Better urban transport and railroads instead of interstates

Over here in Russia, people tend to travel by train on long-ish distances - and the main alternative is the plane. :) (Car is still common, of course, but when people have to travel more than 100 or so kilometers they still tend to take the train if they can.)
I always thought that in the US, the plane was the main mode of inter-city transport. I mean, just how do those non-car-owning people get around if you don't have any railroads? :confused:

First, 300 million Americans own close to 240 million motor vehicles; roughly 4 to every 5 people. This means that almost everyone has access to a motor vehicle, even if they don't own one.

Second, in the US we also travel long distances by bus; slower than either rail or plane, but generally cheaper. (Of course, long distance to an American is not the same as long distance to a Russian! ;))
 

abc123

Banned
I suspect that this could not have been enacted in the US in the fifties but how different would US society be if that happened?

Why instead? In any other developed country it isn't choice between expressways and railways, it's allways compliementary.
 

BlondieBC

Banned
For what you want you need to butterfly away the American love for automobiles, which is rooted in the individualistic American psyche. Cars let us go wherever we want, whenever we want; cars make us more independent. And Americans love their independence, even at the cost of destroying their health and the environment. To change that requires changing the entirety of American history starting with the earliest colonists.

The interstate highway system was originally proposed to enable the US military to easily shift troops and equipment across the country (never mind that rail, ship, and air transport could accomplish the same thing and all were already established). What it actually did was far different; it made long distance travel by car and truck easy.

An easy POD is Eisenhower comes back from WW2 impressed with rail transport, not the Autobahn. Then either no Interstate bill, or more realistically, a transportation bill where 2/3 of USD go to rail and 1/3 for Interstates. Many railroads are rebuilt and purchased by the USA. Anyone can run a train on these public tracks at subsidized prices. (This is much like OTL for cars.) Also the interstates are built differently. The roads are built more per there state purpose of military transport, with many fewer exits and also a lot fewer miles. The big cross country interstates are built, but no the many loops and exits in cities. On the rural portion of the interstates, the exits are only every 100 miles or so.

Mass transit is dependent upon a certain population density, so we would have much more dense cities. NYC and other eastern cities might be much the same, but somewhere like Dallas or Houston might take 1/10 the current area. For example, Dallas/Fort Worth would be two separate cities separate by a farm belt. Airports would be built near to major rail hubs, and with denser, smaller cities, the airports would be closer to the city center than now. Say on DFW, maybe at love field, maybe on the rail line running from Dallas to Fort Worth.

In more rural areas, county seats would be larger, and outlying towns would be smaller, because the city seats would have a big advantage over a town/village a few miles away. Rail is more fuel efficient, so less crude oil is used, which affects USA foreign policy. Big box retailers are much, much less successful, since i need to walk home with what i buy, not load up the car. The USA might have even avoid the gutting of the inner city, and the inner city might be the most economically active part of most cities.
 
Thing is if they were built for their military purposes as per OTL than there would be more exits not less that part was de-emphasized and only one exit was ever completed to the planned standards
 

BlondieBC

Banned
Thing is if they were built for their military purposes as per OTL than there would be more exits not less that part was de-emphasized and only one exit was ever completed to the planned standards

Why more exits? Why better exits?

I have been the lead vehicle driver in military convoys on USA roads. The exits are grossly overbuilt for the needs of a military vehicle. Even the non-off road military vehicles grossly exceed the off road capacity of a standard civilian car. When we took breaks, we simply drove off the side of the road to one of the grassy triangles near an exit. There was a little gravel/dirt to cut down the slope but nothing approaching an improved road. All that is really needed is exits going towards military bases, these exits are not where civilian find useful, but basically the shortest distance to the military base, and exits near major cities or major defensive fortresses. Ninety-five percent of the exit work is absolutely unneeded for military use. If you want an example, take I-40 in Arkansas. You need one or two exits near Little Rock, one near Camp Robinson, one at the Nuclear Plant, and one to Fort Chaffee. That is 5 exits compared to 20 or more exits on that part of the road. All the loops around the Little rock are unneeded.

Hint: Military units only go from military base to military base. Unless the war comes to Arkansas, that is all that will every be used by the military on that part of the road. And if war does come, it is real hard to anticipate where the enemy will deploy. In reality, the military would just make adhoc exits of dirt where needed to fight. The main driver of exits will be the rest breaks scheduled by military handbook and possible fuel/food needs. From memory, a break has to be taken every 2 hours, and the travel speed is 45 miles per hour, so the exits need to be roughly every 80 to 85 miles. We have combat engineer units attached to the brigade, and they can make a dirt off ramp in minutes.
 
The US railways never developed the trump card of rail, speed. If 125mph was a common speed for US passenger services more people would use it.
 
Why more exits? Why better exits?

I have been the lead vehicle driver in military convoys on USA roads. The exits are grossly overbuilt for the needs of a military vehicle. Even the non-off road military vehicles grossly exceed the off road capacity of a standard civilian car. When we took breaks, we simply drove off the side of the road to one of the grassy triangles near an exit. There was a little gravel/dirt to cut down the slope but nothing approaching an improved road. All that is really needed is exits going towards military bases, these exits are not where civilian find useful, but basically the shortest distance to the military base, and exits near major cities or major defensive fortresses. Ninety-five percent of the exit work is absolutely unneeded for military use. If you want an example, take I-40 in Arkansas. You need one or two exits near Little Rock, one near Camp Robinson, one at the Nuclear Plant, and one to Fort Chaffee. That is 5 exits compared to 20 or more exits on that part of the road. All the loops around the Little rock are unneeded.

Hint: Military units only go from military base to military base. Unless the war comes to Arkansas, that is all that will every be used by the military on that part of the road. And if war does come, it is real hard to anticipate where the enemy will deploy. In reality, the military would just make adhoc exits of dirt where needed to fight. The main driver of exits will be the rest breaks scheduled by military handbook and possible fuel/food needs. From memory, a break has to be taken every 2 hours, and the travel speed is 45 miles per hour, so the exits need to be roughly every 80 to 85 miles. We have combat engineer units attached to the brigade, and they can make a dirt off ramp in minutes.
You're right about number of exits but some would be useful say near vital defense industries so add those to your list

Also the military would want as much straight stretches as possible, backup SAC landing strips

Every exit and entrance in the country was supposed to have a bunker complex built into it, only one test exit ever did
 

Devvy

Donor
The US railways never developed the trump card of rail, speed. If 125mph was a common speed for US passenger services more people would use it.

This is only part of the matter.

As has been mentioned previously, the US rail market is well used by freight services. These trains are comparatively slow in speed and in acceleration.

In order to have fast and frequent trains (the crux to attract passengers), you will need segregated lines from the freight trains. If you have segregated lines, with freight prohibited from them, then you also get round the US rules and regulations about trains having to be able withstand a freight train collision, which is why the Acela train is so damn heavy (lighter trains are quicker to accelerate, faster and cheaper to run).

If you have segregated lines, and the straight lines that are possible in the long rural and sometimes flat spaces between cities, then you can easily start to pass the 125mph barrier and press on towards 150-180mph as per the French TGV or German ICE. The segregated lines mean you can *very* easily run the (from a consumer point of view) minimum of two trains per hour along a line (and more on the busier routes). This, in my opinion, is the minimum service level for people to be able to spontaneously think "I'll catch the train to xyz" as they have no need to check timetables beforehand.

Some long distance train services won't attract end to end passengers, but will attract a lot of shorter trips - ie. for a service that calls at a,b,c,d,e,f,g, there will be few passengers from a to g, but maybe lots of passengers from stations a to c,d,e and from c to f and g, which thereby gives the service plenty of patronage along the entire route. Domestic air services could be killed off apart from longer distance routes where you're crossing more then half the country in a flight.
 
Commuter rail would be alot healthier if it were integrated with the highways system from the get go. For some baffling reason Chicago was the only major city to do so. The inner ring suburbs could continue to be served by rail connections leading to downtown jobs, while the newer more distant outer ring suburbs would make use of the highways.

Secondly, urban downtowns would be alot healthier if they weren't bi-sected by highways. When a highway goes through a city it effectively forms a wall, severing most of the connections between the areas in which they separate. It also makes it easier for drivers to enter and leave the cities without stipping, which was exactly what they did. The downtown office set, began to move off into the suburbs where the primarily patronized suburban businesses. The result of this destroyed much of the economic life within the inner city. This trend also helped lead to the development of the suburban office park which detached thousands of white collar jobs away from the traditional urban core and greatly demished the urban tax base.
 

BlondieBC

Banned
You're right about number of exits but some would be useful say near vital defense industries so add those to your list

Also the military would want as much straight stretches as possible, backup SAC landing strips

Every exit and entrance in the country was supposed to have a bunker complex built into it, only one test exit ever did

Command centers in bunkers at exits would make sense for the military, as I guess would places for anti-aircraft guns at bridges with guard buildings. Also, for the military, much larger rest stops make a lot of sense. Not like we have now with a few parking spots and a bathroom, but a rest stop designed for military units taking breaks. I was playing with the number of people one could move down an interstate using two lanes plus one pull-off lane. It looks like the military could fit 1 division every 60 miles, and at a move rate of 45 miles per hours, could move 16 divisions down an interstate in day. This is a staggering amount of people. (Note: I am sure the logistics of supply fuel/food to these people and keeping the units organized would be staggering. I am just figuring based on the number of vehicles the road itself could carry.)

From the military need, it looks like the 3 main east/west interstates, and maybe 5 north/south interstates is all that would really be needed for the military, even in the largest war, like WW2.

Commuter rail would be alot healthier if it were integrated with the highways system from the get go. For some baffling reason Chicago was the only major city to do so. The inner ring suburbs could continue to be served by rail connections leading to downtown jobs, while the newer more distant outer ring suburbs would make use of the highways.

The story i always heard is the car companies (mostly GM) bough up the inner city rail and tore up the tracks to boost sales of cars. It may be urban myth, but probably has some truth to it. To a large extent, the USA decided to abandon rails and use cars in the 1950/1960's. I believe this decision has a supermajority support among Americans. I am not sure how it was sold to them, but it was a good sales job.
 
Command centers in bunkers at exits would make sense for the military, as I guess would places for anti-aircraft guns at bridges with guard buildings. Also, for the military, much larger rest stops make a lot of sense. Not like we have now with a few parking spots and a bathroom, but a rest stop designed for military units taking breaks. I was playing with the number of people one could move down an interstate using two lanes plus one pull-off lane. It looks like the military could fit 1 division every 60 miles, and at a move rate of 45 miles per hours, could move 16 divisions down an interstate in day. This is a staggering amount of people. (Note: I am sure the logistics of supply fuel/food to these people and keeping the units organized would be staggering. I am just figuring based on the number of vehicles the road itself could carry.)

From the military need, it looks like the 3 main east/west interstates, and maybe 5 north/south interstates is all that would really be needed for the military, even in the largest war, like WW2.
That and Fallout shelter's, that was the main reason for the bunker's
 
The story i always heard is the car companies (mostly GM) bough up the inner city rail and tore up the tracks to boost sales of cars. It may be urban myth, but probably has some truth to it. To a large extent, the USA decided to abandon rails and use cars in the 1950/1960's. I believe this decision has a supermajority support among Americans. I am not sure how it was sold to them, but it was a good sales job.

They did so for street cars which were the principal form of mass transet for the first wave major of american suburbanization. Commuter rail is different as it handles higher volume and is much more expensive to maintain. The big reason why other cities didn't follow Chicago's path is that they thought it was archaic, automobiles were modern and modernist planning was at its core anti-urban.

I dare say the best thing to do would be to lay down the building blocks for an interstate system during the New Deal, so the emphasis of said highway system would be geared towards city rather than its suburbs. Likewise, the planned future suburbs would still be built around commuter rail/street cars rather than feeder roads leading to highways.
 
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In order to have fast and frequent trains (the crux to attract passengers), you will need segregated lines from the freight trains. If you have segregated lines, with freight prohibited from them, then you also get round the US rules and regulations about trains having to be able withstand a freight train collision, which is why the Acela train is so damn heavy (lighter trains are quicker to accelerate, faster and cheaper to run).

No you don`t, you just need high capacity rail corridors. The reason why the NEC and the British E&WCML can run fast and slow trains is because they have quad tracks. The real impediment to speed in level crossings and signalling; you can`t have trains going much over 100mph hurtling through road crossings, and above that speed the train drivers can`t read the trackside signals in good enough time. With in-cab signals and no level crossings you can run 125 mph tains on single-track lines shared with freight and slow passenger services.
 

Devvy

Donor
No you don`t, you just need high capacity rail corridors. The reason why the NEC and the British E&WCML can run fast and slow trains is because they have quad tracks. The real impediment to speed in level crossings and signalling; you can`t have trains going much over 100mph hurtling through road crossings, and above that speed the train drivers can`t read the trackside signals in good enough time. With in-cab signals and no level crossings you can run 125 mph tains on single-track lines shared with freight and slow passenger services.

Which effectively proves my point. I don't know the intracacies of the NEC, but I believe the Acela only hits top speeds at a few points along the line.

The British ECML and WCML have quadruple tracks, which are run as 2 separate pairs of lines, fast and slow, which do not mix. This allows the inner pair of tracks to be effectively dedicated to express trains with no conflicting slow passenger or freight trains. It also allows dedicated high speed signalling systems to be installed if necessary for the express trains, though that isn't something used in the UK bar HS1 to Europe.

I agree about level/road crossings though.
 

Flubber

Banned
Do you have a link for that? I'd like to read more about it.


How about a link to a some actual facts instead? Read them here.

The interstates were never meant to be airstrips or contain bunkers and fallout shelters or any of the other nonsense posted here. The actual reasons behind the interstates is laid out neatly in this link which explains, among other things, why Hawaii has "interstate" highways.

As for the old "auto companies bought and tore up street car tracks" idiocy, read this link. In reality the story is nothing like what is usually claimed.
 
I don`t understand what proves your point. Any reasonable quality double track railway is the raw material for medium to high speed rail that can be shared with frieght. I know this because I live beside one.

If there is one near here then the USA must be rife with them, especially in the time periods needed to keep the balance between road and rail.
 
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Population density is critical for the economic viability of passenger rail. The track costs the same whether there's one train a day or 200 trains a day, and a full train only costs slightly more to run than a nearly empty train. Share out the fixed costs across more passengers, and the rail system can turn a profit at a much lower fare. It's also just plain more useful to any given prospective passenger if there's a denser network of tracks (more likely there's a train that goes from somewhere close to where you are to somewhere close to where you want to be) and more frequent trains on each track (it cramps your schedule less when there's a train every 10 minutes than when there's a train every 2 hours). All of this is much easier in a dense urban area (for commuter rail) or running between urban centers (for long-distance passenger rail). This is a big part of why the NYC subway system is much more successful than, say, CalTrain.

If post-war America had invested heavily in rail in the 40s and 50s rather than in roads, it's likely cities would have stayed dense. Expanding a rail system to support wide-flung suburbs is much harder to do well than building roads, and the marginal benefit of attempting to do so is probably significantly less than improving service and capacity within the existing urban area (which generally isn't practical for roads, since roads are much less land-efficient than train tracks if each is operating near capacity).

An interesting side effect would be that there would have had to have been a different solution for the post-war housing shortage. OTL, suburbs sprung up, with detached single-family houses being mass-produced on cheap farmland which had just become (thanks to the newly expanded and improved highway system) a short drive away from the nearest city. Without the highways, Levittown and the like don't really make sense to build. Instead, there's be some combination of more and earlier high-rise construction in major cities, and cultural shifts towards increased adoptions of living patterns that make more efficient use of scarce living space (multigenerational households, roommates and boarders, or even dorm- or barracks-style housing for young adults living away from their families).

I'd be interested to see what happens to rent control in such an environment. On one hand, price fixing causes artificial shortages, and abolishing rent control would be the most economically effective way of getting developers to start building up the cities to accommodate demand for housing. On the other hand, the inherent expense of urban land and the cost of high-rise construction (combined with pent-up demand while waiting for construction to catch up) would likely cause severe sticker shock among renters, potentially expanding the political constituency in favor of preserving and expanding rent control.
 
BlondieBC said:
Also the interstates are built differently. The roads are built more per there state purpose of military transport, with many fewer exits and also a lot fewer miles. The big cross country interstates are built, but no the many loops and exits in cities. On the rural portion of the interstates, the exits are only every 100 miles or so.
That works for the federal, but don't forget, states will still be building roads/highways, & will want to connect to the Interstates. You'll have to write the law so there are restrictions to access, too, say to allow them to serve as emergency airstrips.
BlondieBC said:
Big box retailers are much, much less successful, since i need to walk home with what i buy, not load up the car. The USA might have even avoid the gutting of the inner city, and the inner city might be the most economically active part of most cities.
And again, not the product of Interstates, but of urban tax policy.
King Gorilla said:
urban downtowns would be alot healthier if they weren't bi-sected by highways.
Building them also tended to destroy lower-class & black neighborhoods...:mad:
King Gorilla said:
The downtown office set, began to move off into the suburbs where the primarily patronized suburban businesses. The result of this destroyed much of the economic life within the inner city. This trend also helped lead to the development of the suburban office park which detached thousands of white collar jobs away from the traditional urban core and greatly demished the urban tax base.
As already noted, not really caused by the highways.;)

As for transit, there was racism, but there was also pure class issues in play. In Los Angeles, frex (& doubtless elsewhere), the trams served mainly poor neighborhoods; the rich(er...) could afford cars.:rolleyes: Cut public transit, you create economic ghettos (& reduce the exposure of the "rich" to the "poor", since the "poor" can't get to where the "rich" can see them: out of sight, out of mind, so forth). Which has poisonous social policy effects.:eek::rolleyes:
 
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