AHC: Wank railroad transportation!

Work-around: have locomotives invented somewhat earlier, even around the mid 18th-century would give it a considerable head start before automobiles enter the equation. By the time of the *ARW or slightly after, much more of *American and European construction has taken place around railroads.
 
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It's not really a hard cap; rather, the FRA has imposed a few different speed limits based on the technology used for controlling trains. If you want to run faster trains, you have to use more complex (and therefore expensive) signaling and control systems. The railroads didn't want to spend the money on those in most places, probably because freight's always been the main money-maker and freight trains mostly don't care about running 100 mph, so they installed those systems on only a relatively small portion of track where passenger traffic was relatively profitable.

Incidentally, the actual cause of this rule was an accident where a train going 86 mph hit another train that was stopped, killing quite a few people, and the engineer claimed it was because he didn't have enough time to stop thanks to missing signals. Investigators figured out that he did have enough time to stop after the red "Danger," but the FRA was already looking to push improved signaling, so...
Oh yeah, that reminds me. The rule is that the trains don't top out over 56 miles per hour WITHOUT automatic brake control systems. They can go as fast as they want as long as they have automatic brakes. But the railroad companies decided not to spend the money installing them and to just obey the letter and not the spirit of the law, thus the speed limit of 56.
 
@1940LaSalle
I love the level of detail and in-depth knowledge of your proposal!

And if you want to drag out railroad supremacy, mess with political PODs to lengthen/worsen Gilded Age inequality to make cars less accessible for longer.
Is that really the path to go? In that case, a lot must have changed in society, for countries with very high income and low inequality, like Switzerland, Sweden, Japan, or Austria, have rather comprehensive and excellent railways...

@M79,
the role Hollywood etc. can play is indeed very important. I´m imagining James Dean and Corey Allen in Rebel Without a Cause go train-surfing instead of a Chicken Run.
 
Much of the whole "last few (dozen) miles", passenger-wise could be covered by busses. Having a joined-up public transport system would be a lot of help.
It`s actually really cool where it exists.
Buses, trams, public bicycles etc. are all good ideas to cover the last mile(s).

What is even more important, at least from a European perspective, where suburban sprawl was mostly a post-war phenomenon and for centuries towns used to be packed, relatively small-sized places, would be the political decision to build (or in the case of war-destroyed towns: rebuild) or allow to (re-)build all the new working and middle class homes in the form of vertical expansion instead of horizontal. Look at how high the public transportation percentage is in Manhattan...
 
Your solution to make rail more popular is to make rail more popular.

The problem with rail is that, for most short and medium trips, cars are superior, and for most long trips, airplanes are superior. Making things more difficult for rail is that the technologies for all three forms of transportations are closely related.

Most of its other problems are political in nature.

I should have elaborated, having state funded, plus federal subsidized transit authorities with a pedestrian focus for urban layouts. Streetcars and Subways to bulwark the larger rail network. That would take breaking up the National Streetcar and Pacific Streetcar companies, and putting the lines under their respective state transit authority. Also avoiding Robert Moses becoming who he was to American Urban Planning. Convincing Eisenhower to have the Highways be completely military focused, and rail for people/mass cargo.

A period of line rationalization and electrification, while differing the feeder routes to a buddy-car style movers. While expanding pedestrian/tram routes in the cores of cities, with subways to get around the med travels.
 
Airline deregulation allowed prices of airfares to drop. If, by one means or other, airfares are kept HIGH, trains become more popular for medium-long trips, especially if the railroads work to increase speed and/or comfort. Getting on a train at 5 or 6 pm, and waking up at your destination, means that you spend little waking time traveling.

If jet airplanes are less trusted, with more fiery crashes, that might keep people more interested in staying on the ground. (Perhaps there's more crashes in several countries due to metal issues like the Comet, and some popular people die.)

And, of course, politics. If the railroad companies have more political clout, they can buy a few influential congresscritters to help hamstring the jet industry...
 
I should have elaborated, having state funded, plus federal subsidized transit authorities with a pedestrian focus for urban layouts. Streetcars and Subways to bulwark the larger rail network. That would take breaking up the National Streetcar and Pacific Streetcar companies, and putting the lines under their respective state transit authority. Also avoiding Robert Moses becoming who he was to American Urban Planning. Convincing Eisenhower to have the Highways be completely military focused, and rail for people/mass cargo.

A period of line rationalization and electrification, while differing the feeder routes to a buddy-car style movers. While expanding pedestrian/tram routes in the cores of cities, with subways to get around the med travels.

You'll run into issues with the federal division of authority. Further, lets note that the feds are in charge of Amtrak, which is hardly a ringing endorsement.

Trying to weaken auto travel just isn't going to work for most of the country. Hell, if you're going to go that route, you'll have to stop suburbanization, which has so many causes that the country would be entirely different without those causes.
 
You'll run into issues with the federal division of authority. Further, lets note that the feds are in charge of Amtrak, which is hardly a ringing endorsement.

Trying to weaken auto travel just isn't going to work for most of the country. Hell, if you're going to go that route, you'll have to stop suburbanization, which has so many causes that the country would be entirely different without those causes.

Suburbanization started before the automobile, with the streetcar.
 

missouribob

Banned
maximise the portion of railroads in total transportation and/or maximise the length and traffic frequency of railroads and/or the importance of railroads in urban and rural geography, culture etc., in short: go total railroad bonkers!
I feel like a post-nuclear war society would need to maximise railroad usage.
 
Suburbanization started before the automobile, with the streetcar.

Quite true. Doesn't change the fact that it grew dramatically with the availability of cars. There's no comparison between a streetcar suburb and a modern suburb, except on the broadest of levels.
 
You'll run into issues with the federal division of authority. Further, lets note that the feds are in charge of Amtrak, which is hardly a ringing endorsement.

Trying to weaken auto travel just isn't going to work for most of the country. Hell, if you're going to go that route, you'll have to stop suburbanization, which has so many causes that the country would be entirely different without those causes.

It is more a federal subsidy board than a transportation authority. Amtrack and a respective rail maintenance and improvement division, would be all that there is federally. States would have their own respective TransAuth, all receiving federal funding and subsidies, being interconnected by Amrtrack. Even if you took a quarter of the Highway funding and put it into rail, would dramatically chance the ability to serve the demand.

This website only shows 2002. But you get the idea of the shift in funding.

Suburbanization started before the automobile, with the streetcar.

Fair statement, but if we are talking in terms of scale, the waves off shore are not the same as the waves inshore. Both are waves however.
 
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Have a national catastrophe, PR focus, or financial event make road travel less viable. Minor Yellowstone eruption, less automobile demand, heavier focus on bad auto crashes, etc. Alternatively, have the RRs buy up car manufacturers they see as successful and limit/shut down production. Cars become toys of the rich or signs of poverty as only poor towns are not on the micro/macro rail system.
 
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