this post was submitted on 04 Feb 2025
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You say that as if it's reasonable to have level grade crossings at all to begin with.
In other words, what you're complaining about isn't a problem with trains, but rather a problem with dipshit planners trying to cheap out and failing to properly fund trains.
Of course it's reasonable to have level train crossings, in a fucking flood zone!
Act like any of us wanna fucking die in a flooded tunnel, trying to evacuate from hurricane flood waters!
Shit, there's a reason we don't have basements here.
A) time to move if climate change has fucked your weather that bad.
B) you don't have to tunnel. You can elevate the track.
C) You can't elevate train tracks, at least not by much. Trains have to run almost completely level to the ground.
Get fucking real.
Uh, what? You absolutely can run trains on elevated tracks. Japan does it all the time. So do many other cities and countries. If you want to get real fancy, mag-lev runs almost exclusively on elevated tracks. Where did you get the impression that you can't elevate train tracks?
Guess you haven't kept up with 11foot8
http://11foot8.com/
Of course you can elevate trains, but it requires an extremely gradual slope. Trains are meant to be almost perfectly level with the ground, so it might take a mile of tracks to raise the elevation even a foot safely.
I'm not sure what your trying to argue here. Elevate rail lines already exist. It's not something theoretical that people think can be done, it already exists. The engineering problems have been solved. Google it if you don't believe me.
It's not about the engineering problems, it's about the financial and economic problems. Trains aren't meant to change elevation quickly, meaning they'd have to rip up a couple miles of train tracks both ways and build a train rail bridge to even start to make an elevated track.
See, trains can't go up and down random hills, they require mostly level tracks. And when they elevate the tracks, they gotta design in a mile or three of gradual slope tracks to keep everything safe.
For light rail, they usually don't bother trying to go up and down for every crossing, they just elevate the whole thing. Easier to move people up and down at the stations.
Light rail? What's the difference?
Where I'm at, the existing tracks are all freight rails, running through major industrial areas, for over 50 years, probably more.
I've never heard of 'light rail' before, and now you have me concerned, because they want to start using our freight rails for passenger trains soon..
So what the hell? What is a 'light rail'?
Light rail is just that: it's still trains, but they are orders of magnitude lighter, since all you are moving are people. After some quick Googling, freight trains can be a mile long and weigh 20,000 tons, while a light rail train may only consist of 5 cars, totalling somewhere around 200 tons. The track you need to support freight trains is very much overkill for public transit.
Now there are heavier public transit trains that are designed to run on existing freight rail lines, but when people talk about trains for public transit, it's usually light rail that they are thinking of. Unless they are talking about high speed trains, which also require their own dedicated tracks.
They're not planning on building new rails. Matter of fact, they're busy doing minor patches on the existing freight rails to dual-purpose them as passenger rails.
So they are cheaping out, doing the least amount possible while still being able to say they "did something". This is not what people are usually talking about when they advocate for trains as a public transit solution, but unfortunately, it's what we tend to get.
There's not much else they even can do, without bulldozing thousands of buildings to build new tracks and stations. In an extremely sensitive spot no less, they'd have to do demolition and reconstruction in the only entrance and exit to the major multi billion dollar manufacturing facility.
TL;DR - Their money talks, our ideas walk (or even drown, they don't care).
the 11 foot 8 bridge (which was recently raised to 12ft4in of clearance) was designed to car standard, not to train standard. it was also designed in the 1920s, when the standard for cars was lower. it has nothing to do with the grade trains are on.
I live next to a literal over-under bridge for freight trains where two tracks cross over eachother in order for freight yard operations to not block passenger rail.
Yes, it is totally possible to raise and lower the levels of train tracks, but it takes lots of logistics and a long path of gradual elevation change to arrange all that.
You're not really saying much by pointing out they raised 11foot8 to 12foot4, a whole whopping 8 inches. And it took them how long and how much money to do even that?
just pointing out that it's not fixed and it's not a good example anyway.
Okay, okay, I get it: you're a special snowflake and you'll spring whatever previously unmentioned random BS on us in order to move the goalposts to pretend your position -- which to be clear, is that some fucking dog is more important than proper public transit -- is somehow anything short of ridiculous.
But sure, I'll play along in good faith: FYI, getting rid of level grade crossings does not necessarily involve tunnels; bridges are a thing too. Therefore, your argument fails.
What histrionic excuse for your train hate are you going to come up with next?
You do realize that trains have to run along almost perfectly level ground right?
You do realize that the street can be the thing that changes elevation instead, right?
Street? You're funny!
I'm talking near two of the top ten industrial facilities in the United States, where trains run parallel to a major highway, road and rail structure is designed around the major highways, major water ways, and major high rise bridges.
They're not about to rebuild all that shit, because absolutely nothing that crosses the rails is called a silly street, they're all major highways, or at minimum major roads or bridges.
Sure, I already pointed out how you started out making a broad, sweeping generalization ('trains bad because noisy, in general'), then shifted the goalposts narrowing it to just train horns at level grade crossings, then just to level grade crossings in a flood zone. The fact that you continued to retreat to talking about next to a city park (in another branch of the discussion responding to somebody else), and now finally to talking about some particular singular site in your response to me, is utterly unsurprising.
Thank you for demonstrating my point about how you're arguing in bad faith.
No, trains can be good, but they shouldn't share the same rails between freights and passengers.
I can guarantee you they will not stop running freight on our rails, and I already know they're planning to share those same rails for passenger trains.
Now, how many train cars derailed over the past few years? While they wanna dual-purpose freight and passenger trains on our same worn out rails, where every couple weeks a broke down train has to literally park on the tracks, blocking all traffic?