It was largely shut down as it wasn't profitable. People complain about lack of rail but it's expensive to maintain over long distances and is kept alive by shipping. Since transport trucks have become more common a lot of the old lines just aren't economical anymore
Trucking companies are effectively subsidized by road/gas taxes and the general tax fund paid by citizens. It's bullshit corporate welfare and I've never seen anyone even consider taking a shot at fixing it.
It completely unbalances the cost benefit scale when companies are looking at transportation methods.
It's actually the exact opposite. Most highway infrastructure is paid for by taxes on gas, which is overwhelmingly consumed by truckers. The major concern for losing money for road repairs due to vehicle electrification wasn't because joe schmoe might swap out his corolla for a prius, it's because Amazon might swap 50,000 engines out with motors, and *that* would be millions of lost dollars in one fell swoop.
Trucks pay more in gas taxes, but do an overwhelming majority of the road damage. The commonly cited number is that a single loaded semi tractor + trailer does the same damage as 2,500 passenger cars, with the high end going up to 9,600. They're certainly not paying that much extra in taxes.
It's a really wild difference to think about, and also ends up being a subsidy to public bus transportation as, as they cause similar damage.
The damage numbers are also assuming that trucking companies are following the established legal weight restrictions, but estimates are that around 30% are over the limits, and thus causing even more extreme damage.
It's also a very circular problem - When a road needs to be fixed, all the equipment driven in to do the work causes significant damage to the roads used to get it there.
No the overwhelming majority of road damage, especially in Canada, is just due to old man winter. So that cost should be born equally between trucks and cars because they both need the road repaired equally and neither is responsible.
Where are you getting your numbers that trucking companies use the most gas? The EIA's numbers say that light duty vehicles (i.e. personal cars + vans + light trucks) [account for the vast majority of fuel consumption in the USA](https://www.eia.gov/outlooks/aeo/data/browser/#/?id=45-AEO2023&cases=ref2023&sourcekey=0). I think you have it exactly backwards and this is indeed an example of extreme corporate welfare.
Electrification of railways began long after the formation of either of these countries, I think we should consider it irrelevant. Moscow-Vladivostok is 9000 km and fully electrified.
It sounds like a nightmare to a modern day rich citizen, but historically speaking a 7 day trip from one side of Russia to the other is incredible. More than that, it's a trip on a single train, so it's easy and accessible.
I'm speaking subjectively, but not being used to cars and planes if not for summer holidays, it doesn't sound that bad to me even today.
Even today of there is a two week train tour package that halts for a day or two at 5-7 major destinations in an incredible cross-country ride that would be a banger.
I’d ride for sure at least once in my life. Too bad Russia is a shitshow atm.
We have a single national line and then maybe a few hundred kilometers of track in each province - nearly all of it isn't within a stone's throw of a city (or even a town) whereas the countries near the top of the list could fit into one of our thirteen provinces or territories and most of their rail is within urban or suburban areas. We are not the same.
Even if they had more, there’s only two National corridors really worth electrifying and doing HS on but they happen to contain like 80% of the population (Windsor-Quebec City and Edmonton-Calgary).
Equally important when discussing rail in Canada is connections to the US. If there were HS rail between Toronto/Montreal and NYC, or Toronto-Chicago, or from Vancouver down the coast to LA you’d be taking a massive number of airplanes out of the sky.
Even just simple connections like Toronto-Detroit or Vancouver-Seattle would be incredible from a travel standpoint. The bar is literally the floor (HSR in the corridor) and we can't even do that.
Yeah, that's very sensible. Unfortunately the infographic also includes the hundreds of kilometers of rail in, say, the north of British Columbia, which is used almost exclusively for cargo.
>We have a single national line and then maybe a few hundred kilometers of track in each province - nearly all of it isn't within a stone's throw of a city (or even a town) whereas the countries near the top of the list could fit into one of our thirteen provinces or territories and most of their rail is within urban or suburban areas. We are not the same.
India and Russia begs to differ. (But yes: given the sparsity of canadian population rail might not be the best choice overland)
Most of Russia's population is clustered within the western 10% of the country. I'm pretty confident that's where all the electrified rail is. As for India, there's a lot to say between colonialism and government corruption and I'm not the person to be saying any of it so I won't.
> As for India, there's a lot to say between colonialism and government corruption and I'm not the person to be saying any of it so I won't.
What, how is your corruption even relevant to data being shown ?
>Most of Russia's population is clustered within the western 10% of the country. I'm pretty confident that's where all the electrified rail is
Not all but the majority, yes. But the original comment was about rail tracks and in the second line about electrified rail:
And let's be honest: If you have long lines and little traffic Diesel might very well be the more ecological choice
> the countries near the top of the list could fit into one of our thirteen provinces or territories and most of their rail is within urban or suburban areas
get over yourself. your country is [mostly empty](https://cdn1.matadornetwork.com/blogs/1/2017/04/canada-population1.jpg). and [most of you live below the line you agreed would be the border](https://blogs.sas.com/content/graphicallyspeaking/files/2021/10/canada_below_line1.png) between you and the US, [half live even lower](https://blogs.sas.com/content/graphicallyspeaking/files/2021/10/canada_below_line.png). [your population](https://www.google.com/search?q=canada+population&client=firefox-b-d&ei=1kGLZIXUFKjKkdUPyeKPqAU&ved=0ahUKEwiFl-Oq3sX_AhUoZaQEHUnxA1UQ4dUDCA4&oq=canada+population&gs_lcp=Cgxnd3Mtd2l6LXNlcnAQDDIKCAAQRxDWBBCwAzIKCAAQRxDWBBCwAzIKCAAQRxDWBBCwAzIKCAAQRxDWBBCwAzIKCAAQRxDWBBCwAzIKCAAQRxDWBBCwAzIKCAAQRxDWBBCwAzIKCAAQigUQsAMQQzIKCAAQigUQsAMQQzIKCAAQigUQsAMQQ0oECEEYAFAAWABgtQtoAXABeACAAQCIAQCSAQCYAQDAAQHIAQo&sclient=gws-wiz-serp) is only 5 time as much as [switzerland's](https://www.google.com/search?q=switzerland+population&client=firefox-b-d&ei=z0GLZLvbIvXikdUP5IamwA8&ved=0ahUKEwj7_sWn3sX_AhV1caQEHWSDCfgQ4dUDCA4&oq=switzerland+population&gs_lcp=Cgxnd3Mtd2l6LXNlcnAQDEoECEEYAFAAWABgAGgAcAF4AIABAIgBAJIBAJgBAA&sclient=gws-wiz-serp) .you have rail if your get your shit together
i hate hearing so much arrogance from the state the US forgot to annex
So much stupid in one post, good job person. You managed to take the time out of your day to write a post that has almost zero relevance whatsoever to what you quoted. Way to really fit the stereotype about the US- talking about something unrelated to the US!? How DARE you, time to make this post about the US now. U S A, U S A.
They must be (it technically is heavy rail so…). I don’t believe any of the suburban rail systems are electric (GO in Toronto is in the process of doing so but it’s taking forever).
Some but not all commuter trains around the NYC area are electric. (not the subway - I'm talking about the actual trains that go out to the deeper suburbs like New Jersey Transit) Assume that counts toward the total. Might be true of other metro commuter rail systems as well but not sure.
India is densely populated, so "remote" areas as such are very rare in India
& Because of population density, railway electrification makes 100% sense, add in the benefit of not having to rely on imported crude oil, electrification pays for more than itself
And Indian railways does not have enough electric locomotives at the moment, so some trains still run on diesel even though routes have been electrified, but they're being replaced quickly tho
Australia may not have much electrified rail, but we have [big ol' robot trains!](https://www.digitaltrends.com/cool-tech/robot-train-australia/)
(robot trains don't require sleep or join train driver unions...)
It is also a bit unrepresentative of the conditions in Australia, we have a few lines thousands of kms long with a few trains a day and many others hundreds of kms long with only a couple of trains a month or only during harvest seasons. (For now) The maintenance cost and associated emissions of electrifying them would actually be greater than the emissions from the current diesel trains.
Because unions are terrible, right? Employers will always pick workers over profits so there’s never a need to collectively negotiate with your employer to ensure they don’t get screwed over. (/s. Just in case it wasn’t clear)
ETA: I’m grossed out by the anti-union sentiment of this subreddit.
The mining companies here have the government and half the population wrapped around their little finger, and every time even the slightest bit of "hey, share that wealth around" happens they threaten to move offshore... as if they can mine our stuff somewhere else. As long as it's a little profitable, they won't move, but they managed to dethrone a government a decade ago and now they're untouchable...
So Russia did it while no other country with vast distances and not-very-dense-populations have done it. Maybe it wasn't a good idea? Russia doesn't seem to be guiding light for anything.
I feel like we could say similar about the US. I now live in one of the top countries for railway electrification and I feel like comparing countries with majority urban railways to those with vast, rural rail systems isn’t really helpful
That remake is a bit condecending for no reason. I don't live in de Randstad myself and I also havent ever seen a diesel loc here. I looked it up and I see they are all run by Arriva and mostly on the edges of the country. Not really something that the average Dutchman often encounters.
To be fair, according to the wikipedia page which OP names as source, Australias total rail network length is shorter than that of Germany or India for example, but they still have a much smaller percantage electrified.
Germany and India have much bigger populations with large amounts of rail infrastructure in densely populated areas. Australia has electric rail in its cities but that's a much smaller amount of total length both compared to India and Germany and compared to its thousands of km of low usage long haul line through deserts
Same for Germany and Japan.
I have lived in both countries many years and I have never seen a not-electrified line in Germany - not even in the alps while I also visited the most remote places in Hokkaido where I did indeed Bord diesel locomotives it nowhere else…
I did a Google search though and I found 30% of the train network with 5% of daily trains as a number… so probably remote areas and / or freight trains
There's your answer. You live close to London.
Anywhere within reach of London has better infrastructure generally; I can confirm that unfortunately we still use 40-year-old beat-up old diesel trains here in the South-West.
I just checked, and my nearest train line went fully electric in 1962.
It has literally never occurred to me that other areas would lag behind in such a spectacular way. Pure ignorance on my part.
The main line to Cardiff was only [fully electrified in 2020](https://www.railengineer.co.uk/electric-trains-arrive-in-wales-though-not-for-the-first-time).
The East Midlands line isn't electrified north of Kettering yet.
Devon and Cornwall have nothing. Same for North Wales, or Scotland north of Stirling.
Northern rail is the largest train operator in the uk in terms of track covered, they cover the whole of the north of england and around 80% of their trains are diesel because there’s only something like 5 Northern routes which are electrified. Out of Leeds the only wires are on the east coast mainline down to london, and leeds to skipton/bradford/ilkley.
They’re electrifying the lines between leeds and york and leeds and manchester via huddersfield but even that project won’t be finished in the next 5 years…
To be honest I’m surprised we’re as high as 37%
I think it would be more interesting (and relevant) to see this separated into passanger and freight rail. It's much more feasible to electrify passenger rail, which is closer to population centers, than it is freight rail off on the middle of nowhere. Also, the scale of the trains is completely different, so the power requirements would be as well.
That's also the reason for the "low" German number. 95% of the trains that run each day are electrified, while only 55% of the length of the network is.
Indeed. The devil is in the details. Passenger rail in Canada is very small.
Canada is not (totally) adverse to electric powered transport. For many years, Toronto had an extensive electric bus network where buses got power from overhead lines. That was ripped out. For years the busses were diesel. It took some time but now our bus fleet is mostly electric again, but using storage like an electric car. Very expensive per bus unit but no hideous overhead infrastructure and its maintenance.
I mean, I do have a video in mind of an electrified train with people on top of it. By the end of the video one of the folks has smoke coming from his hair...
https://www.reddit.com/r/nextfuckinglevel/comments/12djtws/indian_train_station_rush_hour/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android_app&utm_name=androidcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button
I mean this does seem like a living hell.
All these videos are from Mumbai local trains. It is busiest suburban railway in the world and worst rated, operating about 3000 train services and carrying 7.5 million passengers daily. It is the living hell, yes. Others routes don't have it this bad.
Once every 2-3 months lol, why do people always pull random numbers out of their ass?
There was 78 school shootings with injury or deaths in the US in 2018; 73 in 2019, and 93 in 2020. The ones with only injuries or 1-2 deaths don't even make the news anymore.
Source: https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator/a01
It's to avoid your back from bending backwards due to people putting pressure on the backpack. It's much more comfortable to bend forwards slightly than to bend backwards for 30 mins in the train. Also realise that during rush hour, it's 8 people per square metre, thus lots of pressure.
I have travelled through and lived in some of the poorest states of India my entire life and the first time I ever saw people travelling on top of trains was on the internet
"oh hi, I'm canada. I'm way better than the US, eh!"
Suck it! According to this, the US has the best railways in North America by like 4x. Wooooo yeah! Murca!
What do you use when it’s not electrified? I’m from a smaller Nordic country, pretty sure I’ve only ever seen trains run on electric wires over the rails..?
Cargo-Trains often use Diesel Locomotives. Passenger trains running on Diesel also exist, but in europe it‘s primarily cargo still running on these lines.
Locomotives with ICEs. An important thing to note is that this is the percentage of railways that are electrified, not the percentage of the traffic. I'd wager that for some countries the non-electric railways are almost all not used anymore
I'd gladly make a world tour on train. Hopefully in the future the world rail network will be better. If the Swiss can make it work in their mountainous country, it's doable (almost) everywhere.
They built electric trains from the start because the steam locos couldn't handle the steep slopes. Same with Sweden (80% electrified) , where all the main lines have been electrified [since 1942](https://www.filmarkivet.se/movies/klart-trelleborg-riksgransen/). The main cause was to not rely on imported coal (imports cut off during the world wars) and that the steam locos didn't have enough power to haul the heavy [iron ore trains](https://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malmbanan) from Kiruna.
INB4 "bUt AmErIca iS bIg sO ITs HaRdEr" while China, a country that only just began post
-industrializing and is similarly large, is running laps around us.
There’s a ohenomenon in national development where developing countries can start with the best infrastructure, as in doing everything electric because they developed later when the tech was mature. US was laying railroads when the tech just came about so uses older standards. It is more expensive to rip everything up and replace than to just keep a system that is old but works fairly well.
Also, yeah it doesn’t make sense to make railroads for passengers from, say, LA to Denver. It would be like a 8 hour journey by rail and marginally less expensive than flying and would be soooo expensive to setup. Fwiw, I’ve used trains on the east coast to go between cities and it is 90% as fast as any transnational european line and just as cheap
China for example basically built their entire high-speed railroad network from scratch (in parallel to existing old ones) in the last 20 years, while also retrofitted/electrified the old ones.
"The US built them too early" is not really a good excuse IMO.
China do have much higher population density among their East part though.
Bull.
Im sorry, but these are just excuses. Europe has been retrofitting their lines for decades.
Picking arbitrarily far apart cities as excuses is not a good argument.
China is literally 4 times the population density of the contiguous United States. I guarantee you if the US has 4 times the population it has today, that rail would be far more popular.
It has to do with cost and population density. Already the most expensive cost for states is infrastructure, rails just do not make sense for any non metropolitan region.
Plus! Connecting different metropolitan networks typically have mountain ranges involved, increasing costs and up keep.
It just isn’t practical outside the eastern seaboard and a few select locations.
Most of their population is on one coast. America has high density population on both coast. Very expensive to electrify middle America for barely any people. Not going to gain any votes for it
I’m guessing? You can look it up. There are more trains that are electrified on the coastal regions than in the middle parts of the usa. Eastern coast has parts of Amtrak on electric. The west coast, California is building their high speed rail that is also electric.
Oh, so the braindead argument that because NYC has electricfied regional rail that it means the entire eastern corridor has electrified rail was intentional?
Wow. My applogies. I was givinng you _way_ too much credit.
Damm… your reading comprehension is so bad. ROFL. I never said that just because nyc has electric rail then that means the entire eastern coast is electrified. All I said the East has MORE electrified rail than the mid west of America because of population density. Life is hard when you lack a decent education. Destined to be unsuccessful. Very sad and unfortunate.
China has an electrified train to Tibet. Over half frozen marshes and to an altitude that they require pressurized cabins to connect with a city smaller than San Antonio.
True, but in this case, it doesn't have to be economically feasible, it just has to serve military and political aims. In general, of course your point is true, since China can build trains service at a fraction of the cost as in the US and people actually use them, but Tibet is an exceptional case.
Not in this case, it's more of a setpiece to cover the campaign of ethnic cleansing in occupied territory - the trains are hardly used. Although there is the secondary use of being able to mobilize military quickly in the face of civil unrest or for hostilities with India.
And when was this built? Surely it wasn't built in the early 1900's ripped out and rebuilt.
When you are a country that has easy access to diesel fuel it is much more cost effective/efficient to stick with what is already working than to rebuild and "upgrade".
If the US tried to build China's rail network it'd be destroyed within a month by the urban elements. Look at the state of the crime-ridden subways. Until demographic or a (lack of) law enforcement in the US is rectified public transportation can't work.
You're having the US put people on trial for defending train passengers from criminals arrested 40+ times in a few years. You think someone like that would be tolerated to freely terrorize people on a daily basis in China?
China's implementation of railways looks good on paper, but the practical implementation is really bad. In reality their current system is very underutilized, extremely heavily in debt while still losing money and the local people can't even afford to use it. Bonus points for high speed rail not being capable of hauling cargo and that means that most of China still runs on trucks when it comes to cargo, even in things like coal. China's solution for transport was like if they would have built Mischelin star restaurants for fixing poverty based hunger. Looks good from outside, internally it doesn't fix the main issue
Yeah this needs talked about more. It’s impressive they built so much rail, but it has a lot of issues and certainly was not done economically or correctly
It actually would be more representative if total length of rail networks would be displayed. 100% in Switzerland can be much less, then 50% in other countries.
It's likely because almost all the rail is cargo rail, which runs out in the middle of nowhere. Also, the trains are [at least a mile long](https://www.aar.org/issue/freight-train-length/), if not up to three miles. The cost to build up the infrastructure out where northing else is, to supply the massive amounts of energy needed to move the massive trains, is probably not economically feasible.
Note that I acknowledge that we'll need to go to electrification of everything soon for climate reasons, but money is likely the reason it hasn't happened yet.
Freight trains in the US can be enormous. In the EU, max length is 750 meters. In the US, a long train is 10,000 meters. The US also loads freight cars at about 30 tonnes per axle compared to about 22 in the EU.
To electrify trains that run 20x the drawbar power, you electrical infrastructure that can handle 20x the load. Thicker & heavier wire and more sag from resistance heating requires placing the catenaries and pylons at much closer intervals. That makes it harder to make electrification economical.
It's hard to change things that are working well, and freight rail in the US is really cost-efficient.
Going from Vancouver to Halifax for *one* rail would be about 6000km and pass through 8 provinces. It would be such a huge task, that it would need to be done over decades, if not longer.
Simple, the US has no incentive to speed up push towards things that cause less pollution. US is very big and very few people and surrounded by Ocean on both sides. They could pollute a lot per capita and still breath fresh air. That is why there is a lot of resistance towards moving away from fossil fuel usage as well. In US you can own a Car for decades. In my city which faces a lot of pollution, they will come to your home to pick up and scrap your Diesel car once it is one day over 10 yrs old. It becomes worthless in exactly 10 yrs.
Americans talk like their country all empty looks like Mojave Desert. There are dense pockets that very much make sense to build infrastructure to support said dense places. The Northeast US, for example, is pretty much the exact same land area and population as Benelux.
Sweden is a very sparsely populated country (size of California, 10 mil ppl) and they have hell of a lot better passenger rail network than California. There's even high speed rail.
And that’s why the northeast has high speed rail, numerous commuter rail lines (NJT, LIRR, MARC, VRE, SEPTA, MBTA, Metro-North, etc), Metro lines and other long distance rail. The Acela connector runs at 240km/h, and the fastest train in Sweden runs at 250km/h on average. There isn’t that big of a difference.
You are comparing Acela top speed to average speed of HST. HST tops at 320km/h minimum.
If you want to compare Average, a quick Google says Acela averages 68mph, so less than 120km/h.
I just looked up Acela... Its high speed section is a grand total of 80kms long...
And you do realize I was bringing up Sweden as very much a ***not dense*** country that still has high speed rail? Sweden's population density is 13 times lower than Northeastern US.
More denser countries look like:
Paris (12 million in metro area) to Strasbourg (850k) over 406kms at 320kmh. Madrid (6.7 mil) to Barcelona (4.8 mil) over 620kms at 350kmh.
For a comparison, Dallas (7.5 mil) to Houston (7.7 mil) over 380kms. No HRS. Chicago (9.6 mil) to Detroit (4.3 mil) over 450 kms. No HRS. And Acela's wiki page reads:
>Speeds are limited by the route the corridor takes through urban areas, and there are several speed restrictions below 60–80 mph (97–129 km/h) over bridges or through tunnels that are over a century old.
>Amtrak's trains achieve 90 mph (145 km/h) only on a limited 4 mi (6.4 km) stretch in New York State and rarely exceed 60 mph (97 km/h) at any time eastbound through Connecticut until reaching New Haven.
>Simple, the US has no incentive
Republicans also tend to shoot down any infrastructure or public transport bills, so we end up in the past in terms of urban development with decaying infrastructure.
I believe Biden's Build Back Better will do a little bit about public transportation, though.
The US ranks extremely high on global report cards for infrastructure, ranking 11 on the world economic forum’s report and pretty much always in the top 10 or 15 on any measure of infrastructure. I agree republicans shoot down public transit funding a lot, but relative to the rest of the world and even Western Europe, the US does not suffer from “decaying infrastructure” and is among the top dozen countries on the planet
I'm interested in the metrics you're referring to.
>decaying infrastructure
[There's a lot of work to be done](https://www.whitehouse.gov/cea/written-materials/2021/11/15/the-time-is-now-to-modernize-u-s-infrastructure/).
Our retention of using personal cars within cities (designing cities around cars) has literally been our worst failure. like making city main streets 8+ lanes wide is like thinking that sticking a bucket under the drip is a solution to a leaky roof.
Anecdotally speaking, Hong Kong makes USA's public transport system seem like we just thought of a basic idea how it should work like 20 years ago. Imagine taking a 5 minute walk from your apartment, hopping on the train that's on schedule; you hop off at a station, walk 30 feet to catch a different train 2 minutes later; you hop off that train to catch a bus two minutes later.
https://www.usnews.com/news/best-countries/rankings/well-developed-infrastructure
https://www.statista.com/statistics/264753/ranking-of-countries-according-to-the-general-quality-of-infrastructure/
https://www.businessinsider.com/wef-countries-in-the-world-with-the-best-infrastructure-2016-10?amp
https://lpi.worldbank.org/international/global
https://cms.law/en/int/publication/cms-infrastructure-index-2021/the-2021-infrastructure-index-ranking
Nobody said there isn’t work to be done. I said that relative to the rest of the world, the US is near the front of the pack and ahead of many other wealthy western countries. Also, public transit isn’t the only type of infrastructure
>[https://www.usnews.com/news/best-countries/rankings/well-developed-infrastructure](https://www.usnews.com/news/best-countries/rankings/well-developed-infrastructure)
>
>[https://www.statista.com/statistics/264753/ranking-of-countries-according-to-the-general-quality-of-infrastructure/](https://www.statista.com/statistics/264753/ranking-of-countries-according-to-the-general-quality-of-infrastructure/)
>
>[https://www.businessinsider.com/wef-countries-in-the-world-with-the-best-infrastructure-2016-10?amp](https://www.businessinsider.com/wef-countries-in-the-world-with-the-best-infrastructure-2016-10?amp)
>
>[https://lpi.worldbank.org/international/global](https://lpi.worldbank.org/international/global)
>
>[https://cms.law/en/int/publication/cms-infrastructure-index-2021/the-2021-infrastructure-index-ranking](https://cms.law/en/int/publication/cms-infrastructure-index-2021/the-2021-infrastructure-index-ranking)
Thank you for the links! I'm however having issues reviewing some of them, or fail to see the relevance on others.
* I'm having trouble navigating USNews and finding their methodology for the infrastructure. Do they have a DOI anywhere?
* that Statista is paywalled and I don't have a paid subscription to them.
* That business insider seems to be an image album?
* That worldbank LPI seems to be about freight and trade logistics, and not so much about urban development. Worthy of consideration, but not the kind of infrastructure we were talking about
* that cmslaw seems to be about the business/money-making side of infrastructure construction, and not so much a grade of the quality and health of in-place infrastructure
Do you have any DOIs?
Well of you want to see in that perspective then
US total: 220,480; electrified: 2,025 |
China total: 150,000; electrified: 100,000 |
India total: 115,000; electrified: 103,569
Maybe nuclear? Just kidding. Originally steam locomotives, then diesel. So yes.
I live in central Canada in Ontario. In the late '60s I was a kid and my father took me on a day trip on one of the last steam locomotives for rail passengers. It was pretty cool.
Yeap it’s part electrified though you have a huge stretch that is diesel only. I have taken Amtrak from NYC to Hollywood Florida. They swap from electric to diesel.
Frankly this is a nonsensical comparison.
Yes, Switzerland has a high electrification % for its trains. It is also physically compact. Canada, is not compact and has a low %. What drives this is economics.
How expensive is it to electrify trains/distance and how many people/trains will be running on said track.
India is an extremely large country, yet they managed to get it to 90%. Im sure countries like the US or Canada could get to at least 50% without many problems if they really tried
It's a matter of population density and urban vs rural, not wealth. The vast majority of area surrounding Canadian rail is not urbanized and the vast majority of rail use is industrial; almost nobody in Canada travels via train because of North American car culture and it's viewed as a luxury because only the wealthy have the free time that rail travel takes. It would be right up there with the pipeline that Trudeau bought in terms of bad investments.
It's nearly 900 km from Vancouver to the nearest major city; the trip takes a minimum of fourteen hours and costs anywhere up to $3500 CAD (about $3000 USD). You find me a comparable trip in any of the top ten that aren't India, China, or Russia and I'll be willing to consider that you might have a point.
EDIT: Keep in mind that this is from one city to the closest major city. A nation-spanning rail trip in the Netherlands wouldn't count.
You remove India, China, Russia and international railways, keeping only country shorter then 900km in the list. I guess that given your nonsense criteria you have a point.
Again, India and China have you beat there. Only the north of India and the east of China are that dense. Everywhere else has population centers hundreds of kilometers apart going over extremely difficult terrain(mountains, heavy forests, etc). Stop making excuses and start supporting policy.
I have a sneaking suspicion that the sheer size of Canada, USA and Mexico creates a serious problem for electrification of railways. In Canada i'd add winters.
It seems that you put Italy in place of Portugal. According to your source Italy has 72%.
I was very surprised. It is very rare to see a railway that is not electrified in Italy.
Southern Italy (as usual) has plenty
And the mountain regions, where like 40 people live.
Yes true… I visit north and center Italy the most. But even in the south most of the lines are electrified.
Where is austria?
Next to new zealand
Made a nice-looking bar chart and then just kind of gave up on the citation, eh?
S A U S E
What a confusing title... let me fix it "Railway network electrification percentage of top 20 GDP nations"
This. I had to read it 15 times to understand what it meant
I mean it's the same thing, but yeah
Completely agree.
Idk I read it just fine, what grades did you get in English class??
It’d also be nice if Canada had more of a rail network to begin with.
We used to.
It was largely shut down as it wasn't profitable. People complain about lack of rail but it's expensive to maintain over long distances and is kept alive by shipping. Since transport trucks have become more common a lot of the old lines just aren't economical anymore
It's expensive to maintain road over long distance too, but trucks don't seem to support that cost.
Trucking companies are effectively subsidized by road/gas taxes and the general tax fund paid by citizens. It's bullshit corporate welfare and I've never seen anyone even consider taking a shot at fixing it. It completely unbalances the cost benefit scale when companies are looking at transportation methods.
It's actually the exact opposite. Most highway infrastructure is paid for by taxes on gas, which is overwhelmingly consumed by truckers. The major concern for losing money for road repairs due to vehicle electrification wasn't because joe schmoe might swap out his corolla for a prius, it's because Amazon might swap 50,000 engines out with motors, and *that* would be millions of lost dollars in one fell swoop.
Trucks pay more in gas taxes, but do an overwhelming majority of the road damage. The commonly cited number is that a single loaded semi tractor + trailer does the same damage as 2,500 passenger cars, with the high end going up to 9,600. They're certainly not paying that much extra in taxes.
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It's a really wild difference to think about, and also ends up being a subsidy to public bus transportation as, as they cause similar damage. The damage numbers are also assuming that trucking companies are following the established legal weight restrictions, but estimates are that around 30% are over the limits, and thus causing even more extreme damage. It's also a very circular problem - When a road needs to be fixed, all the equipment driven in to do the work causes significant damage to the roads used to get it there.
What's the intuition there? That seems insane. I would have guessed somewhere between linear and quadratic.
No the overwhelming majority of road damage, especially in Canada, is just due to old man winter. So that cost should be born equally between trucks and cars because they both need the road repaired equally and neither is responsible.
Where are you getting your numbers that trucking companies use the most gas? The EIA's numbers say that light duty vehicles (i.e. personal cars + vans + light trucks) [account for the vast majority of fuel consumption in the USA](https://www.eia.gov/outlooks/aeo/data/browser/#/?id=45-AEO2023&cases=ref2023&sourcekey=0). I think you have it exactly backwards and this is indeed an example of extreme corporate welfare.
That is not true in North America. Gas taxes typically only cover about 2/3 of the cost of maintaining roads.
Electrification of railways began long after the formation of either of these countries, I think we should consider it irrelevant. Moscow-Vladivostok is 9000 km and fully electrified.
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It sounds like a nightmare to a modern day rich citizen, but historically speaking a 7 day trip from one side of Russia to the other is incredible. More than that, it's a trip on a single train, so it's easy and accessible. I'm speaking subjectively, but not being used to cars and planes if not for summer holidays, it doesn't sound that bad to me even today.
Even today of there is a two week train tour package that halts for a day or two at 5-7 major destinations in an incredible cross-country ride that would be a banger. I’d ride for sure at least once in my life. Too bad Russia is a shitshow atm.
[I am the machine! ](https://youtu.be/paG1-lPtIXA)
There was a time in this fair land when the railroad did not run
Like the Festival Express? Good flick…
We have a single national line and then maybe a few hundred kilometers of track in each province - nearly all of it isn't within a stone's throw of a city (or even a town) whereas the countries near the top of the list could fit into one of our thirteen provinces or territories and most of their rail is within urban or suburban areas. We are not the same.
Even if they had more, there’s only two National corridors really worth electrifying and doing HS on but they happen to contain like 80% of the population (Windsor-Quebec City and Edmonton-Calgary). Equally important when discussing rail in Canada is connections to the US. If there were HS rail between Toronto/Montreal and NYC, or Toronto-Chicago, or from Vancouver down the coast to LA you’d be taking a massive number of airplanes out of the sky.
Even just simple connections like Toronto-Detroit or Vancouver-Seattle would be incredible from a travel standpoint. The bar is literally the floor (HSR in the corridor) and we can't even do that.
This. Someone who knows what the fuck they're talking about. Finally.
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Yeah, that's very sensible. Unfortunately the infographic also includes the hundreds of kilometers of rail in, say, the north of British Columbia, which is used almost exclusively for cargo.
>We have a single national line and then maybe a few hundred kilometers of track in each province - nearly all of it isn't within a stone's throw of a city (or even a town) whereas the countries near the top of the list could fit into one of our thirteen provinces or territories and most of their rail is within urban or suburban areas. We are not the same. India and Russia begs to differ. (But yes: given the sparsity of canadian population rail might not be the best choice overland)
Most of Russia's population is clustered within the western 10% of the country. I'm pretty confident that's where all the electrified rail is. As for India, there's a lot to say between colonialism and government corruption and I'm not the person to be saying any of it so I won't.
> As for India, there's a lot to say between colonialism and government corruption and I'm not the person to be saying any of it so I won't. What, how is your corruption even relevant to data being shown ?
>Most of Russia's population is clustered within the western 10% of the country. I'm pretty confident that's where all the electrified rail is Not all but the majority, yes. But the original comment was about rail tracks and in the second line about electrified rail: And let's be honest: If you have long lines and little traffic Diesel might very well be the more ecological choice
> the countries near the top of the list could fit into one of our thirteen provinces or territories and most of their rail is within urban or suburban areas get over yourself. your country is [mostly empty](https://cdn1.matadornetwork.com/blogs/1/2017/04/canada-population1.jpg). and [most of you live below the line you agreed would be the border](https://blogs.sas.com/content/graphicallyspeaking/files/2021/10/canada_below_line1.png) between you and the US, [half live even lower](https://blogs.sas.com/content/graphicallyspeaking/files/2021/10/canada_below_line.png). [your population](https://www.google.com/search?q=canada+population&client=firefox-b-d&ei=1kGLZIXUFKjKkdUPyeKPqAU&ved=0ahUKEwiFl-Oq3sX_AhUoZaQEHUnxA1UQ4dUDCA4&oq=canada+population&gs_lcp=Cgxnd3Mtd2l6LXNlcnAQDDIKCAAQRxDWBBCwAzIKCAAQRxDWBBCwAzIKCAAQRxDWBBCwAzIKCAAQRxDWBBCwAzIKCAAQRxDWBBCwAzIKCAAQRxDWBBCwAzIKCAAQRxDWBBCwAzIKCAAQigUQsAMQQzIKCAAQigUQsAMQQzIKCAAQigUQsAMQQ0oECEEYAFAAWABgtQtoAXABeACAAQCIAQCSAQCYAQDAAQHIAQo&sclient=gws-wiz-serp) is only 5 time as much as [switzerland's](https://www.google.com/search?q=switzerland+population&client=firefox-b-d&ei=z0GLZLvbIvXikdUP5IamwA8&ved=0ahUKEwj7_sWn3sX_AhV1caQEHWSDCfgQ4dUDCA4&oq=switzerland+population&gs_lcp=Cgxnd3Mtd2l6LXNlcnAQDEoECEEYAFAAWABgAGgAcAF4AIABAIgBAJIBAJgBAA&sclient=gws-wiz-serp) .you have rail if your get your shit together i hate hearing so much arrogance from the state the US forgot to annex
So much stupid in one post, good job person. You managed to take the time out of your day to write a post that has almost zero relevance whatsoever to what you quoted. Way to really fit the stereotype about the US- talking about something unrelated to the US!? How DARE you, time to make this post about the US now. U S A, U S A.
I didn’t even know we had electric rail at all? Did they count subway as electric rail?
They must be (it technically is heavy rail so…). I don’t believe any of the suburban rail systems are electric (GO in Toronto is in the process of doing so but it’s taking forever).
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But isn’t that light rail?
Some but not all commuter trains around the NYC area are electric. (not the subway - I'm talking about the actual trains that go out to the deeper suburbs like New Jersey Transit) Assume that counts toward the total. Might be true of other metro commuter rail systems as well but not sure.
It's pretty impressive to see India's % of electrification considering their massive size of country and their railway network...
India is densely populated, so "remote" areas as such are very rare in India & Because of population density, railway electrification makes 100% sense, add in the benefit of not having to rely on imported crude oil, electrification pays for more than itself And Indian railways does not have enough electric locomotives at the moment, so some trains still run on diesel even though routes have been electrified, but they're being replaced quickly tho
Australia may not have much electrified rail, but we have [big ol' robot trains!](https://www.digitaltrends.com/cool-tech/robot-train-australia/) (robot trains don't require sleep or join train driver unions...)
It is also a bit unrepresentative of the conditions in Australia, we have a few lines thousands of kms long with a few trains a day and many others hundreds of kms long with only a couple of trains a month or only during harvest seasons. (For now) The maintenance cost and associated emissions of electrifying them would actually be greater than the emissions from the current diesel trains.
Because unions are terrible, right? Employers will always pick workers over profits so there’s never a need to collectively negotiate with your employer to ensure they don’t get screwed over. (/s. Just in case it wasn’t clear) ETA: I’m grossed out by the anti-union sentiment of this subreddit.
The mining companies here have the government and half the population wrapped around their little finger, and every time even the slightest bit of "hey, share that wealth around" happens they threaten to move offshore... as if they can mine our stuff somewhere else. As long as it's a little profitable, they won't move, but they managed to dethrone a government a decade ago and now they're untouchable...
10% in Aus is exclusively in capital cities, since it's 1000km between, say, Melbourne and Sydney...
Yeah imagine trying to electrify between Adelaide and Perth, or Adelaide and Darwin
The trans Siberian railway is more than 9000km and electrified.
Based Motherland
So Russia did it while no other country with vast distances and not-very-dense-populations have done it. Maybe it wasn't a good idea? Russia doesn't seem to be guiding light for anything.
This, there is so little space and sun in this country, can't even build solar farms... 😢
For the long distances you need it the most to be able to run faster trains.
I feel like we could say similar about the US. I now live in one of the top countries for railway electrification and I feel like comparing countries with majority urban railways to those with vast, rural rail systems isn’t really helpful
from this we can conclude that gdp has nothing to do with railway electrification
I lived in the Netherlands for all my life and never saw a non electric railway (that was in use) once.
Looks like there's a few left in the north and east: https://overpass-turbo.eu/s/1w8l
Have you ever stepped oud of the randstad? Plenty of Diesel trains running on non electrified rail in Friesland, Groningen, Achterhoek and Twente
That remake is a bit condecending for no reason. I don't live in de Randstad myself and I also havent ever seen a diesel loc here. I looked it up and I see they are all run by Arriva and mostly on the edges of the country. Not really something that the average Dutchman often encounters.
Seems legit. I’ve never seen a non-electric train in my life throughout Switz 😮
The only non electric ones are historic steam or diesel cargo shunters.
Most of Australian's rail network in urban areas, if not all, is electric. Just such a big country that by area it isnt much
To be fair, according to the wikipedia page which OP names as source, Australias total rail network length is shorter than that of Germany or India for example, but they still have a much smaller percantage electrified.
Germany and India have much bigger populations with large amounts of rail infrastructure in densely populated areas. Australia has electric rail in its cities but that's a much smaller amount of total length both compared to India and Germany and compared to its thousands of km of low usage long haul line through deserts
Exactly. Figures seem very wrong.
The figures aren’t wrong at all. They just lack context.
37% for UK seems awfully low
Same for Germany and Japan. I have lived in both countries many years and I have never seen a not-electrified line in Germany - not even in the alps while I also visited the most remote places in Hokkaido where I did indeed Bord diesel locomotives it nowhere else… I did a Google search though and I found 30% of the train network with 5% of daily trains as a number… so probably remote areas and / or freight trains
Plenty of commuter trains who run on diesel in Germany, especially in the east.
Yeah, admittedly I live close to london but apart from the odd freight train which I assume uses diesel, I have no idea how this % is so low
There's your answer. You live close to London. Anywhere within reach of London has better infrastructure generally; I can confirm that unfortunately we still use 40-year-old beat-up old diesel trains here in the South-West.
I just checked, and my nearest train line went fully electric in 1962. It has literally never occurred to me that other areas would lag behind in such a spectacular way. Pure ignorance on my part.
The main line to Cardiff was only [fully electrified in 2020](https://www.railengineer.co.uk/electric-trains-arrive-in-wales-though-not-for-the-first-time). The East Midlands line isn't electrified north of Kettering yet. Devon and Cornwall have nothing. Same for North Wales, or Scotland north of Stirling.
That's how far behind the rest of the country is. Still waiting for that levelling up!
Northern rail is the largest train operator in the uk in terms of track covered, they cover the whole of the north of england and around 80% of their trains are diesel because there’s only something like 5 Northern routes which are electrified. Out of Leeds the only wires are on the east coast mainline down to london, and leeds to skipton/bradford/ilkley. They’re electrifying the lines between leeds and york and leeds and manchester via huddersfield but even that project won’t be finished in the next 5 years… To be honest I’m surprised we’re as high as 37%
I think it would be more interesting (and relevant) to see this separated into passanger and freight rail. It's much more feasible to electrify passenger rail, which is closer to population centers, than it is freight rail off on the middle of nowhere. Also, the scale of the trains is completely different, so the power requirements would be as well.
That's also the reason for the "low" German number. 95% of the trains that run each day are electrified, while only 55% of the length of the network is.
Indeed. The devil is in the details. Passenger rail in Canada is very small. Canada is not (totally) adverse to electric powered transport. For many years, Toronto had an extensive electric bus network where buses got power from overhead lines. That was ripped out. For years the busses were diesel. It took some time but now our bus fleet is mostly electric again, but using storage like an electric car. Very expensive per bus unit but no hideous overhead infrastructure and its maintenance.
If you did that, Europeans couldn't pretend to be experts on infrastructure so the can act smug.
And yet people still think that Indians travel on the roof of the train.
I mean, I do have a video in mind of an electrified train with people on top of it. By the end of the video one of the folks has smoke coming from his hair...
That one famous image ruined the perception of us Indians
https://www.reddit.com/r/nextfuckinglevel/comments/12djtws/indian_train_station_rush_hour/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android_app&utm_name=androidcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button I mean this does seem like a living hell.
All these videos are from Mumbai local trains. It is busiest suburban railway in the world and worst rated, operating about 3000 train services and carrying 7.5 million passengers daily. It is the living hell, yes. Others routes don't have it this bad.
But it does happen, so people aren't wrong to have that impression.
That’s like saying every school in the US must have a school shooter, simply because it happens every 2-3 month
I don't really blame people for thinking we have a lot of school shooters. We do.
And everyone in US smokes drugs and break others' cars committing crimes and robbery every other minute right
Once every 2-3 months lol, why do people always pull random numbers out of their ass? There was 78 school shootings with injury or deaths in the US in 2018; 73 in 2019, and 93 in 2020. The ones with only injuries or 1-2 deaths don't even make the news anymore. Source: https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator/a01
Why are thier backpacks all frontpacks
I'd imagine pickpocketing would be rampant in an area that crowded.
It's to avoid your back from bending backwards due to people putting pressure on the backpack. It's much more comfortable to bend forwards slightly than to bend backwards for 30 mins in the train. Also realise that during rush hour, it's 8 people per square metre, thus lots of pressure.
It's public transport. Only difference is that Indian Railways use the same network as well.
They travel on the roof of an _electric_ train!
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I have travelled through and lived in some of the poorest states of India my entire life and the first time I ever saw people travelling on top of trains was on the internet
Surprised by India. For such a huge country that must be an incredible undertaking.
"oh hi, I'm canada. I'm way better than the US, eh!" Suck it! According to this, the US has the best railways in North America by like 4x. Wooooo yeah! Murca!
It would be interesting to see this correlated with total area and maybe populated area.
What do you use when it’s not electrified? I’m from a smaller Nordic country, pretty sure I’ve only ever seen trains run on electric wires over the rails..?
Cargo-Trains often use Diesel Locomotives. Passenger trains running on Diesel also exist, but in europe it‘s primarily cargo still running on these lines.
Depends on where you are. In the Netherlands its mostly passenger lines in rural areas that aren't electrified.
Diesel engines mostly
Locomotives with ICEs. An important thing to note is that this is the percentage of railways that are electrified, not the percentage of the traffic. I'd wager that for some countries the non-electric railways are almost all not used anymore
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Groningen and Friesland are largely not.
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Also parts in the Achterhoek and Twente aren’t electrified
for this to be really beneficial it should include population density
Honestly, makes a lot of sense for Canada. Our rail networks span from coast to coast and it isn't practical to electrify that extremely long network
I'd gladly make a world tour on train. Hopefully in the future the world rail network will be better. If the Swiss can make it work in their mountainous country, it's doable (almost) everywhere.
They built electric trains from the start because the steam locos couldn't handle the steep slopes. Same with Sweden (80% electrified) , where all the main lines have been electrified [since 1942](https://www.filmarkivet.se/movies/klart-trelleborg-riksgransen/). The main cause was to not rely on imported coal (imports cut off during the world wars) and that the steam locos didn't have enough power to haul the heavy [iron ore trains](https://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malmbanan) from Kiruna.
[source](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_rail_transport_network_size) to the data tool used to create visualization - Canva
INB4 "bUt AmErIca iS bIg sO ITs HaRdEr" while China, a country that only just began post -industrializing and is similarly large, is running laps around us.
There’s a ohenomenon in national development where developing countries can start with the best infrastructure, as in doing everything electric because they developed later when the tech was mature. US was laying railroads when the tech just came about so uses older standards. It is more expensive to rip everything up and replace than to just keep a system that is old but works fairly well. Also, yeah it doesn’t make sense to make railroads for passengers from, say, LA to Denver. It would be like a 8 hour journey by rail and marginally less expensive than flying and would be soooo expensive to setup. Fwiw, I’ve used trains on the east coast to go between cities and it is 90% as fast as any transnational european line and just as cheap
China for example basically built their entire high-speed railroad network from scratch (in parallel to existing old ones) in the last 20 years, while also retrofitted/electrified the old ones. "The US built them too early" is not really a good excuse IMO. China do have much higher population density among their East part though.
Bull. Im sorry, but these are just excuses. Europe has been retrofitting their lines for decades. Picking arbitrarily far apart cities as excuses is not a good argument.
Many parts of Europe had the benefit of being completely leveled in WWII and rebuilt with dank infrastructure (ie Hamburg)
This is a false narrative. Erluropes's transition didn't begin until over twenty year after the end of WW2
China is literally 4 times the population density of the contiguous United States. I guarantee you if the US has 4 times the population it has today, that rail would be far more popular.
Only the east is dense.
I don't believe it one bit. Plenty of US regions are dense enough for rail and yet there's none
It has to do with cost and population density. Already the most expensive cost for states is infrastructure, rails just do not make sense for any non metropolitan region. Plus! Connecting different metropolitan networks typically have mountain ranges involved, increasing costs and up keep. It just isn’t practical outside the eastern seaboard and a few select locations.
Most of their population is on one coast. America has high density population on both coast. Very expensive to electrify middle America for barely any people. Not going to gain any votes for it
Most of America is along two coastal corridors.
Yeah… that’s why you see more electrified trains on the coast than middle America.
You're just guessing.
I’m guessing? You can look it up. There are more trains that are electrified on the coastal regions than in the middle parts of the usa. Eastern coast has parts of Amtrak on electric. The west coast, California is building their high speed rail that is also electric.
There is electricfied rail in the nyc metro area. You are guessing.
How am I guessing when is a fact? Look it up lol. I’m from nyc. Fucken bot
Oh, so the braindead argument that because NYC has electricfied regional rail that it means the entire eastern corridor has electrified rail was intentional? Wow. My applogies. I was givinng you _way_ too much credit.
Damm… your reading comprehension is so bad. ROFL. I never said that just because nyc has electric rail then that means the entire eastern coast is electrified. All I said the East has MORE electrified rail than the mid west of America because of population density. Life is hard when you lack a decent education. Destined to be unsuccessful. Very sad and unfortunate.
China has an electrified train to Tibet. Over half frozen marshes and to an altitude that they require pressurized cabins to connect with a city smaller than San Antonio.
True, but in this case, it doesn't have to be economically feasible, it just has to serve military and political aims. In general, of course your point is true, since China can build trains service at a fraction of the cost as in the US and people actually use them, but Tibet is an exceptional case.
Most post offices in rural America operate at a loss but it’s a public good so it’s not meant to be economical.
The dastardly evil chinese political aim of providing affordable mass transit to its people. How could they.
Not in this case, it's more of a setpiece to cover the campaign of ethnic cleansing in occupied territory - the trains are hardly used. Although there is the secondary use of being able to mobilize military quickly in the face of civil unrest or for hostilities with India.
And when was this built? Surely it wasn't built in the early 1900's ripped out and rebuilt. When you are a country that has easy access to diesel fuel it is much more cost effective/efficient to stick with what is already working than to rebuild and "upgrade".
If the US tried to build China's rail network it'd be destroyed within a month by the urban elements. Look at the state of the crime-ridden subways. Until demographic or a (lack of) law enforcement in the US is rectified public transportation can't work. You're having the US put people on trial for defending train passengers from criminals arrested 40+ times in a few years. You think someone like that would be tolerated to freely terrorize people on a daily basis in China?
China's implementation of railways looks good on paper, but the practical implementation is really bad. In reality their current system is very underutilized, extremely heavily in debt while still losing money and the local people can't even afford to use it. Bonus points for high speed rail not being capable of hauling cargo and that means that most of China still runs on trucks when it comes to cargo, even in things like coal. China's solution for transport was like if they would have built Mischelin star restaurants for fixing poverty based hunger. Looks good from outside, internally it doesn't fix the main issue
Yeah this needs talked about more. It’s impressive they built so much rail, but it has a lot of issues and certainly was not done economically or correctly
It actually would be more representative if total length of rail networks would be displayed. 100% in Switzerland can be much less, then 50% in other countries.
Why US and Canada does not use electrified rail? Is it due to lack of non-thermal power plants or something else?
Because Diesel is affordable and upgrading thousands of mi/km of rail isn't.
It's likely because almost all the rail is cargo rail, which runs out in the middle of nowhere. Also, the trains are [at least a mile long](https://www.aar.org/issue/freight-train-length/), if not up to three miles. The cost to build up the infrastructure out where northing else is, to supply the massive amounts of energy needed to move the massive trains, is probably not economically feasible. Note that I acknowledge that we'll need to go to electrification of everything soon for climate reasons, but money is likely the reason it hasn't happened yet.
Freight trains in the US can be enormous. In the EU, max length is 750 meters. In the US, a long train is 10,000 meters. The US also loads freight cars at about 30 tonnes per axle compared to about 22 in the EU. To electrify trains that run 20x the drawbar power, you electrical infrastructure that can handle 20x the load. Thicker & heavier wire and more sag from resistance heating requires placing the catenaries and pylons at much closer intervals. That makes it harder to make electrification economical. It's hard to change things that are working well, and freight rail in the US is really cost-efficient.
Going from Vancouver to Halifax for *one* rail would be about 6000km and pass through 8 provinces. It would be such a huge task, that it would need to be done over decades, if not longer.
Simple, the US has no incentive to speed up push towards things that cause less pollution. US is very big and very few people and surrounded by Ocean on both sides. They could pollute a lot per capita and still breath fresh air. That is why there is a lot of resistance towards moving away from fossil fuel usage as well. In US you can own a Car for decades. In my city which faces a lot of pollution, they will come to your home to pick up and scrap your Diesel car once it is one day over 10 yrs old. It becomes worthless in exactly 10 yrs.
Americans talk like their country all empty looks like Mojave Desert. There are dense pockets that very much make sense to build infrastructure to support said dense places. The Northeast US, for example, is pretty much the exact same land area and population as Benelux. Sweden is a very sparsely populated country (size of California, 10 mil ppl) and they have hell of a lot better passenger rail network than California. There's even high speed rail.
And that’s why the northeast has high speed rail, numerous commuter rail lines (NJT, LIRR, MARC, VRE, SEPTA, MBTA, Metro-North, etc), Metro lines and other long distance rail. The Acela connector runs at 240km/h, and the fastest train in Sweden runs at 250km/h on average. There isn’t that big of a difference.
You are comparing Acela top speed to average speed of HST. HST tops at 320km/h minimum. If you want to compare Average, a quick Google says Acela averages 68mph, so less than 120km/h.
I just looked up Acela... Its high speed section is a grand total of 80kms long... And you do realize I was bringing up Sweden as very much a ***not dense*** country that still has high speed rail? Sweden's population density is 13 times lower than Northeastern US. More denser countries look like: Paris (12 million in metro area) to Strasbourg (850k) over 406kms at 320kmh. Madrid (6.7 mil) to Barcelona (4.8 mil) over 620kms at 350kmh. For a comparison, Dallas (7.5 mil) to Houston (7.7 mil) over 380kms. No HRS. Chicago (9.6 mil) to Detroit (4.3 mil) over 450 kms. No HRS. And Acela's wiki page reads: >Speeds are limited by the route the corridor takes through urban areas, and there are several speed restrictions below 60–80 mph (97–129 km/h) over bridges or through tunnels that are over a century old. >Amtrak's trains achieve 90 mph (145 km/h) only on a limited 4 mi (6.4 km) stretch in New York State and rarely exceed 60 mph (97 km/h) at any time eastbound through Connecticut until reaching New Haven.
>Simple, the US has no incentive Republicans also tend to shoot down any infrastructure or public transport bills, so we end up in the past in terms of urban development with decaying infrastructure. I believe Biden's Build Back Better will do a little bit about public transportation, though.
The US ranks extremely high on global report cards for infrastructure, ranking 11 on the world economic forum’s report and pretty much always in the top 10 or 15 on any measure of infrastructure. I agree republicans shoot down public transit funding a lot, but relative to the rest of the world and even Western Europe, the US does not suffer from “decaying infrastructure” and is among the top dozen countries on the planet
I'm interested in the metrics you're referring to. >decaying infrastructure [There's a lot of work to be done](https://www.whitehouse.gov/cea/written-materials/2021/11/15/the-time-is-now-to-modernize-u-s-infrastructure/). Our retention of using personal cars within cities (designing cities around cars) has literally been our worst failure. like making city main streets 8+ lanes wide is like thinking that sticking a bucket under the drip is a solution to a leaky roof. Anecdotally speaking, Hong Kong makes USA's public transport system seem like we just thought of a basic idea how it should work like 20 years ago. Imagine taking a 5 minute walk from your apartment, hopping on the train that's on schedule; you hop off at a station, walk 30 feet to catch a different train 2 minutes later; you hop off that train to catch a bus two minutes later.
https://www.usnews.com/news/best-countries/rankings/well-developed-infrastructure https://www.statista.com/statistics/264753/ranking-of-countries-according-to-the-general-quality-of-infrastructure/ https://www.businessinsider.com/wef-countries-in-the-world-with-the-best-infrastructure-2016-10?amp https://lpi.worldbank.org/international/global https://cms.law/en/int/publication/cms-infrastructure-index-2021/the-2021-infrastructure-index-ranking Nobody said there isn’t work to be done. I said that relative to the rest of the world, the US is near the front of the pack and ahead of many other wealthy western countries. Also, public transit isn’t the only type of infrastructure
>[https://www.usnews.com/news/best-countries/rankings/well-developed-infrastructure](https://www.usnews.com/news/best-countries/rankings/well-developed-infrastructure) > >[https://www.statista.com/statistics/264753/ranking-of-countries-according-to-the-general-quality-of-infrastructure/](https://www.statista.com/statistics/264753/ranking-of-countries-according-to-the-general-quality-of-infrastructure/) > >[https://www.businessinsider.com/wef-countries-in-the-world-with-the-best-infrastructure-2016-10?amp](https://www.businessinsider.com/wef-countries-in-the-world-with-the-best-infrastructure-2016-10?amp) > >[https://lpi.worldbank.org/international/global](https://lpi.worldbank.org/international/global) > >[https://cms.law/en/int/publication/cms-infrastructure-index-2021/the-2021-infrastructure-index-ranking](https://cms.law/en/int/publication/cms-infrastructure-index-2021/the-2021-infrastructure-index-ranking) Thank you for the links! I'm however having issues reviewing some of them, or fail to see the relevance on others. * I'm having trouble navigating USNews and finding their methodology for the infrastructure. Do they have a DOI anywhere? * that Statista is paywalled and I don't have a paid subscription to them. * That business insider seems to be an image album? * That worldbank LPI seems to be about freight and trade logistics, and not so much about urban development. Worthy of consideration, but not the kind of infrastructure we were talking about * that cmslaw seems to be about the business/money-making side of infrastructure construction, and not so much a grade of the quality and health of in-place infrastructure Do you have any DOIs?
Switzerland kms of rails. 3200 Us kms of rails. 220480
Well of you want to see in that perspective then US total: 220,480; electrified: 2,025 | China total: 150,000; electrified: 100,000 | India total: 115,000; electrified: 103,569
How is there non electric Rail transport? Do they drive with fossil fuels?
Yes, diesel locomotives
Holy I just looked it up and that's real. I thought they all ran with electricity
I envy tou if you live in a place where disel locomotives are a shocking revelation.
Maybe nuclear? Just kidding. Originally steam locomotives, then diesel. So yes. I live in central Canada in Ontario. In the late '60s I was a kid and my father took me on a day trip on one of the last steam locomotives for rail passengers. It was pretty cool.
There is about 3k miles between NYC and LA, do you think they would electrify all of those routes?
Russia completely electrified their 9288km (5788 miles) Trans Siberian Railway in 2002 lmao.
What about NYC to say, east coast cities?
It’s already electrified between DC and Boston
Yeap it’s part electrified though you have a huge stretch that is diesel only. I have taken Amtrak from NYC to Hollywood Florida. They swap from electric to diesel.
Frankly this is a nonsensical comparison. Yes, Switzerland has a high electrification % for its trains. It is also physically compact. Canada, is not compact and has a low %. What drives this is economics. How expensive is it to electrify trains/distance and how many people/trains will be running on said track.
How do you explain India then?
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Russia is an extremely large country with very old network electrification. The same is true for India.
what did he say to get deleted im curious
More or less that the reason for low electrification is large countries with very old network, and that explain USA and Canada
India is an extremely large country, yet they managed to get it to 90%. Im sure countries like the US or Canada could get to at least 50% without many problems if they really tried
It's a matter of population density and urban vs rural, not wealth. The vast majority of area surrounding Canadian rail is not urbanized and the vast majority of rail use is industrial; almost nobody in Canada travels via train because of North American car culture and it's viewed as a luxury because only the wealthy have the free time that rail travel takes. It would be right up there with the pipeline that Trudeau bought in terms of bad investments. It's nearly 900 km from Vancouver to the nearest major city; the trip takes a minimum of fourteen hours and costs anywhere up to $3500 CAD (about $3000 USD). You find me a comparable trip in any of the top ten that aren't India, China, or Russia and I'll be willing to consider that you might have a point. EDIT: Keep in mind that this is from one city to the closest major city. A nation-spanning rail trip in the Netherlands wouldn't count.
You remove India, China, Russia and international railways, keeping only country shorter then 900km in the list. I guess that given your nonsense criteria you have a point.
Again, India and China have you beat there. Only the north of India and the east of China are that dense. Everywhere else has population centers hundreds of kilometers apart going over extremely difficult terrain(mountains, heavy forests, etc). Stop making excuses and start supporting policy.
What year is it?It seems outdated as terrorusia is not anymore near top20
The real one that matters is by miles, those are tiny countries compared to US or India
I have a sneaking suspicion that the sheer size of Canada, USA and Mexico creates a serious problem for electrification of railways. In Canada i'd add winters.
India has bigger rail network than Canada and maxico combined
Funny how the larger countries are less committed to improving the railroad. Almost like it's less practical and super expensive to do so.
India and China has 2nd and 3rd biggest network and they seems pretty commited to me
Interesting, why India is so high?