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[quote user="HarveyK400"] Samantha, Regarding hybrid cars: <ul><li>How good is the fuel economy of a plug-in hybrid after the first 40 miles?  </li><li>With the exceptions of Dallas-Fort Worth and a few other city pairs, 40 miles would be enough juice to get you to an Amtrak station for an intercity trip.</li><li>The kilowatt hours aren't free either.</li><li>Power generation still relies substantially on fossil fuels.</li><li>Railroads are evaluating hybrid locomotives too.</li></ul>Maybe only 2% of all Californians take Amtrak.<ul><li>That doesn't mean 98% of the population uses California-99 during the year.  </li><li>The percentage of rail travel in given corridors rather than all travel in every direction would be considerably higher.</li><li>One Surfliner accounts for at least a quarter lane capacity in peak hours.</li></ul>Harvey[/quote]The current crop of hybrids gets about 40 mpg around town and 48 mpg on the highway.  GM's new Volt will be able to run the first 40 miles on the re-chargeable batteries.  After that a small gasoline engine will kick in to recharge the batteries whilst powering the vehicle with both systems.  The Volt, however, is intended to be a commuter car, which should work well, since the average commute in America is just over 20 miles.  The idea that a significant number of Texans will give up their gas guzzling vehicles in favor of trains is not supported by the facts.  What they are doing, however, is moving to smaller, more fuel efficient vehicles, as an interim step, with the ultimate goal being alternate fueled vehicles.   Most Texans don't want to drive to the railway station, get a train, and then wrestle with getting suitable transport when they arrive at their destination, which in this state is more often than not a suburban location.  They will take a plane if time is critical, or they are going more than 250 miles.  Except to the extent environmental constraints increase the cost of driving or flying, they are not the primary drivers for alternate modes of transport.  My argument is simple.  Trains only make sense in highly congested corridors where the cost of expanding the highways or airways is cost prohibitive.  There are no areas in Texas, with the possible exception of the mix master in Dallas, where this is the case.  However, this is likely to change as the population of Texas increases.Many Californians live outside the practicable service area for the corridor rail services and, therefore, cannot use them.  Including them in an estimate of the percentage of people who ride the corridor trains understates the percentage of people who live within reach of the corridor who actually use the trains.  On the other hand, California, has a high concentration of people in southern California and the Bay area, which are served by the corridor trains.  I don't have the data to estimate how many people live there, as opposed to the rural areas of the state, but if the demographics are like other Standard Metropolitan Statistical Areas, it is a significant per cent of the state's population.  Accordingly, it is probably fair to say that only a small percentage of Californians, including those who live near the corridors, use the trains.  The relatively low load factors seem to support this view.
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