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Many good points. Yes, gummint must be involved. True, passengers alone won't do it--that is why we plan to have trains daily between, say, ten pm and 6 am that haul mail and express exclusively (as the SNCF does). Like the original passenger trains (and AMTRAK too) mail and express will be a crucial underpinning of the financing to operate. Even so, such service won't be any more "profitable" than an airline is now--which is zilch, as we see. A basic service has little margin for profit, esp. when the costs are high as in rail service. But private operating companies can do it better than a gummint behemoth, we believe. Fast freight is a realistic possibility. That will have to be part of the planning, but that, of course, brings the HSR into direct conflict with the existing rail lines, which haul about 40% of the intercity freight currently. HSR can do better than that, and faster than the trucks--another entity that doesn't want its rice bowl broken by HSR, nor does it want to lose its grotesque subsidies from the taxpayers. The system must be built, opened, and operated incrementally--so that each segment operates effectively, and each new increment piggybacks on the ones built--as Icetrain suggests. But nothing can happen until and unless gummint makes it possible. AMTRAK presently has a legally exclusive mandate to operate interstate passenger trains, which precludes anybody raising money or doing anything else. A basic problem is the massive subsidy for oil use (not true in Europe), with cheap gasoline, that does not come close to paying its true costs of use. This suppresses transport alternatives. The world passed its peak of oil production three years ago, in AD 2000, according to the experts in the ASPO (Assn. for the Study of Peak Oil). Time to create practical alternatives, which will take time and financing both public and private. Hence the need to get Congress off the dime. The heavy dependence on cheap oil of the past century and a half is headed for the scrapheap of history. Time for some new thinking. J. Snyder Chairman, APHSR
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