In other words—wide streets are an aesthetic choice that predate the car, not something made necessary *by* the car
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
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So, in the US, rail companies tended to locate their *junctions* outside the center of town, in industrial areas
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While locating their *stations* closer to businesses and residences
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There is money to make in passenger service, but *only if people can easily transfer between lines*
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Otherwise you do not have a rail NETWORK, you only have a collection of individual rail LINES
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So. All this said, is there any hope for rail in the USA in the future? Sure, but with important caveats…
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The first, most important caveat is that creating new service must start small, where it makes the MOST sense, and build out from there
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This is why I concentrate exclusively on New England. There is a viable starting point (Boston), and a modest scope for growth…
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…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*
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Second big caveat—it won’t work if past mistakes are repeated. Optimize for passengers if you want passenger!
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As for the spread out aesthetic—this is the single largest obstacle. Narrow streets are largely *banned* in the USA, and even if legal…
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…nobody has any recent experience building them. Indeed, they tend to come into existence in the first place largely unplanned!
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The best that can be done here, I think, is to show Americans what narrow streets *actually look like,* this is where the internet is good
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Accounts like @IAmDavidBoxall and
@NathanNWE, among many others, tweet lots of beautiful examples—rather like I try to do with actual trains -
One thing to note--wherever passenger traffic in the USA *was* very busy, different companies consolidated their stations
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This is why so many larger cities and towns have a "Union Station," like the one here in Northampton
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So there are two additional advantages to focusing on New England: many large settlements from the colonial era, and better networking
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