solarpunk memes

Trains benefit people, those other things benefit billionaires.

California high speed rail was something my parents voted on when I was a child.

I had this friend who was a year under me in school. Her kid voted for it too.

It still doesn't exist. California can't build something as modern and cutting edge as a train.

If you want to build a train in empty space I'm sure you could get that approved pretty quickly. Of course, it'd be useless. The biggest problem with trains is getting land for it since they are most useful where there's a lot of people.

I hate these data centers and flock cameras as much as the next guy, but they aren't really comparable. Flock cameras don't even take up much space and they are put up on land the government already has. It's like asking why it's so easy to put stop lights.

Sorry, I'm Mr Buzzkill.

If you'll allow me to nerd out a little. I love trains as much as the next guy. I also love arriving at the next station alive. Every single time. And i also want my grandchild to arrive at the station Alive. Every single time.

But by the time we start to actually lay down the tracks, a whole lot of work has already been done. Ground has to be sampled along the way. The ground has to be prepared, large boulders has to be cut/blown apart. Engineers and geologist must have had time to calculate that the ground will hold, perhaps certain areas needs to be reinforced more than others The ground has to be owned by an entity that can authorise the use of it.

Signal cables has to be drawn. There has to be space for trains to pass eachother. And then there are probably solutions to things we didn't even know was a problem.

What's my point? Of course trains take a lot longer than setting up a bunch of cameras on poles... I'd be more concerned if it was the opposite. And yes, I'm hillarious at parties.

All of that is correct however I am also currently watching my government fail to be able to construct a train station along an existing track. So far the process has been going on for about six years and no one has so much has dug a hole yet. It's barely even a construction project, they just need to pour some concrete into a rectangle and then add some stairs and call it a station. But apparently even that requires six years worth of committees.

Everyone is talking about obtaining land and eminent domain and whatnot. ..We have streets. 🤷

Flock cams don't even need a power connection because they run on solar+battery, and wireless data connection. You can put one practically everywhere without any preparation - even the post it sits on is pretty optional, could use cable binders to hang them on a tree.

Data centers often get built where land is cheap, and at least in the US there is a (horrifying and stupid) trend to design them to run off-grid with gas turbines, so you don't even need utilities there, just data connections that you can run underground.

Trains take up a lot of space, and if you want them to be useful, they need to be where the population density is high enough. That means high cost for land, often buying up big amounts of smaller lots where you have to work something out with a multitude of land owners who might not want to part with their - often prime location, because it's in the city - land. A single land owner not selling their land can grind a project like this to a halt, at least if there is hesitancy using eminent domain, which is a crowbar approach and leads to resistance to your project.

Don't get me wrong, i really think the USA would benefit greatly from modernizing and expanding their rail network! But realistically, refitting a train line into a city center where you preferably want the station to be is a hard task, doubly hard if you want to actually pass through the city because its not the head end of the line - it doubles the land acquisition woes. A possibility would be going underground, but underground construction is an expensive endeavor, and the US would probably need to get outside expertise from Switzerland or Austria where we construct tunnels through mountains and below cities on the regular to make it work.

You're noticing a bit too well citizen....

So what would happen if I went to Home Depot and rented one of their trucks, added full accident coverage, and then immediately crashed into and knocked over, one of the lamp posts with the flock cameras on it?

I am all for calling out privacy-invading cameras but comparing the putting up of small wireless cameras on already existing poles with prepping existing rails for high speed train connections, not to speak of actually buying the trains and maintaining them properly. The cameras have no risks of causing accidents either, aside from people accidentally cutting them down (as one does). So the comparison feels pretty silly to me.

Now compare it to something like building another 3 lanes on a highway, thats more appropriate.

Well of course. Billionaires are motivated to keep an eye on their livestock, but aren't motivated to make sure their livestock has a good quality of life. I mean how else can they hunt down a woman trying to have an abortion? That's their future worker after all....

Billionaires hate trains.

There’s a really weird misconception about Amtrak and U.S. railroads.

Amtrak is not some ordinary private corporation. It is a federally chartered corporation, with the federal government as its controlling shareholder. Its board is largely made up of presidential appointees who require Senate confirmation. So, functionally, Amtrak is a government-controlled corporation that happens to operate as a for-profit company.

The stranger part is the infrastructure underneath it.

The vast majority of Amtrak’s route mileage runs on tracks owned by private freight railroads. Those freight railroads are enormously important to the U.S. economy, but the industry is also highly consolidated. A handful of Class I railroads control enormous regional networks, creating what is essentially a series of geographic monopolies/oligopolies. Amtrak itself says 97% of its route-miles operate over tracks owned by other railroads.

So you end up with this bizarre situation where the federal government owns and controls the country's principal intercity passenger railroad, but much of the physical railroad infrastructure it depends on is privately owned.

And expanding passenger rail isn't as simple as "just build more trains." You need track capacity, signaling, bridges, grade crossings, stations, dispatching capacity, maintenance facilities, etc. In many places, you're trying to add passenger service to infrastructure that is already being used by private freight companies. Amtrak frequently doesn't even control dispatching on the tracks it operates over.

That's why the U.S. rail situation is so strange. We have an enormous private freight-rail system that is absolutely critical to the economy, a federally controlled passenger railroad, and an infrastructure network that has been extraordinarily difficult and expensive to expand and modernize.

It's not simply "the government sucks at trains" or "private companies suck at trains." The institutional arrangement itself is bizarre. The U.S. essentially split passenger and freight rail into two different systems while leaving much of the underlying infrastructure in private hands.

And then everyone wonders why building modern passenger rail is so damn difficult.

In America, yeah. Shit country!

I mean... yeah. Trains have had a lot of articulate obstacles out in their place. And it goes without saying that Flock and AI datacenters can fuck right off

But trains also are much, much more complicated projects. A flock camera needs like 4 square get of space next to the road that's already in the ROW, and data centers are built a single piece of land.

Trains, and especially high-speed trains require securing of land and grade separation/fencing that makes their installation very difficult from an engineering and property-ownership stance.

Roads can just be routed between property lines as much as possible because cars can make pretty sharp turns. High-speed trains have to cut properties in half, build off grade, and put up a fence.

Imagine you're a farmer and they put a trail line android your property. Now to get between the house and the barn that was 100 yards away you have to travel 2 miles down the track to the nearest crossing, so you've made a 200 yards round to 8 miles. Yeah, you'll get paid"fair market value" for the 50-ft wide strip of land their treasure from you, but with half your land cut off from the rest the damages are much higher.

You don't want that, so you sue to stop it. And so do thousands of other property owners in the same situation. And the business owners of the roasts that will be bypassed, cut off, or simply used less. And the cities and counties who now have their existing transportation infrastructure fucked.

It's a huge impact, and even if it's a net good, there's severe collateral damage and those imitated will fight to stop it.

The time to secure rail rights was 150 years ago. And that's what they did and why that's where pretty much where all the rails are.

Just put the datacentres on trains