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380kmh's profile
Haunted Forrest 🌲
Haunted Forrest 🌲
Haunted Forrest  🌲
@380kmh

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Haunted Forrest  🌲

@380kmh

#TrainTwitter - trains & train stations - passionate opinions on public transit & civic design - transit bureacrat, but all views here are my own

Pioneer Valley
patreon.com/380kmh
Joined March 2011

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    1. Haunted Forrest  🌲‏ @380kmh 30 Oct 2016
      Replying to @380kmh

      The functions of “connection” and “station” were divorced—connected tracks tended to be used for through service but weren’t sites of stops

      1 reply 0 retweets 1 like
    2. Haunted Forrest  🌲‏ @380kmh 30 Oct 2016
      Replying to @380kmh

      Why? Railways in the USA were optimized for freight traffic—you could make money from freight with less investment than passengers needed

      1 reply 0 retweets 3 likes
    3. Haunted Forrest  🌲‏ @380kmh 30 Oct 2016
      Replying to @380kmh

      A given line might see several dozen freight trains per day, but only one or two passenger trains per direction

      1 reply 0 retweets 2 likes
    4. Haunted Forrest  🌲‏ @380kmh 30 Oct 2016
      Replying to @380kmh

      So, LONG BEFORE cars were invented, travel by train—faster, admittedly, than walking or horse—was slow, involving long layovers at transfers

      1 reply 0 retweets 3 likes
    5. Haunted Forrest  🌲‏ @380kmh 30 Oct 2016
      Replying to @380kmh

      In other countries, passenger rail was more extensively developed—more frequent service, transfer points as stations, etc

      1 reply 0 retweets 2 likes
    6. Haunted Forrest  🌲‏ @380kmh 30 Oct 2016
      Replying to @380kmh

      In the USA, the shortcomings of passenger service on main line rail were so drastic that an entire parallel rail network grew—“interurbans”

      1 reply 0 retweets 2 likes
    7. Haunted Forrest  🌲‏ @380kmh 30 Oct 2016
      Replying to @380kmh

      These were analogous to modern-day private railways in Japan; development companies speculating on land accessed by their lines

      1 reply 0 retweets 1 like
    8. Haunted Forrest  🌲‏ @380kmh 30 Oct 2016
      Replying to @380kmh

      But Japan’s “interurbans” were well-integrated with main lines, often sharing terminals, etc. In USA, this was rare.

      1 reply 0 retweets 1 like
    9. Haunted Forrest  🌲‏ @380kmh 30 Oct 2016
      Replying to @380kmh

      The interurbans, which often used the same public ROWs as horses and carts, were crowded out by cars; replaced with buses and abandoned

      1 reply 0 retweets 1 like
    10. Haunted Forrest  🌲‏ @380kmh 30 Oct 2016
      Replying to @380kmh

      The second point is important too, though—the cultural habit of making streets deliberately wide, and of spacing out buildings

      1 reply 0 retweets 1 like
      Haunted Forrest  🌲‏ @380kmh 30 Oct 2016

      These habits were not present in Colonial America, by and large, and didn’t become common until the 19th century—but they predated cars

      3:47 PM - 30 Oct 2016
      • 1 Like
      • vague & candid
      1 reply 0 retweets 1 like
        1. New conversation
        2. Haunted Forrest  🌲‏ @380kmh 30 Oct 2016
          Replying to @380kmh

          The advent of steam power and the industrial revolution are probably the culprits—two reasons for this

          1 reply 0 retweets 1 like
        3. Haunted Forrest  🌲‏ @380kmh 30 Oct 2016
          Replying to @380kmh

          On the one hand, city industry was now largely a coal-fueled endeavor, and air quality diminished in urbanized areas

          1 reply 0 retweets 0 likes
        4. Haunted Forrest  🌲‏ @380kmh 30 Oct 2016
          Replying to @380kmh

          On the other hand, ideas of standardization & master planning were getting fashionable—applying, even overapplying, the lessons of factories

          1 reply 0 retweets 0 likes
        5. Haunted Forrest  🌲‏ @380kmh 30 Oct 2016
          Replying to @380kmh

          So one way or another, it became common for new development to occur in large strokes, instead of incrementally…

          1 reply 0 retweets 0 likes
        6. Haunted Forrest  🌲‏ @380kmh 30 Oct 2016
          Replying to @380kmh

          …an entire neighborhood at a time, even—every street planned in advance, with uniform width instead of hierarchical width

          1 reply 0 retweets 0 likes
        7. Haunted Forrest  🌲‏ @380kmh 30 Oct 2016
          Replying to @380kmh

          Pre-industrial revolution, streets were more or less just the residual space between buildings: wide when needed, narrow otherwise

          1 reply 0 retweets 0 likes
        8. Haunted Forrest  🌲‏ @380kmh 30 Oct 2016
          Replying to @380kmh

          It should be pointed out that widening streets was not exclusive to the USA—European countries tried it at the same time, pre-automobile

          1 reply 0 retweets 0 likes
        9. Haunted Forrest  🌲‏ @380kmh 30 Oct 2016
          Replying to @380kmh

          Haussmann’s work in Paris is the most famous example, but this tendency was most widespread in England and her colonies

          1 reply 0 retweets 0 likes
        10. Haunted Forrest  🌲‏ @380kmh 30 Oct 2016
          Replying to @380kmh

          Japan industrialized later than Europe and missed this cultural trend—even in Europe, it never became common (except in the Anglosphere)

          1 reply 0 retweets 0 likes
        11. Haunted Forrest  🌲‏ @380kmh 30 Oct 2016
          Replying to @380kmh

          Consequently, when Japanese cities modernized, they kept their narrow streets—even long after they came to dominate the car industry

          1 reply 0 retweets 0 likes
        12. Haunted Forrest  🌲‏ @380kmh 30 Oct 2016
          Replying to @380kmh

          In other words—wide streets are an aesthetic choice that predate the car, not something made necessary *by* the car

          1 reply 0 retweets 0 likes
        13. Haunted Forrest  🌲‏ @380kmh 30 Oct 2016
          Replying to @380kmh

          Since the USA experience most of its development during and after the industrial revolution, we have little experience with walkable cities

          1 reply 0 retweets 1 like
        14. Haunted Forrest  🌲‏ @380kmh 30 Oct 2016
          Replying to @380kmh

          And because our railways were optimized for freight—even tho in other countries, private railways in the 19th cent optimized for riders…

          1 reply 0 retweets 0 likes
        15. Haunted Forrest  🌲‏ @380kmh 30 Oct 2016
          Replying to @380kmh

          …our railways were ineffective for passenger travel—Americans *needed* cars to be able to travel pragmatically

          1 reply 0 retweets 1 like
        16. Haunted Forrest  🌲‏ @380kmh 30 Oct 2016
          Replying to @380kmh

          Postscript: I think part of the reason our railways were optimized away from riders was due to an odd sense of “competition”

          2 replies 0 retweets 1 like
        17. Haunted Forrest  🌲‏ @380kmh 30 Oct 2016
          Replying to @380kmh

          That is, private railways weren’t willing to expand their ridership in a way that’d significantly expand ridership on another railway too

          1 reply 0 retweets 1 like
        18. Haunted Forrest  🌲‏ @380kmh 30 Oct 2016
          Replying to @380kmh

          When you make it easy for passengers to switch between railway companies, BOTH companies can see ridership growth

          1 reply 0 retweets 0 likes
        19. Haunted Forrest  🌲‏ @380kmh 30 Oct 2016
          Replying to @380kmh

          Because all the stops on *your* line can now connect people to that many new destinations; many more trips become possible

          1 reply 0 retweets 0 likes
        20. Haunted Forrest  🌲‏ @380kmh 30 Oct 2016
          Replying to @380kmh

          And people will still use your railway to get to the point of transfer—this applies to both (or more) companies that intersect

          1 reply 0 retweets 0 likes
        21. Haunted Forrest  🌲‏ @380kmh 30 Oct 2016
          Replying to @380kmh

          This is true for passengers but not freight, because freight packages don’t get off one train and onto another…

          1 reply 0 retweets 0 likes
        22. Haunted Forrest  🌲‏ @380kmh 30 Oct 2016
          Replying to @380kmh

          For freight to switch from 1 company to another, the actual tracks must connect—passengers just need to be able to use one station for both

          1 reply 0 retweets 0 likes
        23. Haunted Forrest  🌲‏ @380kmh 30 Oct 2016
          Replying to @380kmh

          So, in the US, rail companies tended to locate their *junctions* outside the center of town, in industrial areas

          1 reply 0 retweets 1 like
        24. Haunted Forrest  🌲‏ @380kmh 30 Oct 2016
          Replying to @380kmh

          While locating their *stations* closer to businesses and residences

          1 reply 0 retweets 1 like
        25. Haunted Forrest  🌲‏ @380kmh 30 Oct 2016
          Replying to @380kmh

          There is money to make in passenger service, but *only if people can easily transfer between lines*

          1 reply 0 retweets 1 like
        26. Haunted Forrest  🌲‏ @380kmh 30 Oct 2016
          Replying to @380kmh

          Otherwise you do not have a rail NETWORK, you only have a collection of individual rail LINES

          1 reply 0 retweets 2 likes
        27. Haunted Forrest  🌲‏ @380kmh 30 Oct 2016
          Replying to @380kmh

          So. All this said, is there any hope for rail in the USA in the future? Sure, but with important caveats…

          1 reply 0 retweets 0 likes
        28. Haunted Forrest  🌲‏ @380kmh 30 Oct 2016
          Replying to @380kmh

          The first, most important caveat is that creating new service must start small, where it makes the MOST sense, and build out from there

          1 reply 0 retweets 0 likes
        29. Haunted Forrest  🌲‏ @380kmh 30 Oct 2016
          Replying to @380kmh

          This is why I concentrate exclusively on New England. There is a viable starting point (Boston), and a modest scope for growth…

          1 reply 0 retweets 1 like
        30. Haunted Forrest  🌲‏ @380kmh 30 Oct 2016
          Replying to @380kmh

          …so I don’t get distracted in what sort of rail connections will work in, say, rural Arkansas. I focus on the network *centered in Boston*

          1 reply 0 retweets 0 likes
        31. Haunted Forrest  🌲‏ @380kmh 30 Oct 2016
          Replying to @380kmh

          Second big caveat—it won’t work if past mistakes are repeated. Optimize for passengers if you want passenger!

          1 reply 0 retweets 0 likes
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