this post was submitted on 17 Aug 2025
321 points (98.8% liked)
Map Enthusiasts
4970 readers
28 users here now
For the map enthused!
Rules:
-
post relevant content: interesting, informative, and/or pretty maps
-
be nice
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
It takes money and (probably more importantly) personnel to operate a rail line. Think regular inspections and repairs of tracks and stations, cutting of trees, operating switches, controlling traffic, regularly updating schedules (so the trains actually make sense in the greater scheme of things), actually driving the trains, cleaning and maintaining them, and replacing them.
Again, I’m no expert, but I hold the belief that even a fancy bus line is orders of magnitude cheaper than a train line where demand isn’t high.
Buses allow you to do different things en route, just like trains. And they aren’t necessarily less comfortable than trains. Your argument about traffic jams is moot. There are no traffic jams between small towns.
Operating a bus line also costs money. Bus drivers don't work for free either, nor do buses just grow on trees. So many of those costs also exist for bus lines. In fact due to buses having less capacity than trains, you need more staff to transport the same number of people by bus than by train.
Trains are more comfortable than all road traffic because road traffic always uses bumpy roads that degrade comfort, rail traffic always glides on smooth metal rails.
Wouldn't railway be the perfect mode of transport to automate though?
Probably more so than cars, but I don’t see that coming anytime soon.
The driver isn't the large cost.
reducing driver costs is precisely why public transport organizations try to run trains instead of buses lmfao
staff costs are HUGE in the west
We're talking about trains here, not buses. So one driver per potentially many many hundreds of passengers.