieving a significant higher modal split for rail in freight than the US. Which results in exactly, what you said. For example, the Gotthard base tunnel would have never been possible just for passenger services or freight services. But because the line sees heavy usage by both of them, this tunnel was possible. They run now at peak 2 passenger services and 6 freight services per hour per direction through the tunnel. Also, if you are in the area which is serviced by the RhB, you will quite often spot passenger services with freight attached to them. I think this looks quite funny - a small Stadler EMU with several freight cars casually driving through a snow storm on top of a mountain. Also, such a service has quite the advantage by running often. You don't need long trains, if one runs anyway every hour (which also applies to regular freight trains in Switzerland).
@@TAWithiam Cost of rail freight shipping in all of Europe is starting to drop currently (spearheaded by Switzerland) because of finally starting with automated couplers.
Definitely agree that the point of "American level of success" in freight service is a bit of a hogwash. In comparison both India and China manage to do both 1billion passenger kms every year and in-addition China does over 3000 billion tonnes of freight and India does about 1500billion tonnes of frieght. Most of the rail network in these two countries is mixed traffic. Even in terms of modal share both these countries fare better in terms of share of rail in freight.
@@julupani sure such countries move a lot of freight, but it's important to remember that doesn't mean American freight railroads aren't highly successful. If you want to simply go by statistics a better way to compare would be modal share, where America is quite high but also not dominant, but again there is a lot more to it that such stats. China, for example, has a huge amount of industry and despite that is more dependent on trucking, they just ship a lot more goods total so of course their rails move a lot of freight. Take this with a grain of salt, but ostensibly China has been neglecting their freight lines in favor of their high speed passenger lines, which are important to the CCP as a symbol of economic success. Anyways really what a lot of people mean by freight rail success in the US is how competitive it is over other modes. That's not all down to business management and good policy, mind you. Europe has far higher usage of cargo ships for shipping within Europe simply because of geography, and cargo ships are the one mode of transportation cheaper than trains (should probably mention pipelines for liquids are usually even better). What's also impressive about US rail is how well it competes with trucking despite government funding subsidizing trucking far more (Truck taxes do not cover road maintenance at all, even if you exclude infrastructure costs from personal vehicles). Of course private business success doesn't mean that it's good for the country, I'd argue that a good example of Policy setting up good freight rail is Switzerland who have driven rail freight adoption quite hard. Mind you US railroads probably achieve greater cost efficiency (I have not checked this) and US railroads certainly benifit from the much larger loading gauge, but in terms of total beifit to the country as a whole, Switzerland has proportionally displaced a lot more trucking than the US and has a great passenger network at the same time, and I'd argue Switzerland's approach has a greater net benifit to society. The above rant is probably somewhat incoherent, it's 3AM here and I should go to bed. Oh also there can be more than one country exemplifying freight rail success.
You're doing a great service by making your audience aware of this stuff. Most rail foamers are not, and they will recite the pronouncements of the rail cabal verbatim when they get into an argument with someone more enlightened, i.e. me.
CSX owns some ROW in my area that they refuse to sell. The line hasn't been used in 20+ years, it is completely disconnected from any main or trunk line. The industry that CSX used the track for ceased operations 35+ years ago and the area is all residential. Yet they refuse to sell it. The tracks are completely buried in dirt, grass and trees now. CSX is very draconian about anyone else using their tracks, abandoned or not and want 6 to 8 figures for it.
Love the video. "Well There's Your Problem" highlighted many of the issues with the American rail system, in their Penn Central Bankruptcy series. What alarmed me, and helped me to understand many of the problems with regional and national passenger rail service, was that by and large, US rail operators (and I assume CN and CP), don't have timetables. They just build a train and send it out. Whereas passenger rail needs timetables so people can make use of it. On top of that, the US operators didn't see passenger rail as profitable as cars came into vogue, so they didn't invest, and ended up spinning long-distance rail into Amtrak (vs the alternative of just stopping all passenger service), and the regional/commuter rail was transferred to cities and states, who had no interest at the time, of operating any transportation systems. Unfortunately for us, with the elimination of these local and regional services, and the consolidation of the rail companies, many of the tracks that would have been of great use for new services are being claimed for other uses. Some have just been incorporated into other properties, eliminating the ROW, in whole or part, and other have become walking/riding trails, which would be exceedingly difficult to convert to passenger use. As a result, the rail operators sort of have Amtrak and regional commuter rail over a barrel, in terms of track access, and times of operation. Look at the Seattle Area, there is a great State Funded (along with Oregon and BC) Amtrak service, called "Cascades". It is a handy service, but only runs 4-8 trains a day, most of which don't even run the full length of the service, and it is very difficult to get one train to go from Eugene to Vancouver, let alone Bellingham or Everett to Portland. On top of that, with people moving further east in the state, it would behoove the states to look at expanding eastward, a train from Everett/Seattle to Spokane would be great, as well as Spokane to Tri-cities to Portland, or even Bend to Salem or Portland. But due to infrastructure issues (largely the Cascade tunnel), it is a non-starter, even with new technologies that would allow smaller gaps between trains, producing little to no exhaust when in the tunnels. Then Seattle has the Sounder. A great commuter rail, wasted by BNSF. It is only allowed to run 4 trains North of Seattle in the morning, and 6 South of Seattle, during each commuting period. As a result, it doesn't get nearly as much ridership as it would if it 7 days a week, all day, in both directions. On top of that, the expensive rolling stock is idle most of the time because of this restriction. And, there are a few places where stops are needed or would be useful, but just aren't there, and BNSF balks at additional stops or extending service (especially north) to the other communities where it would be useful. So, as a result, Sound Transit has to build it own tracks, in new ROW, for the Link Light Rail, which has been an expensive feat. There is an even more suitable route for light rail, or even metro service near SR 99 (rather than I-5), and along I-405 that would have been easier and cheaper to build in, but both corridors were abandoned, critical infrastructure removed, and they were converted to trails, making their use a non-starter. Yes, Passenger and Freight Rail can co-exist, but it will only happen when everyone gets their signaling modernized, passenger rail is given the same priority, and we start to use it as it is built, we can see the scale move toward equality in service, and perhaps, just perhaps, we can get some decent investment in new rail infrastructure for mixed uses.
All excellent points, as someone from a town with a bunch of freight rail crossings I genuinely appreciate you mentioning how they can divide up a town. It's a complaint that can feel so silly to voice aloud because it's just sitting and waiting, but it really does have measurable consequences. especially since freight rail is both noisier and much less considerate about operating at night than passenger rail, two things that in combination still make zero sense to me. Carbon emissions from idling cars, disturbed sleep, distressed animals, and lost school time all have real impacts. Thanks for the video, keep up the great work!
Full nationalisation would be a challenge. But if you nationalise only the interstate main lines and important corridors and have the government timetable services similar to Australia it could give priority back to passenger trains.
I used to read train magazines and this was definitely a topic. The day-to-day scheduling is planne d when adding passenger, but decisions are made in a freight rail network management center. Some decisions won't be favorable for everyone. I think capacity is tight and doesn't accomodate failure nicely when it happens. To me, western Canada had an incredible network of freight and passenger. Look at an old rail network map of the prairies and imagine grain and people hauling using people to control traffic. Cities can't plan want to adopt/adapt whatever solution buys them time.
As much as I hate to say this, I actually think that freight is more important than rail transit from a purely rational standpoint. One time last June, I remember being very frustrated because my Amtrak train delayed by 5 hours because several 3 mile long trains (I counted the cars) were blocking the tracks. However, as I was doing some math, I figured out that the 275 delayed passengers on my train were only providing about $22,000 in revenue, while the freight trains were probably delivering somewhere in the ballpark of a billion dollars in goods. Overall, although I think that rail transit is vastly superior to personal automobile transport, and that infrastructure for it should continue to be expanded in every way possible, I don't think we can ignore the fact that freight trains reduce the carbon footprints of our lives in a major way. If these shipments were moved to trucks, the impact on emissions would be disastrous.
This sounds corny, but a video game, Transport Fever, proves your point to the letter. If you start a new game and focus entirely on passenger transport you're most likely going to go bankrupt within the first decade as the expense of running the railroad far outweighs the income you get from connecting small towns. Even if your passenger railroad is successful you're not going to see any big profit any time soon. Set up just one freight chain, Farm - Factory - City, to just one city and you'll have literal millions of dollars in the bank within the same time frame. Passenger transport only becomes necessary when the city you're connected to stops growing so you then connect it to another city via rail to increase the population, which in turn ... guess what ... increases the freight demand, so you create a second chain and watch your bank account go in to overdrive. To put it in to real world terms: You're absolutely correct and that is the sole reason as to why the USA prioritizes freight over passenger, because it makes a ridiculous amount of money by comparison, each freight train carrying tens of millions of dollars worth of freight. In fact it's also why highways were built between cities; to get people off the rails and in to their own cars so they can put more freight trains on the tracks without passenger trains getting in the way.
Of course they can and they should, the problem in the US is that the owner of the tracks are the freight companies. In Europe even some high speed rails are used by passenger and freight trains. Hi from Spain, amazing video!!
The Amtrak routes in the US with the best OTP are not NEC routes but ones in shared freight corridors. They accomplish this with double track mainlines and multiple crossovers that allow faster passenger trains to overtake slower freight.
It really is a matter of priorities. In Europe, generally passenger rail takes priority to the relative neglect of freight, and in North America freight rail usually takes priority to the neglect of passenger service. Freight rail is most efficient with long, relatively slow trains moving large amounts of freight, while passenger rail is most efficient running regular, fast, relatively short services. It’s not impossible to integrate the two but it can be very difficult, especially in very congested, high-traffic areas. Creating enough capacity to do so can also be very expensive.
They surely can, only thing is you need to get the blend correct. I'd say the way UK and Germany share tracks between freight and fast intercity trains (or even ICE lines in Germany's case) is not a good idea, as it hurts capacity of both. If you have freight and 'slow' local/commuter services and a segregated fast intercity setup (which the UK WOULD have had, if not for the gutting of HS2), that's probably ideal, and only build freight corridors (like the Betuwelijn here in NL) when needed.
Although the HS2 cutbacks will cause some problems if the reduced scope forms the full extent of the project, the phase 1 and 2A elements will nevertheless provide significant traffic relief for the WCML (west coast main line), Britains busiest long distance freight corridor, by removing the fastest express trains, creating room for more slower regional expresses as well as freight. The truncated East leg of Ph 2 will also take some of the fastest trains from the East Midlands and South Yorkshire to London, relieving the south end of the MML for freight and slower passenger service growth. The Golbourne Link in the North West and the remainder of Ph 2 East towards Leeds and the North East are supposed to be under reconsideration with alternative routes mooted, better aligned to also improve travel BETWEEN key northern cities, something that was outside the remit for HS2 when the route was developed initially. The UK government's mishandling of the project saw no detail published about these alternatives before the announcement of the cutting of the previously planned legs. This has destroyed any trust that they're actually serious about developing such proposals.
In india we are building new tracks along old lines which will exclusively be freight train to resolve this dispute they are called dfc (dedicated freight corridors)
In Japan, passenger rail dominates lines to the point where it’s difficult to schedule more freight services. In fact, less than 1% of freight in Japan is shipped by rail.
Thanks for such a well-presented and knowledgeable post Reece. I truly hope that some of the many obvious truths that you've articulated so well, are heeded by those who can make these changes come to pass.
I live in the other London, on one of the busiest passenger lines in the UK, the Brighton Line. Where I live there are four tracks, all with low Voltage third rail electrification. There are frequent passenger trains, but also freight trains on the slow lines. The majority of these seem to carry stone, some to a terminal just a few km North of me. These generally consist of about 20 high capacity hopper wagons, so are shorter than typical North American freight trains. There are no problems with them striking platform edges or conductor rails. They are hauled by class 66 Diesel locomotives, built in North America, in London I think, these have to be smaller than those built for the home market due to the more restricted British loading gauge.
EMD 66 is american built from the Class 59 that was a SD 40 but in british body. And they are the backbone of our system. Although GBRf is planning on getting some new Bi mode freight loco's from Stadler eventually.
In Auckland and Wellington in New Zealand both the passenger networks in the regions co-exist with freight networks. In Auckland they are even separating the freight lines from the passenger network with a third main between Quay Park and Wiri
I think it's a win win for everyone if they work together. Passenger trains gets more rails to do more trips and have new stations. The Goods/product trains can still operate their large trains and earn money on the side by lending their trails w/o much of a problem. And the government gets a better train system. We could be the first 🥺
AFAIK the primary reason why the freight railroads ripped out their infrastructure was to reduce their property tax burden. The reduction in the capacity for decent passenger service is just a bonus.
Apparently the government decided to tax rail infrastructure per km of laid rail, so if you had double tracks you had to pay twice the tax burden. What a great incentive to tear out as much track as possible!
In the UK, passenger and freight trains often operate on the same line together, so in some countries passenger and freight rail can conexist and it doesn't affect the passenger trains
Good video. The over-arching "neutral arbiter" model works well in Australia and Türkiye where railways have been mostly in public hands for decades. Rail freight in Türkiye is limited to the lower-speed legacy system which is steadily being upgraded, alongside construction of more high-speed lines (which are purely for Intercity passenger traffic). In Australia many parts of our heavy rail "suburban" networks manage to run quite high-frequency passenger services, despite much line-sharing with freight, because the specifications for freight trains are not that different (due to the long history of that over-arching model of regulation - even though Victoria, WA and Queensland have non-standard gauge passenger services). In a way, the huge historical success of freight rail in North America is the main obstacle to allowing sharing infrastructure with passengers as you point out, but without a strong independent arbiter the freight companies get to have their cake and eat it too. Thanks Reece very enlightening.
Is there any reason you didn't write _Turkey_ as you're writing in English? Do you write _Rzeczpospolita Polska_ too, or they're not brown enough for a virtue signal?
In the UK we do this all the time. The freight goes where it needs to go, and the passenger trains go where they need to go, but if they both go via the same stretch of rail, they do. Passenger rail and freight combine into 1, with freight branching off into their sidings and passengers doing the same
In Sydney, you've got coal trains to Wollongong and grain trains to Nowra, plus ballast trains from Bombo. Some of the steepest track in Sydney is Hurstville to Sutherland. 7 passenger trains per hour (6 local, 1 regional). The freight trains wait on the quad track (only needed for passengers in peak hour) for 1 window per hour for the rest of the week, when they can jump onto the double track, and get a reasonable southbound path to grind up Como Bank with a full load. They follow an express train that diverges at Sutherland, and are followed by an all stations train 12 minutes behind the express. They're tabled to arrive at Sutherland 15 minutes apart. That 12-15 minute window is enough for a slow goods to grind up Como Bank every few hours without delaying the all stations train behind it.
Although passenger and freight services can co-exist, it becomes really difficult to operate both of them together in an efficient manner in countries with massive passenger train rider-ship. Being in India, we can see the government prioritising dedicated grade-separated passenger and freight corridors at the same time.
Growing up in Lakefield Ontario, a small town NE of Peterborough, there once was a rail line that serviced that town. The old station building is still there as well as the ROW which is now a trail. CN operated the line up to its final days. The significance of that was lost on me when I was younger but now I find it crazy that we had rail service to even small towns in Canada. Like, it is legitimately mind blowing to me now as it is hard to imagine today. Such a shame so much of our rail infrastructure is lost now.
I’m from Peterborough proper and when I learned that the passenger train only stopped in the 1990 I was amazed. because of how relatively recent that is. I’m very excited for the new Windsor to Montréal corridor though so that soon the Peterborough station will be used again. Until then our closest station is Cobourg.
In North America, not on the same lines. Railways in North America are primarily privately-owned-and-operated, and freight is much more profitable for these railways than passenger service is. Government-owned railways are practically unheard-of in North America. And people who want to ride a train, well, the private sector simply points them to the road network and tells them to "just shut up and drive".
Here in Guadalajara, Mexico metro line 4 is currently under construction. It's going to share the freight tracks that go south of the city through some densely populated suburbs and industry hubs. SITEUR (the Guadalajara metro operator) said it was the best option to provide transport to that zone of the city that really needed it. We'll see if it truly was the best option when enters in service in 2024.
If you go to Germany at any major station you will see practically non stop passenger and freight traffic. But then they tend to run much shorter single stack container trains at 100kph+
It’s something that’s being already done in Victoria in Australia where all of the railway infrastructure is owned and maintained by the state government! So a large majority of regional and even some metropolitan train lines in Melbourne are already being used by both passenger and freight trains! :)
Same here in Sydney, even the tracks going up to Newcastle which are mostly only double tracked have a lot of freight traffic with little or no passenger disruptions
In western Australia regional rail and freight share tracks, though when the tracks were privatised freight was given right of way over passenger services, which causes significant delays on some services.
In Germany this seems a very strange question. I live and work next to the main Basel-Karlsruhe line which carries freight from Italy and southern Europe to the ports and industrial regions of the north. We get mixed treight and passenger trains every few minutes.
I know that in some places like China for example, they're experimenting with high speed freight service by modifying a bullet train with massive cargo doors. I assume they fill the roll of express service like cargo planes transporting perishable goods like fruits and vegetables quickly across vast distances. In that case, there's little conflict between freight and passenger rail as they use the same, high speed train which I find to be pretty nifty.
Simple answer: of course (as they do) and somehow, freight train drivers also need passenger trains to get to their job ;-) Detailed answer: it can be a difficult relationship. From a European railway transport planner's perspective, we have more and more trouble with increasing passenger service frequencies on often 19th century infrastructure like some single track lines with sidings too short for nowadays block freight trains, so that you can only run long freight trains at night what then defines your whole timetable and production scheme although it's only a 24 km section of the 1.000 km way from the alps to the North Sea ports and makes it quite inflexible. There were already law suites in Switzerland were SBB Cargo lost its path on day time because stable frequencees of passenger service were seen as higher valuable for the country's economy than this one freight train, that from the judge's perspective could also run at night. But you can't only let run freight trains at night if they have to cover a long distance. And a concentration on rail freight corridors like in the EU also causes the problem of not having a good usable alternative in case of construction works or incidents as the 2017 Rastatt incident showed and we already struggle to organise economically feasable alternatives for a month long closure at the same place in 2024 although working on it for more than a year also due to a lack of international coordination of construction works across Europe's infrastructure managers because everyone wants to have his big measures in the summer period or won't be able to significantly reduce passenger service to let pass more freight trains on deviation routes. This challenge between freight and passenger service often on a regular basis for the annual timetable and especially while construction works take place has even become worse the last years and probably will become worse the next years making it difficult to run the freight concepts you based your calculation on, so it becomes difficult for some freight train companies to survive if not subsidised or compensated as it's already being started in the Netherlands or to be in Switzerland. A truck can easily change to another road, a freight train can't.
I just have LoL, North America rail ines when they were first built carried everything on the same train. Had passenger cars, freight cars and mail cars. They didn't have dedicated lines or networks. This all ended with interstate infrastructure that started to go up in the 1950's, as well as passenger airlines at the same time. The major decline in the rail use can be largely blaimed on the oil industry which highly pressure the auto industry and local governments to make the personal car more disirable then the train. If it wasn't for oil industry, the US would still be use rail for most all state-state transit of any kind.
If I look at Belgium and line 50A I can say they definitely can co exist. At just a double bi-directional track you have 96 passenger trains a day on top of unit trains moving cars form the port of Brugges. Although they are now expanding the line to 4 lanes. Interestingly though is that they still wont split freight and passenger. In stead the inner two lines will have a speed of 200 kph for the IC trains and the outer will have 160 kph speed for local and freight running. Still all bi directional. Meaning local trains running on the outside can use the inner lines for overtaking freight.
In NSW Australia, part of the problem is that we cannot double-stack east of the Great Dividing Range, due to bridge heights and overhead wiring. Double-stacking is key to competing against trucking. Between Sydney and Brisbane, there is a busy commuter route between Sydney and Newcastle and country service to the North Coast and Brisbane 3 times per day. The North Coast line from Maitland to Coffs Harbour and Brisbane is single track and is very windy. Consequently, it takes about 16 hours for a goods train to travel from Sydney to Brisbane. If there were no passenger trains, a freight train would take about 12-14 hours. This was demonstrated during the Covid lockdowns when freight trains were running up to two hours early. Hence, while they can a do co-exist, one tends to dominate the other. For instance, in Europe, passenger traffic tends to dominate, whereas in Nth America, passenger traffic is clearly compromised for the sake of freight traffic. The best example is where you have two different systems one for freight and the other for commuter rail.
Here in Sydney Australia, on some lines we have a separate ARTC freight line for freight to run alongside the suburban rail & bypass stops. The lines also connect back on to the mainline connecting the states after the catenary & suburban services terminal stations
Personally where I live in South west Sydney there is a seperate track for freight trains running south towards Wollongong and Canberra which sees a lot of traffic, even on the suburban tracks we get freight trains running, mostly to the inland dock at Minto
The real difference between NA and the EU is that in NA freight railroads own the tracks they run on, while in the EU the tracks are owned by the governments and operated by freight and passenger companies as toll railways. This means that the freight railway I work with (RCC-Italy) doesn't have to worry about maintenance, capacity or whatnot, they just pay track access fees and we'll be going on with our business while a third-party company, which doesn't operate trains at all, manages the infrastructure and dispatches the trains.
I'm a little surprised to find that other than a brief mention at the end of this video, there isn't much reference to the impact of the creation of the nationalized freeway system has historically had on freight rail and their associated passenger operations. As you mention, having to compete with the much less environmentally efficient trucking industry is the main catalyst for freight rail becoming the one-trick pony it's become today. Less highlighted here, though possibly because it's had less impact in Canada than it has in the US, is that freight companies manage the capital costs of maintaining and upgrading their infrastructure whereas trucking companies who largely operate over freeways do not. Railroads then pay taxes on the land by track mile (for at least some time, and in some places they still do) on top of it. Imaginably if the freeways were to become privatized and trucking companies took ownership of them, similar effects would be seen on passenger car travel versus freight-carrying truck. This includes laxing on maintenance and shrinking particularly large freeways because they don't need all that space even if passenger cars benefit from it. If freight companies weren't motivated to minimize their infrastructure and maximize train length to compete with trucking companies, there would still be plenty of 2, 3, or even 4 track systems still present which could reintegrate passenger rail much more easily. Freeway expansions don't directly cost trucking companies a dime and they benefit from having better throughput of surrounding traffic as opposed to being stuck in gridlock (until the induced demand catches up again), whereas unless the government opts to subsidize it, expanding sidings to accommodate passenger rail comes out of freight companies' pockets so of course they're opposed to it. Also, while I hold a reasonable level of optimism that corridors which have been single-tracked can be expanded upon to bring in dedicated passenger RoW alongside dedicated freight RoW, my own anecdotal observations of the land around railways around me indicates to me that much of the land that once belonged to the railway has been reclaimed for other uses such as single-family housing very close to the current single-track, or parking lots for businesses in downtowns. Of course, the freight industry's own opposition to passenger rail, and even their concerted efforts to make passenger rail harder to bring back are of no help as well. Anyways, other urbanist channels have covered this historical aspect, particularly in talking about the potential to nationalize the railways in the US and Canada, so I recognize this point was not central to this video. I just wanted to put it out there again here. In the end, your idea of a neutral arbiter managing the railways would have the same effect on the potential growth of passenger rail and I would completely be happy to see that come to be!
In The Netherlands, the line between Rotterdam and Hoek van Holland used to be a railway line, but was converted to a metro line in recent years. But they had to find a sloution so that the freight trains to Vlaardingen still could use the line.
About railroad crossings,sometimes it takes over an hour to clear freight trains and if this happens multiple times a week,then the first responders get pissed off and eventually the civilians
Another benefit of having shared infrastructure for passengers and freight managed by a seperate entity is much more efficient use of the infrastructure, spreading the cost between multiple operators and therefore bringning the cost for each single operator down.
Hello from Austria where it's not unusual if you come to the station a few minutes before your train arrives that one or two freight trains come through before your passenger train arrives and departs perfectly on time. The system in most cases can avoid having passenger trains stop anywhere between stations (except on single track lines where in some places trains pass each other without stopping to let passengers in and out). Passenger trains operate on a predictable rhythm, every one or two hours, and freight trains can go between. When I look at it I find it's a marvel how well this can be managed, though sometimes things still go wrong, such as a train having to stop in front of a station while the connecting train departs without waiting.
Here in Melbourne, we have multiple metropolitan suburban railway lines which share the same track with freight. I WISH we had the same as Sydney where there is dedicated freight that parallels these lines, but now most of the land adjoining the railway are far too built up. That being said, for the most part we still run 10-minute or better headways and manage to squeeze in freight operations in between. The big priority now is giving intercity V/Line trains even greater separation from suburban services (possibly on these aforementioned separate freight lines). Glad to see this is a worldwide problem that we can look to one another to fix
The UK handles this pretty well. We don't really have railway classes as such, but the large majority of our government funded or private freight rail companies like freightliner coexist with national rail services on the same lines. There are some freight only lines, but they are often short bypass sections to go around cities {more common further north or south of London} or entrance sections into industrial areas.
Three random observations from Germany. 1. I believe there are regulations that actually specify how much infrastructure owners can charge for the use of their infrastructure, and pretty much any railway company can thereby use almost any (at least main) tracks, according to the rules laid down by the relevant authority (for which rules I don't claim to be any kind of expert) and at the price established. One effect of which is that we have hundreds of railway companies operating in Germany, from several big national operators down to (for a while) one single woman engineer operating one single (WW-II-vintage) electric freight locomotive (and one truck for hauling replacement parts). Also, this allowed the creation of Flixtrain. 2. Also, it seems remarkable that as far as I can tell, most operators even of freight services prefer using electric locomotives. Looking at the specs, it seems typical electric locomotives have significantly more power than typical diesel locomotives, and that is true both in Germany and in the US. 3. As far as I can make out, one of the strongest drivers for developing ECTS-based signaling was creating cross-Europe freight corridors. As soon as a signaling system uses any kind of on-engine automation, making sure everybody uses the same system is a major operating cost reduction (and also creates a larger market for buying the relevant infrastructure and rolling stock).
Or look at the London Overground, as I guess you did during your recent visit, where they were able to combine some freight lines with existing train and underground lines to create a system that runs passenger services every 10-15 minutes.
UK frieght lines run so little frieght with such small trains on a relatively disconnected network that idk if its really comperable to North America. I do think its a more relevant model though if you are only looking to bring frieght into a city from a nearby rail yard, instead of running frieght trains through.
@@neolithictransitrevolution427 I agree UK freight trains are shorter than US/Canada ones (but still far longer than passenger trains), but 'so little' ? Here are some stats from Network Rail: Approximately 40% of all aggregates used in London are delivered by rail • Rail freight moves one in four containers entering the UK • In 2019, the North London Line was used by over 10,000 intermodal trains • There are 32 active rail freight terminals in Greater London
@@surreygoldprospector576 Refrence to the North London line and London frieght terminals is definitely interesting and valid. Like I said, in terms of the ability to move goods into a city London may have some useful lessons, as North America heavily leverages trucking for this. But in reference to the entire industry, I have to say UK is *Comparitively* small. In 2019, the USA moved 2,364,144 Million Tonne Kilometers of goods, Canada moved 433,139MTK, and the UK moved 16,919MTK. North America also runs by PSR (precision scheduled railroading), so even small delays to give passenger right of way can have network wide effects as shipments don't appear on time. The industry, its impact on the economy, and the scale of what is moved is simply incomperable. I don't think you can look at London and say "They move a lot of what London uses in by rail" and then meaningfully say "I don't know why North America can't move a large precentage of thier exports through cities without issue". There are solutions, and I would love to see governments pay for building new by-pass lines and rail yards going around a city so that using inner-city lines for passanger service is achieved. But simply giving passanger priority as is done in europe is not a solution, or at least not one of net benefit.
short answer- YES. It was the case during the so called "golden age of passenger rail" and it should continue to be the case now. We should make the most of the infrastructure we already have now or if necessary, bring back lines that are no longer in service
Just to add to your point about private railways being the beneficiaries of government largesse, a lot of US railways' antecedents got their start via government charter and/or government funding.
My hot take on freight-passenger coexistence is that freight often doesn't use its more urban tracks in the way that they should. Local services that move smaller units of freight such as goods trains (in place of regional-distance trucking), and the like should be the freight users of the urban tracks, as they are shorter and less cumbersome than the long ones and so would better fit in between passenger scheduling. In turn, the longer trains should have bypasses around the cities. However this requires governments to cooperate to de-subsidise the trucking system in the form of the roads, and subsidize freight companies for these new priorities. In addition, local governments could ban diesel trains much as steam trains had were, and so make an even greener future for transportation as a whole.
What do you think of Switzerlands integration of passenger rail and cargo? Riding a train in Switzerland, or just standing at a station, its very common to see freight trains on those tracks. Also, partly what has to be considered is that in the US, you move a lot of stuff that simply not needing to be moved. We don't have huge trains full of coal moving around, because we don't move coal. Coal for a long time has been a driver of freight rail, so statistically you can have good numbers by moving lots of coal, but be actually less good at running diverse complex freight operation. Its much easier to transport bulk goods from a mine to a port, the numbers on that look amazing. Trying to build a cargo rail system that takes a diverse amount of trucks of the road is much harder.
The problems seem to be more acute in the US than here in Canada where there is already more cooperation between the government and railroads. Government regulation forcing freight railroads to operate passenger lines that prodigiously lost money were a large part of what drove the US railroads nearly out of business in the 50's through 70's. This also created an adversarial relationship between the government and the surviving railroads which still lingers and gets in the way of them cooperating. For example on passenger rail, and also unsnarling the current transportation and supply chain issues. Ramping up passenger rail in North America will require large government subsidies and accepting that it might never be profitable and self-sustaining. Amtrack and Via Rail have been operating on meager budgets and need more money to provide a level of service more people will want to use. Probably the best way to smooth relations between passenger and freight operators would be for the government subsidized passenger rail networks to pay premium prices that make them valued customers of the freight railroads. The government could then look at reducing some of the other rail subsidies.
Sure it can, however it has to be thought out and make it work for both. Around here we primarily have shared use tracks for anything from commuter and regional trains, regional and international express and high-speed trains to freight trains running on the very same set of tracks. Of course one shouldn't send the regional train, stopping at every single station in between, not right in front of a quicker express train or freight train. Being on the track between two cities already, one can schedule the time frame that slower trains, stopping at every station, will reach a station with 3rd and maybe 4th track where they stop at the platform, while a quicker train of any sort can pass them at that station Of course that gets rather difficult if 1) passenger trains are running an extremly tight schedule, like the commuter trains in my state's capital city running on a 2 minute schedule in the downtown area at rush hour (and thatfor go onto a seperate track) or 2) if freight trains are super long and slow like it's quite common in the US If track speeds for various types of trains are somewhat comparable, it's easier to make it work than some trains going super fast and some other trains going super slow; Here in Germany freight trains often go at the same max track speed like regional express trains
Related to it, the HSR between Munich and Nuremberg has got a regional express train which uses InterCity carriage because the trains must go fast and not disrupt the high-speed service.
@@MarioFanGamer659 it's simply the one and only regional express train which travels the entire stretch of a high speed line and operating at those speeds; Probably wouldn't use that track if it wasn't going that fast; Unfortunately, further south all trains, including HSR, crawl along busy and curved sections at rather low to moderate speeds
It’s not an impossible task. The Former PRR (Now NS) Pittsburgh division was 4 tracked with 2 tracks dedicated to passenger service and 2 for freight. Now it’s only 3 in most places but the state of Pennsylvania just announced in partnership with NS they’ll be putting on another Amtrak train in each direction between Pittsburgh and New York. Now it’s my understanding the state had to poney up for some infrastructure upgrades on NS owned track but at the end of the day it’s all about the money. The freight railroads don’t necessarily need to be privatized but certainly some more regulation would help.
I think the main issue is mostly about how compatible the services are to each other. One reason (but not the only one) why freight trains in Europe are so short compared to NA and Australia is because they're running on mainline tracks where passenger trains also run and shorter trains easier to pull and thus can run at a higher speed (the other reason is the current method of using chains and buffers for coupling instead of the advanced Scharfenberg coupling). Similarly, main lines are primarily tracked _at least_ with passing loops in regular distances (often doubling as a station) to allow slower trains to stop and still allow high speed trains to run on the same tracks. But of course, the more buisy the lines are, the more dedicated tracks you need for a specific service which can be seen in Frankfurt Airport where one station is dedicated to regional service (i.e. the S8, S9 and three regional express trains) while the other station for long distance service (i.e. IC, ICE and apparently one regular regional train) while the city proper put all the S-Bahn trains aside from S7 on the main station underground (granted, they must be this considering they do double as a secondary metro in the city core). The Munich-Nuremberg regional express train is another example on why some tracks only allow certain trains: It runs on the high speed line and uses InterCity rolling stock because no regular regionalal train is even _allowed_ in these tracks. Either way, these examples show why running passenger trains on freight tracks in NA comes to the cost of the passenger trains since the latter trains are too long and slow to coexist with the former, not to mention the freight tracks are single tracked, thus resulting in a major bottleneck for passenger rail.
There are train RU-vidrs in the US too. I enjoyed the video. The United States is a large country, so I know that planes are mostly used. I look forward to the next good video.
Freight and passenger services always coexist on British mainlines. There are usually 4 tracks: Up fast, Down fast, Up slow, Down slow. Freight trains share tracks with slow trains, and that's OK because they go 60 - 75mph at their max speed.
Such an interesting video. I remember seeing a freight train on my first trip to canada and it felt like being in a movie because it was passing a crossing for so long and it was so huge. Never seen anything like it before
To answer the question of passenger and freight trains co-existing: In Australia, it is extremely common for passenger and freight to share network infrastructure, especially in regional and rural areas.
Better transportation leadership or outright nationalization of tracks or freight carriers is a must. The status quo is mainly designed to benefit rail company shareholders while making everyone else miserable.
The railroad companies exist, not to move anything but to make money, and transporting freight is more profitable than transporting people. Freight doesn't require as much speed or smooth tracks or as many safety systems as people. Freight doesn't require comfortable stations, a ticketing system or even a specific schedule. Unless there is a government subsidy for passenger service, the rail companies have no incentive to provide it. As always, it's all about the money.
Last time I was in Canada, I took the train from Toronto to Niagara Falls. What a slog! Here in the UK, freight and passenger services operate together with no issues. The infrastructure is owned by Network Rail which is a government-run body.
Being from Canada and occasionally visiting Taiwan, I am envious at how well the latter manages to make their rail system work, with a mix of express passenger, local passenger and freight traffic on the same tracks. They even do it successfully in the mountainous east coast, with just one dual track main line and a few sidings. North America definitely has more than enough space to do something similar. It's just a matter of priorities
One country doing that very well is Switzerland (as always). They even have trains to transport trucks, because there isn't as much capacity in the neighboring countries to do the entire trip on rails. And their new tunnels are also very helpful
Trucks on a train don't have to pay tolls for driving through Switzerland. So shipping just the trailer from Rotterdam to Milan is cheaper than driving it all the way there. A RoLa is for the shorter routes through the alps (load in Germany, unload in Italy for example ) where the drivers do travel with the vehicles.
