Flock cams don’t even need a power connection because they run on solar+battery, and wireless data connection. You can put one practically everywhere without any preparation - even the post it sits on is pretty optional, could use cable binders to hang them on a tree.
Data centers often get built where land is cheap, and at least in the US there is a (horrifying and stupid) trend to design them to run off-grid with gas turbines, so you don’t even need utilities there, just data connections that you can run underground.
Trains take up a lot of space, and if you want them to be useful, they need to be where the population density is high enough. That means high cost for land, often buying up big amounts of smaller lots where you have to work something out with a multitude of land owners who might not want to part with their - often prime location, because it’s in the city - land. A single land owner not selling their land can grind a project like this to a halt, at least if there is hesitancy using eminent domain, which is a crowbar approach and leads to resistance to your project.
Don’t get me wrong, i really think the USA would benefit greatly from modernizing and expanding their rail network! But realistically, refitting a train line into a city center where you preferably want the station to be is a hard task, doubly hard if you want to actually pass through the city because its not the head end of the line - it doubles the land acquisition woes. A possibility would be going underground, but underground construction is an expensive endeavor, and the US would probably need to get outside expertise from Switzerland or Austria where we construct tunnels through mountains and below cities on the regular to make it work.
The US famously bulldozes whole districts for their stupid highways, to build a whole highway junction inside cities (or whatever is left inbetween highway and parking lot).
Sure both train tracks and highways are harder than flock cameras or data centers, but the US certainly has no issue with building highways. All the issues are home-made. We have the same fucking issues here in Germany, it just so happened that more of our rail network (relative to size & population) survived the neolibertarian onslaught of the past ~60 years.
At the end of the day train networks primarily serve people, not capital.
Trains take up a lot of space, and if you want them to be useful, they need to be where the population density is high enough. That means high cost for land, often buying up big amounts of smaller lots where you have to work something out with a multitude of land owners who might not want to part with their - often prime location, because it’s in the city - land. A single land owner not selling their land can grind a project like this to a halt, at least if there is hesitancy using eminent domain, which is a crowbar approach and leads to resistance to your project.
There’s also interference risks. My city was building out their train network, and had to do extensive testing to make sure that the trains didn’t disturb the university’s experiments. An entire planned hospital was scrapped because it was too close to the tracks, and the trains would interfere with the hospital equipment.
A data centre or cameras wouldn’t have the same risk, so wouldn’t need to go through the same level of approval/testing.
That’s a lame excuse. There are universities right next to heavy rail, with super sensitive equipment. It is all a question of shielding and vibration management. And when it comes ro vibrations, I have never heard of a highway project getting cancelled because of sensitive hospital or research eqipment, have you?
I heard something similar in Vienna - but they were building a hospital near a rail line and then had to retrofit because they underestimated the interference with their equipment.
It’s a difference between using eminent domain in an area with a very low population density vs. using it in a high density area with very high land prices. Avoiding it in both areas would be preferable, but the second variant is for sure riling people up a lot more.
the power companies have goodwill with the people because they have proven themselves reliable, amtrak has not in the majority of the country (both trains and powerlines have a significant amount of rural land where trains do jack shit)
Flock cams don’t even need a power connection because they run on solar+battery, and wireless data connection. You can put one practically everywhere without any preparation - even the post it sits on is pretty optional, could use cable binders to hang them on a tree.
Data centers often get built where land is cheap, and at least in the US there is a (horrifying and stupid) trend to design them to run off-grid with gas turbines, so you don’t even need utilities there, just data connections that you can run underground.
Trains take up a lot of space, and if you want them to be useful, they need to be where the population density is high enough. That means high cost for land, often buying up big amounts of smaller lots where you have to work something out with a multitude of land owners who might not want to part with their - often prime location, because it’s in the city - land. A single land owner not selling their land can grind a project like this to a halt, at least if there is hesitancy using eminent domain, which is a crowbar approach and leads to resistance to your project.
Don’t get me wrong, i really think the USA would benefit greatly from modernizing and expanding their rail network! But realistically, refitting a train line into a city center where you preferably want the station to be is a hard task, doubly hard if you want to actually pass through the city because its not the head end of the line - it doubles the land acquisition woes. A possibility would be going underground, but underground construction is an expensive endeavor, and the US would probably need to get outside expertise from Switzerland or Austria where we construct tunnels through mountains and below cities on the regular to make it work.
The US famously bulldozes whole districts for their stupid highways, to build a whole highway junction inside cities (or whatever is left inbetween highway and parking lot).
Sure both train tracks and highways are harder than flock cameras or data centers, but the US certainly has no issue with building highways. All the issues are home-made. We have the same fucking issues here in Germany, it just so happened that more of our rail network (relative to size & population) survived the neolibertarian onslaught of the past ~60 years.
At the end of the day train networks primarily serve people, not capital.
That wasn’t just for the highway, that was blatant racism to cut through the heart of thriving black communities.
There’s also interference risks. My city was building out their train network, and had to do extensive testing to make sure that the trains didn’t disturb the university’s experiments. An entire planned hospital was scrapped because it was too close to the tracks, and the trains would interfere with the hospital equipment.
A data centre or cameras wouldn’t have the same risk, so wouldn’t need to go through the same level of approval/testing.
That’s a lame excuse. There are universities right next to heavy rail, with super sensitive equipment. It is all a question of shielding and vibration management. And when it comes ro vibrations, I have never heard of a highway project getting cancelled because of sensitive hospital or research eqipment, have you?
I heard something similar in Vienna - but they were building a hospital near a rail line and then had to retrofit because they underestimated the interference with their equipment.
States are using Eminent Domain to support Data Centers.
https://www.tftc.io/ai-data-center-eminent-domain-land-seizures-transmission-lines
It’s a difference between using eminent domain in an area with a very low population density vs. using it in a high density area with very high land prices. Avoiding it in both areas would be preferable, but the second variant is for sure riling people up a lot more.
the power companies have goodwill with the people because they have proven themselves reliable, amtrak has not in the majority of the country (both trains and powerlines have a significant amount of rural land where trains do jack shit)