The priciest bit of rail per mile is in cities because of the stations and land use, but even those are one time costs. If we magically moved two cities in Japan 5x further apart, it wouldn’t cost 5x the amount to install the rail to connect them. When considering maintenance costs, a comparison to highways wouldn’t be close.
Rail infrastructure across America is mostly dedicated to freight, with passenger travel taking a literal back seat. Comparing rail to air isn’t exactly apples to apples considering how artificially cheap domestic air travel is permitted to be.
California’s rail situation is an entire can of worms on its own. My underlying point is that the type of cities shown in this post are possible everywhere. All it really takes is willpower.
The priciest bit of rail per mile is in cities because of the stations and land use, but even those are one time costs. If we magically moved two cities in Japan 5x further apart, it wouldn’t cost 5x the amount to install the rail to connect them. When considering maintenance costs, a comparison to highways wouldn’t be close.
Rail infrastructure across America is mostly dedicated to freight, with passenger travel taking a literal back seat. Comparing rail to air isn’t exactly apples to apples considering how artificially cheap domestic air travel is permitted to be.
California’s rail situation is an entire can of worms on its own. My underlying point is that the type of cities shown in this post are possible everywhere. All it really takes is willpower.