When you look at domestic surface modes, in the big-picture sense, America has an inadequate amount of railroad route miles of track.
While roadway pavement in the U.S. has historically increased, the amount of track has been cut back. Railroad route mileage has dropped from a high of 254,000 in 1916 to today’s roughly 140,000. Though that is a decrease of not quite half, it’s still significant.
Meanwhile, roadway lane-miles domestically outnumber railway route-miles by a factor of almost 30 to 1: There are approximately 4 million lane-miles of roadway pavement currently.
If there was more railway route mileage available, the potential for allocating more of that to passenger-train service is greater. This could mean a marked improvement in such service, if more steel, concrete and wood were dedicated to this cause or purpose. Perhaps such would result in greater efficiencies and fewer incidents for not only freight and passenger trains, but for motor vehicles operating on roadway pavement surface. There are presently roughly 280,000,000 registered motor vehicles in the U.S. There are locations all across the country where railroad track that was removed could be reinstalled in an effort to provide passenger trains exclusive use. This not only could allow for increased passenger-train efficiencies, but those affecting freight-train operations as well.
I believe this country took a wrong turn when it collectively decided to downsize railroading operations and increase the amount of space devoted to motor vehicle use.
Will the number of railroad route miles continue to shrink? Will the number of roadway lane miles continue to swell? I say that situation needs switching.