>>1470670>That's because you say things like "you don´t need freight to compete with railroad"That is almost a given statement. Per tonnage per maintenance per kilometer, freight on road is pretty bad compared to cargo on train.
Its also pretty bad for time estimates, since more pragmatic railroad lines at 80km/h quickly outcompete road freight cargo via trucks at similar speeds due cutting trough far more terrain.
The key problem is that if you only have one set of tracks, you only got cargo capacity for the entire line being bottlenecked by the stations where 2 cargo trains can meet. Which means cargo unloading/Loading will be undersized. Which again means that if you want freight across different regions, reloading to train 2 is a complete mess.
Railroad freight is simply cheaper and faster. It involves less manpower, and logistics to make it happen. But it also needs the trains to be built, where it has trouble with basic transportation if the tracks are too few.
>You have to sweeten the deal and make whatever it is worth their while.Thats a bit late, isn´t it? If the city is founded in the 1850s or 1910s, thats quickly 100 years of infastructure development you need to compete with. And 100 years of neighborhoods, highways and what not.
Which makes NIMBY a even more compound issue: If it where built out ahead of existing communities, it could have picked ideal paths trough the landscape, and gotten idea lots for industrial operations.
Instead you need to deal with a new community each few kilometers, for the swat of land you are trying to acquire. Rurally they might do it collectively, so its far better, and they do got more land.
