A coalition of local officials from across the country are calling on Congress to oppose proposed legislation that will allow an increase in the length and weight of large trucks traveling on commercial highways.
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“Longer and heavier trucks would cause significantly more damage to our transportation infrastructure, costing us billions of dollars that local government budgets simply cannot afford, compromising the very routes that American motorists use every day.”
Yeah, they are pretty heavily used for anything that needs to go hub to hub on a ‘when it gets there’ schedule. However, I find it ironic that the majority of pro-train individuals complain heavily about cargo trains making the train system worse.
It’s not the cargo trains that make the system worse, it’s the prioritization of cargo over passenger rail along with lack of investment. If they spent even half the money on rail that they do on automobile roads we’d have one hell of a good rail system.
The highway system costs 200-400 billion dollars a year split between state and federal government.
Meanwhile Amtrak gets about 1.5 billion dollars from the federal government.
It’s pretty simple. More investment to build more robust and more connected lines. High traffic lines could be multiple rails wide, so faster passenger trains (which are time sensitive) can pass slower freight trains.
The issue with our rail infrastructure is that lines have been reduced over and over. Also, despite legally amtrak being given priority, they rarely do get it. Freight trains are often too long to be able to let them pass, so they are no longer legally required to get out of the way, because there isn’t an alternative for them.
Freight causes issues with the current system, but it is not required to cause issues. It only causes issues because we have chosen to not invest in improving things.