henry6 Politics, union agreements, the price of steel or cement, electricity and gas, all have to be ignored and planning and building in a present blank toward a future of what is needed to move people and goods around the nation or its regions.
Politics, union agreements, the price of steel or cement, electricity and gas, all have to be ignored and planning and building in a present blank toward a future of what is needed to move people and goods around the nation or its regions.
henry: And just how would anyone do that? Ignoring history and present reality is not going to move anything. if that is all we can do, then we should just give up because that can only be used to create some fantasy land stories, not a viable passenger rail transportation system. I believe it can be done, but only with some hard-nosed analysis, which includes the sort of questions that Paul asks [sorry, Paul, I thought the maintenance issue had been raised by Don].
C&NW, CA&E, MILW, CGW and IC fan
henry6 Paul, neither your nor I can prove anything because there is no single complete and comprehensive formula to use to comparing.
Paul, neither your nor I can prove anything because there is no single complete and comprehensive formula to use to comparing.
I can indeed prove some things.
A while back there was a discussion about Beech Grove having, what was it, some 4000 employees to give Amtrak's fleet maintained and how Norfolk Southern had some 1000 employees to run their central maintenance facility.
Yeah, yeah, I know apples and oranges comparisons, and I am sure the 4000 maintenance workers employed by Amtrak are good people, who work hard for their money, and are upstanding people all around. What I did at the time was make some estimate of the maintenance worker-hours per passenger-mile on Amtrak and compare it with the maintenance hours per passenger mile that someone was quoting for one of the major airlines. It came out that the Amtrak maintenance hours required to produce a passenger-mile by rail was multiples of the maintenance hours to produce a passenger-mile by air.
I don't have the numbers handy, but if someone doubts me, I could search through the archives on this Web site to find that old thread.
But we are not talking some percent difference, we are talking about the train being multiples more expensive to keep going than an airliner. How can that be? Aren't trains these very heavy and rugged things with simple mechanicals and aren't airplanes this very lighweight and fragile things with very complicated mechanical and electrical systems?
For one thing, airplanes move 5-10 times faster than planes. Airlines get many more passenger miles out of each airline seat-hour. This saves on crew costs, and apparently this saves on maintenance costs pro-rated per passenger mile, even though an airliner may be more expensive to purchase and more expensive to maintain than a railroad coach with the same number of seats.
For another thing, it may go back to Don's 6-million dollar passenger locos and 2-million dollar coaches (probably more like 3-million). Because the equipment costs that amount of money, Amtrak spends so much in maintenance rather than junking their old stuff and buying replacements.
Another perspective is that maybe the shock and vibration environment of steel rolling on steel is such that there is a lot of wear-and-tear on some heavy structures (mainly trucks?) that require expensive overhaul?
Someone is going to get back to me and say "That is only maintenance, what about emissions, what about fuel, what about land use?" I don't know how to quantify those other things (one could quantify fuel if more data were available). But maintenance is something I can quantify. If the passenger train mode takes multiples in maintenance of the air mode, and we are talking about an operating expense and not a capital charge (OK, Sam1, don't get on my case that I am not considering capital and its interest and amortization as a recurring charge), the passenger train has some kind of trouble competing.
The whole advocacy situation stems from the situation that trains are just chock full of inherent goodness that the fact that trains are expensive just cannot be right, someone just isn't adding up the number right or financial numbers are the wrong metric or something. My position is that if half the energy spent on a blanket defense of trains were put into understanding trains, where they can compete and where they cannot, into understanding why we are stuck on a .1 percent share of passenger miles and why we cannot get a government-leveraged subsidy expansion in service instead of blaming it "on the nay-sayers and Concrete Lobby", we would be further along.
If GM "killed the electric car", what am I doing standing next to an EV-1, a half a block from the WSOR tracks?
The real problem HSR and passenger rail and this and everyother discussion has is that we (yes, me, too!) suffer from referencing everything to the status quo, to the current model, to the history that has brought us to today. What I keep talking about is that we have to wipe the slate of mind clean of anythng and everything that refers to what exists and how it exists and start thinking from scratch. Don't dwell on what was or what is but think in terms of what has to be and what can be and how that all can be achieved. Politics, union agreements, the price of steel or cement, electricity and gas, all have to be ignored and planning and building in a present blank toward a future of what is needed to move people and goods around the nation or its regions.
RIDEWITHMEHENRY is the name for our almost monthly day of riding trains and transit in either the NYCity or Philadelphia areas including all commuter lines, Amtrak, subways, light rail and trolleys, bus and ferries when warranted. No fees, just let us know you want to join the ride and pay your fares. Ask to be on our email list or find us on FB as RIDEWITHMEHENRY (all caps) to get descriptions of each outing.
Forgetting for one moment the high costs of building decent a infrastructure for HSR or HrSR, you have the unavoidable fact of very high operating expenses with Amtrak currently and likely whoever runs an improved passenger service in the future. If you attempted to cover the OE's with farebox revenues, you'd never get many riders. Hence subsidies which unlike the highway and air ones, are not easily hidden. Result: taxpayer "outrage" at huge subsidies for Amtrak or any other operator. The biggest barrier to a modern HSR system is not the infrastructure, as costly as that is. It is the high operating expenses, much of which is wages and salaries of a terribly inefficient operation. Don Oltmann has pointed out the high costs of the Beechwood shops as one example previously. This is an area that needs investigation/reform, if any progress is to be made, not rehashing ad nauseam the tired arguments about road and air subsidies, external costs and expenses (environment), fuel savings, etc..
Paul, neither your nor I can prove anything because there is no single complete and comprehensive formula to use to comparing. Where do you start the comparison? From the cost of purchasing, financing, insuring, licensing, maintaining, housing, and wear and tear on a private automobile plus cost of road building (including land use), policing and law enforcement, fuel, fuel efficiencies, emmissions, clean up, road mainenance, parking facilities (either on street spaces or special garages), and the physical and mental wear and tear on the driver could all be considered in the cost of driving an automobile. Likewise the cost of land, roadway, labor, equipment, fuel, fuel efficiencies, policing, maintenance of roadway and equipment, financing, insurance, etc. for bus, truck, or train have to be comparing apples to apples and not comparing an apple to an orange. You can't say unequivocally that one system of transportation is better than another because they aren't. Each has an inherent plus quality offsetting all others at a given time while having a minus quality offsetting all others at a given time. You cannot out of hand dismiss one over the other or say one is more expensive or more efficient because there are circumstances in which any one of them is cheaper or better or whatever over the other and thus also worse than the other. We have no definitions by which to compare and decide. But that does not mean we ignore one over the other. The truth is both to forget doing anything because it costs money or to put money into a sound and broadly based system utilizing the best of each. Which one do you think costs more?
henry6 We also have to stop using the term expense and use cost, return, and cost effectiveness.
We also have to stop using the term expense and use cost, return, and cost effectiveness.
Perhaps we should use these terms more precisely. Costs would more likely refer to asset cost basis, such as upgrades of RoW, new coaches, engines, trainsets, signaling equipment and electrification. When we talk about expenses, we are likely referring to operating expenses, such as salaries and wages, fuel, supplies.
henry6 But Don, your saying that rail passenger service is "VERY expensive" is not conclusive nor neccessarily accurate. Initial cost maybe, but in terms of capacity, fuel usage, and environmental emissions, it often is much less expensive. I agree, rail passenger service does not fit in all cases but it cannot be declared "VERY expensive" out of hand. One of the problems is that there is no one uniform formula which attrributes all and total costs of any one or all system of trainsportation. Your statement is true if we were to consider a 50 mile route for one person to ride each way each day is one cost but for 50,000 per day the costs are quite different. We also have to stop using the term expense and use cost, return, and cost effectiveness.
But Don, your saying that rail passenger service is "VERY expensive" is not conclusive nor neccessarily accurate. Initial cost maybe, but in terms of capacity, fuel usage, and environmental emissions, it often is much less expensive. I agree, rail passenger service does not fit in all cases but it cannot be declared "VERY expensive" out of hand. One of the problems is that there is no one uniform formula which attrributes all and total costs of any one or all system of trainsportation. Your statement is true if we were to consider a 50 mile route for one person to ride each way each day is one cost but for 50,000 per day the costs are quite different. We also have to stop using the term expense and use cost, return, and cost effectiveness.
It is VERY expensive. Lots of things are expensive. I'm not talking productive (cost per unit of production) but just plain expensive. $4-6M for a locomotive? $2M per passenger car? $2B for a Tampa to Orlando HSR route? That's a lot of money! You have to generate all kinds of benefits to balance these costs. You might justify a $6M locomotive if you pull 1000 seats 1000 miles a day with it, but what if you could do it with a $2M locomotive? You could justify more AND do more.
Paul has asked and pondered why it is so expensive many times. My hunch is that is doesn't have to be. The costs are partly a function of the disfunctional way we are going about these things.
So, what's a $6M passenger locomotive got that a $2M freight locomotive doesn't? (other than a larger price tag?) How about a rebuilt GP40-2 for $1M?
Why does it seem nobody is interested in reducing the life cycle of the projects?
Why did they just write specs for new 1950's style standard passenger cars? Standard design help reduce costs, sure, but why was that then end of it? Why not try to help the "benefits" side of things along a bit? How about some light weight, fuel efficient designs?
The whole process of doing passenger rail projects is so "siloed" and bureaucratic it's a wonder anything ever gets done.
-Don (Random stuff, mostly about trains - what else? http://blerfblog.blogspot.com/)
henry6 Initial cost maybe, but in terms of capacity, fuel usage, and environmental emissions, it often is much less expensive. We also have to stop using the term expense and use cost, return, and cost effectiveness.
Initial cost maybe, but in terms of capacity, fuel usage, and environmental emissions, it often is much less expensive.
Oh yeah? Prove it! How much fuel does the Pacific Surfliner use?
What I am saying is that we keep coming back to fuel usage and by extension environmental emissions, which are proportional to fuel used, as the front-and-center reason to have passenger trains, and we cannot even document that.
As to the call to do away with the term "cost effectiveness", I gotta try that line on my wife some day when I want to buy a fancier car than what our budget permits.
Seriously now, if trains were indeed more cost effective in terms of the amount of trains we could have per unit of subsidy dollar, we would have a lot more trains. We would subsidize trains, people would ride them and find out how great they are, this would add to the political support and more subsidy would get appropriated, and even more people would ride and find out how great they are.
Criticize this as FDR's famous tax-and-spend, elect-and-elect formula, but this government spending leveraged growth effect has seemed to work for every other government program -- military, education, health care, disability, poverty, and unemployment protections. Such leveraged growth in spending (a spending program is popular, which leads to more spending) is so effective that some are worried whether we have maxed out the national credit card as it were.
The funny thing is that leveraged growth has not occurred with passenger trains. Some people here look enviously at the leveraged growth in the military budget as money that ought to go for trains, ignoring education, health care, and the social safety-net income programs. No, it isn't a grand conspiracy of the Cato Institute, the Concrete and Asphalt Lobby, and people who bitterly cling to the steering wheel of their beloved car. The advocacy community needs to look at the expense side to trains rather than blaming it all on other people.
mdw I will not accept your brush off of the futility of pointing out the subsidies air and roads get. That is exactly the primary point of all of this. When a vast infrastructure has been created that massively skews the demand curve of transportation to two forms of travel, it has to be pointed out. You cant say it doesn't matter federal spending on roads and airports, etc. completely stomped the 2010 equivalent of $800 million of private money invested by the private railroads from 1945 to 1955 in new and improved passenger services. The railroads were massively out spent, beaten financially and pounded into the ground. Also, you never answered my comments on the airports. What else can you call it but subsidy? Oh, wait, I'm sorry, I'm not supposed to bring that up....it doesn't matter.
I will not accept your brush off of the futility of pointing out the subsidies air and roads get. That is exactly the primary point of all of this. When a vast infrastructure has been created that massively skews the demand curve of transportation to two forms of travel, it has to be pointed out. You cant say it doesn't matter federal spending on roads and airports, etc. completely stomped the 2010 equivalent of $800 million of private money invested by the private railroads from 1945 to 1955 in new and improved passenger services. The railroads were massively out spent, beaten financially and pounded into the ground. Also, you never answered my comments on the airports. What else can you call it but subsidy? Oh, wait, I'm sorry, I'm not supposed to bring that up....it doesn't matter.
I would argue that the government help people get what they wanted during that era. A Suburban/automobile centric lifestyle. Isn't that what representative democracy is supposed to do?
But, even if you disagree, that is all history. The question now, is "now what"? What do we spend?Where do we spend it? How does it get spent? And, most importantly, what do we get for what we spend.
There is plenty of evidence that owning is operating passenger trains is VERY expensive compared to alternatives - at least how we are doing it these days. I would argue that, even so, there are places where it makes sense. The NEC being the prime example. And, that it likely makes sense to target passenger train to leverage (I hate this use of that word...just too dim-witted to come up with a better one) those existing service to provide expanded routes and services. The new Lynchburg train is a good example. An NEC extension to Norfolk would be another. Improved DC to Richmond, another. Integrating the Piedmonts into NEC schedule, yet another.
Historical "fairness" is fun to study, but useless going forward.
Though what you said is largely true, that argument does nothing to advance the objective. It has been used over and over for the 40 years of Amtrak and has gotten us where we are now. The defintion of insanity is to keep doing the same thing over and over in futility and expecting the next time you will have success.
It was half way through October 2009 when my wife decided she wanted to see USA. I was reluctant so said I want a real train ride. Mid November we took off from Sydney in overnight (plus a bit) cattle class international air connecting at LA with domestic US air to JFK. Then I got my train rides with Amtrak. Penn to DC (coach morning) then to Chicago (roomette overnight) followed by two nights double bedroom to SanFrancisco and coach to LA (well almost, a bus for the last bit) The sleeping car, or at least the dining car gave us the oportunity to meet a new bunch of real Americans at every meal, a highlight of our visit to your country. As we took off from SF in our next overnight cattle car my other half was asking me what other train runs were available and when we could go again. Start selling just a little harder, as my wife is, and you just might get more of us foreigners to visit your country.
I ride Amtrak anytime I can. It is far more comfortable than air travel. I am not wealthy but It is a great way to get to see my folks and the country. The Empire Builder's route is a wonder in all seasons. I just wish I had more time off. I would love to do a week going from Chicago, Washington, to Boston and home.
Ray Watters,Chicago, IL.
Long distance Amtrak is great. I have travelled across the country 3x. Also took Amtrak from Seattle in L.A and from NC to Boston. Each trip has been fantastic. As for flying I can't stand it nowadays and avoid the airlines as much as possible. Shame, as I used to enjoy flying almost as much as train travel.
I always felt that long distance, overnight Amtrak was no worse than in Europe.
Paul: Great post, although not sure about the comparison of Seiden to Bob Woodward, whom I know.
I'm one of those who rides because I love trains. And nostalgia too,My parents worked for Frisco, that's how they met and we traveled all over the US on Dad's pass. So when I ride a train, I think of my many trips with them and all the wonderful memories come flooding back.
Airlines today are such a hassle, unless you have to get somewhere in a hurry, I'd rather take a train.
Sleepers are more expensive, but for long trips, I would prefer them to coach. Spent many long trips on coaches with my parents and with people milling around all night, noises and many stops, we never had a good night's sleep. But it was free, so what the heck. And in those days, smoking was allowed on the trains, so there was a steady stream of people going back & forth from the men's and ladies lounge areas for their smokes.
I''ve ridden the Builder, Coast Starlight and Southwest Chief and have enjoyed every one of the trips. Money is the only thing that prevents me from taking more train trips.
oltmannd mdw: It depends on your definition of subsidy and what is "wastefull" Check out the writings of Andrew Selden of the UPRA. I have seen from Caltrans statistics that the supposedly "lowly" , useless Coast Starlight (one train a day each direction long distance train--about 40, 000 passengers per month) generates nearly as much fare revenue per month as the Pacific Surfliners--multiple daily trains, about 250,000 monthly passengers. So to Sam1 and others who are so cocksure of their info, which train generates more fare revenue per passenger--the Coast Starlight by a wide margin Revenue alone is a meaningless number. You have to take revenue and cost together and normalize by the unit of production. What is the net per passenger mile? The "cocksure" info comes directly from Amtrak's monthly reports published on their web site. As Casey Stengel said, "You could look it up."
mdw: It depends on your definition of subsidy and what is "wastefull" Check out the writings of Andrew Selden of the UPRA. I have seen from Caltrans statistics that the supposedly "lowly" , useless Coast Starlight (one train a day each direction long distance train--about 40, 000 passengers per month) generates nearly as much fare revenue per month as the Pacific Surfliners--multiple daily trains, about 250,000 monthly passengers. So to Sam1 and others who are so cocksure of their info, which train generates more fare revenue per passenger--the Coast Starlight by a wide margin
It depends on your definition of subsidy and what is "wastefull" Check out the writings of Andrew Selden of the UPRA. I have seen from Caltrans statistics that the supposedly "lowly" , useless Coast Starlight (one train a day each direction long distance train--about 40, 000 passengers per month) generates nearly as much fare revenue per month as the Pacific Surfliners--multiple daily trains, about 250,000 monthly passengers.
So to Sam1 and others who are so cocksure of their info, which train generates more fare revenue per passenger--the Coast Starlight by a wide margin
Revenue alone is a meaningless number. You have to take revenue and cost together and normalize by the unit of production.
What is the net per passenger mile?
The "cocksure" info comes directly from Amtrak's monthly reports published on their web site. As Casey Stengel said, "You could look it up."
Andrew Selden has an interesting hypothesis regarding Amtrak long-distance trains. It is what I call the bus-on-steel-wheels.
Amtrak financials are all pooled and then allocated to the different services (such as "Empire Builder" or "Acela" or "Auto Train" and so on). There is almost no data on what individual services are doing. For example, one of the dead horses I keep beating on is to get a breakout of fuel consumption by the different services as a way of supporting (or perhaps not) that increased train service, especially on "corridors" would be fuel saving.
The Selden/URPA view is that the long distance trains pay some nominal fee to use the tracks, but beyond that you are running a "bus on steel wheels" (actually my words of interpretation), and in the opinion of URPA, the LD trains are pretty much covering their above-the-rails costs. This is especially true of a long-distance train that runs pretty much day and night with some layover at the endpoints, compared with, say, a Hiawatha consist that runs at most 12 hours/day or so. The claim is that is what is expensive is running a railroad, that is the tracks, and on the NEC Amtrak is indeed a railroad, and the passenger trains they run will never cover those expenses. Not only that, URPA is claiming that the high NEC expenses are "spread over the entire network" through Amtrak's accounting system.
I used to believe URPA after reading their Web site. Even Trains Magazine took up the cause of the LD trains not being the money pits people thing, but Sam1, our local vigorous defender of accounting practices would have none of what URPA is claiming, and I have swung over to the URPA-skeptic side because it seems the URPA narrative is heavy on story and thin on particular numbers. I once talked to some local advocacy people who know of Selden, and the explanation is that Selden is a kind of passenger-train Bob Woodward, with "connections to Amtrak headquarters where he gets his numbers, which he cannot divulge in order to protect sources."
So why isn't URPA right, why isn't operating the Empire Builder like running a stainless steel bus. One of the insights is the dreaded Inspector General Report that wanted to pull the baggage, dining, lounge, and sleeper cars off the LD trains and those numbers. Besides the high crew costs of the LD trains for their on-board personnel (Lamars-Greyhound stops at Hardy's -- Amtrak has to staff dining cars over long away-from-home runs), I noticed that maintenance costs of train cars runs into a lot of money.
Part of this is that you get what you pay for. As intercity buses average 20 passengers/bus, operated by a single onboard employee, the driver, who also serves as baggage handler, conductor, and whatever else, Amtrak would have to average 40 passengers/train-car-in-the-consist, what with baggage-diner-lounge-sleepers-crew dorm they don't. In other words, all of the "room to get up and walk around" along with "chat with strangers in the lounge car" comes at a cost of needing to run a lot of rolling stock per revenue passenger mile, and rolling stock costs money to operate, whether it has seats in it or not.
The other part is that maybe trains, the way Amtrak or maybe others operate them, cost a lot of money to purchase, maintain, and operate. We got into that dust-up where the multi-thousands in Amtrak maintenance were compared with the single-thousand at NS maintenance, and the anguished cries of "you cannot compare a passenger operation to one only maintaining a fleet of freight locos." I did a back-of-the-envelope comparison of maintenance hours per seat mile of airlines and that of Amtrak based on aggregates of employment, and it seemed, counter to intuition, that on a seat-mile basis, a Superliner requires multiples of the maintenance of a jet.
There is something expensive about Amtrak, and all of the talk about Amtrak being "civilized travel" or "people who know the cost of everything and the value of nothing" doesn't change it. I would like to know what is it about trains that costs so much.
mdw Great point. Airlines are generously subsidized, but it is carefully buried in the depths of the FAA, DOT, and hundreds of local airport authorities. LIke your example of Wichita, if an airport like that applies for and gets $100 mil for runway expansion, is that cost ever fully expressed through ticket prices? The financial report for the South Bend Indiana Regional Airport ( another medium sized airport) a couple of years ago showed that they need about $2 mil to $3 mil per year of local property tax money to balance the books--and that is not counting the $150 mil runway expansion they are now in the middle of. Not sure why they are doing it. 80% of their flights are commuter flights with turboprops and regional jets, and the current runways could handle up to 757' s already
Great point. Airlines are generously subsidized, but it is carefully buried in the depths of the FAA, DOT, and hundreds of local airport authorities.
LIke your example of Wichita, if an airport like that applies for and gets $100 mil for runway expansion, is that cost ever fully expressed through ticket prices?
The financial report for the South Bend Indiana Regional Airport ( another medium sized airport) a couple of years ago showed that they need about $2 mil to $3 mil per year of local property tax money to balance the books--and that is not counting the $150 mil runway expansion they are now in the middle of. Not sure why they are doing it. 80% of their flights are commuter flights with turboprops and regional jets, and the current runways could handle up to 757' s already
First of all, I am not anti-passenger rail. Neither are Paul M, Phoebe Vet or oltmannd, to name a few. On the contrary, I favor the expansion of passenger rail into new corridor services, which by definition, are 300-500 miles - elapsed time <5 hours - in length, with speed increasing to HrSR and HSR levels.
However, long distance routes, like the Coast Starlight, CZ, EB, etc. are untenable and should be phased out. You point out that they generate considerable revenue, at least on certain routes, which is quite true. But you overlook the operating expense side, so that those trains end up being huge money losers. That loss detracts from other Amtrak routes and given Amtrak's limited budget (which may well decrease, at best), prevents expansion of service on the shorter routes. The equipment costs for Superliners, especially sleepers, would be better spent on modern coaches that can be intensively used in fast, frequent corridor services.
It is also a futile argument to keep pointing out how much subsidy air travel (in all forms, including private and corporate, BTW) gets. The "he's getting a puppy, how about me?" argument doesn't work with children and it hasn't worked in the 40 year history of Amtrak.
mdw It depends on your definition of subsidy and what is "wastefull" Check out the writings of Andrew Selden of the UPRA. I have seen from Caltrans statistics that the supposedly "lowly" , useless Coast Starlight (one train a day each direction long distance train--about 40, 000 passengers per month) generates nearly as much fare revenue per month as the Pacific Surfliners--multiple daily trains, about 250,000 monthly passengers. So to Sam1 and others who are so cocksure of their info, which train generates more fare revenue per passenger--the Coast Starlight by a wide margin
Why should one be subsidized more than another?
Um, because one provides 10 times more passenger miles per dollar of subsidy than another?
Muralist0221The $26 billion provided to Mubarak might have built airports, fixed highways, replaced Amtraks aging fleet, etc.
There's a few things you have to look at first.
This makes an assumption that that money would exist in the first place. The aid to Egypt is a complicated beast. A lot of the aid provided to Egypt under the terms of their ceasefire with Israel returns to the United States in arms purchases. This has amounted to a total of $32b since 1979. Those sales then provide the revenue that is taxed so that the government can send a check to Egypt. Egypt receives $2b a year from the United States and $1.3b of that must be spent on US made defense systems or they don't get the money at all. But as it stands right now, at least 65% of the money we provided to Egypt has returned to the United States. Its an oddly self-sustaining device. And it does provide jobs in the various sectors that received contracts from Egypt. But the circular nature of the money's cycle makes it difficult, if not impossible, to assume that the money being spent on Egyptian aid would even exist to spend on other projects, if not for the Egyptian aid program. You run into some pretty heavy duty number work when you have to figure out what price Egypt gets on an F-16, how much of that money is returned to the US government through taxes on Boeing, income taxes on the workers that built the fighter, and so on, and what percentage of a dollar sent to Egypt is based on revenue directly received from the sale to Egypt. A portion of the deal is that we also get priority access to the Suez canal, which I'm figuring is a pretty good thing to have. I'm not saying that this is good or bad. Just that it is. And realistically the percentage is quite low. But it must still be accounted for. That dollar sent to Egypt had to come from somewhere, after all.Since 1975, Egypt has also received $28b in humanitarian and economic aid. Hundreds of millions of those dollars (I don't have a figure) are used to provide financing for the Egyptian private sector to import US goods. So there's a fraction coming back to the US when Egypt buys America made...I don't know what Egypt buys. Tires or something who knows. The number sounds big and scary: $60b to Egypt. If we make the assumption that 100% the money sent to Egypt would have existed, that's $1.6b a year over the last 36 years that would have been spent on other projects inside the US. And that number sounds big too. But how far could you actually spread around $1.6b a year. Not very. In DC alone, they're spending $6.8b to build 23 miles of Metrorail. I don't know if that number includes the $1.27b in new Metro cars or not. That project could range between $6.8b and $8.1b (4.25 to 5 years of Egyptian aid). Once you start spreading out that $1.6b over 50 states or hundreds of cities, its going to disappear into nothingness before you even realize it. They also are in the process of spending close to $3b on the Beltway in VA (The 495 HOT lanes and the I-95/495 interchange, totaling 14 miles of freeway). Three ongoing projects in Northern VA, right now, are totaling between $9.8b and $11.1b
I'd be remiss to point out that these costs are spread over several years, but so are the foreign aid dollars. The Metro silver line project is going to take 11 years to build, so you could look at that as around $700m a year. Which is still pretty close to half the money we send to Egypt.To be completely frank and answer your question: we could have built 280 miles of freeway (out of 46,876 miles in the US), built about 11 runways (based on the $5.3b spent on Philly's one runway they added), but could have bought 25,800 single level passenger cars. Not sure what we'd do with 25,000 passenger cars though. Of course, this would all be over the course of 36 years.
Muralist0221 Which type of transporation service should be subsidized by a soon to be bankrupt country? Let's look at the big picture! Would love to ask the more "fiscal conservatives" on here how they feel about the whooshing sound they hear caused by money handed to foreign dictators or the $700 billion spent on Iraq. The $26 billion provided to Mubarak might have built airports, fixed highways, replaced Amtraks aging fleet, etc. Maybe, some of these funds should be directed to aid Wisconsin and other states, so public employees don't have to protest in the streets of Madison?
Which type of transporation service should be subsidized by a soon to be bankrupt country? Let's look at the big picture! Would love to ask the more "fiscal conservatives" on here how they feel about the whooshing sound they hear caused by money handed to foreign dictators or the $700 billion spent on Iraq. The $26 billion provided to Mubarak might have built airports, fixed highways, replaced Amtraks aging fleet, etc. Maybe, some of these funds should be directed to aid Wisconsin and other states, so public employees don't have to protest in the streets of Madison?
Let's be fair and ask "why sould any type of transportation be subsidized by a soon to be bankrupt country?" rather than "which type of transportation"? Why should one be subsidized more than another? We know the answere: lobbyists, we'eve always done its, conservatives, and the niave!
to daveklepper: I generally agree. I am a #4 and #5 and have ridden almost all of amtrak's LD trains over the years. another category I have frequently seen riding the trains are amish/mennonite (especially on the 'cardinal' and the 'broadway limited'). the importance of the small town on/off loadings is usually overlooked by anti-amtrak people. yes, it is cheaper and better to fly, rather than train, new york-chicago; new york-miami; chicago-los angeles, etc., but there are dozens of small towns along the way where amtrak offers transportation to many people that don't/can't drive and flying is way too expensive or distant to an airport.
I just returned to Tucson from Little Rock to visit my family and celebrate my son in laws return from deployment to Afganistan and my daughters and granddaughters birthdays. I sit in the dome car upper or lower on Amtrak to really get close and personal with the freight trains going in the opposite direction. At night I like the tremendous rush I get next to the window in the coach seat and the trains run more steady in the evenings. I'm a retired auto engineer with plenty of time. I take Amtrak from Tucson to AnnArbor MI and return through San Antonio , St Louis, and Chicago, all hot spots. Tower 55 in Fort Worth is a great sight as is the Mississippi river , and the Chicago railyards. I have'nt flown since 9/11 and don't plan on it unless in an emergency. I would rather take the Sunset Limited,Texas Eagle,and Wolverine. For any rail fan a cross country trip is an adventure.
I used to ride Amtrak from Aldershot, Ontario to Rennselaer when I had busines with Amrak. It was pleasant , economical and just about as fast as flying since the air connections from Toronto to Albany vary from torturous to non-existant.and Toronto is 35 miles from my home and Aldershot is only 10 miles Also took the same train to Washington DC ( with a change in Penn Station) when I was giving a paper there. A 13 hour trip but pleasant..
oltmannd Sam1: Irrespective of the opaqueness of the transactions, all legitimate accounting entries, including legitimate cash transfers, can be traced eventually. This is true for all modes of transport. Thus, the amount of support for the airlines, as well as Amtrak, can be found if one knows where to look and has the tools to dig it out. There is no evidence that the nation's airports and airlines have been the beneficiaries of fraudulent government transactions. Getting the information can be a daunting challenge. It took me months to understand how federal dollars are shifted from the general fund to the Highway Trust Fund, the Airport and Airways Trust Fund, Amtrak, etc. I have a pretty good idea of how these dollars flow into and out of these funds. Moreover, I have looked closely at the financials for Love Field in Dallas, although to get a crystal picture of them I had to ask a couple of friends in the city for clarification on several items. To know the total cash flows to all of the airports and airlines, as well as Amtrak, one would have to look at the financials and accounting records for every airport and train station in America. This would be a daunting task. It would take a small army of auditors to flush out all the information. But it could be done. Accordingly, although the so-called subsidies may be unknown to the public, they are not hidden from people who know where to look for them. That would cover the direct cost side. Then you'd have one more huge task before you could make any rational judgement. What are the benefits? There are the direct revenues, but then, are there any benefits that wind up other places, like public health, surrounding land valuation, industrial development opportunities, etc. Once done, you can accurately assess what you're getting for the subsidy.
Sam1: Irrespective of the opaqueness of the transactions, all legitimate accounting entries, including legitimate cash transfers, can be traced eventually. This is true for all modes of transport. Thus, the amount of support for the airlines, as well as Amtrak, can be found if one knows where to look and has the tools to dig it out. There is no evidence that the nation's airports and airlines have been the beneficiaries of fraudulent government transactions. Getting the information can be a daunting challenge. It took me months to understand how federal dollars are shifted from the general fund to the Highway Trust Fund, the Airport and Airways Trust Fund, Amtrak, etc. I have a pretty good idea of how these dollars flow into and out of these funds. Moreover, I have looked closely at the financials for Love Field in Dallas, although to get a crystal picture of them I had to ask a couple of friends in the city for clarification on several items. To know the total cash flows to all of the airports and airlines, as well as Amtrak, one would have to look at the financials and accounting records for every airport and train station in America. This would be a daunting task. It would take a small army of auditors to flush out all the information. But it could be done. Accordingly, although the so-called subsidies may be unknown to the public, they are not hidden from people who know where to look for them.
Irrespective of the opaqueness of the transactions, all legitimate accounting entries, including legitimate cash transfers, can be traced eventually. This is true for all modes of transport. Thus, the amount of support for the airlines, as well as Amtrak, can be found if one knows where to look and has the tools to dig it out. There is no evidence that the nation's airports and airlines have been the beneficiaries of fraudulent government transactions.
Getting the information can be a daunting challenge. It took me months to understand how federal dollars are shifted from the general fund to the Highway Trust Fund, the Airport and Airways Trust Fund, Amtrak, etc. I have a pretty good idea of how these dollars flow into and out of these funds. Moreover, I have looked closely at the financials for Love Field in Dallas, although to get a crystal picture of them I had to ask a couple of friends in the city for clarification on several items.
To know the total cash flows to all of the airports and airlines, as well as Amtrak, one would have to look at the financials and accounting records for every airport and train station in America. This would be a daunting task. It would take a small army of auditors to flush out all the information. But it could be done. Accordingly, although the so-called subsidies may be unknown to the public, they are not hidden from people who know where to look for them.
That would cover the direct cost side. Then you'd have one more huge task before you could make any rational judgement. What are the benefits? There are the direct revenues, but then, are there any benefits that wind up other places, like public health, surrounding land valuation, industrial development opportunities, etc.
Once done, you can accurately assess what you're getting for the subsidy.
Your correct. The costs can be traced. The benefits, however, are usually a function of estimates based on a variety of inputs. Many of them are difficult to quantify. Or just downright impossible! And many of them are difficult to relate to a specific cause or effect.
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