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