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Real answer? Because train lines cut through a lot of land and every landowner along the route can hold up progress with legal objections. Flock cameras are just attached to poles and data centres are compact.
There’s a saying : “Where there’s a will, there’s a way”
Big tech are using every trick in their book to circumvent regulations and to continue building data centers despite local community disapproval over noise, pollution and a myriad of other problems…
Of course, since data centers are (according to the DOJ), “a matter of national, economic, and energy security”, doesn’t matter even if they are ran by illegal gas turbines.
And they’re not so small
Also, this consideration for others property… man it would have been nice to have had it when the US was building highways through black communities…
using every trick in their book to circumvent regulations and to continue building
when the US was building highways through black communities
The US building highways through black communities is a big part of why we have committees that can hold up rail development. And do you really want a government that uses “every trick in the book” to build railroads? No! You want a government that follows its own rules both in letter and in spirit, and one that reigns in the excesses of the market economy when necessary, and one that simply writes better laws.
I can go walk around and take pictures of the shit train lines. Shit cars and scars across communities
And they’re not so small
They’re not small, but they’re one plot of land, not a line spending potentially hundreds of miles and tens of thousands of individual real estate parcels that each require purchasing or litigation to acquire. Which needs to be done before most of the actual work can even begin.
Yeah, but if you look at the most egregious example of this, California high speed rail, at this point they’ve cleared most of the legal hurdles and have the land.
They still don’t have an end date in sight though because of lack of investment. They get a slow trickle from California carbon tax but not much else. They’ll occasionally get a grant from the federal government only to have it rescinded when Trump gets in office.
The slow trickle from the carbon tax is enough to complete the flat part in maybe 6 years, but the part where they’ll have to bore long tunnels through mountains to get to LA or San Francisco is impossible without a large investment.
Meanwhile there’s no shortage of investment going to data centers.
That shit is a lie. Love to see it, but they should have done that before you and I were born, no matter your age or mine
On the Flock cameras, pretty much agreed.
Data centers are a bit more interesting. Sure the land itself is “find a willing landowner or handful in a sea of any land that would be equally ok”, but then you have supporting infrastructure. Perhaps not as large of a route to secure, and more flexibility to make pretty sharp turns and such, but still lots of room for people to get in the way of a critical dependency. So surely the datacenters are having issues getting power to their facilities in the face of so many people around their property not wanting to give up their land right? No solution for that.
Oh yeah, if they won’t sell their property to facilitate it, the government will just take it over: https://www.washingtonpost.com/ripple/2026/07/16/when-can-a-power-company-take-your-land-for-a-data-center/
So yes, in both datacenter and train, people can make it very hard to get things done. Somehow they find a way for the datacenters…
You as missing the scale problem, here. A data center, hell 1000 massive data centers still aren’t going to take up the land that rail does. Its why you lay down rail first, then build around it, rather than destroying things to put rail in after. So yes, if you are going to magically put all this high speed rail in places people don’t live directly on with trains that don’t go places people want to be, then it’s a great comparison.
China was capable of doing it. Oh, but they have central planning and blah blah blah. Yeah, let’s do that then. Let’s lay some track. If “freedom” means no functional transit but se still get the surveillance state. And “China bad no freedom” means you get a surveillance state but also get functional transit I’ll take Chinas system please. If I’m gonna have cameras watching me wherever I go; I’d at least like to be able to actually go somewhere.
In addition, passenger trains are only really useful if they both start and end in built-up urban areas. A train between a ranch in Nebraska and a potato field in Idaho is not going to be serving many passengers.
That means that some of the key land needed for trains is going to be some of the most valuable land there is.
That’s one reason why authoritarian regimes like China have a much easier time building train routes.
Getting datacentres built would take a lot longer if it was necessary to build them in big city downtown areas like you need for a main train station.
Or they already own the lines and their cars are sitting there surrounded by weeds waiting for vandalism. The train lines consume vast acres of city landscapes, for Cockburn what
Who’d a guessed a ginormous and expensive public infrastructure project that requires meticulous long term planning and the acquisition of literally thousands of privately owned pieces of land (often through long and expensive legal processes, sometimes spanning various different jurisdictions) takes longer than bolting a couple thousand plastic boxes onto poles, or building what’s essentially a large-ish industrial facility?
I am a big fan of rail transport. Use it more than my car because it’s just better. But let’s be real.
Corruption does speed up the build process. Create a secret rail line plan outlining the land that will need to be bought, they allow a select few of the wealthy to buy up all that land. Then announce the construction plan letting the new land owners sell their land to the state/government at huge mark up. No need for public debate, expensive legal process just good ol’ corruption getting the job done.
What is this? The New Gilded Age?
Out of all the dubious (stolen) u.s. land acquisitions, you find this one difficult. Fuck off
Yeah, this unfortunately
It will take while for train based infrastructure to be but. I’m cautiously optimistic about trains and rail based transportation, but it will take a long time to build in the USA due to its toxic car culture and privately owned land
The US built its highway system in a very ruthless and efficient manner using Eminent Domain. Hundreds of communities were ripped out to place the infrastructure used for cars that most travelers unfortunately have to use today. Imagine doing that one more time over less densely populated land to lower demand for highways and possibly restoring some community space instead.
China did it and it vastly improved connectivity between remote cities in little time. Mexico also did away with a lot of the red tape associated with building railways and finished its Tren Maya project connecting the entire perimeter of its side of the Yucatan Peninsula in just five years.
Money in politics is the real reason the US doesn’t have high speed rail yet still has a shitty digital panopticon.
Tell ICE that you can deport way more people via trains and you will have a working train network in 4 weeks.
Heck, the EU even named a train after them! /s
tell the methheads that flock cameras have copper in them and they’ll dissapear within the next week
Because railways cut through the landscape and cameras don’t. Lots of people get up and protest against plans to put a railway through their neighbourhood. For safety it needs to be completely fenced off, otherwise the speed of the train needs to be heavily reduced through that area.
A fenced off section of track is a completely impassable barrier to pedestrians that needs expensive accommodation (bridges or tunnels) to get around.
I mean that’s part of it… but not the whole picture. States are more than willing to utilize eminent domain when some company wants to install a new 6 lane tolled expressway.
It’s because those camera were just thrown up and not cunsulted with by townships. They didn’t even bother trying to do things the legal way, they just banked on getting permission later.
rocks rocks everywhere so let’s all play a game
Trains are like, complicated. Though?
Trains need less RAM, maybe. I’m fairly sure trains run on sticks and rocks and vacuum tubes. Not wise, but less RAM for sure
This image has nothing to do with fuckcars, but promote more USA politics over cameras.
