CNW 6000Ed, you brought up the cost of flying...when I was looking at trips for my wife and the cost to travel by train was 5x the cost of airfare. I'll grant you that may not be the case in every instance though.
Actually, in this way planes are similar to trains may years ago.
Because privately owned trains and planes have traditionally had high fixed costs (much of which is debt) and these costs must be paid whether you tun then or not companies have to do everything they can to fill their seats. If this means running at a loss it is better to run at a loss rather than not run at all because by not running at all you have higher losses.
For planes this means that on competitive routes you can, by shopping around, get very low fares. However if a plane has a monopoly on a route you cannot get these low fares. In fact there is a lot of pressure to raise fares to cover the costs of your competitive routes.
Charles Francis Adams points out that this kind of competition ultimately led to increased costs for the consumer rather than lower costs as many people naïvely believe. It also means that many places are left with no transportation at all.
So yes, some airlines have super low fares between competitive points and while they do it is possible to take advantage of those fares. But if you want to travel between places served by one or very few airlines you will pay a lot more. And maybe you will find that you just can't get they by plane unless you charter one.
edblysardBecause I despise the invasive search and useless nonsense the TSA forces you to tolerate when flying.
Last time I had to travel to another state was in 2004. I went by plane. NEVER AGAIN!! Next time I'll go by bus or train.
Dr. Frankendiesel aka Scott Running BearSpace Mouse for president!15 year veteran fire fighterCollector of Apple //e'sRunning Bear EnterprisesHistory Channel Club life member.beatus homo qui invenit sapientiam
Depends.
To have one "because we used to"? No. If there's a demonstrated need to be met or to reasonably expand existing services then sure.
Ed, you brought up the cost of flying...when I was looking at trips for my wife and the cost to travel by train was 5x the cost of airfare. I'll grant you that may not be the case in every instance though.
Personally I doubt I would ever ride a passenger train.
Dan
I would say does. My visits to Utica when working on our trains there show that people do ride the train - there are plenty of folks getting on and off virtually every train.
While the price tag is out of this world, methinks the extension of what is evidenced in the NEC (which echos Sir Madog's comments on rail travel in Europe) could be accomplished by HSR in select markets.
Larry Resident Microferroequinologist (at least at my house) Everyone goes home; Safety begins with you My Opinion. Standard Disclaimers Apply. No Expiration Date Come ride the rails with me! There's one thing about humility - the moment you think you've got it, you've lost it...
Does
Our roads are strangling us economically not to mention all of the injuries and deaths we suffer from automobiles.
And our roads, especially limited access highways are crumbling. We will have to find money to rebuild them.
And far too many lives have been lost in our wars to keep petroleum products flowing to us.
I am fortunate to live in a country that sports a quite extensive passenger rail network, although it is only a shadow of what it once was. Traveling by train has turned into the fastest and most comfortable mode of transporting people in my country, making domestic flights nearly obsolete. Traveling time from all the way north to all the way south (Hamburg to Munich) takes the same time, if you add all the times, yet taking the train is much more convenient. Trains arrive and depart in the center of the cities, and not in dingy industrial districts. Public transport by light rail or bus takes you anywhere within the cities.
With the gas prices the way they are in my country (how does $ 8.50 a gallon sound to you?) traveling by train is also much cheaper these days.
I am perfectly aware that one cannot compare Germany and the US, as our distances are much shorter, but i still think that your country could do with a better passenger train system than it now has.
Murphy Siding ....because? .......
....because? .......
Because I despise the invasive search and useless nonsense the TSA forces you to tolerate when flying.
Because I love trains, especially long, flashy fast passenger trains.
Because it is hard to hijack then fly trains into the Twin Towers.
Because the cost of flying with my family is about equal to 2 months of my salary.
Because a lot of other people feel the same way.
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... there are some services -- just as there are for regionals or locals -- that need to be assured regardless of the profitability net of all capitalization, stranded cost, etc. that would otherwise 'not be present'.
I leave out discussions of national pride, make-work subsidies, pork-barrel setasides, pandering to underserved constituencies, and the other 'all that implies' things that have characterized some of the recent "discussions" on this general subject... ;-}
Thanks to Chris / CopCarSS for my avatar.
Does, most certainly.
There should also be state/regional rail services, and support for urban rail and light rail systems.
There should also be two types of national 'private' support: A well-established and defined way for private trains or consists to be operated effectively as part of the national system's trains -- I'm thinking here of the Cardinal and Greenbrier Express in particular, and support for a private company's efforts to provide 'comparable' service... perhaps via some kind of 'voucher' that provides some amount that would have been spent on a particular national service to a private entity.
I admit that I think at least the operational fiction that the national system ultimately be "profitable" should be continued, although that shouldn't be an excuse for various doctrinaire politicians to grill the executives of the national system every year over all the jots and tittles of seagull micromanagement...
RME
Does.
The United States need a national passenger rail system?
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