Talk:Rail transportation in the United States

Untitled
I do not believe the project Rail transport in the United States requires cleanup to meet Wikipedia's standards, and for this reason I am removing the Cleanup Template from the article.

Anthony 15:29, 11 August 2006 (UTC)

Too Concentrated on Passenger Rail
Like many other Wikipedia rail entries, this concentrates too much on passenger rail and not enough on freight rail (of which the US has much more usage).--Rotten 09:00, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

Agreed. The main reason to have a wiki article exclusively devoted to US rail Transportation should be to educate and inform on how truly unique it is.

1. Virtually the entire network is privately owned and operated. 2. The primary focus is to optimize the handling of freight. Which results in... 3. The most efficient land transportation system on the planet. 4. A network that hauls the highest percentage of total freight of any developed nation. And, 5. Does it all at a PROFIT making the North American Railroads virtually the only railroads in the world that actually pay taxes as opposed to receiving government subsidies.

Because the article shares the global bias that railroads should be mainly used to haul people, more than half of the article is spent defining what North American Railroads aren't rather than what they are. 1.229.130.160 (talk) 03:10, 4 December 2013 (UTC)

Missing Sections
I can think of two key subjects missing.

The first is innovation and technology. Global bias loves to make US railroads look antiquated backward because they abandoned their passenger operations. However, the global economy as it exists today wouldn't exist without the widespread standardized containerization that was the invention of an American trucking magnate and the incredible innovations related to it by US railroads. Doublestacking and articulated freight cars with capacities up to 20 TEUs for example. Others include innovations like air brakes and AAR couplers that made railroading much safer and made trains over 100 cars possible. In much of Europe, hook and loop coupling STILL requires workers to enter the killzone during coupling and limits tonnage and length. DPUs and MUing that allow trains of up to 200 cars and over 20,000 tons are also the result of US railroad and industry innovations. Other innovations: CTC (the grandfather of virtually all modern train control systems) and FREDs.

The second subject is freight car development. Why have a section on passenger cars and not freight cars? Especially since US railroads were responsible for developing much of the specialized car designs that the rest of the world eventually copied. Some examples of car designs would be the previously mentioned well cars, the 10-unit articulated spine car, the aluminum (rotary dumped) deep gondola, the 89 foot flat car, the 145 foot (44m) tri-level autoracks and the special flats adapted to haul Boeing 737 fuselages from Kansas to Washington.

If I can find acceptable references, I might make the additions myself.1.229.130.160 (talk) 08:52, 4 December 2013 (UTC) fuck you...

Regional speech
I'm going to change all instances of "railway" and the like to "railroad" to line up with standard US usage. Tmrobertson (talk) 03:38, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

Northern California
This region is one of if not the busiest passenger rail area on the west coast, but nothing is mentioned in the article. I'm going to try to find citations and implement what I know about Caltrain, the Bay Area Rapid Transit rail system, and about the Amtrak Capital Corridor route between Sacramento and San Francisco/San Jose. Jorkusmalorkus (talk) 20:13, 2 May 2008 (UTC)
 * Yes, the lead says too much about specific commuter lines, while the body says little and lacks links to important lines. Either the relevant lead words should move to a new, expanded section, or another article should discuss these matters in much more detail.  Jim.henderson (talk) 18:39, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

Gauge Standardization 19th century
No mention as far as I can see of the standarzation of gauge; apart from "narrow gauge lines" I believe that there were many non-standard wide-gauge lines particularly in the South. Mentioned under Cornelius Vanderbilt that he achieved standardization Hugo999 (talk) 07:43, 2 October 2008 (UTC)
 * This subject is also discussed at Broad gauge. 67.86.75.57 (talk) 03:50, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

Railroads and land
If possible, I think this article could stand to discuss more about the role of rail companies and homesteads. When I was researching Mussel Slough Tragedy part of the background was that Congress granted parcels of land to the rail companies in return for laying track. Also, see posters like File:Iowa and Nebraska lands10.jpg where a rail company is advertising land for sale. I don't have the time to do such research, but I think this is an aspect that is not represented well in this article.  howcheng  {chat} 00:10, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

Un-neccesary dis on Acela
A couple of things. #1: The idea that 240km/h "is not really fast enough to be called high speed" is ludicrous when you consider that both the UIC definition (200km/h on existing tracks) and the British/German definitions (HST/Pendolino/ICE) all classify the Acela as high-speed. #2: The average DC-Boston speed THROUGH New York is misleading, since New York is the center of the whole system and is more analogous to a Paris or Tokyo than an online stop. In those countries most trains don't even CONTINUE through (Japan in particular the tracks don't even connect, as routes south of Tokyo run on 50Hz while routes north run on 60Hz), so the average speed would be considerably slower if one counts the time to manually change trains.

I'm rewording it extensively and will watch this article for future edits. 68.91.122.189 (talk) 10:52, 3 April 2009 (UTC)

Obama additions
Should there not be another section added for the reforms of the train services proposed by President Obama? It's quite an important announcement for the future of railway transport. 92.12.191.216 (talk) 23:49, 10 May 2009 (UTC)

I would say the last 5 years have shown the folly of trying to declare partisan political policy as historically significant for political gain and legacy building. Especially considering Obama was only promoting policy and plans that had already seen decades of work by countless community organizers, rail promoters and even politicians from both sides of the aisle. In fact, one could argue Tommy Thompson has had more impact on promoting passenger rail through his support of Amtrak while serving on its Board of Directors (appointed by Bill Clinton) and his support of the Midwest Rail Initiative. If not for the work of folks like him, Obama's one sucess (the Lincoln Corridor) would never have been on the table. Of course, all of this doesn't even belong in an generic overview article on US Rail Transportation and probably violates most of the Wiki "guidelines." See the article "What Wikipedia is not."1.229.130.160 (talk) 04:20, 4 December 2013 (UTC)

US RR History needs help!
Weak as it is, the history section in this article is considerably better than the history it links to, History of rail transport in the United States (not to mention the really terrible History of rail transport in North America). I'd love to fix it, but I'm not that knowledgeable in this area. -- Mwanner | Talk 12:22, 29 June 2009 (UTC)
 * The "North America" article was merged as it was poorly-written US-centric rubbish with no info on the rest of North America, but History of rail transport in the United States does look like it would heavily overlap this article in content. Is there any clear line where the one article stops and the other begins? K7L (talk) 04:31, 18 August 2013 (UTC)

Rail: Wholesale deletion of "Socio-Economic Aspects of Passenger Train Travel" too drastic
Dear Mr. Rjensen: Please tell me exactly which of the below statements of fact you consider false or opinion. If any are such, perhaps removing them would be a better response than the wholesale deleting of half the article. If rather you simply find some of the facts inconvenient or disturbing, I believe the managers of Wikipedia will not like your removing such facts. Nor would you like having wholesale paragraphs unilaterally deleted from some of your many Wiki articles. The below piece treats several important aspects of passenger train travel. They are part and parcel of the history of rail in N. America, and I will not suffer their cavalier removal. Tell me which facts you feel are incorrect, be specific. I will then cite you authorities by book and page. If I am Sincerely, James Hannum
 * 1. It's all polemics, not a balanced statement. 2) it says very little about Trains in USA--it's more about advertising, taxation, & autos; 3) the photo is a fake (it's from Ukraine); 4) the sources are fake--they do not deal with Rail Transport in USA. Genuine sources on Rail transport (like those in the Further reading) are not used Rjensen (talk) 08:49, 17 March 2010 (UTC)

A politically laced topic like "Socio-Economic Aspects of Passenger Train" does not belong in an overview article like this. If you feel it belongs on wiki it should be a stand alone article. It was the right decision to remove it from this entry.1.229.130.160 (talk) 09:16, 4 December 2013 (UTC)

Removed highly subjective statement
Hello, I removed the following statement: "Similarly, the cumulative effects of decades of excessive government regulation brought the freight rail industry to the brink of ruin..." and replaced it with the content there now. I found it to be highly subjective and not fully proven in the material preceding or following it.

complaints
''Most rail transportation in the United States today consists of freight train shipments. Passenger service, once a large and vital part of the nation's passenger transportation network, now plays a limited role as compared to transportation patterns in many other countries.

The U.S. rail industry has experienced repeated convulsions due to changing U.S. economic needs and the rise of automobile, bus, and air transport. Many point to what is sometimes referred to as the Great American Streetcar Scandal of the 1940s, in which light rail trolley-based surface transit, once widespread in American cities, was largely dismantled.

The sole intercity passenger railroad in the continental United States today is Amtrak. Commuter rail systems exist in more than a dozen metropolitan areas, but these systems are not extensively interconnected, so commuter rail cannot be used alone to traverse the continent. Commuter systems have been proposed in approximately two dozen other cities, but interplays between various local-government administrative bottlenecks and ripple effects from the 2007–2012 global financial crisis have generally pushed such projects farther and farther in to a nebulous future point in time, or have even sometimes mothballed them entirely.''

This sounds like it was written by someone from TheAtlanticCities. I actually like that publication, but this has gone too far. I love trains and commuter rail as much as any transit advocate but please try and keep this article neutral. There are too many silly talking points in this introduction and it's sickening. I can only read snide, know-it-all density and transit oriented development comments so many times. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.82.77.166 (talk) 06:36, 20 February 2013 (UTC)


 * Agreed. One of the cited "sources" in the section on freight rail was not a factual article but an opinion piece opposing any increase in regulation of rail companies. It was used in this article to source a bizarre and blatantly promotional claim that US freight railways are "the best in the world". Wikipedia deals in facts, not opinions. The self-congratulatory, promotional text needs to go. I've removed the one instance but this whole article needs to be cleaned up to include just the facts. K7L (talk) 14:51, 15 August 2013 (UTC)

Well, as far as US Class I railroads being "the best in the world," there is more than just The Economist to back the claim. In fact, a 115 page report prepared in France by the International Union of Railways also makes the exact same claim. Their report shows how in almost every case, American Railroads not only outperform European freight rail systems, but often by factors of 4, 5 and sometimes even 10. Only a person who is locked into the idea that railroads' primary focus should be hauling people at the expense of freight capacity would tend to diminish these facts. Ultimately, which really makes more sense, more people on the rails and more trucks on the highways, or pushing as much freight onto railroads as we can and reducing the demand for highways.

http://www.uic.org/diomis/IMG/pdf/DIOMIS_Benchmarking_Intermodal_Rail_Transport_in_the_US_and_Europe.pdf 1.229.130.160 (talk) 09:31, 5 December 2013 (UTC)
 * Thanks to 1.229.130.160 for that excellent update. Rjensen (talk) 10:19, 5 December 2013 (UTC)

World War I
Not a word on the temporary nationalization of rail transport during World War I?!?!? Yikes!!! Carrite (talk) 19:09, 9 May 2013 (UTC)
 * This is covered in the more detailed article at History of rail transport in the United States. You could copy that section into this article, if you like. The history section of this article is only about half the length of the separate History article--and much of the instant section is taken up by an economic theory sub-section, which does not appear in the longer article. Caseyjonz (talk) 01:45, 10 May 2013 (UTC)

Racial segregation
There is a whole long history of racial discrimination in the US, about which the Interstate Commerce Commission did nothing to the point that it had earned the nickname "the supreme court of the Confederacy" before finally being forced by either the Kennedy administration or the courts to act. Why no mention of any of the apartheid era in US passenger rail? K7L (talk) 16:37, 15 August 2013 (UTC)

Fixing a dead link to a reference
I attempted to update the following reference as a student was seeking access to this resource:

Majewski, John (2006). "American Railroads and the Transformation of the Ante-bellum Economy." Accessed February 27, 2013. http://eh.net/node/2735

I found the updated link below and attempted to replace it:

http://eh.net/book_reviews/american-railroads-and-the-transformation-of-the-ante-bellum-economy/


 * Reference has been replaced. For the next time, see:Citing sources
 * --Aaron-Tripel (talk) 16:52, 6 May 2014 (UTC)

External links modified
Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just added archive links to 1 one external link on Rail transportation in the United States. Please take a moment to review my edit. If necessary, add after the link to keep me from modifying it. Alternatively, you can add to keep me off the page altogether. I made the following changes:
 * Added archive http://web.archive.org/web/20060902215734/http://www.ksg.harvard.edu:80/taubmancenter/pdfs/working_papers/fagan_vassallo_05_rail.pdf to http://www.ksg.harvard.edu/taubmancenter/pdfs/working_papers/fagan_vassallo_05_rail.pdf

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Cheers.—cyberbot II  Talk to my owner :Online 04:19, 21 March 2016 (UTC)

Assessment comment
Substituted at 03:50, 30 April 2016 (UTC)

Citations needed
This article can really use some citations... — Preceding unsigned comment added by 37.142.120.66 (talk) 12:58, 23 January 2017 (UTC) e.g. "Freight rail working with passenger rail" — Preceding unsigned comment added by 37.142.120.66 (talk) 13:01, 23 January 2017 (UTC)

Requested move 3 June 2021
Rail transportation in the United States → Rail transport in the United States – consistency with other pages, e.g. Rail transport in Switzerland or Rail transport in Myanmar  dud  hhr  Contribs 21:19, 3 June 2021 (UTC)
 * Oppose. In the USA the preferred term in the reliable sources is "transportation." See 1) major journals such as  Aeromedical transportation, Transportation Research ; (2) book titles like Power Moves: Transportation, Politics, and Development in Houston (University of Texas Press, 2017). (3) and scholarly articles such as Schneider, "The Three Regimes of American Transportation Policy." in The Oxford Handbook of American Political History(2020). Rjensen (talk) 21:36, 3 June 2021 (UTC)


 * Oppose per MOS:TIES. A US topic should use US usage, consistency with other articles isn't necessarily expected, and "transportation" is more common in American usage.  SnowFire (talk) 21:52, 3 June 2021 (UTC)

Article issues and assessment

 * This article has a multitude of issues that includes an enormous amount of unsourced material which likely includes content that may have slipped in and found after references. There is no way to check possible sources, references, external links, and the "long list" of "Further reading" (which could probably benefit from a review) to verify and source the unsourced material. It would seem the article "improvements" are going backward.
 * There are section tags including "This section has "multiple issues": that include "does not cite any sources" and "needs expansion" (both 2015),  another tag. This section "needs additional citations for verification" (2020), and, two inline "citation" needed" tags dated 2017 and 2020.
 * These issues go against the B-class criteria (#1): The article is suitably referenced, with inline citations. It has reliable sources, and any important or controversial material which is likely to be challenged is cited. Controversy was declared by the tags. The timeframe to avoid objections, and allow other editors time to provide sources, likely expired long ago.


 * Possible solutions:
 * 1)- find sources for material.
 * 2)- remove unsourced material that may or may not affect the assessment
 * 3)- reassess the article.
 * Note: WP:BURDEN states: Any material lacking an inline citation to a reliable source that directly supports the material may be removed and should not be restored without an inline citation to a reliable source. because, The burden to demonstrate verifiability lies with the editor who adds or restores material.
 * The lead is inadequate for article size. Together these current issues would justify trimming the article back but I am not sure this could be accomlished without affecting the assessment. Maybe someone else could check it out with recommendations. --  Otr500 (talk) 20:06, 22 October 2021 (UTC)
 * For the moment, I would recommend we change the rating to C, and then work on correcting the issues. I'm willing to work on improving the article over the next few days. Once the issues with the article are resolved, it only would take a few seconds to change the rating back to B. Railroad related articles in general have many issues with unsourced material. I try to deal with it when I encounter it, but there's many many articles with the issues and only one of me.


 * I recently wrote Railroads in New England, a regional subset of this article. Some information from there might be of use here as well. Trainsandotherthings (talk) 20:15, 22 October 2021 (UTC)


 * I just took a quick look, and much of the unsourced material was added between 2007 and 2010, by editors who are long since inactive. I don't think we will be able to get any help from them. Trainsandotherthings (talk) 20:18, 22 October 2021 (UTC)
 * I wrote a new lead section, let me know your thoughts on it. Trainsandotherthings (talk) 20:46, 22 October 2021 (UTC)
 * WOW? On a quick read, it looks "pretty darn good". I didn't read to determine if the lead conforms to what is in the body of the article but with a C-rating it will be an improvement over one paragraph. --  Otr500 (talk) 22:58, 22 October 2021 (UTC)


 * I reassessed to C-class as I agree. I realize anyone could have just performed the action but discussion can sometimes (this is certainly a case in point) lead to improvements. --  Otr500 (talk) 23:04, 22 October 2021 (UTC)
 * "many many articles with the issues and only one of me". I had several railroad/railway books that were destroyed by fire. Economics, some health issues, 3 hurricanes in around 17 months, and a pandemic, meant I have never replaced them. I am certainly slower than you but am not bad at researching. So you will know, I do not like just removing unsourced material (unless it is clear OR or violates BLP policy) so I try to find sources first. I also do not care for career tags either so have to balance things out. On lessor class articles I will be bolder. Since I am "new to the project" I will be browsing around. If I note issues that may be serious I may also either drop you a line or list it at the project. If you want you can simply reply with what you like (I will know you saw it) and I will put it on a list of "things to do". My Wikipedia bucket list might be close to the size of the Grand Canyon. Thanks, --  Otr500 (talk) 23:23, 22 October 2021 (UTC)

Citation 38 does not support the claim made in the text
"...but a major lawsuit delayed the project and as of February 2023 there are no signs of construction activity."

this implies that the lawsuit is causing the delay but when reading the source it shows that the lawsuit is because nothing is happening on the land. That does in fact corroborate the claim "...as of February 2023 there are no signs of construction activity" but a bit dubious in my opinion PissAngle (talk) 14:12, 6 March 2023 (UTC)