Posted on 12/20/2001 8:42:55 AM PST by Publius
Imagine, for example, what it would cost to drive from New York to Chicago if every car had to be monitored by the equivalent of an air traffic controller.
But RIGHT NOW, we have the interstates and air near saturated, and we have almost complete lack of use of railroad right-of-ways around the country.
So, it seems logical, that, until EVERYTHING is saturated, we may get tremendous benefit from developing the rails.
After all, Publius is right, there was a huge interurban rail system up and running all over the United States prior to WW2.
Notice: We had thriving small towns then, with minimal metropolitan sprawl.
And cars were not essential for many persons.
My thesis is that the American pattern of huge cities, huge suburbs, nonexistent small towns, and everything spread out over everywhere, developed AS A CONSEQUENCE of the near-exclusive subsidy of the highway infrastructure and the airways, and the complete neglect of intra- or inter-urban rails' infrastructure.
The auto is king, as are jets, and small towns die with the rails.
I am not advocating the death of the car or of the interstate highway system. Or anything but continued development of the air traffic control system.
But we are overlooking a huge untapped resource in the already-existent rail right of way network that we have carved out all over the rocks and mountains of the United States.
It is a network that is capable of carrying twice as many person per hour as our interstate highway system, given the right development, capital, trains, and improvements.
No kidding.
I know that the gmt pretty much destroyed rail passenger service and look at the types of things that make it impossible for it to ever compete again.
I see gasoline tankers in trains all the time, and we know how it gets to the individual gas stations. 10,000 gallons at a time in a truck.
But again, this debate is about transporting the public. Not metric tons of raw material.
But that gets to the point of commuter rail. It's intended to get you from a low or medium density area (your home) to a high density area (your place of work). It's intended to bypass a congested highway system by using its own guideway. You may have to take a bus or drive to the local commuter rail station, but that's normal if you don't live next door to it.
But the greater issue is whether a commuter rail train gives you an advantage over driving, either with respect to time, congestion or sanity. Your Southern California commute would not work very well by train. Neither did my SoCal commute.
First, the wheels and track of a train are essentially nondeformable. Rubber inflatable tires on asphalt are the exact opposite. HUGE savings in energy there.
Next, rails often run on super-high-voltage overhead electrical energy, which may come from anything from nuclear energy to dinosaur juice to coal to hydrogen to wind to hydoelectric to burning trash to methane ice from the floor of the Atlantic Ocean.
Next, rails can carry ten thousand persons on a single train, pulled by a single motor or single locomotive or at most, few motors. No way can ten thousand cars and trucks come close to that.
Next, rail upkeep is cheaper than road upkeep.
Last, train stations are centrally located in towns and cities, encouraging even less road travel than the point-to point nature of car and truck travel.
Last, trains are the fastest for interurban travel in places like Europe, where the infrastructure is as well developed as would be acceptable.
Haven't our roads been taxpayer subsidized since the Madison Adminstration? Haven't our waterways been subsidized since Coolidge began the practice in 1926? Haven't our airports been taxpayer subsidized since Truman began the practice in 1946?
Why is taxpayer subsidized rail worse than the other modes?
Do some research for me. What % of business in America are placed within walking distance of the nearest "interstate." If the "interstate" has replaced the railroad, and business would be placed near the railroad then surely a large % of American business must be near the interstate.
And you can NOT count gas stations, or fast food places, which probably are a majority of the business located by an interstate. Because if riding a train you have NO NEED for either of them and therefor they would NOT exist near a railroad.
The seats aren't cramped on the train. Or at least on the trains I ride.
Had I been alive when they were proposed, I might have opposed them. My understanding however is that one of the rationales for their construction was to facilitate the movement of troops in the service of national defense, which is a constitutional function of government.
"When we are talking trains we are talking efficiency regarding the amount of freight tons miles/gallon of fuel and we are talking cost effectiveness when we consider the number of operators required. "
When you are talking trains, you are talking efficiency regarding the amount of freight tons miles/gallon of fuel and cost effectiveness.
Even if we grant that trains are more efficient with regards to these factors (which I don't) why should these factors be the only or even primary factors? Asserting that they should be is a value judgement. Why should the state enforce yours?
"If it weren't for the interstate system, government intervention, you would see a huge difference in the placement of many businesses relative to the nearest railroad."
You have no argument from me there. The unintended consequences of one government intervention are the pretext for the next, and thus we lose our freedom.
But if you think about it, the interstate system was not designed for high-speed travel.
I've got a friend that works for the company that does most of the highway building in central and southern Arizona. The highways are built for a speed of 100 MPH (that's the gov spec minimum, he figures most highways bank such that even a weak driver could handle a car at speeds up to 130). Just because the speed limit we put on the highways is slow doesn't mean the highways aren't build for high-speed.
Saw a special on the first transcontinental railroad in America. You are right. Was heavily subsidized by the federal government. Mostly in the form of the land that the tracks were put on. The government provided the land for a reduced rate of shipping on the rail line. The documentary ended with showing the government got over 100 times the cost of the land in savings on reduced shipping costs. So, that was more of an investment that paid off than a subsidy.
Now, when has Amtrack made money?
The Class I railroads don't want the capital cost of owning and maintaining passenger equipment, but most of them have no problem with working with third party carriers, usually commuter rail systems, who are willing to pay the railroad to dispatch the train over their tracks for a price.
Obviously, with the rise of te interstate, rail travel is at serious handicap, perhaps an irreversable one. Should we still try to revamp America's passenger rail? I don't know. Myself, I prefer steam locomotives with fluted domes and capped stacks, and since I rather doubt that will come back, I'm not to emotionaly tied to the furture of rail service...
Highway building and increased auto usage have contributed mightily to this in Europe, but you can also thank the unions for it: I have been on trains and local light rail systems in Europe where passengers were attacked, and the trains were pelted with debris and sabotaged by striking unionists (already well-paid and with far too much job security). So the union aspect is definitely something to bear in mind.
That said, I'd love to see more trains, and not only for big cities. They're pleasant to ride, you can sit there and read or work on your laptop, and in general, you arrive at your destination downtown and some place where you can connect to local transportation.
I live in a small city in Florida that needs to be connected to a big city: that is, it has pleasant living conditions, reasonable housing costs, etc. - and an hour-and-half commute over truck-filled highways to get to the nearby big city. This has severely cramped its economic development.
We recently had a much criticized vote in my state in favor of building a light rail system. Obviously, everybody wants it - although the way to pay for it was not specified, unfortunately. But the interesting thing is that the state has had a rush of private companies that would like to build and operate these inter-city lines.
I think that's the way to go: regulatory help and perhaps tax breaks from the Feds, contributions of land and perhaps tax breaks from the states, and private construction and operation. And don't let the unions destroy it...
personally, i would like to turn over our roads to private industry and eliminate gasoline and other related taxes. private industry would figure out the most efficient way to maintain the roads and charge for them. (note that there are known ways to build longer lasting roads, but most governments are either not willing to take this risk, or do not want to piss off road building companies.)
i have an alternative that may be more politically feasible. eliminate the gasoline tax and charge vehicle license fees that are proportional to the damage they do to the roads. the damage to roads is proportional to the square of the axle weight. fees are more or less linearly proportional to the axle weight. that is, a 150,000 pound semi does over 2500 times more damage to a road than a 3,000 pound car, but the truck pays perhaps 50 times as much as the truck (and deisel fuel taxes tend to be lower than gasoline taxes).
put another way, car drivers (through the government) are subsidizing truck drivers. if trucks had to pay according to the damage they do to roads, i strongly suspect that the free market would cause more shippers to use rail for cross country shipping.
the reason we do not have a strong rail system is because we choose to subsidize highway travel. stop the subsidation and the most efficient system will emerge be it rail or some other mode.
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