Downtown to downtown one-seat rides are essential to hold the intercity short-destance corridor market. That is a given. The Illinois Terminal sure found out that in a hurry when their new streamliners could not enter downtown Peoria. The PRR spent a whale of a lot of money so its intercity trains could enter NY, but most of its commuter passengers still went to Exchange Place, Jersey City and enjoyed the ferry boat ride or a transfer to the Hudson and Manhattan, today's PATH to reach Manhattan. Rush hour commuter service from New Jersey into Penn Station Manhattan increased as intercity trains decreased, as a way for PRR to cut out the expense of ferry boats and the Exchange Place terminal and passsenger yard and locomotive facilities. Commuters are more likely to put up with changes than corridor business riders. The tradition of going to Manhattan and going to San Frfancisco by a ferry boat at the end of a train ride is an old one. Most residents of Staten Island that work in Manhattan do it today, even arriving by bus at the Ferry terminal and even though there is express bus service to Manhattan.
My solution to the Hudson River tunel capacity problem is to make better use of the four existing PATH tunnels, and I have already make some suggestions to PATH. (They did implement certain other suggestion which were provided on a professional basis.)
It wouild be difficult to make better use of the PATH tunnels under any circumstances mainly because of the trolley car curves, reverse curves, and turnouts. The only cars that will fit are the short cars designed for the service, no other car from another route source would fit. And, during rush hour, PATH runs to capacity with a short block signal system and the motormen virtually reading the letters on the markers of the train ahead. So that leave only one two things left: twin bores for at least two tracks if not four, for heavy rail equipment. And while everything runs toward Penn Station (or GCT from the north and the new LI approach to GCT), I often ponder a heavy rail tunnel from Hoboken-Jersey City to downtown Manhatten through to perhaps a LIRR connection at Flatbush and Atlantic or over to Fresh Pond. It would alleviate a lot of congestion at Penn for both NJT and LIRR for starters.
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It's going to be a few years before any new tunnels are opened. It'd be great if PATH can improve capacity beyond what it already accomplishes; otherwise a question of priorities remains for Penn Station. A comment was made that something was in the works to lengthen some platforms.
CUS and LAUPT face problems too; but those should be separate threads.
PATH can increase capacity as follows:
Use a hostler system at Newark for running trains to the pocket tracks with the road engineers dropping off at Newark Station, to halve the headway betweet trains between Journal Square and Newark, and then run through Herald Square service as well as WTC service. They are planning to upgrade the signal system, and if the same standards are used system-wide, there should then be no other problem.
A lot of short cars are uneconomic for maximum loading. Because with passenger unable to move between cars, trains are loaded unevenly, and there can be lots of room in end cars with center of train cars packed to capacity. Many overseas rapid transit lines have learned and applied this lesson. Madrid, for one. I think PATH should be using long multi-section articulated cars, with one or two mutli-car units for the entire train, instead of a lot of small cars. It would be possible to take the existing shells and components of the latest equpment and rebuild them. The riding quality would improve also.
And at least for the WTC-Newark service, longer platforms and longer trains.
PATH has short cars for the same reason that CTA has short cars, there are several curves that can't handle long cars. The same tight curves preclude the use of diaphragms between cars, North Shore tried it with their Silverliner rebuilds but thay had to be pinned back when operating on the L.
Yes, the 90 degree curves (I exaggerate a little) is a problem for PATH and I would think articulated cars would't be able to take the turns, especially the short S and double reverses unless made of rubber from end to end. And I understand the signalling is getting an upgrade. Of course I think PATH in terms of Hoboken but from Grove Street west to Newark it is a different railroad with fewer and less tight curves...so maybe a longer articulated car could be used Newark to Downtown. I'm not sure a hostler would necessarily speed things for return trips at Newark because the trains would still have to go to the far west end and return. Unfortunately the wesbound and the eastbound terminal tracks are at different levels, so stub end and reversing is out of the question. (It is interesting to note that on the weekend service Journal Square to Hoboken to 33rd St to Hoboken to Journal Square there is an engineer at each end of the train as the route is into stub end terminals at Hoboken and 33rd St and with the crowd there is not enough time for the motorman to walk the length of the train for turnaround!) The current signal system of short and overlapping blocks (some as short as a car length where speeds are slow) is based on short cars, too. During rush hours trains often run on the markers or at least with at least one train in sight ahead. Longer trains won't do it because of the platform lengths which also might preclude the use of longer articulated cars if only because nothing could be gained.
Perhaps extending the 33rd St line north and west to terminate at Secaucus Jct, (See the 7 train plan) or even then continuing on from SJ back to Journal Sq. via the old Marion Jct. might be of help (running in a continuous loop or to Newark). One of the things PATH cannot do is make an up and downtown trip easy. Its fares are lower than the subway and thus takes away from subway patronage. That's why one has to change trains somewhere along the line (Hoboken, Grove St.,, or Journal Square) if going from 33rd St to WTC or vice versa). In short I think the way to ease congestion and speed up service for PATH is not in the car sizes, an probabley not much in increasing speeds either, but in expanding and duplcating or augmenting routes.
CSSHEGEWISCH PATH has short cars for the same reason that CTA has short cars, there are several curves that can't handle long cars. The same tight curves preclude the use of diaphragms between cars, North Shore tried it with their Silverliner rebuilds but thay had to be pinned back when operating on the L.
It's the overall length of a "longer" articulated car for PATH that is proposed, like the 97' 3-unit articulated cars of the CTA. I really don't know how effective articulated cars would be in allowing passengers on board to migrate to the ends of a crowded train. Each multi-unit car would need to be half the train length, ~175', which works out to about 5 sections.
Perhaps more effective would be to have a mix of stations with center and end platform stairs/escalators with both at WTC to distribute boarding and alighting.
Newark has tail tracks to reverse PATH trains expeditiously; but I'm not familiar with the operation.
Henry6 made some suggestions that seem worth exploring, albeit requiring another tunnel.
Umm, well, slow down. I ride Acela and it's not wall-to-wall suits. Plenty of regular people ride Acela between WAS and NYP.
And, everything that was done to improve the infrastructure for Acela has directly benefitted all other trains, from Northeast Regional (which exceeds original Metroliner speeds, by the way) and commuter, from track integrity, reliability, and dispatch.
Does the OP actually ride the Acela?
Some on here have sounded as if Acela is a guest on Amtrak rails. I thought Acela was simply a faster Amtrak service. Am I wrong?
dakotafred Some on here have sounded as if Acela is a guest on Amtrak rails. I thought Acela was simply a faster Amtrak service. Am I wrong?
An interesting interpertation...but you are right...Acela is an Amtrak service. It is a novel idea in this age of investment banking mentality, provide a service that fits your business. But don't let my sarcasim scare you off. I really think there is disbelief that people with money, whether business class or whatever, do have money and will spend it because they want what money will buy. It just takes a lot to offer such serface....
....and, yeah, not all riders of Acela are on business expense accounts. But neither do all business people dress in three piece suits with white shirt and tie, either. Going into car dealerships of late and I can't figure out who is the mechanic and who is the salesman! Business owners of all kinds never with a shirt and tie, but jeans and tee shirts!
This is another reason why I can say we've got to stop thinking of what has been and what is and start thinking in new terms and building a new transportation system from scratch.
Thank you, henry.
I'm curious if the new PATH trains are better with the new door configuration. They sure look like they are easier for many people to board and alight than the old cars are.
PATH: The new cars do speed loading and unloading and can result in faster schedules and more service when all are in service. The articulated Electroliners had zero trouble with CTA/CRT sharp curves, and that shows a long articulated car can be run around PATH curves which are no sharper that CTA's. The clearance restrictions are also similar. The new cars have less seating capacity and PATH has gone from an mixture of facing and backward and side seats to all (bowling alley) side seating, thus reducing comfort for off-peak passengers, since more people have to stand. What I would do is use the center doors on each cars only during heavy traffice and have fold-down seats from panels each side of the center doors to provide additional seating during light traffic periods.
The idea of hostlers at Newark is precisely so there is a motorman (engineer) at each end of the train between the Newark station platforms and the stub-end double track pocket. Now, a four-minute headway is the minimum, because it takes time for the engineer on each train to wal the length of the train to reverse ends. The headway could be reduced to two minutes or possibly even 90 seconds, by having an engineer at each end. One train at a time through the X crossovers being the limitation. (Even that problem could be solved by a flyowver track, but that costs money.) But hostlers would be required, since it would be uneconomical for having the second engineer go all the way to WTC or Herald Square. The engineer and conductor of the arriving train at Newark would to downstairs and take over the next arriving train from the pocket tracks west of the staton. The two hostlers would go upstairs and board the next arriving train from Manhattan.
ACELA: The bottom line is that the Acela service reduces the overall subsidy needed for the NEC and so in a sence is "profitable" even if all services are subsidized if capital costs are included.
daveklepper ACELA: The bottom line is that the Acela service reduces the overall subsidy needed for the NEC and so in a sence is "profitable" even if all services are subsidized if capital costs are included.
Without the ability to look at Amtrak's books in depth, as well as the other railroads with a stake in the NEC, there is no way to verify the assertion that the Acela service reduces the overall subsidy needed for the NEC.
It is unlikely that Amtrak would have made the large capital investments in the NEC had it not been for the Acela. However, at the end of the day, no one can know for sure, because no one ran a parallel universe to determine the costs of the alternatives. One thing is certain, however. The NEC does not cover its capital costs out of the fare box.
The logical argument has been presented on this thread innumerable times, but you simply seem rather deaf to its statement. The bottom line is that the Acela Service reduces and does not increase the overall subsidy of the NEC. Any accounting annalysis will prove this. The Acela service either reduces the ticket price you and I pay for NE Regional service or reduces the subsidy we require when we use that service or a bit of both. It also performs a useful function by taking cars off overcrowded highways (sure possibly less than 1% on I-95, but every bit helps) and reduces the need for airport and highway land-taking for further expansion.
This has been repeated and repeated and repeated.
Whether it is subsidized or not is more a matter of semantics than fact. When you drive your personal automotible you are being subsidized by your state's citizens and by your fellow USA citizens. The fact that a Cadillac driver is also subsidized should not disturb you. You would pay more for your Chevrolet or Ford when you bought it if Cadillacs and Lincolns had not also been sold.
daveklepper The bottom line is that the Acela Service reduces and does not increase the overall subsidy of the NEC. Any accounting analysis will prove this. The Acela service either reduces the ticket price you and I pay for NE Regional service or reduces the subsidy we require when we use that service or a bit of both. This has been repeated and repeated and repeated.
The bottom line is that the Acela Service reduces and does not increase the overall subsidy of the NEC. Any accounting analysis will prove this. The Acela service either reduces the ticket price you and I pay for NE Regional service or reduces the subsidy we require when we use that service or a bit of both.
It depends on the amount of capital baked into the NEC for the Acela service. The line was upgraded at significant cost for the Acela service, i.e. electrification of the line from New Haven to Boston, etc.
The Acela fares are not sufficient to off-set the capital costs of the upgrade. Until the Acela covers its proportional share of the capital costs (it is not), it is incorrect to say that it is subsidizing the NEC regional fares. Or at least this is the conclusion that most cost accountants would draw.
Unless Amtrak opened its books to public analysis, which it has not done, a valid accounting analysis cannot be performed.
A bigger factor in reducing NEC regional train fares, I suspect, is the competition, especially from buses and cars. Wannabe travelers from Philadelphia to New York, for example, can take a Bolt Bus for about half of what it costs to go by train. Train devotees may not take a bus, but apparently plenty of people are doing so. Bolt is probably making money; it is adding services throughout the Northeast. Unlike Amtrak, it is an investor owned business. It covers its costs or goes out of business. What a novel idea.
Dave: You said it! sam1 makes some good points but keeps pushing the goal line. The determination of full capitalization recovery costs in transportation seems a very murky area, even for accountancy experts. Sticking with examination of the covering of operational expenses is reasonably transparent and pretty clearly Acela succeeds in doing so and maybe one or two of the other corridor services [CHI-StL and WASH-LYNCH] do also, with tiny surpluses. In the case of Acela, its surplus over OE allows the entire NEC operation to have made $62.9 mil in FY 2011 through Jan.
C&NW, CA&E, MILW, CGW and IC fan
I'm sorry I don't have notes; but some presentations at Northwestern U on Friday and at the Midwest High Speed Rail Association meeting Saturday addressed the issue of public economic benefit justifying transportation infrastructure improvements for high-speed rail in particular and by extension Amtrak and transit generally. Case in point: a $200M hotel and conference center opened adjacent the Normal, IL transportation center still under construction and before the Chicago-Saint Louis Corridor sees 110 mph service. Long-term additional tax revenues from induced redevelopment and economic activity in cities are expected to outweigh the public cost for HSR improvements. US population is expected to rise by 70M by 2035, almost all in urban areas, and bringing the urban proportion to 80%.
And Bolt Bus "covers its costs" and makes money for its owners only because ALL HIGHWAY TRANSPORTATION IS SUBSIDIZED. Including Bolt Bus. If it weren't for the NEC passenger trains traffic would be at a standstill anyway. So in a sense the subsidy to the Amtrak's NEC also subsidizes Bolt Bus. Beyond the lack of real estate taxes on superhighway land, beyond the police protection that is not covered by highway taxes, beyond State congribution to highway repairs that comes from the general fund and not highway taxes.
And the NEC upgrade was needed for decent Northeast Regional service as well as Acela and the Boston electrification was opened only with regular Amfleet operations. Much of the upgrade, and any Amtrak expert will tell you this, was comonsation for long-deferred maintenance.
Long distance trains may be controversial, high speed in the midwest may be controversial, but everyone knowledgeable knows the NEC is essential to the east coast economy (and the USA in general) and needed an upgrade, still incomplete, very very badly. And charging a premium price for the best service to cross subsidize the other services just makes excellent business sense. Amtrak should be applauded for doing the right thing by all its customers, as well as the taxpayers by doing so.
Dave! Your post above states exactly the problems with the US transportation policy: there isn't one and nobody understands the dependencies and independences of each mode. While I know there is no zero point to go back to in order to redesign and replan, planners and the like have to mentally deesignate a date zero start planning, building and intergrating virtually from scratch, But they also need a good, down to earth, PR person who understands transportation and can explain in simple to understand terms to the populos!
henry6 Dave! Your post above states exactly the problems with the US transportation policy: there isn't one and nobody understands the dependencies and inter-dependencies of each mode. While I know there is no zero point to go back to in order to redesign and re-plan, planners and the like have to mentally designate a date zero start planning, building and integrating virtually from scratch, But they also need a good, down to earth, PR person who understands transportation and can explain in simple to understand terms to the populous!
Dave! Your post above states exactly the problems with the US transportation policy: there isn't one and nobody understands the dependencies and inter-dependencies of each mode. While I know there is no zero point to go back to in order to redesign and re-plan, planners and the like have to mentally designate a date zero start planning, building and integrating virtually from scratch, But they also need a good, down to earth, PR person who understands transportation and can explain in simple to understand terms to the populous!
The zero point is today; and it's what we do hereon out that is the important thing. We have a lot of sunk investment in transportation; and the art is to use it as well as possible. We can't afford to rip out and replace in most cases; but we can modify and enhance what we do have. The ideological framework for small government and deregulation makes any central planning next to impossible. Draw your own conclusions.
In your's and my mind zero point is today, Harvey, but the real zero point is when we allow planners, governements, and business to sit down and do what has to be done from that day on. Yes, the ideiological framework you describe is the crux of the matter which is the part that has be be brought to zero to start the proccess or building anew (not rebuilding, but building anew). It is not a matter of ripping out and replacing but about realocating and redesignating and reusing in new ways.
henry6 Dave! Your post above states exactly the problems with the US transportation policy: there isn't one and nobody understands the dependencies and independences of each mode. While I know there is no zero point to go back to in order to redesign and replan, planners and the like have to mentally deesignate a date zero start planning, building and intergrating virtually from scratch, But they also need a good, down to earth, PR person who understands transportation and can explain in simple to understand terms to the populos!
The U.S. has a transportation policy. It is a framework that has relied on the wisdom of the people, as well as the free market system, to determine the winners. The highways and airways won out for a variety of reasons. Many of them can be summed up as better technologies. There was no conspiracy to destroy intercity passenger trains. They could not compete effectively after WWII, although they gave it a good go.
If the United States has no transportation framework, how did it develop one of the best highway and airways systems in the world?
Looking forward I would keep the same framework, except that I would make sure all modes of transportation at priced fully at the point where the user pays for them, i.e. ticket counter, pump, etc. If the nation did this (it won't because of politics), then passenger rail might have a chance in relatively short, high density markets. But it would be challenged given its cost structures.
In FY10 Amtrak passengers received a federal subsidy of 21.13 cents per passenger mile. Airline passengers received a federal subsidy of 99/100s of one cent per passenger mile, whilst motorists (includes intercity bus operators) received a federal subsidy of 49/100s of one cent per vehicle mile traveled. These were direct transfer payments from the federal government's general fund to Amtrak, FAA, and Highway Trust Fund or they were support services received from Homeland Security, Essential Air Services Program, etc.
All modes of transport, including Amtrak, receive some indirect state and local funds to help defray their costs, although in the case of the airlines and motorists, because of their large population base, they pay the local funds through sales taxes, property taxes, etc. Amtrak's passengers pay the same taxes, but there are not enough of them to complete cover the state and local fund sources.
Given the spread between the subsidies paid for intercity passenger rail and the subsidies paid for competing modes of transport, passenger rail would be challenged to compete in a free market, although with heavy restructuring it could be done. But it could not stand on its own using the current methodologies.
Those who argue for a strong, centralized transport plan, are overlooking the fact that these arrangements have failed in most parts of the world. Statism is out of vogue because it does not work.
The other thing is that the suggestion that a bus company (Bolt Bus?) provides a cost effective common-carrier mode of transportation on the Northeast Corridor seems to evoke righteous indignation (I was going to call the use of exclamation points and all-caps emphasis something else, but would righteous indignation be sufficiently non-offensive to the parties involved?)
Yeah, yeah, the bus is subsidized in terms of using the highway, and yeah, yeah again, much of the highway subsidy is indirect (police patrols) rather than out of the gas-tax Trust Fund. But the bus, to my knowledge, is receiving no subsidy from the wheel/pavement contact patch on up. The only Amtrak train that appears to do the same thing is the Acela, which charges a much higher fare. So to the extent that the Bolt Bus and the Acela pay their operating costs but depend on society at large to provide the roadway/track, by its much lower fare, the Bolt Bus is clearly the mode of transportation "for the rest of us" whereas the Acela appears to be a mode of transportation favored by the priviliged few, confirming the thesis of the grandparent post on this topic.
My question, however, is why a rail-borne conveyance could not be a Bolt Bus on steel wheels? I don't know if Sam1 would go along with this, but suppose we level the playing field between modes by subsidizing the highways and in similar manner subsidizing the tracks and signals (and I will even throw in the stations as a "public good") Why does the rail mode have to charge much higher fares than the bus in order to break even on the above-the-contact-patch costs? Is there something technological about steel wheels on steel rails that is much more expensive than rubber on cement, or is the difference institutional?
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 US does not have a transportation policy...it is a haphazard patchwork system with no coordination or rationale...there is not sign of "service" but rather groups of services, companies, modes, etc. that don't necessarily work together for the benefit of the public. It is based on political lobbying for some modes and with some modes wanting the public to stay away. Political pork barrel favors will give one community preference over another, one mode over another. We need to have buses meet trains meet airplanes in addition to trains meeting trains and buses meeting buses so that a person can travel from one place to another without hours or days of waiting for connections. Having a vehicle leave a point even 30 minutes before another vehicle arrives which could have been a connection is absurd. There are times when a bus is perfect, other times a train, and another time an aircraft. But it all has to be rationalized, scheduled, coordinated. The thing that has to be done is that planners must sit down and look at the infrastructures in place and pretend non of it is being used. Then start plugging in vehicle schedules, beef up some infrastructure here and there, eliminate some in some places, build new where needed. Forget about existing operations, schedules, subsidies, etc. and redesign the system to provide a transportation service for both public and industry.
henry6 The US does not have a transportation policy...
The US does not have a transportation policy...
And you are going to tell me that the US does not have an energy policy, or a housing policy, or any number of other important policies.
The US does indeed have a transportation policy, as pointed out by Sam1, but it is not the transportation policy you agree with or the transportation policy you want. For example, the transportation deregulation of the late 1970's, formulated by policy guru Alfred Kahn, put forward by President Carter, and strongly supported by the late Senator Edward Kennedy, that constituted a transportation policy. The Staggers Act deregulating the freight railroads was a transportation policy. Nationalizing the bankrupt eastern railroads, amalgamating them into Conrail, spinning off the Amtrak-run NEC as a passenger railroad, and then privatizing Conrail into CSX and other entities was part of a transportation policy.
But that the national transportation policy is not the one you want is no excuse to claim there is no transportation policy, especially after being informed of what the transportation policy indeed is.
And yes, the transportation policy is decentralized in its planning, with the consequence that connections and interfaces between modes become more haphazard than what you prefer.
I am not going to go on a tirade against central planning either. There is a blogger who goes by the name "Mencius Moldbug" who is a kind of iconoclast in not fitting in with either the right-wing or the left-wing party line -- if you want to read his stuff you can search that name on Google. He points out that central planning or authoritarian government is often associated with the decline and fall of the Soviet Union, but just because something is centrally planned or a government exercises authority does not mean that government is ineffective at bringing about prosperity. Examples given are Francoist Spain, where after following the anti-left party line Spain was run into the ground, Francisco Franco brought in technocrats, folks belong to Opus Dei of all things, presumably their Catholicism separating them from the atheistic Communist left, who actually turned things around and brought about prosperity. Or the very late stage New Deal, where the Roosevelt people were still committed to a strong Federal government, but they threw out the rule book of most of what they did in the 1930's and managed to ramp up industrial production in anticipation of the need to fight WW-II. Or post WW-II Germany, on the brink of mass starvation by 1947, partly because of the occupation policies of the victors, partly because of what the Germans may have been doing, where this one guy put in place reform policies that brought about the "German economic miracle" of postwar reconstruction. Or the autocrats who ran Singapore, South Korea, and Taiwan (HSR anyone?) who brought about the reforms and prosperity of those societies.
But there are two principles working here. One is, indeed, right-wing ideology of Adam Smith's Invisible Hand and self-organizing systems and prosperity coming out of seeming chaos. The other is that there are perhaps more examples of failed central planning than successful central planning. But just because the US transportation policy is not the one you want, don't tell us that we don't have one.
Yes, I am telling you and everybody else that. And I'm not the only one saying this and many, many more involved in transportation have been saying the same thing for 50 or more years. There is no coordinated transportation system, each works in its own orbit with very little regard for the other. Only recently has the truck and rail industry really begun to understand their interdependency and ability to prosper together. In government at all levels the same ignoring of one mode over another has caused all kinds of confusions, overlapping, under-serving programs. Why does Europe have a wonderful rail system? Because it is coordinated with itself, with air, and with highway options. We have air fighting rail fighting bus fighting private auto for passengers and similar fighting for freight between and among modes. The public is clueless but planners have been warning us for years that we've got to put aside the differences and work on coordinating for economy, efficiency, and for environmental reasons, too. Things are changing but slowly. Rail and truck companies have been able to understand how they should work together with intermodal containers and trailers; that together they can provide a service that is profitable for both and is what the customers want and need. For passenger services, we have barely addressed it: airplanes are the fastest way to travel; trains are quaint and nostalgic; buses are creepy; and the family automobile is in my driveway and cheap and ready to go when I am. That is basically our transportation policy: chaotic, undefined, self serving, underutilized, expensive. I am not talking political ideologies, not talking likeing trains, not talking being anti this or that, am talking about working everything together to work for all. Can it be public? Can it be private? Probably, if US history is any indication, it will be both. More importantly, it has to be.
airplanes are the fastest way to travel
Airlines are actually the cheapest way to travel. Trains Magazine was already telling that in the 1960's, that a Boeing 727 jet had the Denver Zephyr beat, not on some ICC fully allocated formula but on direct operating costs. This ran counter to intuition, that a low-tech earthbound train should cost more to operate than some delicate jet needing all manners of specialized maintenance, but maybe in terms of trains we were all thinking coal hoppers rather than passenger coaches with specialized maintenance requirements of their own. The one thing that the jet had, however was speed, which means the same plane and crew could carry more passengers per hour than the train.
That airlines are the cheapest way to travel finally made it in to national transportation policy, namely, Alfred Kahn, President Jimmy Carter, and noteworthy support from that lion of liberalism, Senator Ted Kennedy. Airline deregulation was indeed a policy, a governmental policy. The policy is that someone recognized the low operating costs of planes, and the plane went from being this fancy venue of the "jet set" to being a bus with wings. Why, a major European consortium to build airliners decided to call their product the "Airbus."
The knock on passenger trains is not that they are quaint and nostalgic. The problem is that they are expensive, both in the capital requirements on account of the tracks and in operating costs, for reasons that I would like to better understand.
Each individual means of transportation has advantages and disadvantages compared against themselves and against other forms. Cheap is not the only means of measuring. And if we were to have planners to start planning from a board that has infrastructure but no service, there is a completely different set of measurements and results to be dealt with. Problems and control with the environment are not being considered here nor have been until just recently. Congestion now and projected for the future is another item that has to be explored and solved. I don't live near an airport, there are no buses going my way, there is no train service. I only have a car so it doesn't matter what is cheaper or cheapest to me. But in center city there are buses, subways, and even taxi cabs to choose from. To get in and out of the city there is the car plus bus and train services. And intercity there are cars, buses, trains and planes. So if I have a car I can drive it to my destination or to a station point for a bus, train, or plane. Or to a bus that takes me to a train that takes me to a plane. Or not. And stop making it a liberal vs conservative problem! Politics have to be put aside and reality of environment, congestion, raw materials, land availability, fuel, cost of building any given infrastructure, cost of given vehicles, cost of labor, and so many more things other than political positions that will make the decision process. And yes, it will be a combination of public and private organizations, public and private money, and government and private enterprise people working together to make it happen. And its going to be different than it has been in the past.
henry6 And stop making it a liberal vs conservative problem!
And stop making it a liberal vs conservative problem!
In what way did I claim the choice of transportation mode to be a liberal vs conservative debate? When I pointed out that with respect to intercity common-carrier transport, we have a transportation policy, that transportation policy is deregulated airlines, and this policy had the backing of President Carter and the support of Senator Kennedy? In other words, a policy that some around here would attribute to a libertarian/conservative think tank is actually one of Senator Kennedy's legislative achievements?
Cheap is not the only means of measuring? Then what is? Land availability? When airplanes largely navigate the skies between airports whereas a rail line requires a continuous strip of land in between stations? CO2 emissions and imported oil when the energy efficiency of Amtrak is only marginally better than the airlines? Congestion? When rail lines have congestion problems all their own, and where the NEC is approaching capacity without multi-billion dollar Hudson River tunnel projects?
And if cost is no longer the consideration but a whole list of intangibles become the metric, how do we quantify those intangibles apart from engaging in a political process?
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