For anyone who doesn’t know, freight trains make a lot more money and will illegally take the right of way over passenger trains and just pay the fines. This happened to me on my first and last train ride in the last decade. Waited over an hour on the tracks as the angry conductor explained the situation.
What? In US the right of way is decided by the trains, not infrastructure dispatchers? What you described sound like the freight trains just commonly run through the stop signal which is a BIG NO-NO.
Legally passenger rail has the right of way, but reality can turn that around.
freight isn’t always scheduled, but “when full”, so it’s tough to coordinate
freight can be slow so owners have no incentive to keep the track in good condition, slowing everyone
freight is infrequent so no need to parallel rails: many places have only maintained one track, so how can a faster train pass?
freight trains have gotten longer, outgrowing many sidings, so there are fewer places they can pull over to let faster trains pass
Each of these is quite legal, and even normal to some extent, but adds up to huge delays and unpredictable schedules for passenger rail
NOTE: this is also one cause for our unacceptable levels of accidents. As freight trains get slower and longer they block at grade intersections for unacceptable lengths of time. As they’ve gotten longer without updating sidings and rail yards to match, there are too many cases of trains stopped blocking at grade intersections. Too many drivers frustrated by too many delays tempts some to cross the tracks when it’s not safe, with predictable results.
In a lot of cases in the US the lines themselves are privately owned so the owners will prioritise the most profitable services. The punishment for delaying a passenger service is a fixed fine with no further implications, so that fine is just a business expense.
For anyone who doesn’t know, freight trains make a lot more money and will illegally take the right of way over passenger trains and just pay the fines. This happened to me on my first and last train ride in the last decade. Waited over an hour on the tracks as the angry conductor explained the situation.
What? In US the right of way is decided by the trains, not infrastructure dispatchers? What you described sound like the freight trains just commonly run through the stop signal which is a BIG NO-NO.
Legally passenger rail has the right of way, but reality can turn that around.
Each of these is quite legal, and even normal to some extent, but adds up to huge delays and unpredictable schedules for passenger rail
NOTE: this is also one cause for our unacceptable levels of accidents. As freight trains get slower and longer they block at grade intersections for unacceptable lengths of time. As they’ve gotten longer without updating sidings and rail yards to match, there are too many cases of trains stopped blocking at grade intersections. Too many drivers frustrated by too many delays tempts some to cross the tracks when it’s not safe, with predictable results.
In a lot of cases in the US the lines themselves are privately owned so the owners will prioritise the most profitable services. The punishment for delaying a passenger service is a fixed fine with no further implications, so that fine is just a business expense.