Is it sabotage?
Is it confirmation bias - ie we pay attention and assign meaning to something that normally happen.
I don’t know.
Railroads pay property taxes on the railways. Any seldom used rails will be ripped out, rather than left idle, in order to reduce the tax burden.
Double track will also be ripped up to single track in order to reduce the tax burden.
One thing Connecticut did right was railbanking abandoned railroads. They own the right of way and some of the state owned lines are used for freight (Cental New England) - or tourist train (Valley Railroad) or both (Naugatuck Railroad).
“What is Happening to Rail in the USA?”
Same thing that’s happening to everything else in the country...crapified by democrats.
What’s happening? ... it’s the Democrats putting a queer in charges of transportation and him not taking enough time from his maternal duties and bashing conservatives to fix any rail problems.
Maybe Xi bought more land?.
Has to do with where choo-choo go.
When that track goes through Rock Ridge, the land will be worth millions!
My theory is, and has been for decades, is that rail cannot and never will be able to compete against public roadways.
Rail has to build and maintain its tracks and right of way from within.
Trucks travel on taxpayer funded roadways.
Americans like to have a certain amount of jealousy for European and Asian rail passenger transit systems. However, if you go over there, you’ll find them highly jealous of our freight systems.
Nobody does freight like the US...
What you’re seeing is a result of the efficiencies our freight systems have undertaken. It’s called intermodal.
Container ships come to ports, then highly automated systems select containers and place them onto rail flatbeds. These trains then travel to rail hubs along the network. These hubs have been consolidated by region and metro. At those depots, the automated systems hoist the containers onto truck flatbeds, where they continue to a regional distribution hub. There, they are offloaded to local retail or commercial delivery vehicles for dissemination.
Because of this efficient, pared-down system, there is no longer a need for many freight rail lines. They are becoming redundant to the system.
The logistics are amazing. And to state again, NOBODY does freight like the United States...
Are you talking about rail in the US, or just in your spot in IN?