SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
Freight railroads generally have operated the same way for more than a century: They wait for cargo and leave when customers are ready. Now railroads want to run more like commercial airlines, where departure times are set. Factories, farms, mines or mills need to be ready or miss their trips.
Called "precision-scheduled railroading," or PSR, this new concept is cascading through the industry. Under pressure from Wall Street to improve performance, Norfolk Southern and other large U.S. freight carriers, including Union Pacific Corp. and Kansas City Southern, are trying to revamp their networks to use fewer trains and hold them to tighter schedules. The moves have sparked a stock rally that has added tens of billions of dollars to railroad values in the past six months as investors anticipate lower costs and higher profits.
Calling all Railroad Tycoons...
(Score: 3, Interesting) by canopic jug on Friday April 05 2019, @01:03PM (1 child)
I thought that was mainly because half the tracks had been pulled up so the transport became half duplex as it were instead of full duplex. That might not matter on certain stretches of track but in very busy areas it creates lots of problems. We're looking at just over 80 years since the conspirators Firestone and GM bought up the light rail [wikipedia.org] around the US and pulled it up. They, or their backers, have been trying to get the last of the passenger rail for decades and it was quite a while back that they pulled up about half the remaining tracks.
This change in rules to force freight to stick to a schedule is a shift away from that and towards the right direction, at least as far as passenger rail goes. However, there is still the issue of the missing tracks. Instead there is a push towards self-driving cars. Self-driving cars will make congestion worse [businessinsider.com], but the backers know that and want that, anything to distract from rail. However, the over population issues and climate change makes mass transit an essential activity to resume.
Money is not free speech. Elections should not be auctions.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by JoeMerchant on Friday April 05 2019, @02:24PM
There are so many bad analogies to choose from, let's start with: the Barbarians have invaded and Rome is burning, so we should focus on better acoustics in the amphitheater so more people can hear Nero play better.
🌻🌻 [google.com]