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0 pointsEisenstein2y ago0 comments

> And quite a few industrialised countries around the world are building more rail lines.

Can you expound on this?

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3 comments · 1 top-level

eru2y ago· 2 in thread

My own adopted home of Singapore is highly industrialised, and building more rail lines. China is reasonably industrialised and building more rail lines. Spain is building more, etc.

You can do some web searches. Alas, it's a bit hard, because Google seems to insists that I am only interested in new _high-speed_ rail lines, instead of all new rail lines. But if you are willing to only look at those, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proposed_high-speed_rail_by_co... has a list.

throwaway20372y ago

The original post suggested to build more passenger rails to reduce burden upon freight rails. Does Singapore move any freight by rail?

Also, the original post wrote:

> the US built it's current freight network in a comparatively low tech era, yet I doubt it could do it again in the current era due to funding and beauracracy.

My reply was specific to that. Saying: The original post says little because _no_ highly industrialised nation could build a freight network from scratch given current land and noise constraints.

eru2y ago

> Does Singapore move any freight by rail?

Not as far as I know.

However, if you can build any rail at all, you can build freight rail, too.

It's mostly in the US that freight rail is noisier than passenger rail. As explained in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39023890

If you are building new freight rail in your country, you can avoid problems (1) and (2) from that comment. Freight rail doesn't take more land than other rail (if anything, it has lower requirements, because lower speeds mean tighter curves are possible). And freight rail doesn't have to be noisier than passenger rail.

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