Passenger Trains

[Anonymous]

....And will continue for years and years

Unless airliners become obscenely slow, or unless the public becomes fed up with transportation susbsidies in general, the Fed will continue funding airport construction & expansion.

In the case of the first, passenger rail would not be able to handle the volume. In the case of the second, then rail wouldn't get any Fed funds at all either.

[Modelcar]

Well, the Amtrak haters may soon get their wish according to today's paper. GM Gunn indicates he may have to start storing equipment by the middle of next week if some action regarding requested funding isn't forthcoming. If he must start to shut it down....we want ALL of it shut down....No NEC running. Wonder what kind of chaos and attention that may get...

QM

[Anonymous]

Sorry, but this is less and less so. The hubs are going away.

The only major hubs still around are St. Louis, Chicago, and Atlanta. But the rest are, one by one, fading away.

Why? Increased fuel efficiency and range means that flights from, say, New York to asia no longer need to stop at a west coast hub to refuel before humping over the Pacific. Airports on the Pacific Rim that built themselves up based on asian Hub traffic are becoming empty shells.

Newer technology is coming online which will only increase this effect. The Boeing Sonic Cruiser promises to make longer runs from smaller runways at faster speeds with greater efficiency. This is not just a pipe dream... this is the very real answer by Boeing to the Airbus A3XX superbus.

So while airports used to be hubs, those that remain will be a lonely few.... and will be, increasingly, local servers and not transcontinental hubs.

[Anonymous]

Well USDOT is supposed to handle all transportation issues. Norm Mineta heads it up now...

But leadership comes from either Admin (ie Prez.) or Congress. The first has more important things to worry about and the second has less important things to waste time on.

This is part of the reason a private enterprise solution would be desireable... no fetters from the feds, maybe we'd see more progress.

But none of this will happen until Amtrak is out of the way. As long as it's floating about there in limbo, half dead, half alive, no one will lift a finger.

[Anonymous]

True, the safety standards may be irrelevant, considering the TGV's safety record. but without the government safety stamp of approval they can't operate.

[Anonymous]

But keep in mind that TGV was going to buy the real estate and build the high speed rail lines in Texas....Now, they do not have to buy the real estate.....

As for the safety standards, who really cares? Bureaucrats? Has any TGV train derailed after twenty years of service. Nope..... I wish Amtrak could say the same......

[Modelcar]

I don't have any idea who or what organization may do it in the future...but someone better be thinking on HOW we're going to move people or our transportation system will become jammed so tight nothing will move as it needs to in many parts of this great country.

QM

[Anonymous]

Well, Texas has given up building freeways. Notice on a road map the new turnpikes around Houston, and the northern half of Dallas. There is even talk that when the TDOT rebuilds the interstates they will be changed into turnpikes..... Enough said....

[Anonymous]

Good luck. You guys down there might at least have the space to do it justice. And if Texas can prove it works, then maybe it'll expand.

Or maybe everyone will just move to Texas!

[Anonymous]

This is mostly an infrastucture issue... but you must realize the costs of producing such a system would be extraordinairy.... beyond reason. Just as the Interstate highway would not be built today at it's costs today.

One other thing is that the Interstates have fisrst priority... and are now falling apart, especially the bridges, which were not meant to alst as long as they have. They will suck up infrastructure dollars all by themselves for the next half century.

[Anonymous]

The governor calls it an infrastructure corridor, and yes, while he is aiming for the moon, we might get a satellite out of it after all. Not just a 6 lane turnpike, power lines, and 6 railroad tracks side by side, heck double track is hard to find in Texas, but more importantly new gas pipelines....it seems all of the old gas pipelines are reaching the end of their serviced lives, well, maintaining them has become expensive....

More than likely we might end up with a smaller scale corridor, with trains, probably double rail for passengers only. It seems the freight railroads are against public rail, they like having their little monopolies..... And yes, our governor is talking to TGV and ICE.....

[Anonymous]

A lot of the failure of Texas TGV also had to do with the lack of safety standards from FRA.

These still do not exist BTW.

[Anonymous]

And the airlone subsidies were wrong too.

We have become too reliant on this concept that we should have fast transportation between every where all the time at a low cost. well guess what? Everything costs something, adn we still pay for the ticket. We just pay for it in our taxes instead.

I do not find it palatable philosophically to be getting my plane ticket cheaper because Bill Gates' tax return is subsidizing it.

The idea of interstate systems and such are antiquated, FDR WPA style projects. This era is over. Boston's big dig promises to be the last public works project of a conventional nature to be built in the USA. (It probably still won't be finished a decade from now.)

Alameda Corridor is an example of a project model that could be successfully expanded.... a project which is based soundly on free market principles, not on socialized federal construction.

Well, regardless....even if you and i don't agree on this, I CAN make you one garauntee... you may not like it, but the solution you would like to see will not happen as long as Amtrak exists. There is no chance that Amtrak can morph into anything resembling a professional system of the caliber you wi***o see.

A new, from the ground up organization, designed to do those things? Yes, that could work. But it probably will not happend, and if by chance it did, it will not be a Federalised organization.

That era is over.

[Anonymous]

If Southwest Airlines had not of used its political clout in Ausin several years ago, TGV would have built a triangle of new high speed rail in Texas expecting to make a profit privately. i wonder why Amtrak and the Feds don't think so.......Our current governor is kissing TGV again currently......Our interstates have been taken over by uninsured Mexican truckers, our airports our out of terminal space and runways, not to mention air space. While it would be nice to high speed around Texas, most Texans wi***o vacation in Mexico, and there ain't no train going there. Amtrak's biggest mistake in Texas!

[Anonymous]

At least a train stops at small depots along its routes in the west. How many airliners you know stop at Green River, Utah, for example. Airliners and trains will never replace the automobile, but I have a feeling that we really haven't given the trains the opportunity to beat the airliners... What is needed is a high speed rail network, with a line on the west coast and a good basic network east of the Rockies. Denver-Omaha-Chicago-Cleveland-New York City ; Boston-New York City-Washington DC-Raleigh-Savannah-Miami; Savannah-Atlanta-Birmingham-Dallas; Houston-Dallas-Kansas City-Saint Louis-Chicago; Chicago-Lousiville-Nashville-Atlanta-Tampa; and a west coast line Oakland-Los Angeles....Within a couple of hours, bus or local train, three fourths of Americans would be living near a high speed rail line.....

[Anonymous]

Got news for you, the density issue is DOA. Enforced high density to support any transit system is a concept of the 20th Century and is not growing, but is in it's last, decadent, golden age.

We are the home of Density in Oregon... we have the "leading light" on New Urbanism issues.... and even those who helped write these laws are now on the other side, fighting against them. People don't want townhouses built in their backyards.... but that's another issue.

[Anonymous]

Ed:

That's great investment advice! Your DC analogy is perhaps the most pithy way of phrasing it I've heard yet!

Reasonable? Heck, i love trains, and I know that to be blind and just "wish it were so" will never accomplish anything. Except perhaps to waste more money.

I don't really know for certain if a passenger train can break even, or not. I think it's awful strange if this country can do so much in the free market but can't run one stinking passenger train wihtout subsidies. But maybe it isn't possible.

But we will never know if all we do is take knee-jerk positions and defend the status quo.

[Anonymous]

If they want to keep the NEC running they may begin to have to pay.....

The rest of the US States DO have to pay to get rail service. Cascades Corridor funding is 50% Washington State DOT Dollars. Likewise, CalTrans in California.

Matter of fact, the Congresswoman from WA was complaining last month about just that.... why does her state have to fund their rail but the NEC gets 100% Fed?

You'd be better off getting the state to fund it anyway. State leadership will be a better garauntee that the trains actually goes somewhere people want to ride.

[Anonymous]

Yeah, Amtrak had plans for the Mexico run, but ditched them. I actually was not aware that that many texans went south for holidays. I supose it makes sense, but forgive this northerner, (even tho he's got Texas blood,) but I always thought there wasn't much difference between Texas and Mexico anyway, except for about a hundred years of progress....

Your comments on routing are probably correct. Heard about the governor's recent push for a super-railway. Any thoughts on that?

Any chance the Texas Leg might morph that into something practical? After all, california has CalTrans running it's internal trains and they do a decent job. Texas is just big enough to make it work..... Think of what Southwest did for the airlines, but on rail instead.

Alexander in Oregon

[Anonymous]

I remember World War II. I recall gasoline being rationed at 3 gallons per week. No wonder the railroads profited.

Some say raise the fuel efficiency. Some say tax gasoline. But the clearest cut way to reduce auto emmissions is to ration the living daylights out of it...

[Anonymous]

The states of Massachuettes, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Deleware, Maryland, and the District of Columbia don't pay, why should an even larger state such as Texas pay?

[Anonymous]

Alexander,

Thanks for helping me carry the banner on this subject. I have been talking capitolism on this subject for a while and nobody seems to understand.

Regrettably, No. 3 is their top reason. I think the other two are just interesting filler for the 'debate'.

Funny thing about the comming interstate tolls, [I agree completely they will try and confuse us by calling it something else] that may be the mechanism that actually jump starts passenger rail travel in this country. I think they would have to do something about the low cost of buses before trains would have a significant share of the market.

Another friend of mine attacks the problem from a different angle. First he points out that federal grants got the transcontinental railroad started. So he believes the feds should pay for the construction of a dedicated passenger rail network. His other comment is, 'If you build it, they will come.' Now this is real sneaky. If the Feds did build it, at the staggering cost it would require, they would never abandon it and admit they wasted that much money, so they would subsidize it and hide the true cost any way they could.

It never ceases to amaze me that Americans will believe they can send a dollar to DC and when DC sends 90 cents back they have made a good investment. Just send a dollar to your locality and get them build your project instead. You get to keep the whole dollar and you don't have to do it their (DCs) way.

One other thing I would like to offer. I don't think the railroads made much money taking passengers out West in the 1800s. What they were doing was creating freight markets by having people out there harvesting raw materials to ship back East and creating a demand for goods out West.

Thanks again for being reasonable. - Ed

[Anonymous]

I beg to differ. The major airports are hubs, and about half the people that fly into them fly out on a connecting flight. So an airport does not necessarily support a locality......

[Anonymous]

I posted this as a starter system. But I am all for expanding the system later. I would love to see another high speed rail line from Chicago to Florida, and Georgia to Texas. When you include these, we are getting close to three fourths of America's population living with a couple of hours of a high speed rail line. We do need density for high speed rail to work....

[Anonymous]

I don't want you to have to support the airlines unless you use them. That's my whole point. I don't want to support them either. If the Federal government stopped supporting the ones that can't support themselves, then the overcrowded airways would fix themselves. In my opinion, an airport serves a locality. Therefore the locality could chose to support the local airport in order to support local business. But the Feds shouldn't be involved in subsidizing the air travel industry.

Which leads to my next point. If we can't stop the Feds from supporting Amtrak, the sickest little pig, then everyone else starts screaming 'Hey, where's my cut?' Then everyone goes broke supporting industries which are not earning their way. Next thing you know, we act like a bunch of Europeans; Socialist to the max and whining for the old glory days when we were a great nation while watching our standard of living plummet. No thanks. - Ed

[Anonymous]

Every solution y'all propose favors the Northeast. You insist on having Amtrak commuter service up there and then say we should add highspeed service to the West and Florida from the Northeast. That leaves out much of the country. Why should we pay into the plan when you are not going to provide us with commuter service and trips out West and to Florida? That is why it is a regional issue. Your region has the population density to make train travel realistic. I think passenger rail is great for the places where it makes (dollars and) sense. I seriously doubt you could build the rail network that would service the whole country for a reasonable price. Just have the riders pay the costs and everything works out the way it should. But remember, you need to pay the whole cost, operations and infrastructure. - Ed

[Anonymous]

There are over 20 million people living in the state of Texas, and Amtrak runs one daily train, Texas Eagle, north south route from Chicago and San Antonio. Amtrak also offers the trice weekly Sunset Limited, east west route from Los Angeles to Orlando. While it might look pretty good on the map, it is nothing really. The connection in San Antonio is in the wee hours of the morning. While Amtrak switches a sleeper and a coach car westbound, eastbound the Amtrak personnel wakes people up and throws them off the train. Keep in mind the station is closed, and there is no cover for bad weather.... Whereas Amtrak recently introduced a local, Heartland Flyer, to Oklahoma City, it is painfully obvious that the fools went the wrong direction. If anything, the congressmen from Texas should insist on a daily Dallas-Houston local. Considering that Texas has more population than New York, Amtrak's should beg forgiveness for its dismal ****-pour performance in Texas!

The Sunset Limited should also be routed from Houston to Dallas and west through Abilene and Midland-Odessa on its way to El Paso. Considering the fact that half the people of Texas vacations in Mexico, it would be a bright idea to run a long distance train from San Antonio to Mexico City! That is, if Amtrak wants to deliver vacationers to their destination!

[Anonymous]

Last year the feds spent just in the Transportation Department, notice not the FAA, $11 billion for new terminals and runways......We would be better off spending all of this on high speed rail......Keep in mind that was just for last year, this subsidy has been going on for years and years.

[Anonymous]

Haven't you notice that all of the airlines have their tin cups out, wanting billions for a bailout on top of the billions we pour into terminals and runways? Why should I support air travelers?

[Anonymous]

What Amtrak needs is its own high speed rail network. Forget the freight right of way, its a right of way of freight, not passengers.

A national plan, similar to the interstate highway system needs to be instituted. I suggest a high speed rail network of Boston to Miami along the east coast, a New York City to Denver route through Chicago, a route from the big state of Texas to Chicago, and a west coast line between the Bay area and Los Angeles to start.... A third of the east coast line is almost already built. Such a starter network, it can be expanded later, would get some sort of high speed rail nearby to at least half of America's population... I don't see a high speed rail as being feasible over the Rocky Mountains or the Sierra Nevadas.