> From: Chuck Norcutt <chucknorcutt@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
>
> To be clear, the US still has a fairly extensive rail network
"Fairly extensive" is pretty vague. Without having actual numbers to
back me up, I'll bet it's a tiny fraction of total land transport,
compared with the rest of the world.
Wait a second, I *do* have some actual numbers, but they don't
exactly back me up:
kilometers per $ of GDP:
#1 Mongolia
...
#101: USA, just ahead of Lebanon
http://tinyurl.com/265d7p
Of course, statistics are notorious for showing whatever you want.
Note that if a country's GDP (denominator) is zero, one millimeter of
rail (numerator) would give it an infinite score.
Here's another one: kilometers per capita:
#1: Australia
#2: Canada
...
#16: USA, just behind Argentina and Hungary
http://tinyurl.com/23nxn7
And for you red/white/blue types, here's another: by total weight-
distance:
#1: USA, not far ahead of China
http://tinyurl.com/295zh7
So it's safe to say the US rail system is not closely coupled with US
GDP or population, but it does ship the heaviest goods the furthest.
(Stat wonks will LOVE the site referenced in the URLs above.)
Requisite Oly content: my dad won first place in his club's photo
contest in 1998 with a shot of a locomotive taken with an Olympus
D-600L -- the first time a digital photo had been entered. No one
suspected, and they immediately made a separate category, so the
filmies wouldn't have to compete with the bit-twiddlers.
:::: Real peace in a petroleum-fueled world means rejecting petroleum
dependence in all possible ways. -- Jan Lundberg ::::
:::: Jan Steinman (a fossil-fuel-free zone) <http://
www.VeggieVanGogh.com> ::::
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