The Great Northern. It was built without Land Grants or government assistance. Now for some perspective, the Land Grants were on the same land being given away free to anyone, so there was no differential treatment of the railroads. Government assistance was given to construct transcontinental railroads through the wilderness to link the country up. This was done in the form of low interest loans. The railroads repaid this many times over by hauling government consigned freight first for free, and then for very deep discounts. They still give special rates to government movements (such as military equipment), even over railroads that revceived no assistance.
That said, most railroads are in the midwest and east and were not built with any assistance beyond use of the incorporation laws and eminent domain. This is especially true for the trolley lines in cities and for electric interurban railways (rather like your light rail line in Houston) dedicated mostly to hauling people.
It started in the 1870's when a group of businessmen went down to city hall and asked the government to give them free land on city streets for their tracks. City Hall gave them the perks they wanted and from then until 1940 government constistently subsidized and built the Houston streetcar system.
I don't know about Houston, but common practice up here was for the right to build tracks in the streets came with the obligation to perform all streets maintenance along side of and between the tracks. This obligation is maintained today, and SEPTA, our transit agency, is still liable for all street repairs near its tracks.
There are actually quite a few of them throughout history. Several of the old roads that we know today by the name of "turnpike" were originally trails that private citizens and companies cleared out in previous centuries (they also charged users a fee on several of them).
Private industry was willing to finance gravel and corduroy roads. It was not willing to spend the billions that would be spent starting in the 1920's for modern paved roads with modern engineering standards. Thus, in came the government.
In modern times there have been several private venture tollroads where companies have come in under public-private partnership laws, bought the land, and built the roads on their own. Some of the tollways in CA and the Leesburg Greenway outside of Washington D.C. are prime examples of this.
Bravo to the few. You can count them on one hand. Why not apply the same model by selling the interstate highway system and making it tolled? You could even collect taxes on their profits and property, just like done with the railroads.
Unfortunately it is actually the government that impedes this the most - to build a private road you have to go through ridiculously complex bureaucracies before they will give you the land use approval that is necessary to begin construction.
The Railroads have to jump through the same hoops for new construction. The reason is the need to use eminent domain powers. Granting such powers to private corporations needs to be strictly regulated.
Whereas highways recover the majority of their expenses through user fees and user taxes, public transit doesn't even come close to the 50% mark. Houston's metro is on pace to take in maybe $5 million in ticket sales this year, which is less than ONE QUARTER of what it costs them to simply keep the trains moving.
You think so, but you are wrong. Lets posit a modern freeway through an urbanized area, as in Houston. Cost of land aquisition and construction is about $100 million per mile per lane couplet. So if it has 8 lanes, it would cost $400,000,000 per mile. Lets say each lane is packed with an average of 1500 cars per hour all day long (recognizing less traffic at night and more at rush hour). That is 288,000 vehicle miles per day. If we make gas mileage 25 mpg and $0.40 of the cost is taxes, 1/25 of 40 cents is collected per vehicle per mile per day, or $4608 per day per mile of 8 lane freeway. This works out to $1,681,920 per year.
Are you seriously trying to tell me that $1.7 million per annum is going to finance and pay for $400 million in construction? To say nothing of paying for maintenance and police and lost property tax revenue? Over the 35 year life of the road before a total reconstruction is needed, you'd collect about $60 million to pay for a $400 million facility. The actual return is under 10% of costs paid for by direct users (much worse than most rail systems). You will find this holds true for nearly every major highway.
The reason gas taxes come close to even paying for part of the highway system is that they are restricted to use on less than 5% of total milage where just 25% of vehicle miles are driven.
We had a major highway reconstruction up here recently, where five miles of lane couplet was added, and a major interchange rebuilt at a cost of $250 million for each item. Given the number of vehicles using these facilities per day, they would have to pay $0.05 per mile plus a $0.25 surcharge for passing through the interchange each way every day - just to break even on construction/finance! You needed to collect $0.10 per mile for the 5 miles of road/interchange, but the gax tax only collects $0.016!
Not so. Homesteads were limited acreage giveaways that contained provisional contingencies WRT the land being farmed and used. Railroads got adjoining lands to their tracks as an incentive and could use those free lands to reap profits. Either way though, it still demonstrates the error of your original claim about RR's not recieving government perks. Government perks were a crucial element to building the vast majority of them.
This was done in the form of low interest loans. The railroads repaid this many times over by hauling government consigned freight first for free, and then for very deep discounts.
Not sufficient. Most government-backed railroads including the first two transcontinentals teetered on the brink of bankruptcy throughout the late 19th century. They turned no substantial profit to give back to themselves much less the government for all the free track land and adjoining right of ways they got. At best they gave the feds some minor perks that only went part of the way to filling the gap. And of course, whether they paid back or not it still remains that your initial statement was wrong.
This is especially true for the trolley lines in cities and for electric interurban railways (rather like your light rail line in Houston) dedicated mostly to hauling people.
It wasn't true of Houston by any sense. Look at city council's transit policies from 1870 straight on through to 1940 and you will see nothing but protection, perks, incentives, bailouts, and regulations all to the benefit of the streetcar operator.
I don't know about Houston, but common practice up here was for the right to build tracks in the streets came with the obligation to perform all streets maintenance along side of and between the tracks.
That "obligation" is generally the case in most cities, I suspect, but if one looks at it carefully it is shown to be neither an excessive burden nor anything that the streetcar operaters shouldn't have been required to do in order to "earn" the perk they were given. Very few if any cities required them to pave the whole street - only that slender portion of it to either side of their tracks often extending not more than a foot. This made the streetcar tracks safer from an engineering perspective and it made them more user friendly (stepping onto pavement while exiting is a lot easier than stepping into a mud puddle). The city came in and paid for the rest of the roads.
This obligation is maintained today, and SEPTA, our transit agency, is still liable for all street repairs near its tracks.
As it should be within reason. It's in the interest of transit user safety that the tracks rest on a stable and easily accessed foundation. If a pothole emerges a foot away from the track in a loading area the agency has a safety obligation to fix it.
It was not willing to spend the billions that would be spent starting in the 1920's for modern paved roads with modern engineering standards.
The Leesburg Greenway outside of Washington and several privately financed tollways in CA say otherwise.
Bravo to the few. You can count them on one hand.
And you know why? It ain't because they don't want to build them. It's government itself. Very few states have provisions in place that even allow private companies to build roads. To my understanding, VA and CA are among those few, and they are extremely bureaucratic. It takes years to get through the bureaucracy so otherwise willing builders are deterred and delayed by government. In Virginia for example there are probably a dozen or more proposals for private bridges or roadways or tunnels under the state's public-private partnership laws in any given year. One, maybe two, will make it through the bureaucracy before they even obtain various use permits on property that they themselves pay for and own.
Why not apply the same model by selling the interstate highway system and making it tolled?
VA and CA are evidently heading in that same direction. The Leesburg Greenway, for example, is a strong case to go by. It's a full-sized multi-lane highway that serves hundreds of thousands of people. But other states have to first adopt provisions that let private companies do that sort of thing and then lower the bureaucratic barriers to building one.
The Railroads have to jump through the same hoops for new construction.
...yet most of the major railroad lines are already in existence and have been for a century. Private highways are almost always a new startup and most states don't even have the process that allows companies to build them, let alone a bureaucracy to go through.
You think so, but you are wrong.
Oh, I'm correct to be certain. The statistics back up everything I've said.
Lets posit a modern freeway through an urbanized area, as in Houston. Cost of land aquisition and construction is about $100 million per mile per lane couplet.
You are severely overestimating for Houston, where land is (a) generally cheaper than the national average and (b) is in some cases already owned by the government along the highway expansion corridors being considered. A major interchange on I-10 for example was recently estimated at $59 million and as a rule of thumb interchanges cost several times that of flat mileage. They've been reconstructing and building up sections of Loop 610 in Houston for the last several years at a cost of about $30 million per 3-4 mile segment.
The biggest current expansion project is on I-10 where they are going from 11 lanes to 18 or 20 lanes (including HOV and feeders). It is a 40 mile corridor expansion. 100 feet of defunct freight railroad right of way plus 300 feet of existing I-10 right of way plus 35 feet of county-owned right of way on Old Katy Road give us a total of 435 feet of government owned right away ALREADY EXISTING to build the expansion. The remainder will come from property acquisition - mostly at existing feeder intersections and the sort - along the route and is estimated at $180 million. And that is not per mile. It's $180 million spread out across the entire 40-mile corridor! Construction itself is estimated at about $850,000, so you're looking at just over $20 million per mile plus $4.5 million a mile in ROW giving us just under $25 million a mile to add some 8 new lanes in each direction over a 40 mile stretch. That means you overestimated the total fourfold.
So if it has 8 lanes, it would cost $400,000,000 per mile. Lets say each lane is packed with an average of 1500 cars per hour all day long (recognizing less traffic at night and more at rush hour). That is 288,000 vehicle miles per day.
You severely underestimate Houston highway usage. Our major freeways approach some 390,000 vehicles a day, each travelling on average a commute in the 20 mile range both too and from work (which is more than southern CA and probably makes them the most travelled roads on the north american continent) for a total of about 40 VM/D per driver (the most recent govt estimate said 37.6 IIRC). So if we have 390,000 vehicles on a major Houston freeway each travelling 37.6 miles a day that gives us, oh, about 14.6 million vehicle miles travelled daily on that corridor.
If we make gas mileage 25 mpg
That's another overestimation, especially for city driving. You're probably looking at somewhere around 17-18 mpg.
and $0.40 of the cost is taxes, 1/25 of 40 cents is collected per vehicle per mile per day, or $4608 per day per mile of 8 lane freeway.
Wrong again! Per our previous calculations, you're looking at $862,588 in gas taxes on average. Divide that by 37.6 and you're looking at $23,000 per mile per day. Times that by 365 and we get $8.4 million in revenue per mile per year. Maintenance costs on the Katy Freeway are currently about $200,000 per mile, or $8 million total for the 40 mile stretch. That leaves us ahead by $8.2 million per mile, meaning the construction costs are recovered in about 3 years.
Are you seriously trying to tell me that $1.7 million per annum is going to finance and pay for $400 million in construction?
No, because your stats are so far out of sync with reality as to render them no better than arbitrary numbers drawn from thin air (which is likely where you got them to begin with). As shown above using the actual cost figures for the Katy Freeway, you severely underestimate usage and revenue while severely overestimating costs.
To say nothing of paying for maintenance and police and lost property tax revenue?
Most of the Katy Freeway's ROW property is already government-owned and therefore does not pay taxes. That small portion which does is more than offset by increased property values subsequent to the expansion as is generally the case with all freeways. Maintenance currently is a tiny $8 million a year over 40 miles. Even if you double that figure you're still ahead by $8 million per mile. It is also not unreasonable to expect that police and emergency costs will DECREASE following the expansion because of a decrease in congestion-induced accidents, which otherwise consume the majority of policing and emergency expenses.
Over the 35 year life of the road before a total reconstruction is needed, you'd collect about $60 million to pay for a $400 million facility.
Wrong again. See above. It should also be noted that you overestimate reconstruction costs. Loop 610 has been reconstructed at about $10 million a mile give or take a few (divided out at roughly $30 million per 3 mile stretch).