>Invest 20T in roads
>results in 200T in economic activity
>Invest in 2T in trains
>Net loss of 1.5T but people with aspergers are happy they have gay trains to jerk off to

If you could fund such a thing privately like cars are funded privately then you might have a argument, but you can't because not only is there not a demand but it's wildly impractical for the vast majority of the country.

>>2019928
>roads don't do anything for society or the economy, but trains do!
This has to be bait.

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>>2019928
Mid-tier bait

Road are the most flexible transportation infrastructure and are often ultimately the cheapest and fastest way of moving the widest variety of things to and from the largest number of commonly used origin-destination pairs. This is why even for freight where the ton/mile cost of shipping by train is a fraction of the cost by truck, trucks still dominate the market. Flexibility is king and roads are some of the most useful infrastructure that you can build in terms of return on investment.

Other methods of transportation may be more efficient when measured using specific metrics but this falls apart when you look at the larger picture. The lack of flexibility inherent to systems which move people/freight in bulk necessitate compromises to just how many origin/destinations can be served and how often they can be served.

These compromises add costs, both tangible and intangible. For most commutes it will nearly always be faster and more convenient to drive than to take transit because your car leaves directly from your house exactly when you want to leave and goes directly to wherever you're wanting to go. Trains and busses don't.

Cars also give individuals core control over the quality of their commute. They can choose to have nicer seats in your car. You can choose to drive a somewhat longer but more pleasant route. You can also choose not to pick up a random screaming homeless man covered in his own shit. Choices are good.

>>2019950
Who are you quoting bro? Do you really not understand the concept of return on investment or are you just trolling.
>>2019944
Or do you actually believe this nonsense. Roads can't even pay for themselves.

>>2019952
>bait
You know it's possible to build tracks in 99.9% of the places roads are built right? If trains god half the money that the IHS did we would have saved trillions on gas and have the exact same flexibility.

>>2019960
>You know it's possible to build tracks in 99.9% of the places roads are built right?
Yes. So what?

>If trains god half the money that the IHS did we would have the exact same flexibility.
How?

>>2019962
Ask less stupid questions and you might get an answer

>>2019963
Not an argument.

>>2019964
You know trucks don't just drive into town and drop off your package, they all have to go to a unloading depot, which then gets sent to warehouses.
They have no flexibility advantage over trains and many disadvantages, there only advantage is the fact the roads existence and MAYBE less susceptible to terrorism. Still financial insanity to go with cars,

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>>2019962
You can also just run busses on the roads, that would make a lot more sense but still suffers from all the issues I listed which are limitations of mass transit.

There's a good reason you don't run train tracks to every house. Trains are track controlled vehicles. They have 1 dimension of freedom in their direction of travel whereas road vehicles have 2. Road vehicles can pass each other and turn onto different roads without requiring switches. Using witches also put a minimum safe distance between things running on the same track to allow time for the switch to move which limits vehicle throughput massively. Trains get around this by being large vehicles which run infrequently, compared to cars which are small vehicles which run frequently. Putting switches every dozen feet is mechanically complex and introduces about a million points of failure which would require an overwhelming amount of constant maintenance and be absurdly expensive for no benefit. Roads to not require moving parts to do the same thing better.

>>2019958
>Do you really not understand the concept of return on investment or are you just trolling.
Do YOU? Do you really think that trains provide benefits to society and economy but somehow roads don't?

>>2019965
>they all have to go to a unloading depot
So... they're just like trains

>You know trucks don't just drive into town and drop off your package, they all have to go to a unloading depot, which then gets sent to warehouses.
Trains are even less accessible to customers with the added problem of time and scheduling; trains are slower. Another problem is that railroads function as monopolies in some respects. If you build a facility served up UP, then UP service is all you're going to get. Don't like it? Use trucks - and countless former customers did just that.

>>2019967
The vast majority of roads literally don't and cost way more than they will ever be worth. And heavily used roads have much higher maintenance costs offsetting their value.
There is a reason roads go to shit in most places the second the roads stop getting subsidized.
Train tracks in comparison are literally 100x cheaper to maintain after they are built
>>2019968
>so they are just like trains
exactly, but cost way more and carry way less.
>problem of time and scheduling, slower
Trains are both faster and easier to schedule than cars. In-fact there is industry standard proven software that can schedules trains for an entire country.
>railroads function as monopolies
That is simply not true and you can have as many companies on a track as is realistic.

>>2019969
>exactly, but cost way more and carry way less.
In the US, trucks carry more tonnage than trains annually. It's cheaper to move a trailer across the country by truck than by train.
>Trains are both faster and easier to schedule than cars.
You can get a truck across the country faster than on a train, and it's far easier to deal with trucking companies that compete with each other than railroads. There's a reason people call being screwed over "getting railroaded."
>That is simply not true
Yes it is. Nearly all rail lines are privately owned in the US.

>>2019969
>stop getting subsidized
Urbanists have built up this mythology that infrastructure is a massive part of any city budget. It's only "subsidized" the same way education is (which, by the way, occupies a MASSIVE chunk of the budget)

>Train tracks in comparison are literally 100x cheaper to maintain after they are built
It all depends on the use of them, streets that see hardly any traffic can remain effectively untouched for years, same with rail. It's not a good comparison because all of the costs of trains are in operating.

>exactly, but cost way more and carry way less
Trucks require one person and can go directly from point to point, while trains require a whole crew and can't. Freight trains are only efficient and profitable when they can carry vast amounts of cargo (like a bunch of tank cars carrying the same thing). Disconnecting cars is a massive pain. Slowing down a train and backing up is a massive pain. There's a reason why most of the smaller spurs to non-specialized warehouses have been dismantled.

>That is simply not true and you can have as many companies on a track as is realistic.
Like the other anon said, railroads are owned by the companies that run trains on them. Anything not owned by them (say, Union Pacific trains running on BNSF tracks) pays trackage rights.

>>2019944
>people with aspergers are happy they have gay trains to jerk off to
Unironically this, love cars and trains but unless you are Socialist State with little to no private car ownership and a small amount of land (like Czechia) it is a simple calculus to determine that automobile infrastructure requires way less maintenance than rail. Rails are complicated with lots of failure points, leave them untouched for a decade or more and your trains will be stuck moving at 10-40 KM/H along such iron roads. A road requires little to no maintenance save for bridges, and cars can still go on unpaved forest roads. There is the question of fuel and parts yes, but it's still less than how much work steel behemoths tend to require. That's not even getting into the cost of maintaining overhead lines.

Really, if it wasn't for maintenance costs there wouldn't br a reason not to spam rails to supplement water and road everywhere.

>>2019969
>>2019970
Railways should not be privately owned, they should always be nationalized. You can have private carriers use them but the railways should be property and responsibility of the state run company.

>>2019976
>Railroads should all be managed like Amtrak
Too bad, they're private in the US

>>2019928
It's about time the US Government stops subsidizing the destruction of our country through Big Oil and Big Auto. The policies lobbied by Big Oil and Big Auto over the last century has been DISASTEROUS, economically, socially, and ecologically. Paired with Big Bank for predatory loan terms and what you have is debt slavery of the common man only for his capital to be used against him.
>"Buy this car to go to work
>Go to work to pay for this car"

>>2019974
This reply has a whiff of AI about it

>>2019928
>Be car-free until 30
>Parents give me car because they are upgrading
>Driving around more
>Realize having a car, even in a city with awful traffic is superior in every way to using public transit

>>2019974
Absolutely retarded ragebait take.
Trains are the most reliable and durable kind of transportation mankind has ever created. Every part of a train is insanely overbuilt when compared to anything else. Trains last tens of millions of miles over decades before requiring a complete rebuild, with the average lifetime expectancy of 30 to 50 years of active use, putting any car or truck to shame. Planned obsolescence and retarded engineering is a car thing, trains need to last a very long and very hard life by definition. Many train parts are produced locally, most car parts require insane logistics.
Freight trains carry more cargo than any semi truck ever could over far greater distances and do so much more efficiently and reliably.
Railroads span hundreds of thousands of miles through otherwise impassable forrests and wastelands, providing reliable connections to some of the most remote regions all over the world.
Railroads are an essential part of any country's defense system.
Rail condition deteriorates from heavy use, tarmac deteriorates greatly by itself over time. Compare an old railroad and an old tarmac road of similar vintage that haven't seen much use, the tarmac will always be in much worse condition.
Potholes are straight up deadly and often appear simply from yearly temperature cycles.

>>2020569
Most of that is a distortion or outright untrue

>>2020571
lol retard

>>2019974
>it is a simple calculus to determine that automobile infrastructure requires way less maintenance than rail
>A road requires little to no maintenance save for bridges
simply untrue, sure building costs for rail is 2-4x more expensive per mile but ongoing maintenance costs for paved roads is easily 10x more than the cost of maintaining rail infra. Road infra is such a terrible money sink with little return on investment in regards to economic activity generated that a lot of small towns are going bankrupt simply because of road maintenance costs. Big Oil and Big Auto lobbying the Government's Taxpayers to foot the bill of road infra has been the largest theft of wealth in history.

>>2020621
>>2020633
bot

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>>2019950
>roads don't do anything for society or the economy, but trains do!
Correct!

>>2019928
You're right, we're better off using that 20T$ to replace the Taliban with the Taliban 10 times. Better ROI.

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>>2020672

>>2020634
Kiss my shiny metal ass, nigger

>>2019928
Can we not?
>t. bicycle and motorcyclist enjoyer
If I want to become a sardine in a train I can move to japan

>>2019948
they highway system is NOT funded privately

>>2023470
Cars were commercially successful before highways were even a idea.
Cars can exist in the market without gov funded highways.
If there is enough demand private highways would arise to meet the need unless prevented from doing do.
Just like there were and still are privately funded conventional railroads. Just like there still is demand for privately funded conventional railroads.

I am so suck of people using shit like transport as a in for socialist/fascist policies. Stop trying to force shit no one wants from the top down. Let the market let people choose how best to fulfill their needs and stop having bureaucrats and corrupt power-hungry assholes tell everyone what to do.

>>2023480
>Cars can exist in the market without gov funded highways.
different anon here, but how?
in every country that has a high personal car usage, they're always paired with government-funded and built highways
>If there is enough demand private highways would arise
has this ever actually happened?

Yep. Unfortunately the oil companies buy the GOP politicians so they try to keep car-dependency going as long as they can.

>>2024753
Wow, Chang, and yeah, that is really unfortunate.

>>2024753
>he thinks that oil prices only matter if you drive a car

>>2024696
>in every country that has a high personal car usage, they're always paired with government-funded and built highways
Yes, governments are supposed to supplement the interests of the population, they're not our parents making us eat vegetables.
>>If there is enough demand private highways would arise
>has this ever actually happened?
Google "toll road" and get back to us.

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>>2024766
>Yes, governments are supposed to supplement the interests of the population, they're not our parents making us eat vegetables.
that doesn't explain at all how a place can exist with both high car usage and no government-funded highways?
>Google "toll road" and get back to us.
fair but those toll roads only make up a tiny fraction of all highways, and roads also, in just about every civilized country and they still have to be approved by the government

also just to nitpick your original point that
>Cars were commercially successful before highways were even a idea.
is wrong on multiple accounts because highways have existed for thousands of years to transport goods via horses and carts/wagons, the first cars being "commercially successful" (which is easy because there were so few of them as explained here) had more to do with the fact that they were exclusively built for the very wealthy and a unique novelty more than anything else

the general conclusion is that if governments completely stopped building highways, which they will never do unless they are usurped by giga-corporations which by that point they essentially ARE governments but that's an entirely different topic, it will be because they are no longer viable for one of two reasons:
1. so few people drive cars in the future that most of them will walk, cycle or take public transport which will eliminate the need for most current highways as city sizes would shrink dramatically due to density increase
2. governments can no longer afford to build highways, which will lead to one of the two above scenarios

i also find it infuriating and laughable at the same time that some people still believe in "the market" - what are you talking about? surely not the free market, that thing which supposedly exists but is also surrounded by tariffs, government-incentives, tax breaks, etc. by governments and special interest groups?

how many cars do you think can exist in a solely private highway market?

>>2024775
>surely not the free market, that thing which supposedly exists but is also surrounded by tariffs, government-incentives, tax breaks, etc. by governments and special interest groups?
You know that just because kike scum like you infringes on it doesn't mean that market instantly stops working and becomes literally impossible to comprehend and estimate.

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>>2024775
>how many cars do you think can exist in a solely private highway market?
vastly more than there are now if you stop regulating and taxing the cars into mechanical and financial unviability

>>2024779
what regulations and taxes on cars are making them unviable today?
is it the cheap fuel? the lack of a requirement to meet emissions standards if the car is old? the non-existent roadworthy fee in many states? the less stringent laws applied to pickup trucks?

>>2024779
I know this is a bait post, but automobile production and operation is one of the most heavily subsidized industries in North America

the main issue is that they design car networks with "Arteries" and vast neighborhoods between them with no through traffic
So everything clogs up predictably at stop lights where a neighborhood of 10,000 cars has to go through

>>2024792
Red herring and false.
It's both a lie AND a diversion that has nothing to do with the claim that the car market is over-regulated.

>>2024798
>the main issue is that they design car networks with "Arteries" and vast neighborhoods between them with no through traffic
Where does this idea that subdivisions are these vast network of squiggles that have no connection to each other? Is it cherry-picking or one of those exaggerations that somehow has lodged itself as "truth"?

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>>2024788
About half the fuel price comes from taxes on it and modern cars are filled with emission reducing doodads and electronics that are very unreliable, expensive to make and expensive to maintain. Nowadays car maintenance costs as much as the fuel used to power it, which is absolutely abhorrent and completely the fault of government regulations both poisoning car design but also the highly restrictive certification process that excludes all but the largest car manufacturers from the market, creating an oligopoly that's filled with bad practices, corruption and scams at the expense of the common man.

>>2019928
>Conservatively estimating the US has spent around $20T on cars, fuel for cars and car related infrastructure, mostly on fuel for cars which only contributes to (making the car move, drill baby drill, and pollution (used to be lead pollution too) )
Considering we have spent $50T on minorities, $20T for roads is a bargain.

>>2024897
>>2024788
Don't fall for the meme narrative.
What usually happens is that you need to do a timing belt replacement, coming up at 1/3 the cost of a brand factory new engine. Or replace all gaskets for the price of 1,5x the cost of a factory mint engine.
At that point a gasket replacement + new cams is more than what the vehicle is sold for by this point..'
Its not
>filled with emission reducing doodads and electronics that are very unreliable
No, its all just moving from air cooling to water cooling.

Or option B: The entire thing is rusted to shit

>>2025055
modern diesels choke almost exclusively on the emission shit and would be running for literal millions of miles if not for those.
https://stillrunningstrong.com/car-maintenance/diesel-engine-problems/

>>2025055
>a timing belt costs 1/3 of a whole engine
>head gasket job costs 1.5x what the engine costs
holy shit you bikefags are peak retarded lmao you cannot possibly actually believe this

>>2025074
eh, you're right because new engine are fucking expensive, but he's not wrong that timing belt jobs are fucking expensive too
timing belt job is 1-2k now on a lot of cars.
500 would be minimium

i did mine myself but i'm not a wrenchlet like most pathetic carfags and i don't rely on my car for transportation like a cuck.

>>2025090
>i did mine myself but i'm not a wrenchlet like most pathetic carfags and i don't rely on my car for transportation like a cuck.
I can exchange my disposable income for periodic car maintenance because I value my own time. Bicyclists still have no idea that time is one of the most precious commodities of all.

>>2025093
it's not about time, you lack the skill, tools, and confidence. How the fuck is bickering about this a good use of your time, but doing it is a bad use?

>>2025114
You should ask yourself the same question

>>2025090
are you perchance confusing a timing chain job with its tensioners and guide shit for a timing belt? timing chain is like once every 300,000 miles, timing belt is like 50-80k and is usually in the $100s of dollars not $1000s. if you are paying 4 figures for a $30 timing belt replacement on a car that does not say "bentley" or "rolls royce" my friend you are just getting hosed.
most timing belt cars make the job simplistic because it has to get done eventually, it's really up to the consumer to buy cars that are easy to work on. it's (hypothetically now) your own fault for paying arm+leg for expensive timing belt service every few years on a bmw when you could have a dodge with a timing chain. same is true for bikes. some people are willing to trade the minor inconvenience of service for what they perceive as better performance or efficiency.

>>2025074
>>2025169
Whats wrong anon? Can't deal with facts?
A complete engine overhaul is fuckall in parts. The pistons, the seals, the gaskets, the fuel injection, fuel pump, sparkies, wires, seals, or anything else in there is fucking cheap.
But you then need to pay somebody to:
1. A small insurance fee in case this is the one they do this year they fuck up
2. A mechanic for 2-5 days, depending on how bad it is for that engine make
3. Occupying the car lift for those days
4. If you are lucky, the rebuilt can be done inside of the engine bay. If not, then you need to pay for 2-3 hours for assembly + disassembly

This is one of the big modern ICE problems.
If you can wrench and have a garage it isn't that bad, it just takes time. If you can't, then you could get a undamaged engine from a car chopper or junkyard, and play the "is this the same parts as my OEM, or is this the 2nd revision of it? and how badly did the owner treat it?"

>>2025055
>>Don't fall for the meme narrative.
>Spouts delusional bikefag meme narrative.
It's all so tiresome. It's because of dishonest crap like this that people want to crash their cars into you and splatter your guts on the pavement.

>>2025169
>are you perchance confusing a timing chain job with its tensioners and guide shit for a timing belt?

no lad i just fucking did the job myself, i know what it is

I said $500 + and a lot of cars are 1-2k (subies for example). Google how much it costs if you don't believe the price. It's a lot of work.

No shit the parts are cheap, it's not $30 though. It's like $150 for a decent quality belt kit and waterpump. The original NSK tensioner bearing was mint when i removed it, so was the original Aisin pump. Why would I replace them with chinese garbage?

>>2025175
>If you can wrench and have a garage it isn't that bad, it just takes time.
... have you rebuilt an engine?

>>2025158
My time isn't valuable. I waste a lot of my time. Working on my car isn't a waste of time, achieving practical stuff like that makes me feel great and what i learn is useful in a lot of different ways.

What's always held me back from doing it more has been fear and lack of ability, not time.

>>2025192
Nice blog retard

>>2025197
keep pretending you won't do the job that means taking half your engine bay apart and will total your car if you get it wrong just because you 'dont have the time'

>>2025190
>. have you rebuilt an engine?
Yes.
Its not "hard", but its time consuming. And chance of bricking.
You also need to some have wrenching experience under your belt, so you orderly dissassemble and reassemble. And make sure you got every tool and gasket and seal and sealant snakeoil needed to complete the task.

>>2025202
man i'd like to try it one day but with a 'if this goes wrong, who cares' project.

>>2025199
I'm not pretending. When you include the learning curve, ordering parts, and the work itself, it's not worth my time.

>>2025205
motorcycles

>>2025093
>>2025158
>>2025197
>>2025209
I get the point you are making anon
But why make it so poorly stated? You are saying because you have not gotten the base skill via education, you are unlikely to want to spend the time needed to grind up the skill. And that includes expensive fuckups.

The catch is that by having no experience, you can't tell the difference between a tool heavy job that requires properly lifting the vehicle.... And a few panel clips and some cheap plastic trim remover tools.

>>2025190
>and a lot of cars are 1-2k
This faggot can't say a single truthful word