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 never have any real advantage over taking one’s own car on the same route. Trains can have an advantage because they are more comfortable and can bypass traffic jams.
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.
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?
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.
Probably more so than cars, but I don’t see that coming anytime soon.