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[quote user="Maglev"] The subsidy figures Sam cites appear incomplete to me.  It is probably easy to figure the Amtrak per-mile subsidy, but what factors are included in determining air and highway figures?  More importantly, what non-economic costs are being ignored? For example, automobiles have dramatically altered our social architecture.  Before traffic laws, streets were a safe place to play.  After too many people were killed by cars, laws were enacted restricting movement in neighborhoods and children learned to obey guards at school crossings. There are many other ways that automobiles have contributed to a host of social ills.  Social impacts of air travel include non-economic costs such as people having no idea how vast and beautiful our nation is.  And we have accepted that long-distance travel means indignity and discomfort.  Pollution is another issue where it is easy to overlook non-economic costs.  Examples: Scientists have only a poor understading of what happens to tires as they wear down.  Do we breathe those particles?   Power plant turbines have more stringent emissions requirements than airplane turbines; and the effects of contrails are unknown.  Therefore, a fuel-efficiency comparison of electric trains versus airplanes ignores some important or unknown non-economic costs.   Simply put, because we have no transportation policy, we do not analyze costs in a rational and consistent manner. [/quote] The figures that I presented to show that passenger rail is much more dependant on federal handouts than air or motor transport can be found at Amtrak, DOT, FAA, and Homeland Security.  They are verifable. As I have pointed out in other postings, the federal, state, and local subsidies received by airline passengers and motorists are largely paid by them, although wealthier users pay a larger share of the subsidy than lower income users.  On the other hand, the subsidies received by rail users depend on a large transfer from non-users because only a very small percentage of the population uses passenger rail. All forms of transport, including railroads, as well as power production facilities, generate some pollution. Attributing the cost of the pollution depends on estimates that can vary widely.  Nevertheless, at the end of the day, someone pays for them. My estimate of the cost to build one HSR line from New York to San Francisco overlooked two important numbers.  I did not account for the cost of the train sets.  I don't know how much they would cost, but I suspect they are not cheap.  The other item that I overlooked, which is unforgivable for an accountant, is the cost to finance the project. Assuming all estimated $100 billion to build the project is borrowed at the U.S. Treasury long bond rate, the total cost of the line would be $384.8 billion over the estimated service life of the debt.  Again, this is just the cost of one line.
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