Separate infrastructure and operations. Nationalize the infrastructure, allow private companies to pay to operate over it, but place limits on things like train length and require regular inspection of the rolling stock using the national infrastructure. Basically, adopt an infrastructure & regulation system similar to that trucks operate under.
Perfect! Just like the interstate highway system, one of the smartest and most successful initiatives in American history. And like the interstates, this is a solid investment of our tax dollars.
Let the private operators fight over pricing, both for commercial and private use. That’s a win for everyone, and the environment.
If I could hop a train to New Orleans and just chill for a few hours, I sure as hell wouldn’t drive. People like me could move around, stimulating economies far from home. That in turn would drive cities to invest in infrastructure, give people a reason to visit.
I’ll blame the former guy all day long for his failings, but the Staggers Act deregulated the railroad industry in 1980, and was signed by Jimmy Carter. This mess has been a long time coming.
I don’t know what it’s like where you live, but as rule, who knows? There are scheduled trains which are notoriously unreliable, but also unscheduled trains. Basically whenever there is enough cargo to justify a train it gets put out on the tracks and they move it when they can. Caveat: this is for Canada and is largely based on info from some former neighbors who were conductors and brakemen.
Freight is definitely tracked but not necessarily scheduled in regular intervals. This is true for both trains and ships. Like it costs so much and the world isn’t always that consistent.
But yeah like cp/cn/CSX/ns/BNSF etc all know what’s on their lines and where.
However these lines are fully private unlike aviation so there is no requirement to publically provide any data.
For planes position data doesn’t even come from the airline but a govt mandated transponder that communicates on public frequency on the aircraft and private websites use a network of recieving radios donated or not spread across the world to provide the public with a service they also try to profit off of. This doesn’t exist for trains as far as I know. And I don’t think for ships either.
They track them, but they’re not all scheduled. If there is enough cargo there they put on a “special” and they will move it between the scheduled trains. Train scheduling and tracking is an art unto itself.
Wouldn’t it be more energy efficient to just electrify the line rather than charging & hauling around batteries? The technology has been around since checks notes the late 1800s.
Hydrogen has a major efficiency problem. Unless the electricity to create the hydrogen is practically free (i.e. grid price is zero, you’re turning off generators) it’s not worth it. You’re at like 30% round trip efficiency whereas batteries and overhead lines are well above 90%.
Using hydrogen also prevents regenerative braking, which is one of the big advantages of battery or overhead electric.
True, but eletric overhead has significant upkeep and initial investment costs, as well as pure grid reliance. Batteries have significant weight, cost, and technical requirements combined with a relatively low lifeapan. Every energy system is going to have it’s downsides. Hydrogen fits well in train use cases because they often rely on being able to fuel relatively quickly (low downtime means less expensive engines required), operate in areas with unreliable grids (urban through shipping), and it has a relatively low initial investment cost (about on par with regular diesel). Hopefully it would be generated with on-site renewables, but we’ll cross that road when we get to it. Oh, and another thing people often forget about batteries is that once you account for losses in transmission, voltage conversion, and charging it ends up being significantly less efficient. I’ve been unable to find exact statistics for this in % though.
25kV railway electrification is normally very separate from local electric grids.
Grid ‘reliability’ issues are normally load shedding or damage at the distribution level; the 10-22kV local networks. DC networks like third rail and 1500V are often supplied from local substations.
Long distance 25kV lines are almost always fed directly from big substations on the grid backbone - here in NZ, they’re all from the 220kV substations at roughly 140km spacing; I believe in the UK it’s almost all from 400kV subs. Those are extremely reliable and well monitored because no-one wants to be doing a grid black start, and loss of a grid backbone substation gives you a pretty good chance of the whole grid falling over. 25kV railway electrification is rock solid.
NZ’s grid is roughly 93% efficient; half of that is in the transmission (long-distance) and the other half in distribution. We have one of the worst grid layouts for transmission efficiency because most of the generation is in the deep south while the load is in the north, with an underwater section in between.
Batteries and charging is IIRC around 90% efficient, round trip. Call it 75% from generator terminals to motor terminals.
If you’re not generating the hydrogen right at the generator, you’ll also be incurring grid losses to get the power to the hydrogen plant.
If you are generating hydrogen at the generators, you’ll then need to transport the hydrogen even further. I’m struggling to find exact figures for losses in natural gas networks, but my understanding is that leakage is several percent. Any large-scale hydrogen system could end up being similar, plus you now need a shipping industry to move the hydrogen to the point of consumption.
It’s funny to read this article painting electric trains as a great novelty, when the majority of trains in western Europe (excluding certain island states) have been electric for decades. But good for california, sounds like a nice improvement!
Or that the Northeast Corridor (DC>Philly>NYC>Boston) is all electrified and has the fastest passenger train on the continent (Amtrak Acela can do 150mph, soon to be replaced with a 165mph variant that can do like +30 in turns). And that NJ Transit on that line (following US 1 and I-95) is electric along that massive population concentration. But yeah, good for California. I get it, running power is a really expensive project but at least this section goes back at least as far as the GG1 loco days.
America is a petrostate that uses diesel and coal for most industrial purposes and trains have usually been used as cargo movers and not people movers, so they usually use diesel.
But what’s wrong with working in parallel? Develop hydrogen while the grid becoming greener. A traditional electric train has the same issue of being grid based.
Nationalize all of it, or let the unions purchase the companies.
When Conrail was up for sale, initially the only viable bid came from the employees’ union of Conrail. Liddy Dole rejected it out of hand for that reason. Years later it was sold to a group of proper capitalists.
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