Daily Willie Green Choo-Choo thread.
Promoting 19th Century technology for the 21st Century.
Baton Rouge needs something like this. There are no good flights, no train service...everything goes out of New Orleans. Baton Rouge is the state capitol.
Uh, an hour and a half for the round trip?
Well at least there’s some sanity here. Now if they can just get government’s hands out of our pockets and let business do it, it would be the perfect solution.
Gov Jindal was exactly correct. The state would have been burdened by a subsidy. And even with regular passenger rail there is that risk. Which is why government can have no part in this.
The real question here is: are these trains economically viable? I suspect the answer for many is: no. While you might save some time from city to city, you’ve still got to have the mobility to get where you need to go within the city or surrounding area. If the city doesn’t have a transit system, you’ll have to rent a car. And then any time or money savings goes out the window.
The worst case is the "Big Dig" in Boston. Another example was a bridge across the bay east of Pensacola. The company pushing it claimed that a toll bridge would provide massive revenue to the area and reduce the commute for many people. They built the bridge and the revenues didn't even cover the salaries of the toll plaza workers. That's when the government decided to actually look at the figures that were provided for the revenue. The estimates required 60% of the population of the county to cross the bridge twice a day. It was totally unrealistic.
Never do they show the ridership potential vs profit/loss.
That factors out to $18 million per rider.
What defines ‘high speed’ rail? I’ve taken my handheld GPS on trips between Boston and Washington and the Northeast Regional often exceeds 110 mph. Iirc I once saw 124 mph.
We are having a similar debate up north in Wisconsin. The Dem. governor wants a train between Madison and Milwaukee. We have federal money to build most of it, but the yearly operating costs will be at least $10 million. The state will have to pick up that cost year after year.
Our train would be high speed, but would start in Milwaukee, then make three stops before it got to Madison. The drive by car is 90 minutes. With the stops it will take about 60 minutes. Then once you get to the destination you have no car to get where you really want to be!
Our train will be costly and inconvenient. I bet yours will be too.
Daily Willie Green Choo-Choo thread.
Promoting 19th Century technology for the 21st Century.
I used to live near Gonzales — very very small town — all rural there —there’s no way to get anywhere once you would get off the train. Baton Rouge is a series of subdivisions and malls — no city there to speak of.