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Who cares if passenger rail disappears ?

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One reason why passenger rail has suffered in this country is because the maintenance on the infrastructure of the competing modes (air and highway) are paid for by taxes while the freight lines are responsible for maintaining the rail lines. The freight lines maintain the tracks well enough so their trains can go over them at the rates they usually travel at which is not nearly good enough for passenger rail that could compete with cars and planes. According to two pieces in the current issue of "Trains" this is true, in part, because the men who own the railroads have always been afraid to let the government maintain the tracks because of the regulations that would certainly accompany such involvement. Also, the auto makers, truckers and the airlines have fought tooth and nail to prevent increased subsidies for rail service. Apparently, things are changing of late. On the one hand, trucking companies are beginning to work with railroads ("Beltway Insider") and the railroad CEOs are also seeing advantages in working with the government ("From the Editor"). <br /> <br />Also, a study done for the National Association of Railroad Passengers, suggests that passenger rail would be competitive with air and highway transportation over medium distances (e. g. Chicago-Detroit) if it was subsidized on the same level. <br /> <br />Here in Chicago, we are fighting over how to deal with our over-crowded airports. At present, most plans propose updating existing airports or building a new one. But there is a small but growing minority that is advocating rail as the solution. Jet engines are terribly inefficient at low altitudes. On short flights, planes spend very little time at an altitude that is best for their engines. Diesel/Electric locomotives are already more efficient and with the improvements that are going to have to be done to reduce emissions, they'll do better yet. We just need to have roads build with welded rails, concrete ties and no level crossings so that the trains can go 150+ mph like they do on the Northeast Corridor.
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