Even though I’m pulling a big quote, David Galbraith’s I Used to Love Trains, is worth reading in its entirety.
So why isn’t the same true of the road network? That requires massive infrastructure and in France the road network is possibly the most free-market driven infrastructure in the world with private toll freeways operated by companies in places like Dubai. The French road network is ironically far more capitalist than America’s. But it isn’t the nature of the ownership of the infrastructure but the nature of the network itself that determines its character. Railways can only pack a very few number of trains on at one time and there are few exits or stops. Roads have many vehicles like little packets of transport. The road network is like a packet switched one, like the Internet whereas the rail Network is like the legacy, fixed line, monopolistic telephone system.
Galbraith is someone else I’ve been following for quite a while. He’s done quite a bit of interesting stuff in the past. Some of the projects have been quite successful so he speaks with some authority on technology. Galbraith doesn’t post all that frequently. So each one should be savored.