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No functioning rail system
Has largest railroad network in the world
Pick one or specify you mean passenger rail.
Captain Literal! Thank goodness you've come!
Lmao I don't know why, but this fucking killed me
Just because you have a big country doesn't mean you can claim most functioning rail system. USA has the most km of track, but if you adjust to per capita it's 20th. That is a better judge
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_rail_transport_network_size
Y'all can down vote me all you want but it still won't change the fact the United States has a functioning railroad system outside of passenger service. I only mention network size because it was the easiest metric to pull up. But the point is whatever metric you use outside of passenger service the US is in the top three countries which is something not possible unless you have a functioning railroad system.
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The US is third for tonnes per kilometer.[1]
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The US is second for tonnes hauled per year.[2]
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The US moves more intermodal containers by rail then all of Europe combined. [3]
It might seem like the United States doesn't know how to run trains but in reality we have one of the best freight networks out there.
I'd also like to add that on the passenger side of things the US is really trying to improve but the investments haven't had time to come to fruition yet. Amtrak has 768 siemens venture cars and 175 ALC-42 locomotives on order so it can expand to 39 new routes [4]. There's been a significant amount of funding into high speed rails for other corridors outside of the northeast corridor [5].
the United States has a functioning railroad system outside of passenger service
"We have a functioning car if you ignore that the gas pedal doesn't work!"
Passenger rail is part of our rail system AND the topic of OP for anyone who can read. Its terribleness is in many ways the freight systems fault (at least Amtrak specifically) so it absolutely loses points on the functional scale since usually things that function well don't actively damage other related things
Feels like there's been too many catastrophic accidents to call it functional, maybe that's just me
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Just because it’s large doesn’t mean it’s functioning. Russia has a lot of roads, but functioning would be a strong word for what state they’re in.
From which less than 1% is electrified and don't even mention high speed networks
No kidding. The fact that we never electrified any of it kind of shows where our priorities lie. It was a dumb idea even before climate change to run our entire rail system on wasteful diesel generators carried by the damn train instead of power plants. Now folks want to use batteries and fucking hydrogen, when we've had the solution for more efficient trains forever.
Oh it's worse than that. Much of the Milwaukee's main line was electrified - over 600 miles worth - and the electrification was removed in favor of running diesels.
Line go up
Dump truck? Nah, this ass is a freight container