I would like to bring to everyone's attention a striking problem that was mentioned recently in the Boston Globe...there is a bus fare war going on right now between Boston and NYC. One way fares as low as $10.
Why do I bring this up?
[1] How can railroads compete for intercity travelers with bus companies? The tracks are not open access like the highways are. The tracks need to be open access for passenger travel! There will be rail companies willing to offer cheap intercity travel, once the tracks are no longer private property! This is not communism, or socialism! This is simply taking the idea of an interstate highway system and transfering it to railway travel. IRSA {Interstate Railway System Administration} would solve this problem by allowing intercity access to more passenger rail providers. We should already have single unit rail vehicles shutteling between BOS and NYC and other US cities!! America cannot depend forever on one passenger rail carrier (Amtrak). Either the existing commuterrail organizations need to be able to get into the intercity rail connections business, or there needs to be other passenger rail transport providers besides AMTRAK.
[2] If the Bus companies can afford to sell seats this cheap, then the bus companies are obviously not paying their fair share of highway upkeep! With IRSA, the taxpayers will be supporting less interstate highway projects, and more interstate railway projects. This has to happen! We know the days of cheap, plentyful oil are gone!
Are you just talking about the NEC or all the rail lines in the US? How would you accomplish this? Amtrak and MN own the NEC. What if their lines are not for sale. Would you just take it from them?
Would "expensive oil" tilt the market toward rail or bus? If bus, then why would we need rail at all?
-Don (Random stuff, mostly about trains - what else? http://blerfblog.blogspot.com/)
I would rather push a train than ride a bus!
"Make no little plans; they have no magic to stir men's blood." Daniel Burnham
Maglev I would rather push a train than ride a bus!
And how would you get to such places as Bend, OR; College Station, TX; Madison, WI; Ithaca, NY; or Knoxville,TN?
If you want to pry money out of other people's wallets to build HSR, you'll have to have a more compelling arguement than, "I don't like buses."
creepycrankIn states that have a dedicated tax the amount collected is more than adequate to maintain the road.
Unfortunaly you have missed some of the posts this year about road wear. RWM had a post that explained (haven't found it yet) how road wear is about to the 4th power of the weight on any wheel. Now a bus doesn't weigh as much as a 80,000# 18 wheeler (4250# tandems, 6000# steers, nominal)but with only six or eight total tires the weight gets fairly close to those of the afore mentioned 18 wheelers. This is another example of the people who drive cars (1000# nominal, 2000# Suvs per wheel) subsidizing the trucks and buses. This is just one of the reasons I do not support BRT as an ongoing entreprize. Around here on the interstates trucks a banned except on the two outside lanes. Those are the ones that are coming apart, cracked, potholed, etc.
What is BRT?
jclass What is BRT?
Bus rapid transit. It can be anything from a dedicated busway using articulated buses to just a regular old transit bus that can activate a few city traffic lights in it's favor.
Paul--
I have flown to Knoxville and Ithaca, on the type of regional flight about which there are now SERIOUS safety questions. I flew because I could afford it. I drove to Bend in a rental car from Portland, because I was with my family and wanted to enjoy survive the trip.
High Speed Rail is necessary for safety and dignity of travel.
The co-pilot of that plane that crashed near Buffalo made less per year than I did working as a hotel bellman, and was seriously fatigued by communting from Seattle to Newark. As for buses, our vacation in Bend would have been miserable if my blind, one-legged father had to ride a bus for six hours to get there. Mom has mobility problems too, and my wife used to make me wipe Amtrak bathrooms before she would use them--she would make herself sick before she used a bus toilet. And I had just finished the Portland Marathon, so occasionally stretching my legs was necessary.
There's a 1000-lbs car? Where?
Wait. What?
Maglev High Speed Rail is necessary for safety and dignity of travel.
You're going to need a lot more than that if you want to make a serious pitch for High Speed Rail. If dignity of travel (whatever that means) is such an issue, why do people, myself included, continue to travel on commercial airlines? I do not find the accomodations on commercial airliners, both regional and long-haul, to be an affront to my dignity.
Maglev High Speed Rail is necessary for safety and dignity of travel.Â
High Speed Rail is necessary for safety and dignity of travel.Â
aegrotatio There's a 1000-lbs car? Where?
Oltmand:
I attended the meeting in Charlotte of the national high-speed rail vision road show – a series of workshops in seven U.S. cities put on by the Federal Railroad Administration on the 20th.
In attendance were representatives of FRA, Amtrak, National DOT, Virginia DOT, North Carolina DOT, North Caroilina Rail Road (Did you know that NC has owned a railroad for 160 years?) South Carolina DOT, and Georgia DOT.
The SC rep sounded enthusiastic, but all of the other state entities were not only enthusiastic, but were eagerly describing the many things they are already doing to further the SouthEast high speed corridor. VA and NC have done the environmental studies and are working on the engineering of the route from DC through Richmond, to Raleigh. NCRR is in the process of doing 150 million dollars worth of upgrades between Raleigh and Charlotte, GA has done the feasability studies from Charlotte, through Atlanta, to Macon and is ready to start the environmental studies in GA. NC has preliminary plans for a network of local rail from the shore to the mountains to bring people from all over the state to the corridor.
It was a very positive sounding meeting.
Dave
Lackawanna Route of the Phoebe Snow
creepycrankMaglev High Speed Rail is necessary for safety and dignity of travel. Sounds like what you need is a private railcar rather than high speed rail. Have you thought of an RV for your own travel needs?
President Obama mentioned the indignities of air travel in his speech announcing high-speed rail, so I am not alone in my opinions.
According to the Wall Street Journal, Americans spend over a trillion dollars per year on discretionary travel. I have spent thousands of dollars to travel by train when I could write my own free plane tickets (my late wife's daughter was a Senior Purser for United Airlines). I do not need a whole private car on a train; indeed, private sleeping accommodations are something I do for my wife... Amtrak coach seats are fine by me. However, my family has always viewed RV's as an inefficient and uneconomical way to travel.
Dad lost his leg below the knee in Korea. It would be impossible for him to sit on a bus for more than a short trip. But he and Mom made a journey to Europe after he became completely blind (lost one eye in Korea, the other to cancer), and the trip was enjoyable because of the availability of public transportation.
And no comments on safety? My flight to Knoxville was the scariest landing I have ever experienced. The pilot must have been in a hurry; the only other time I have been on a plane that landed so steep and fast was on a flight where another passenger had a heart attack.
A few comments:
1. A scary (to you) landing approach may be perfectly safe, you're not in the cockpit and you're not a licensed pilot.
2. Intercity buses qualify as public transportation, even if you don't think so.
Commercial aviation, intercity buses and rail service can and should complement each other, co-ordinating the various modes is an approach that needs to be considered.
The title of this thread is rather broad, but the first post refers mainly to buses. Anyway, here are some of my comments that were forwarded to Senator Patty Murray (D-Washington, chair of the Senate Transportation, Housing and Urban Development Appropriations subcommittee). Note the absence of references to cold fusion and my poor blind one legged father:
"...As I mentioned at the Ferry Advisory Council meeting, my concern is that anational network is neglected in the name of developing regionalcorridors.For Washington State, this means the Eastern part of the state willsee no improvement in mobility, there would be no service from Seattleto Denver (the old Pioneer route), and only one train beyond Eugene.One intangible result is that this truly hinders the cohesiveness ofour state and nation: in Spain it has been found that regionalcultures feel more united thanks to high-speed-rail development.("The country is becoming far more intertwined," says José MarÃaUreña, a professor of city and regional planning at the University ofCastilla-La Mancha. "In a country that tends to separate out somewhat,that can only be a good thing." Wall Street Journal, 4-20-2009,http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124018395386633143.html).By developing corridors only, some close city pairs will not beconnected (such as Cleveland and Pittsburgh). But by filling suchsmall gaps, some of our biggest population centers become connected(such as New York and Chicago). Potentially lucrative tourist routesare conspicuously lacking from the corridor plan: for example, Floridais not connected to the Northeast or Midwest, and Texas is isolatedfrom New Orleans. The Wall Street Journal states that discretionarytravel is a trillion-dollar industry in the United States (3-20-2009,http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123750615544890121.html); any railplan must consider the benefits of keeping these dollars at home onland.Americans are not aware of how much our freedom is hindered due to theway we have neglected public infrastructure. President Obama hintedat the aesthetic hassles of flying in his comments on high-speed rail,but did not emphasize that trains are the only way to truly appreciateand take pride in our "purple mountains' majesty and amber waves ofgrain." A national network is needed to unify our nation..."
I might not have included the flowery bit at the end if I was certain Senator Maurray would read and respond to my comments... But I am glad I made the comparison to Spain. I received this in an email Wednesday from Bruce Agnew, Cascadia Center of the Discovery Institute:
"...While in Washington, D.C., this week, I heard Congressman Peter DeFazio, a senior member of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee and Chairman of its Highways and Transit Subcommittee, say that Spain has done things the right way with regard to high-speed rail..."
The last time I looked, Spain is smaller in area, and the population density higher, than some states, much less the entire United States. What works in Spain in regards to rail service will not necessarily work in the United States. Anyway, a national transportation network already exists in the United States; it may not always be perfectly co-ordinated, but it IS national; it's the commercial airline network. Airline service already exists between Seattle and Denver, and it's faster than the "Pioneer" ever was. Speed sells, and rail cannot realistically compete with air on distances greater than about 400 miles. Regional rail networks are a lot more realistic than attempting to go after a long-haul market that has virtually vanished.
Phoebe Vet Oltmand: I attended the meeting in Charlotte of the national high-speed rail vision road show – a series of workshops in seven U.S. cities put on by the Federal Railroad Administration on the 20th. In attendance were representatives of FRA, Amtrak, National DOT, Virginia DOT, North Carolina DOT, North Caroilina Rail Road (Did you know that NC has owned a railroad for 160 years?) South Carolina DOT, and Georgia DOT. The SC rep sounded enthusiastic, but all of the other state entities were not only enthusiastic, but were eagerly describing the many things they are already doing to further the SouthEast high speed corridor. VA and NC have done the environmental studies and are working on the engineering of the route from DC through Richmond, to Raleigh. NCRR is in the process of doing 150 million dollars worth of upgrades between Raleigh and Charlotte, GA has done the feasability studies from Charlotte, through Atlanta, to Macon and is ready to start the environmental studies in GA. NC has preliminary plans for a network of local rail from the shore to the mountains to bring people from all over the state to the corridor. It was a very positive sounding meeting.
Somebody must have woken up SC! "zzzzz...Huh? Money? Lots of money? I'll be right there!"
oltmannd Somebody must have woken up SC! "zzzzz...Huh? Money? Lots of money? I'll be right there!"
Yep; That's how it looked to me.
Very few state-maintained roads including federal highways and interstates are fully funded with user fees such as fuel taxes, license fees, or tolls. Illinois for one is planning to make up the shortfall in matching road funds by licensing video poker and increasing taxes on tobacco and alcohol; and the federal government is using general funds, largely from income taxes, to make up the shortfall in the motor vehicle fuel taxes for the highway fund.
Local roads have been maintained with a combination of taxes on the genral public including property and sales taxes, without which the highways would be useless. And this doesn't include the cost of parking rolled into the prices for housing, goods, and services.
The problem with coasting downhill is going uphill first.
Until 2007 the cost of the Interstate Highway System was covered by user fees, i.e. fuel taxes, license fees, etc., as per the accounting for the Highway Trust Fund (HTF). Until 2000, except for the initial years of the fund, the HTF ran a surplus.
In 2007 the federal government transferred approximately $3.4 billion from the general fund to the HTF. In 2008 the transfer was approximately $8 billion. These transfers resulted in average federal subsidies of .11 and .26 cents per vehicle mile traveled. By comparison, Amtrak's passengers received average federal subsidies of 19.83 and 18.39 cents per passenger mile in 2007 and 2008.
In Texas, at least, the cost of state highways is covered by user fees. However, because the state legislature has refused to raise the fuel tax, which is the major user fee, TXDOT has turned to toll roads as a mechanism to fund some of the new highways needed by the state. Tolls are a direct user fee.
The cost of county roads is paid for via general obligation bonds. And the cost of most city streets is covered by property taxes. The cost of patrolling the roadways is covered by property, sales, and business taxes, all of which are paid for the most part by motorists.
Approximately 70 per cent of the people in Texas are 18 or older. More than 90 per cent of them drive. Practically all of them pay sales and property taxes. They also pay directly or indirectly parking fees. Thus, they are paying for the county roads and city streets that they use, although not necessarily through direct user fees.
With one exception most motorists are subsidizing themselves through the general taxes that they pay. However, lower income motorists receive a subsidy from higher income motorists because their aggregate tax lift, whilst a higher percentage of their income, is less than the lift for upper income motorists. In other words, whilst passenger train users in the U.S. require a significant subsidy from people who do not ride the trains, motorists for the most part are covering the cost of the nation's roadways.
The only reason that the highway trust fund has been in surplus is because they have done very minimal maint since the '60s when President Johnson instituted that "unified budget" scam to hide the cost of the war. Perhaps you didn't notice how many of our bridges are in dangerously substandard condition.
Parking fess and highway taxes are the cheap part of relying on automobiles for transportation. How about direct costs of the car itself? Before I paid it off, my Toyota cost me $1,000 per month payment, finance charges, gas, insurance, and maintenance.
I suspect that most users of these fora are middle-aged or retired; I certainly hope college students are busy preparing for final exams now. Students could certainly benefit from improved public transportation, as many cannot afford an automobile.
For many families, a second car for commuting is a necessity; and often that commute involves "intercity" travel. For example, all of southern California from San Luis Obispo to San Diego is one megalopolis; separate cites now need to be united by trains for commuting. As has been shown on these fora earlier, development of passenger trains in similar intercity corridors is a given: it is the only way to handle increased traffic.
Therefore, vision and commitment are needed to develop routes outside the corridors to provide economical and envronmentally responsible transporation to and from places such as Knoxville, Ithaca, Bend, and College Station, Texas.
Maglev Parking fess and highway taxes are the cheap part of relying on automobiles for transportation. How about direct costs of the car itself? Before I paid it off, my Toyota cost me $1,000 per month payment, finance charges, gas, insurance, and maintenance. I suspect that most users of these fora are middle-aged or retired; I certainly hope college students are busy preparing for final exams now. Students could certainly benefit from improved public transportation, as many cannot afford an automobile. For many families, a second car for commuting is a necessity; and often that commute involves "intercity" travel. For example, all of southern California from San Luis Obispo to San Diego is one megalopolis; separate cites now need to be united by trains for commuting. As has been shown on these fora earlier, development of passenger trains in similar intercity corridors is a given: it is the only way to handle increased traffic. Therefore, vision and commitment are needed to develop routes outside the corridors to provide economical and envronmentally responsible transporation to and from places such as Knoxville, Ithaca, Bend, and College Station, Texas.
The cost of owning an automobile, including the depreciation, has nothing to do with transport subsidies. These costs are paid by the owner.
In those states without a state income tax, filers can deduct their properly supported sales taxes, including those paid on a car, on Schedule A of their federal income tax return. This is a minor federal subsidy, if you believe tax deductions are subsidies, but it pales compared to the subsidies required by passenger rail.
I have yet to read from any of your posts how you proposed to pay for your rail visions, other than to use taxpayer monies; that is to say, other peoples monies, to pay for them.
Phoebe Vet The only reason that the highway trust fund has been in surplus is because they have done very minimal maint since the '60s when President Johnson instituted that "unified budget" scam to hide the cost of the war. Perhaps you didn't notice how many of our bridges are in dangerously substandard condition.
The unified budget has nothing to do with the Highway Trust Fund (HTF). It includes monies to maintain the Interstate system as well as expand them.
What is meant by minimal maintenance? Most of the Interstate highways that I have driven are in pretty good shape. Moreover, significant portions of I-35, I-45, and I-10 in Texas, at least, are being rebuilt. The monies to do so, for the most part, are from the HTF.
The American Society of Civil Engineers estimates that up to one third of the country's bridges need to be upgraded or repaired over the next decade. They based their estimate on a statistical sample, which is subject to a range of probabilities as opposed to an exact outcome. Moreover, given that civil engineers have a vested outcome in the results, i.e. a bleaker picture means more work for civil engineers; I am a little suspect of their estimate. Nevertheless, I agree that the U.S. needs to upgrade a significant portion of its transport infrastructure (highway, rail, airports, etc.) over the coming decades.
To say that many of the country's bridges are dangerously substandard is not supported by the evidence. Following the collapse of the I-35 Bridge in Minneapolis, an unusual condition, TXDOT examined every bridge in Texas. It identified a significant number of bridges that require enhanced maintenance over the next few years, but it did not find any bridges that had to be closed because they were dangerous.
How to pay for my ideas?
For years, Don Phillips has written in Trains about how our nation needs a transportation policy. By comparing various modes of transportation on an even playing field, we would adopt the most efficient and environmentally responsible spending of transportaion money.
But apparently that's not good enough, so here's a new source of money: in the maglev thread, I mentioned that 20% of the world's copper and 80% of the world's nickel are on the ocean floor near Hawaii. The United Nations Law of the Sea was enacted to preserve global trade patterns and forbids mining off Hawaii for explicitly economic and political reasons. Yet other nations are now mining the sea floor anyway: for example, Nautilus Minerals of Canada is working on gold mining off Indonesia. Furthermore, advances in semi-autonomous underwater vehicles might reduce the on-site environmental impact by 90%. Source for mineral quantities and reasons for Law of the Sea: J. Schneider and H. Thiel, "Environmental Problems of Deep-Sea Mining," Manganese Nodule Belt of the Pacific Ocean, pp. 223-228; Stuttgart: Ferdinad Enke Verlag, 1988.
I respect that many who post here are supporters of passenger rail, and understand that bold new ideas may be seen as a threat by scattering your focus. Here in the San Juan Islands, just keeping our current level of public transportation is an ever-more difficult struggle. But at the same time, as an environmental scientist I see a looming crisis because of our over-reliance on automobiles in this country, and I do not see any support for futuristic ideas which are needed for long-term survival.
The statement that the cost of an automobile doesn't matter defies logic. Does the cost of trains not matter when planning a rail system? Is Boeing going to give away their 787's? Where does a struggling college student get money to buy a car, so that he or she may travel home for vacations to maintain family and community ties?
The cost of an automobile is a personal expense incurred by the buyer. It is a factor in his or her personal transport option. As I pointed out, the only subsidy or public money associated with the purchase of an automobile occurs in those states that do not have a state income tax, in which case the buyer can deduct the attracted sales tax from his or her federal income tax return.
Boeing sells airplanes to a variety of air carriers around the world. It is in business to make money. In this country air carriers receive no direct subsidy for the purchase of their airplanes. In fact, I don't know of any carrier that buys airplanes; they lease them. The cost, which is part of their total cost structure, is recovered through fares. Except for the Essential Air Service Program, which I think is a waste of taxpayer monies; they receive no direct federal or state subsidies.
Unfortunately, passenger railways require significant federal and state subsidies. They cannot survive without them. In FY08 Amtrak required $1.4 billion in subsidies. Those required by many state and local supported operations, on a per passenger mile basis, are even larger than the subsidies required by Amtrak. The Trinity Railway Express, for example, required an average subsidy of 39.5 cents per passenger mile in 2008 compared to Amtrak's average subsidy of 18.39 cents.
Passenger railway trains make sense in high density corridors where the cost of expanding the highway and airway systems is prohibitive. High speed rail proposals, as well as some moderate speed rail proposals, don't appear to meet these criteria and, therefore, don't make economic sense. This is why I keep raising the question of the proponents. What is your realistic plan to pay for them? Or better yet, how will you pay for them without increasing the federal debt?
Let's see, we could get rail money by cancelling the 5.1 Billion Dollar USS Gerald R. Ford CVN 78
Or the As yet unnamed CVN 79. Or the as yet unnamed CVN 80, scheduled to be built to join the recently built USS George H. W. Bush CVN 77 and the recently built USS Ronald Reagan CVN 76.
Perhaps we can park all those new aircraft carriers named after Republican Presidents end to end and just lay the HSR tracks along them.
I would much rather they honored themselves by naming high speed trainsets after politicians. The trainsets would be more usefull.
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