this post was submitted on 12 Aug 2026
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The US was built on rail. 100 years ago, there were trains going to every little town that a passenger could ride.
Thanks to subsidies of the auto industry, many rights-of-way are not currently in use, and most that are exclusively carry cargo, not passengers.
I'll admit I like a rail trail as much as the next cyclist, but it does make me a little sad when I'm on a cool trail that's essentially the skeleton of our former public transit infrastructure.
The rights of way largely still exist, though. Some are still owned by the rail companies and just loaned to municipalities for trails, but the land of a former railway almost never gets completely dissolved into the parcels around it. There's cost to dividing/recombining parcels, and no one does it without reason. Those lines shouldn't be splitting anyone's property, either, because the land was platted with them in place.
Those old rights-of-way often wouldn't work for high speed due to the radii, but most of the rail we need doesnt need to be high speed. In situations where we do need high speed, there are usually highways that we could and should cannibalize some land from.