A bridge that crosses the Yellowstone River in Montana collapsed, plunging a freight train carrying hot asphalt and molten sulfur into the rushing water below. No injuries were reported. Officials shut down drinking water intakes downstream while they evaluated the danger from the accident Saturday morning. Railroad crews were at the scene near the town of Columbus, about 40 miles west of Billings. The river was swollen with recent heavy rains although it is unclear whether that contributed to the bridge collapse. The Yellowstone saw record flooding in 2022 that caused extensive damage to Yellowstone National Park and adjacent towns in Montana.
We’ve been warning about dangerous infrastructure for years now. It’ll only get worse until we start building for the next millennium.
Sure, and that future likely involves a lot of trains.
I want super high speed rail instead of airplanes. I want regular high speed rail instead of highways. I want medium speed rail instead of roads. And so on. The technology is there, and we already have the land for most of it, we just need to stop building so many roads and actually build solid rail infrastructure.
Agreed.
I live in the Bay Area and because of my anxiety I can’t drive, but I can get to most places I need to be by BART/light rail.
it’s just one mode of transportation. In Japan also have a comprehensive bus system as well as small towns you can only get by car which rail trains use to service in the 1900s.
People will still have cars. We’ll still have roads and their big dick trucks. I don’t understand how this is a bad idea. LA to Vegas high speed would have been amazing. I lived in oak hills by the 15 seeing the traffic and how many people die on the pass due to car accidents was just horrifying.
I’d rather fly.
Sure, that should be an option too!
If you visit Europe or Japan, you’ll find that trains and airplanes both exist, and both are popular and inexpensive. That’s what I’d like to see happen elsewhere in the world as well, rely less on personal vehicles and more on mass transit, though preserve each as an option.
Removed by mod
No, nothing has “infested” Lemmy. It’s just that many people understand, that rails are much more efficient than roads and that individual traffic on large scale has no future. At least if you want our future to be survivable.
Sure, we can absolutely have both, we should just be preferring mass transit to personal transit for populated areas.
In my area, we have:
We’ve been having more traffic recently, so what’s the state-wide transportation system’s decision? Delay expansion of rail and expand the highway.
What we should instead be doing is:
Transit will never fully replace personal vehicles, but it can drastically reduce the need for driving within urban and suburban areas. Rail lines are a lot cheaper to maintain than roads, and trains can carry a lot more people than cars. In other words, if we can get people to use trains more than cars, we can reduce our spending on transportation infrastructure.
We should absolutely keep and improve our existing highway infrastructure, but we should also be phasing out a lot of our road infrastructure in densely populated areas in favor of mass transit options that move people more efficiently.
I agree with you! Fuckcars takes it to such an extreme I find it very very difficult to side with them. Cars have their uses
I guess we’re fucked then
Yeah, I agree. It’s not hard to build infrastructure that lasts forever, it’s just no one wants to pay for it.
I would gladly pay for it. Unfortunately most of us that would gladly pay for it can’t afford to pay for it. And the people that could afford to pay for it don’t get rich by spending their own money. They want everyone else to spend their money on it so they can use it for free.
What is the reason why no one wants pay for it?
To build that infrastructure, an increase in taxes will be needed. The middle and lower tax brackets can’t afford any additional taxes at this time, so that leaves corporations and the upper tax brackets that will need to foot the bill. They don’t want that, so they pay to have campaigns of ignorance blasted at the masses to induce fear of any tax reform.
At the end of the day, nothing gets fixed and the wealthy keep their money.
Or things get fixed at 10x what the actual costs should be because the people who award the contract are paid with part of that excess and it helps them keep the seat that allows them to continue funneling money.
Plus, why build anything properly when you can build it shit and (a) get paid the same anyway or (b) keep getting paid indefinitely to come back and finish the job?