President Joe Biden — perhaps the nation’s biggest Amtrak fan — is set to promote new federal investments for trains on the heavily trafficked Northeast Corridor.

The Democratic president is headed to Bear, Delaware, on Monday to announce more than $16 billion in new funding that will go toward 25 passenger rail projects between Boston and Washington, the White House says. Bear is located about 12 miles (20 kilometers) from Biden’s home of Wilmington.

His remarks will be held at the Amtrak Bear Maintenance Shops, where trains are maintained and repaired. The investments, the White House says, will help trains run faster, cut delays and create union jobs.

  • Redscare867@lemmy.ml
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    28
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    1 year ago

    Railroads are land intensive but somehow 27 lane highways aren’t? Also wait until you find out how expensive it is to maintain all of those highways…

    • Igloojoe@lemm.ee
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      2
      arrow-down
      15
      ·
      1 year ago

      Railroads have always been business owned. So acquiring land is expensive for them. Highways and interstates are government owned. So they just forced owners to accept the appraised value.

      • Redscare867@lemmy.ml
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        18
        ·
        1 year ago

        And for whatever reason you think we couldn’t do literally the exact same thing we did with highways to build nationalized rail?

        • Igloojoe@lemm.ee
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          8
          arrow-down
          1
          ·
          1 year ago

          I wish we did. It seems logical that railroads should be government run transit option.

        • AA5B@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          6
          ·
          1 year ago

          We could call it, let’s see, hmmm …. America’s Track? I wish there was a way to shorten that …. AmeriTrack? … AmRail?

          • Redscare867@lemmy.ml
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            3
            ·
            1 year ago

            You might be on to something, but I gotta say this all sounds vaguely familiar for some reason 🤔

      • grue@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        15
        ·
        1 year ago

        Do you have even the slightest idea how much land we already have for railroads that already existed but have been abandoned?

      • captainlezbian@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        7
        ·
        1 year ago

        No they aren’t. Amtrak is literally a publicly owned company. Basically all passenger rail in the United States is Amtrak in the modern era