Edit post

Edit your reply below.

Post Body
Enter your post below.
[quote user="gabe"]Which rail line do you think was the biggest mistake in abandoning?  Please explain why. In answering this question, if you must give a sentimental answer rather than a business-related answer, please say so. Gabe[/quote]Sentiment aside, there is almost no long-haul infrastructure that we abandoned that we will truly, deeply later regret, so long as we didn't let the right-of-way revert to local landowners.  That's because the cost of recreating it is almost always less than the cost of having to maintain it during the period when it wasn't needed.  Assuming there was anything worth maintaining in the first place: I mean, really folks, just WHAT about the former Milwaukee Road infrastructure, other than some of the bridges, was worth saving?  The track was junk that if you had it today it, magically preserved as it was in 1980, you would hold your nose, scrape off, and throw away.  You couldn't run safely or economically on it.  It would be nothing but an expensive and unpleasant hazardous-waste disposal headache.  Even a lot of the bridges are cheaper to build new than maintain all these years. The unfortunate mistake, as many have already pointed out, was losing the ROWs in cities such as PE, North Shore, CA&E, etc.  I can see how transportation planners 30 and 50 years ago could come to the conclusion we'd never need them again, and in fairness to them in the light of their day I think any reasonable person would have made the same decision.  What I wish they'd done was consider the downside risk they were incurring in not holding onto the ROWs compared to the almost infintesimal upside risk they gained by selling them.  But even if they had considered that, local, state, and national politics tied their hands; they had to let them go, or forgo dollars for highway and street projects that the public loudly demanded. Had I the power to change the past, I think I would have held onto most of the ROW, and even most of the track too, though unlike many I am under no illusion that the track would ever be used again, only the ROW with 100% new track.  That's because even crummy track helps protect the embankment from erosion and helps keep the public thinking it's still a railroad. Some of the long-haul ROW that reverted and didn't go to rails-to-trails we may someday want back, but for the foreseeable future I can't identify any. S. Hadid
Tags (Optional)
Tags are keywords that get attached to your post. They are used to categorize your submission and make it easier to search for. To add tags to your post type a tag into the box below and click the "Add Tag" button.
Add Tag