Quote Originally Posted by Tom Kratman View Post
Eh? I've seen worse threaddrift.
As have we all I'm sure, but in an RFI thread you can imagine the one doing the requesting watching it drift away and wondering what happened...

Quote Originally Posted by Tom Kratman View Post
There is a reason they might. Both rail and canal transport are expensive to build, in terms of man hours mostly, but cheap to operate. Roads are also expensive to build, and not cheap to operate. If you're in a place where man hours are cheap...well...what's the downside? (There are a couple, of course. Rail requires a high degree of managerial expertise, discipline, and of societal stability. Hmmm...quick check....hmmm...Zimbabwe: 3 crashes and 105 fatalities in the last seven years. Electrically powered sections turned off in 2008.)
Certainly if these trends were directed by rational, conscious decisions there would be incentives to move away from road-based transport... but how often and how successfully have such economic evolutions been directed by rational, conscious decisions?