Transportation in North America

Transportation in North America is about a varied transportation system, whose quality ranges from being on par with a high-quality European motorway to an unpaved gravelled back road that can extend hundreds of miles. There is also an extensive transcontinental freight rail network, but passenger railway ridership is lower than in Europe and Asia.

The railroad network of North America (using standard gauge) is extremely extensive, connecting nearly every major and most minor cities. The United States, Canada, and Mexico have an interconnected system with railheads stretching from Hay River, Northwest Territories, Canada to Tapachula, Mexico, and on Vancouver Island. The state government of Alaska also operates the Alaska Railroad, which currently does not connect to the North American network. In Canada, rail lines from Labrador City, NL to Sept-Îles, Quebec also currently are not linked to the North American network.

There have been proposals in recent years to link the island of Newfoundland to the mainland of North America via a 17 km-long rail tunnel under the Strait of Belle Isle, which would also carry automobile traffic on flatcars, similar to the Channel Tunnel between the United Kingdom and France. This has stalled due to the lack of a large road network and a lack of rail lines in Labrador, and the remoteness of the area on both sides of the strait in Newfoundland and Labrador. Another issue to contend with is that Newfoundland had abandoned its Canadian National/Newfoundland Railway lines (3 ft 6 in (1,067 mm) gauge until 1988–1990), turning it into the Newfoundland T'Railway, a rail trail spanning the entire island. An automobile tunnel would be most likely unfeasible due to the length needed to cross the strait, and the difficulties of removing automobile exhaust and bringing in fresh air via large circulation fans throughout the tunnel.

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