Can you imagine those poor homeowners whose houses back onto a railroad that had just a few trains pass per week but then gets turned into a truck freeway? The roar of trucks passing constantly a few feet from your door 24 hours a day? I’d take the trains anytime - even a busy mainline.
Dan, you’re great!! You hit it right on the head. Satire will get you points!!!
My wife just came in asking what that loud crash was and found me on the floor holding my sides[(-D][(-D]
Umm . . . where to begin.
First, whether the judge understands your particular understandings of adverse possession is irrelevant. What the judge says is final, and if a judge—or jury—finds that someone has been on a former railroad right of way without permission, has used that land to their own benefit in an open matter for the specified length of time, good luck trying to get anyone to believe your judge is clueless argument.
Second, I just did a search for adverse possession of abandon rail right of ways, the search revealed 337 cases in the last 20 years—and those are just the appealed cases that were published and that my search engine was able to pick up! I don’t rec
The Right of way or truck road would alternate routes such as northbound in the morning and south bound in the the evening. Trucks would run in a Convoy that would be sceduled. Multicombonation vehicles would be allowed. The Right of way would be signaled and Industrial parks would be built next to the right of way. Trucks could be Opticaly guided by wires buried in the pavement. ( They could drive themselves). The system would be like bus rapid transit only with trucks. If there was enough traffic you could create Trolley Trucks that would be powered by overhead wire. The avantage that this would have over rail is minmizing the time to switch out RR cars and transloading as well. The Truck route could be closed on weekends to alow bikes to use the facilitys as well.
So if I understand this correctly …
Use abandonded ROW to create a new electric truck railroad that travels the same path that the RRs abandoned because they weren’t profitable.
I like the helicopter idea better…
but the bikes could still use it…just stay clear of the whilry thingies
But didn’t the efficiency of the Skycranes really doom them for such an idea?
Yes and no. They were great heavy lift assets but that’s all they could do. They had no internal passenger capacity so they were relatively inflexible as to role, as carrying the people pod underneath meant no lift ability. Better to have a more flexible asset. The CH47s and CH53s can do the same now with internal capacity to fill other roles.
Maybe when the plan gets going, we can have excursions with the old Skycranes. Do the CH47 and CH53 have the same lift capacity? That would surprise me.
The first CH47s had the same lift capacity as a Skycrane at 16K. Models since then have risen to 20+K. The CH53Ds have a 14K and the Es have 26K. Better engines. A Skycrane re-engined with 53E motors and minus the 53Es weight, would probably, probably be in the 30s.
Coffee, nicotine and boredom…
…could be used to build a maglev…
…or a monorail…
A maglev would be cool, especially on weekends when the bicyclist were using it. It would be like a bike flubber path, with bikes just floating along…
In Ohio, some of the big talk for the future is high-speed rail. I won’t believe it until I see it, but I’d rather see those corridors reserved for that-- not for trucks.
Regarding adverse possession, another required element not mentioned is “claim of title.” Esp’ly with respect to railroad rights-of-way, I can’t see this working.
My experience is that quit-claim deeds and property line agreements are the more typical way to get clear title. A.P. cases, at least in my area, are very, very rare, but I have prepared several instruments by other methods.
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Those are my sentiments exactly. [:o)]
I say Build catenary down the old ROW’s. Actually perhaps I should call it “inverted catenary” as it will serve to energize the pantographs hanging down from the undersides of the fleet of “ELECTRIC CARGO ZEPPELINS” built to run on this new network…
Invoking eminent domain for this sort of use would get nowhere fast, especially considering the political and legislative fallout after the Supreme Court’s decision in this matter.
Forget the trucks, put them back into use as dedicated passenger train routes. As this country continues to grow these routes could be a valuable link and rebirth for our passenger trains. Many cities are wanting to limit cars in certain areas and are looking at passenger rail as a way to do so.
City to city travel would benefit from passenger rail and it would take autos off our heavily traveled interstates.
Although it’s not for frieght, In the San Fernando Valley they have turned the old Burbank branch into a bus road.
At the risk of sounding incredibly dumb, if there is a demand for freight (or passenger) traffic along the route… uh… why not put the rails back? And run a train??? I must be missing something…
There is a serious issue which Hugh brough up, though: most railroad rights of way – whatever the ownership status – which have been abandoned or discontinued are much too narrow for a truck or bus special route (not true of all of them). Even if you postulate one-way traffic – very inefficient (have you ever been stopped at a long single lane contstruction site?) you need, as a minimum, 24 feet for pavement (otherwise your whole road is going at the pace of the slowest vehicle) plus another 12 feet from time to time for an emergency parking space. Then you need a minimum of 50 foot clear shoulders, if you are looking at any sort of speed at all. So between 150 and 180 feet is kind of the minimum these days. A single track rail line often had a right of way of 33 feet, if that. Problem…
And then, assuming you can get your hands on the extra land needed on both sides, there is the problem of widening the fills and cuts, and construction of all new bridges…
Why not put the rails back and run a train? Maybe I’m missing something…