Caltrain owns its tracks between San Francisco and San Jose, but operates on UPRR track between San Jose and Gilroy. Unlike the interstate highway or federal aviation systems, the United States has invested comparatively little in our national rail infrastructure. For example, public entities cannot exercise powers of eminent domain on the freight railroads to gain use of their property, even if its for the public good.
Due to poor infrastructure and extremely heavy congestion on some routes, because the volume of goods that our country imports from places like China has increased some 10fold in the past several years. They have little incentive to maintain the quality of the tracks to the level that good passenger service requires. Its unsafe for passenger trains to travel at highspeed on poorquality track, so passenger trains have to slow down in places where track has only been maintained only to levels acceptable for freight. Underinvestment and vulnerable system.
Due to poor infrastructure and extremely heavy congestion on some routes, because the volume of goods that our country imports from places like China has increased some 10fold in the past several years. When freight company owns the track, passenger service can suffer for the following reasonsWear and Tear. Freight trains loaded with cargo are extremely heavymany times heavier than passenger trainsand they rumble along much more slowly than passenger trains. An overloaded system.
An overloaded system. Public entities have very little leverage over the freight railroad companies, and must generally agree to pay very large sums of money to fix up or build new tracks on railroad property in exchange for permission to run additional service on tracks owned by the railroad.
Remember that UPRR makes lot more money from the freight train than from the passenger train although some passenger agencies have worked out financial incentives to UPRR to allow passenger trains to proceed on schedule. Public has little leverage. When something breaks, it can take them several hours to to the site of the failure and fix it. If it happens to break along singletrack section, it can prevent passenger train from proceeding for many hours.
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