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Modern positive train control (PTC) is installed, and in some places operational, others in testing. Installation Deadline is Dec 2018, and full operation will be in 2020. Effort will cover 54,000 route-miles vs 173.947 kilometers of double tracked high speed rail for the Beijing–Zhangjiakou intercity railway.

We've been through this three years ago (and earlier, but I can't find the links).

As everybody knows, trains' primary purpose is not to haul cargo or transport passengers, but to provide jobs . Not just the drivers (excuse me, engineers), but even the announcers (excuse me, conductors) can not be eliminated.

Automating them will causes them to fail in that primary purpose and therefor can not done. From the Socialist scum to the seemingly respectable Slashdotters, everyone is against that... #ResistOrSomething

This is not a technical problem.

And there it is the obligatory jingoist retard who can't deal with the fact that the US isn't number one, but more like number eleven. American patriots probably just assumed the second one is a typo for an exclamation point, probably a consequence of their red state public schooling.

Or perhaps the obligatory jingoist retard was trying to be factual.
It was a reasonable thing for the poster to say.
USA's freight rail network has long been acknowledged as the best in the world, but I had to wonder what the status is now.

Question for you regarding freight rail service.
Where did you get that the USA is "more like number eleven"?

So, I looked it up.

A search gave me many USA #1 articles like this:
https://www.aar.org/Background...

And I found that by number of kilometres of rail, the USA (225,000) is double #2, China (112,000)

But then again, there's the amount of freight carried.
Here's a couple of links for rail tonnage-miles:
The trend is clearly for China holding the lead in recent years by about 15%
http://www.statista.com/statis...
http://www.statista.com/statis...

What I could not find was stats for delivery performance (how long to load/unload and travel), or on-time performance.

Question for you regarding freight rail service.
Where did you get that the USA is "more like number eleven"?

One must be careful not to confuse the frequency of spills with the quantity spilled, or the size of a spill with how much press it gets.

Actually the spill rate (measured in gallons spilled per million ton-miles of oil transported) is the right figure to look at. Those articles you linked to didn't indicate this is what they're looking at, but it seems to be the case. Apparently* trains spill about 2.2 gallons per million ton miles, whereas pipelines spill 6.3.

* this is according to the following document which, in full disclosure, comes from a Railroad industry trade group.

And, last I heard, the fuel efficiency of rail is frickin' awesome. While the engine itself is around 1-2MPG (diesel), that engine is towing tons and tons and tons of equipment behind it (American Association of Railroads claims that they get around 457 tons moved one mile per gallon of diesel fuel).

Better look again. The US uses a very extensive rail system for sending freight.

U.S. freight railroads are the world's busiest, moving more freight than any rail system in any other country. In fact, U.S. railroads move more than four times as much freight as do all of Western Europe's freight railroads combined.

In the US we do not waste our trains on the task of moving people - we send people via air transport. Though the population spread in the US is different, so rail transport for people makes less sense.

Well, you can try asking for one. The railroads (in the US) are hiring right now due to the combined effects of the recent economic upswing and new retirement rules, which caused an unexpected surge in early retirements. Here's some sites to check out:
Demand clogs traffic, profits for Union Pacific
Union Pacific website
BNSF website
and more

don't have any of the long rail lines like they do in Germany or Japan

The more than 600 freight railroads operating today in Canada, Mexico, and the United States are vital to North America's economic health. They form a seamless integrated system that provides the world's most efficient, cost-effective freight service. North American railroads operate over 173,000 miles of track, and earn $42 billion in annual revenues.

The AAR organizes railroad statistics, background papers, rail cost indexes, profiles, as well as industry history papers.

Railroads remain the backbone of North America's freight transportation network. In the U.S., railroads account for more than 40 percent of all freight transportation -- and that's more than trucks, boats, barges or planes.

Seventy percent of all automobiles produced in the U.S. move by train. So does 30 percent of the nation's grain harvest and 65 percent of the coal which, in turn, provides more than half of the nation's electricity. Railroads move enough wheat to provide every man, woman and child a fresh loaf of bread six days a week... enough lumber to build almost three houses every minute of every day... and enough concrete to build 45 miles of new highway every day.

U.S. freight railroads are the world's busiest, moving more freight than any rail system in any other country. In fact, U.S. railroads move more than four times as much freight as do all of Western Europe's freight railroads combined.

don't have any of the long rail lines like they do in Germany or Japan

The more than 600 freight railroads operating today in Canada, Mexico, and the United States are vital to North America's economic health. They form a seamless integrated system that provides the world's most efficient, cost-effective freight service. North American railroads operate over 173,000 miles of track, and earn $42 billion in annual revenues.

The AAR organizes railroad statistics, background papers, rail cost indexes, profiles, as well as industry history papers.

Railroads remain the backbone of North America's freight transportation network. In the U.S., railroads account for more than 40 percent of all freight transportation -- and that's more than trucks, boats, barges or planes.

Seventy percent of all automobiles produced in the U.S. move by train. So does 30 percent of the nation's grain harvest and 65 percent of the coal which, in turn, provides more than half of the nation's electricity. Railroads move enough wheat to provide every man, woman and child a fresh loaf of bread six days a week... enough lumber to build almost three houses every minute of every day... and enough concrete to build 45 miles of new highway every day.

U.S. freight railroads are the world's busiest, moving more freight than any rail system in any other country. In fact, U.S. railroads move more than four times as much freight as do all of Western Europe's freight railroads combined.

Nonsense.

About 90% of road fees are paid for by direct user fees.The remaining 10% is local roads as the article says.

Actually railroads still haul quite a bit, although most people don't realize it. Actually, US railroads haul more freight than any other country by weight (by cost trucking does win out). Incidentally, I believe that for non-amtrak rail lines, maintenance is almost completely provided by the private companies that own them (which is actually a problem cause they don't spend enough).

Don't worry, they're not going to pave over America, road building is something like 5% of what it was 30 years ago. As a matter of fact, that aspect is probably causing more pollution.

But I digress. Now that I think about it, I would have no problem with a government funded internet infrastructure as long as it's paid for by user fees. I would add as a warning that the government rarely does things like this right, however, but as long as i'm not paying for it, i'm ok. Yes the government builds roads, but it doesn't really do that right, anyway.

Incidentally your local community or state may subsidize car owners. If that's true, yeah that's wrong, you shouldn't have to pay for it. So go campaign for lower sales or income taxes then.

If you want a good site on the current state of North American railroads the American Association of Railroads is a good place to start. Interestingly enough rail is on track to set intermodal (truck to rail loading and vice versa) records next year. Slashdot always seems to think that rail in the US is dead but au contraire, the US ships more goods by rail by weight than almost any other nation (along with Canada and Mexico).

Interestingly enough, Union Pacific is the first railroad in the US to use remote control train technology at railyards (Canada National, one of the best railroads in the world, has been using it for about 10 years). People think that US doesn't have any rail system but the fact is that we probably have one of the best rail networks in the world, we just don't waste it on passengers.

Thank you! Finally someone who posts on the issue of trains in America who gets it. If you read the American Association of Railroads website, you get a better perspective on America's vast and efficient rail network and why passenger rail seems to defy logic by not being better. America uses it's rail network (as well as Canada) more than any other nation on earth, it's just that it uses it for freight, which makes logical sense when you think about it. All Amtrak does is just get in the way of those freight trains and makes it harder for them to compete with trucking.

Now, of course, the automobile dominates passenger traffic and the trucking industry dominates freight and our potentially efficient rail infrastructure is a government-subsidized crumbling ruin that neither the auto, trucking or oil industry is interested in seeing re-emerge.

Wrong. Railroads in the United States are profitable, privately run companies, which make their money from hauling freight. 40% of all frieght travels by rail in the US. Rail infrastructure is not a "government-subsidized crumbling ruin," as you claim. It is very much intact and well maintained by private money. The railroads were deregulated around 1980, and have been doing fine ever since. The fastest growing area in the industry is intermodal: hauling trucks and containers on flat cars. Research, man! Try it sometime!

Association of American Railroads

Union Pacific Railroad Homepage

DM&E expansion project. This page is a little sparse, so try Google.