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funny how that works
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this post was submitted on 12 Aug 2026
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If you'll allow me to nerd out a little. I love trains as much as the next guy. I also love arriving at the next station alive. Every single time. And i also want my grandchild to arrive at the station Alive. Every single time.
But by the time we start to actually lay down the tracks, a whole lot of work has already been done. Ground has to be sampled along the way. The ground has to be prepared, large boulders has to be cut/blown apart. Engineers and geologist must have had time to calculate that the ground will hold, perhaps certain areas needs to be reinforced more than others The ground has to be owned by an entity that can authorise the use of it.
Signal cables has to be drawn. There has to be space for trains to pass eachother. And then there are probably solutions to things we didn't even know was a problem.
What's my point? Of course trains take a lot longer than setting up a bunch of cameras on poles... I'd be more concerned if it was the opposite. And yes, I'm hillarious at parties.
And the Chinese build a 50000 km high speed railway network in 18 years. The first high speed train was in 2008. If there is a will, there is a way. Infrastructure benefits the people.
In California for example the high speed railway was authorized in 2008 for only 795 kilometers long. The project is expected to be completed between 2031 and 2033. So in the same time frame, China build 49205 additional kilometers of track.
In western countries, everything and everyone needs to be consulted and 99% of the time a court case follows because of some animal found or it is too close to houses or whatever shit people think of, causing massive delays. Than of course there are the changes in government. Think about the Biden infrastructure bill that got scraped like the second day the current regime took over.
The system makes it too hard to get infra built, but the movement looks bad if they seem to think building a train is as easy as it is in SimCity.
It’s also been known that when laying track over large distances, a site of archeological importance has been discovered, this can delay the project for years whilst it’s examined.
FWIW, while you're not incorrect about the build process part, this person specifically mentions the politics and paper process required just to get approval to start conducting land surveys and the like, so his point is valid too. Also fun at parties, cheers!
No it’s really not.
Flock is a massive evil. But there’s zero planning required. They're completely self contained, solar powered cameras. You can put them anywhere. Thats their entire selling point.
You do not need any new infrastructure whatsoever.
Got a stopsign? Strap a flock to it.
Street light? Flock camera.
Tree? Flock camera.
There are no land surveys to do. No finding a site. No dealing with property ownership issues. No construction. Nothing at all other than telling Flock “yeah sure strap a camera to this existing pole”.
A flock camera requires about as much planning as slapping a sticker onto a street sign. They’re not even remotely comparable to fucking trains lol.