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Given Up on Passenger Rail Advocacy
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<p>[quote user="John WR"]</p> <p>[quote user="Bonas"]Stop Comparing Amtrak ridership with automobiles. You have to use % of "Common Carriers" that charge a fare for a seat like the Airlines and Greyhound.[/quote]</p> <p>When I was a student I took a course about creating mathematical models. The professor began by pointing out "The whole truth about a thing is the thing itself." No model can ever be completely accurate. There is no truly accurate way to compare passenger transportation by rail, automobile and airplane. Yet when it comes to public policy we do make decisions about how much to spend on each form and we do need a basis for those decisions. What should the basis of our decisions be? <span style="font-size:12px;">[/quote]</span></p> <p><span style="font-size:12px;">Mathematical (statistical) models emulate the real world. And they give researchers insights into what is going on or what might be possible.</span></p> <p><span style="font-size:12px;">There are numerous, verifiable ways to compare modes of transportation by rail, automobile, and airplane. The U.S. Transportation Department generates a huge volume of transportation statistics that show meaningful, quantifiable comparisons between modes of transportation, i.e. passenger miles, cost per passenger mile, etc. Understanding the models requires an understanding of the mathematics and statistics, but the comparisons are there for everyone to dig out.</span></p> <p>The qualitative variables are not comparable, i.e. the personal value of the privacy afforded by an automobile vs. the community dynamics of public transport, which includes all modes of commercial transport, or the value of time for a traveler.</p>
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