• HobbitFoot @thelemmy.club
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        7 months ago

        You need to run more trains, but a schedule will make it easier to hire qualified people to do so.

        A lot of what has made current freight rail shitty in the USA is that a lot of freight rail companies seem hyper fixated on only the most profitable routes at the exclusion of everything else. This has caused freight rail companies to adopt some really terrible labor practices, which has led to labor shortages.

        • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
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          7 months ago

          But how many trains is more trains? Because you’re talking about enough trains to make up for the loss of thousands upon thousands of trucks from the road. That sounds a hell of a lot more than, say, one train an hour. In fact, it sounds like people would be held up at crossings constantly.

            • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
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              7 months ago

              Why would it be a lot less? I just looked it up and there are 13.86 million trucks on the road in the US. How many cars would a train need to make up for that in a once-per-hour schedule over a 24-hour period?