Posted on 09/20/2010 2:43:33 AM PDT by Willie Green
Well, people will vote with their feet on that one. I suspect a lot of them will opt for the cheap, cheap buses.
Not coin machines... Think credit card readers...
It costs the same to fly a lavatory as it costs to fly three passengers. If you are one of the 30 people to use that lavatory on a trip, you should expect to pay about the tenth of the cost of your ticket.
Of course, on short haul flights, that will mean that almost everybody uses the facilities back at the airport before departure. The reduced demand will mean that airlines can remove most of the lavatories for their planes, making more room for fare-paying customers, and reducing unit costs. WIN-WIN.
And yet they still fail to turn a profit.
while the airlines have decreased!!!
And yet the DO turn a profit. What a miracle!
Here's the lesson Willie: Government entities don't make money, they cost taxpayers BILLIONS.
Private sector businesses do turn a profit or they cease to exist.
Why is that so hard to grasp?
(less than 500 miles) where passenger rail can provide more cost effective service.
As long as they have an endless supply of money taken from hard working taxpayers at the point of a gun.
that chart is garbage.
passenger rail is dead and should say dead. How much of the cost for airlines is absurd financial regulation?
Rail is just a white elephant for real estate insiders.
not to mention the absurd cost of maintaining rails and the fact amtrack is a government rail.
it is cheeper to buy cars for passengers than to fund these rail systems.
Nope. Routes and fares were deregulated in 1978.
There is nothing free market about the airline industry. It’s heavily subsidized with tax money and government programs encourage wasteful and unneeded airport developments.
Monetary policy and near-zero interest rates keep oil prices artificially high. The holding costs are at historically low, encouraging speculators to park supply in anticipation of the economic (and price) recovery.
Finally some good news from passenger rail.
BTW, Rail will never compete with air for 600 mile flights. Rail is, and will always be, too slow.
If I was going to take that amount of time, I'd just drive. Why subject myself to the riff-raff on mass transit if it buys me nothing? If I don't need the speed of air I use the convenience and increased capacity of my own vehicle.
Not to mention the fact that private auto is far far cheaper for a family than rail or air. (Incremental cost per person for auto is trivial. Perhaps $30 per day for food at most. Incremental cost per person for rail or air is hundreds of dollars. Another full fare ticket per person (plus baggage charges, taxes etc))
Take the money from the amtrak subsidy and put it into the highway system where it can actually do some good.
it is cheeper to buy cars for passengers than to fund these rail systems.
No it isn't.
Passenger rail systems have economic lifespans that are measured in decades, whereas at best, automobiles only last about 13 years. And most become crappy clunkers long before that.
So to do a true apples-to-apples comparison, it would require an extremely large number of automobiles to travel the same number of passenger miles as a passenger rail train that's heavily used 24/7/365 for 25~30 years of service.
True, but you still need the car to get to the train. You have to add that cost in, too.
With the exception of Essential Air Service, the FAA does not regulate routes and fares. The number of boarding gates at an airport regulates how many airlines can serve an airport and at a couple of airports in the country there is a restriction on landing slots.
I last checked on Essential Air Service about a month ago. I think the number of airports affected by EAS is down to about 112. Many of these airports were in Alaska.
Cheap tickets to Europe about $260 in the ‘80s, can’t get much lower than $700 today after taxes and fees.
I don’t comment much on your train threads, but one of my coworkers wanted to use Amtrack to go meet his son and daughter in law in AZ. His trip would have taken him through Chicago. We are talking Austin to AZ and FIVE days sitting in a rail car.
but one of my coworkers wanted to use Amtrack to go meet his son and daughter in law in AZ. His trip would have taken him through Chicago. We are talking Austin to AZ and FIVE days sitting in a rail car.
Well that would've been his own fault for taking the train in the wrong direction.
If he took the westbound Texas Eagle from Austin to LA, he could've gotten off in Benson, Tucson, Maricopa or Yuma, AZ without much fuss.
However, if he was trying to get to get to Winslow, Flagstaff, Williams Junction or Kingman along the northern Arizona Southwest Chief Amtrak route, yes, that would've taken him to an extremely inconvenient circuitous route through Chicago.
That's a good reason why we need to built more North/South Amtrak routes (like the Fort Worth - OK city - Wichita line) that connect the different East-West Amtrak routes. It would make it a lot easier to get to many areas without making conections in a distant hub and having to double back.
The good news is.... we really don't have to build very many of these North/South connections to make the network more flexible. And the scheduling opportunities would improve dramaticly!
entirely wrong.
They have done studies for the high speed rail between tampa and orlando FL. based on the cost of construction, it would be CHEEPER to buy each potential regular rider a limo with driver FOR LIFE than to build that white elephant.
It is NOT the government’s job to maintain the rails. It is the private company’s job. Amtrak was supposed to be a temporary fix until it could be privatized.
If rail for passengers was so wonderful, then private companies would have moved in.
based on the cost of construction, it would be CHEEPER to buy each potential regular rider a limo with driver FOR LIFE than to build that white elephant.
No, limos are expensive to maintain and won't last the lifetime of the riders like a passenger rail car will.
You have to buy each of those passengers at least 3 or 4 limos (maybe more) to actually travel the same number of passenger miles as the train travels.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.