8mo ago

Handedness of rail traffic: left hand and right hand operation world wide.

Not visible in the map, but interesting to note, is that in France the trains normally drive on the left, except in Alsace where they drive on the right as a legacy of the time the province belonged to Germany.

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Train noob here, what does the "20% of multi-track operation" line mean?
- Multi-track meaning two “lanes” of track laid side by side to allow for bi-directional operation.
  
  soooo does the difference between x-handed and x-handed 20% multi-track mean that the x-handed colouring has >80% single lane tracks?
  i live in australia (left-handed), and… that seems… implausible
- An affordance to allow this maneuver:
Are the legend markers not ordered? Or is ‘Left-hand traffic with exceptions’ really more ‘left-hand’ than ‘Left-hand traffic’?
- I think it is less. And more than 20% share is more. As in, we do left handed, and we also have a significant portion of our network that is multi track and therefore abides by that convention. As opposed to somewhere that is just left handed, but doesn't have a mature/extensive use of that convention because their network is smaller/sparser
The terminology of this map confuses me quite a bit. Austria has mostly right-hand traffic nowadays, the Franz-Josefs-Bahn being the only exception I am aware of; it used to be a lot more mixed until the early-to-mid-2010s.
All of our trains in Lebanon have been ripped out in the 60s and 70s so we can siphon our money more efficiently to the patron class by buying cars and gas through their companies. Granted cars make sense for the topography but trains should have stayed in operation, especially for freight.
Not sure how recent some of these data points are, unless it just describes the law for some of these if less data is available
"Welcome to France. Be prepared to change trains regularly."
- I thought all trains were only from and to Paris, so you’d have to change trains at most once, whether you’re going from Marseille to Toulon or from Caen to Le Havre.
  
  Paris has more than one terminus.
  
  That sounds highly inefficient.
How can there not be rail traffic in Libya? I mean, there has to be some kind of line that runs along the southern rim of the Pacific.
kagis
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rail_transport_in_Libya
Hmm. Apparently the map is right.
There have been no operational railways in Libya since 1965, but various lines existed in the past. Since 1998, plans for an extensive system have been developed,[1] but work has largely halted since the outbreak of the First Libyan Civil War in 2011.
kagis for an Africa rail map
https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.redd.it%2Fzewtbml8t4481.jpg
It looks like there's rail along the south Mediterranean rim except through Libya. Doesn't even detour south around Libya. I guess one switches cargo to ship or truck or something.

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