# Obama to unveil HSR plan Thursday



## jc653 (Apr 15, 2009)

Reuters reports this morning:

*U.S. readies plans for high-speed rail development*
 
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Obama administration is expected to unveil its plans on Thursday for accelerating development of high-speed rail, a concept that in the past has had mixed political support and little public funding.
 
"It will be broad and strategic," Karen Rae, acting head of the Federal Railroad Administration, told Reuters in an interview on Tuesday about the initiative described by officials as President Barack Obama's top transportation priority.
 
http://www.reuters.com/article/domesticNews/idUSTRE53D78C20090414

http://www.reuters.com/article/domesticNew...E53D78C20090414
http://www.reuters.com/article/domesticNews/idUSTRE53D78C20090414


Any guesses on where the $8B in stimulus and $5B in the budget over the next five years will go? This hardly seems like enough money to fund major projects on all 10 designated HSR corridors plus the NEC.


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## WICT106 (Apr 15, 2009)

What may happen is that one or two projects will be chosen as tests, and, once those are up and under construction, the next set of projects will be named during the next budget period. Some projects, such as the Midwest HSR and the NC portion of the SEHSR, are much farther along than the TX and Gulf Coast HSR. If I were making the selections, I think I would be strongly inclined to pick the projects that were "Tier 2 - ready to go" by Amtrak some years ago.


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## MattW (Apr 15, 2009)

I guarantee none of it will find its way to Georgia. shirley franklin might open her big mouth again and whine about the noise or something.


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## printman2000 (Apr 15, 2009)

I have seen some map where is connects Houston with New Orleans. It is very dumb, in my opinion, not to connect Houston and DFW. Cannot tell you how many people I know who make that flight at least weekly.


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## Joel N. Weber II (Apr 15, 2009)

WICT106 said:


> What may happen is that one or two projects will be chosen as tests, and, once those are up and under construction, the next set of projects will be named during the next budget period. Some projects, such as the Midwest HSR and the NC portion of the SEHSR, are much farther along than the TX and Gulf Coast HSR. If I were making the selections, I think I would be strongly inclined to pick the projects that were "Tier 2 - ready to go" by Amtrak some years ago.


Are there any ``high speed'' projects that were ready to go years ago that even manage to go as fast as the Northeast Regional, which I thought wasn't considered high speed?


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## Spokker (Apr 16, 2009)

I think that when the Obama administration says high speed rail, they mean American standards for high speed rail. An incremental upgrade of our nation's rail network isn't a bad thing.

Even if true high speed rail fails to get off the ground an incremental upgrade to 110 or 125 MPH is an incredible improvement. It's not only about increasing top speeds, but average speeds as well.


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## Long Train Runnin' (Apr 16, 2009)

I just hope he doesnt say "MEG-LEV' I just don't see that as the answer plus there are to tracks


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## birdy (Apr 16, 2009)

I figure they wouldn't be making a grand announcement if it were some kind of incremental type projects. I also do not think they would pick one project for full funding to the exclusion of other good projects.

In this case, the logical thing to do corresponds with the political thing to do. Pick out four or so sensible projects for two years of funding and go back to the well for funding to finish. Its not likely the home state senators would kill funding for the projects underway in their own back yards. More likely, log rolling would start by the senators who feel left out, and president Obama would be more than pleased to support their projects as well.

The rail-straightening projects should get funded too. They are dirt cheap relatively speaking, are quickly implemented for stimulus purposes and they make great consolation prizes.

There's plenty of money for all of this. We can pay for a pretty robust $90 billion dollar program over the next ten years just by not passing Senator Kyl's plan to raise the estate tax deduction to $10 million. If we don't spend it all on the NEC, that would be enough to build 7 or 8 of these lines plus a big part of the California system. Of course, that would be pretty rough on Paris Hilton types, but there is always a trade-off on these things.


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## JC653 (Apr 16, 2009)

Looks like we are getting a general strategy, not specific projects:



> DWIGHT, Ill. -- The Obama administration on Thursday will outline how it plans to spend $8 billion in stimulus funds on high-speed passenger-rail service, a new federal commitment that has rail advocates and states jockeying for a piece of the pie.
> Administration officials won't name winners or losers on Thursday, but they will provide the first look at their strategy and give states a better sense of how they can qualify for funding.
> 
> http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123984482505323489.html


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## BuzzKillington (Apr 16, 2009)

Its front page on CNN.com again...


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## volkris (Apr 16, 2009)

birdy said:


> I figure they wouldn't be making a grand announcement if it were some kind of incremental type projects. I also do not think they would pick one project for full funding to the exclusion of other good projects.


My understanding is that this isn't a real announcement but rather an analysis that was required by the stimulus legislation.

They're just meeting a deadline.


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## Joel N. Weber II (Apr 16, 2009)

birdy said:


> I figure they wouldn't be making a grand announcement if it were some kind of incremental type projects. I also do not think they would pick one project for full funding to the exclusion of other good projects.
> In this case, the logical thing to do corresponds with the political thing to do. Pick out four or so sensible projects for two years of funding and go back to the well for funding to finish. Its not likely the home state senators would kill funding for the projects underway in their own back yards. More likely, log rolling would start by the senators who feel left out, and president Obama would be more than pleased to support their projects as well.
> 
> The rail-straightening projects should get funded too. They are dirt cheap relatively speaking, are quickly implemented for stimulus purposes and they make great consolation prizes.
> ...


From CNN:



> Each of the corridors identified by the president's report are between 100 and 600 miles long. The blueprint envisions some trains traveling at top speeds of over 150 mph.
> Federal grants would also be directed toward separate individual rail projects that are deemed "ready to go," with preliminary engineering and environmental work already completed.


So, not all true HSR.


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## Joel N. Weber II (Apr 16, 2009)

Spokker said:


> Even if true high speed rail fails to get off the ground an incremental upgrade to 110 or 125 MPH is an incredible improvement. It's not only about increasing top speeds, but average speeds as well.


The problem is that the typical 110 MPH project is much more willing to go below the top speed on a curve than a typical 220 MPH project, so a typical project with a top speed of 220 MPH may well have an average speed of something like quadruple the average speed of a typical ``110 MPH'' project.


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## Long Train Runnin' (Apr 16, 2009)

Joel N. Weber II said:


> Spokker said:
> 
> 
> > Even if true high speed rail fails to get off the ground an incremental upgrade to 110 or 125 MPH is an incredible improvement. It's not only about increasing top speeds, but average speeds as well.
> ...


Right but a 220 MPH project would be quadruple the cost and you wouldn't see service for at least a decade.


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## Joel N. Weber II (Apr 16, 2009)

Long Train Runnin said:


> Right but a 220 MPH project would be quadruple the cost and you wouldn't see service for at least a decade.


The cost difference is probably a lot more than a factor of four between a 220 MPH for most of the miles project and 110 MPH for a few of the miles project.

However, a 350 MPH project is probably going to be a lot less than 50% more expensive than a 220 MPH project, and I suspect the 350 MPH project will have a better cost/benefit ratio than the 220 MPH project.

A 220 MPH or 350 MPH project is going to attract a lot more passengers who would otherwise take airplanes than a 110 MPH project, though. If we're trying to reduce carbon emissions and petroleum consumption by a certain amount, and perhaps reduce airport congestion and intercity travel delays, there may be an argument that the higher speed projects are going to make far more progress there.

As for not seeing service for a decade, there's no way to get the majority of the passengers who would take a 220 MPH train instead of an airplane to take the train instead of the plane in less than that decade anyway, so why does it matter so much? We can still get this done in time for the 220 MPH train to be available for the majority of your lifetime.


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## Tony (Apr 16, 2009)

> including California, the Pacific Northwest, the Midwest, the Southeast, the Gulf Coast, Pennsylvania, Florida, New York and New England.


Let's see...


Southwest (aka California)

Northwest

Midwest

Southeast

Northeast (aka NY and NE)

Mid Atlantic (aka PA)

Gulf Coast



OK, where will there not be even a hint of getting a piece of the HSR pie? Hawaii and Alaska?


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## Joel N. Weber II (Apr 16, 2009)

Tony said:


> OK, where will there not be even a hint of getting a piece of the HSR pie? Hawaii and Alaska?


HSR tends to be an intercity thing. Oahu is basically all either populated or steep mountains; there's nowhere to run a train through an unpopulated couple of hundred miles on Oahu. You can drive around almost the entire perimeter of the island in a couple of hours. And the rest of Hawaii is probably not anywhere densely populated enough to justify the costs of an HSR project anytime soon, though the Big Island might be big enough in land area to justify a HSR project.

Much of Alaska doesn't even have intercity roads.


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## wayman (Apr 16, 2009)

Joel N. Weber II said:


> Long Train Runnin said:
> 
> 
> > Right but a 220 MPH project would be quadruple the cost and you wouldn't see service for at least a decade.
> ...


A decade is five sessions of Congress, enough time for the entire Senate to come up for re-election, and longer than a two-term Presidential Administration. The odds of a decade-long high-speed-rail project that doesn't even serve passengers until the decade is nearly over maintaining national funding over that period of time--especially when many districts and states aren't even served by it--is quite small. Better to get something up and running and demonstrating proof of concept before everyone decides it's a financial black hole and cuts all funding leaving a totally inoperable system and public opinion heavily against rail.


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## jackal (Apr 16, 2009)

Joel N. Weber II said:


> Much of Alaska doesn't even have intercity roads.


And people seem more than willing to take the LSR (low-speed rail) between Anchorage and Fairbanks. 

There were 150 people (two jam-packed coaches) on the Aurora Winter Train I took in March. 150 people! That's more than are on many Amtrak trains! And this was winter...when the level of tourism is virtually nil!

In the summer, there can be seven full ARR coaches plus 10 pull-contractor (cruise line) coaches...sometimes there are upwards of 1,500 people on a train!

And this trip takes 12 hours to cover 350 miles!

Give me HSR to Juneau, though. Then I may be able to afford to get to my own government without paying $350 round-trip on Alaska Airlines...


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## PetalumaLoco (Apr 16, 2009)

Obama outlines vision for high-speed rail network



> President Barack Obama on Thursday outlined plans for a high-speed rail network he said would change the way Americans travel, drawing comparisons to the 1950s creation of the interstate highway system.


No mention of mag-lev.


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## MattW (Apr 16, 2009)

Well at least some of those corridors traverse Georgia. Though because GA's government is so stupid, I wouldn't expect to see much of anything happen here for at least a decade or more.


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## Ispolkom (Apr 16, 2009)

Long Train Runnin said:


> Joel N. Weber II said:
> 
> 
> > Spokker said:
> ...


But you would have the advantage of having it done right. Or so suggests this article.

Me, I actually don't like traveling that fast. My main objection to flying has always been that you sit in a metal cylinder for a time, and then you are there. A fast train wouldn't help this.

I'll quickly admit that I am in the minority in this view.


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## birdy (Apr 16, 2009)

Kinda vague as to whether they mean true HSR or rail-straightening. Maybe it depends on the level of local support and agitation.

I don't know why it would take 10 years to build 300 miles of line per project. The main slow down is money. The environmental and siting issues can be expedited. I am amazed at the broad level of support for this. Once a line goes operational anywhere, even for an intermediate station, I think the public demand for the service everywhere goes off the charts.


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## PetalumaLoco (Apr 16, 2009)

Ispolkom said:


> Long Train Runnin said:
> 
> 
> > Joel N. Weber II said:
> ...


Oh contrare, I've been thinking the same thing. If we do get true high speed cross country rail I will miss the leisurely pace of today's LD trains. I take the train as part of my vacation, to relax. Kind of like taking a cruise, but with better scenery.


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## Joel N. Weber II (Apr 16, 2009)

PetalumaLoco said:


> Oh contrare, I've been thinking the same thing. If we do get true high speed cross country rail I will miss the leisurely pace of today's LD trains. I take the train as part of my vacation, to relax. Kind of like taking a cruise, but with better scenery.


I think it's a long time before we'll see the portion of the Empire Builder west of Minneapolis / St Paul go much faster than it does today. You'll probably always have the option of taking an overnight train to Minneapolis and then boarding the Empire Builder.

I also suspect that if we can give a small town a several hour conventional speed train ride to get to a HSR network that actually provides good connections to places people want to go, that conventional speed train will suddenly have the potential for decent ridership that it can't get if all it connects to is an all-conventional-speed rail network.


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## Spokker (Apr 16, 2009)

PetalumaLoco said:


> Oh contrare, I've been thinking the same thing. If we do get true high speed cross country rail I will miss the leisurely pace of today's LD trains. I take the train as part of my vacation, to relax. Kind of like taking a cruise, but with better scenery.


I don't think we'll see long distance trains go away. The HSR plan is about corridors. I think we could shave a few hours off of long distance routes, but I doubt they'll change considerably. 
Anti-Amtrak folks like to talk about the black hole that is Amtrak, but the money spent on long distance trains is a drop in the bucket in the grand scheme of things. I would argue that they are a national treasure and daily runs should be maintained indefinitely. They also provide transportation to small towns.


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## MikefromCrete (Apr 16, 2009)

I believe the California project will be true high-speed, with new right of way, separate tracks from freight lines, no grade crossings and a TGV-type trains hitting at least 186 mph. It will probably get the "true high speed" spending.

The midwest project of Chicago-St. Louis, Chicago-Milwaukee-Madison and Chicago-Detroit-Pontiac is a shoe-in for one of the "110 mph" projects since Illinois, Wisconsin, Michigan and Missouri already support passenger trains and Illinois, Michigan and Wisconsin have been working on high speed rail projects for some time. Also, remember that the president, secretary of transportation, chairman of the Amtrak board and federal railroad administrator are all from Illinois, so the "fix is in" for the Chicago-based system as we say here in Illinois.

The other "110 mph" project would probably be the southeast line, since CSX has said it will cooperate and Virginia and North Carolina are active in the passenger train world.

This spreads the money across the country and will be a good test of support for high speed rail outside of the northeast corridor.


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## George Harris (Apr 16, 2009)

MikefromCrete said:


> I believe the California project will be true high-speed, with new right of way, separate tracks from freight lines, no grade crossings and a TGV-type trains hitting at least 186 mph. . . .
> 
> The other "110 mph" project would probably be the southeast line, since CSX has said it will cooperate and Virginia and North Carolina are active in the passenger train world.


California's concept is to run 220 mph from the start, except close in to Los Angeles and between San Jose and San Francisco where the speed is proposed to be 125 mph. Hopefull the line down the Valley will be straight enough that the speed can be faster in the future. Train type is being kept open, so it may be TGV, Shinkansen, or something else. The French and the Japanese are not the only players in this game.

Part of the SEHSR plan is to rebuild the ex SAL line between Petersburg VA and Raleigh NC as a 110 mph, hopefully 110 mph plus line. At this time I think their last plan update was in something like 2002.

There re web sites for both of these projects.


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## Joel N. Weber II (Apr 17, 2009)

Spokker said:


> Anti-Amtrak folks like to talk about the black hole that is Amtrak, but the money spent on long distance trains is a drop in the bucket in the grand scheme of things. I would argue that they are a national treasure and daily runs should be maintained indefinitely. They also provide transportation to small towns.


For the stations that have service only in the middle of the night at times such as 3AM, is that scheduling also a national treasure you want preserved?

I think once we have a national HSR network, we should break up each LD route at each station along that LD route which is also a HSR stop, and then reschedule the broken up trains so that they start in the early morning and finish their runs by the late evening.


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## Spokker (Apr 17, 2009)

Joel N. Weber II said:


> For the stations that have service only in the middle of the night at times such as 3AM, is that scheduling also a national treasure you want preserved?


No, I was thinking more along the lines of the views and the experience of riding an American long-distance train that you just can't get anywhere else.
I wouldn't want to see the LD routes broken up, but I'd like to see the schedules tweaked so that you could transfer to HSR at key stations. Of course, that would assume the LD trains ran on time in the future. Those who want the LD experience can ride the rest of the way.


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## volkris (Apr 17, 2009)

Joel N. Weber II said:


> I think once we have a national HSR network, we should break up each LD route at each station along that LD route which is also a HSR stop, and then reschedule the broken up trains so that they start in the early morning and finish their runs by the late evening.


One of the benefits of LD trains is that you can catch one in the evening, sleep for the night, and wake up at your destination. If you do a morning to evening run you've spent a day of conscious hours on travel... not so good.


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## Joel N. Weber II (Apr 17, 2009)

volkris said:


> Joel N. Weber II said:
> 
> 
> > I think once we have a national HSR network, we should break up each LD route at each station along that LD route which is also a HSR stop, and then reschedule the broken up trains so that they start in the early morning and finish their runs by the late evening.
> ...


If you have a conventional speed daily train with a 12-18 hour run from one HSR station to another HSR station with a bunch of intermediate stops that are served only by this daily train, you either get to make it a day train only, or force some people to board in the middle of the night. Do you really think boarding at 3AM is an improvement over daytime travel?

Also, consider how you get from Connersville, IN to McCook, NE. If we preserve the current long distance schedules, you can board at Connersville around 3 AM, reach Indianapolis around 4:45 AM, perhaps board a HSR train around 6:00 AM, and if its top speed of 220 MPH works out to an average of 150 MPH after you account for the travel through cities to downtown stations at slower speeds, the almost 1100 miles would take a little over 7 hours, so you'd arrive in Denver a little after 1 PM. Then you could wait around until 8:10 PM to board the eastbound Zephyr, and get to McCook a little before 1 AM.

Wouldn't it be better to board a day train at Connersville at 4:45 PM, reach Indianapolis at 6 PM, board a HSR sleeper train that provided early boarding and departed around 10:00 PM and reached Denver around 5:30 AM, and then lingered at the platform for several hours so that you could disembark at your convenience to transfer to a train that would depart Denver at 9:00 AM and reach McCook at 1:40 PM?

(Or maybe you change trains at Omaha instead of Denver and take the westbound Zephyr instead, but I think in that case the travel time works out roughly the same.)

Another thing to consider is that since Connersville is the only stop between Cincinnati and Indianapolis currently, if there were a train that ran from Cincinnati to Connersville to Indianapolis and that was its entire run, adding some more intermediate stops would probably be viable in a way that isn't when the train runs all the way from Chicago to New York City.

If we had enough sleeping cars, the other alternative is an overnight train with a set out sleeper for each intermediate stop. You end up needing two cars per stop to make that work, one carrying passengers towards the HSR station each night, and another carrying passengers away from the HSR station each night (unless there's enough demand at each stop to need more than that).


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## WhoozOn1st (Apr 17, 2009)

Raising the issue of HSR funding, this L.A. Times editorial advocates, as do I, jacking up gasoline taxes to help pay for the network(s), as opposed to funding it with debt.

"High-speed rail networks might very well be the "smart transportation system" of the 21st century, as President Obama declared Thursday. The trouble is, we're using a very 20th century method to pay for them."

No way to build a railroad (print edition headline)


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## sunchaser (Apr 17, 2009)

WhoozOn1st said:


> Raising the issue of HSR funding, this L.A. Times editorial advocates, as do I, jacking up gasoline taxes to help pay for the network(s), as opposed to funding it with debt.
> "High-speed rail networks might very well be the "smart transportation system" of the 21st century, as President Obama declared Thursday. The trouble is, we're using a very 20th century method to pay for them."
> 
> No way to build a railroad (print edition headline)


If the HSR funding is provided soley by gasoline taxes and also to discourage using your vehicle, I do not think that will work. If you over tax the gas, people will drive less, then you will get less funding. To acheive funding in the best way, the source of funding should be examined from all angles. And the possiblity of unintended consequences.

I realize many people use their cars for commuting to work, as well as travel, but people also use them to go to the store & other places. In my city, I could take the bus to the store, but it would be silly to haul the groceries home that way. I have done it in the past, it is difficult, to say the least. HSR, Public Transportation, Planes, Trains & yes Cars all serve a purpose-to get us from point A to B. It really depends on how you use them.


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## AlanB (Apr 17, 2009)

sunchaser said:


> WhoozOn1st said:
> 
> 
> > Raising the issue of HSR funding, this L.A. Times editorial advocates, as do I, jacking up gasoline taxes to help pay for the network(s), as opposed to funding it with debt.
> ...


Congress needs to increase the Federal gas tax just to pay for the roads, before they even start to think about funding high-speed rail via the same method. Last year the gas tax failed to cover the outlays from the Highway Trust Fund, which pays for the bulk of the repair work and expansion of our Interstate Highways. The HTF required an cash infusion of $8 Billion of our Federal Income Tax dollars to keep it from going bankrupt. It's estimated that without any increases in the gas tax rate, that the HTF will need $9 Billion this year and next, and that will jump to $12 Billion in 2011 & 2012.


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## birdy (Apr 17, 2009)

WhoozOn1st said:


> Raising the issue of HSR funding, this L.A. Times editorial advocates, as do I, jacking up gasoline taxes to help pay for the network(s), as opposed to funding it with debt.


No hair shirt required, Whooz. Total transportation spending is only 3% of the federal budget. We have $40 bil per year going out the door to "name-brand" tax havens like Switzerland. As these entities cooperate in investigations against drug dealers, these are mostly accounts held by overground economy scofflaws. the Euros want us to crack down on this and I believe we will. We could raise maybe $20 billion per year this way.

Another way to pay is simply to NOT pass Senator Jon Kyl (R. AZ) plan to raise estate tax deduction to $10 million. Killing that one provision and leaving the tax at its already generous $7 million (joint deduction) level would raise $90 billion over the next ten years, more or less fully funding a true HSR network.

Remember also, there is a recyling effect on all this. All the contractors and their employees pay federal tax, which is effectively like a discount to us. Finally, its not unreasonable to expect the states to kick in 10% of the construction cost, allowing probably one whole extra system to be funded over the next ten years.


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## birdy (Apr 17, 2009)

MikefromCrete said:


> I believe the California project will be true high-speed, with new right of way, separate tracks from freight lines, no grade crossings and a TGV-type trains hitting at least 186 mph. It will probably get the "true high speed" spending.The midwest project of Chicago-St. Louis, Chicago-Milwaukee-Madison and Chicago-Detroit-Pontiac is a shoe-in for one of the "110 mph" projects since Illinois, Wisconsin, Michigan and Missouri already support passenger trains and Illinois, Michigan and Wisconsin have been working on high speed rail projects for some time. Also, remember that the president, secretary of transportation, chairman of the Amtrak board and federal railroad administrator are all from Illinois, so the "fix is in" for the Chicago-based system as we say here in Illinois.
> 
> The other "110 mph" project would probably be the southeast line, since CSX has said it will cooperate and Virginia and North Carolina are active in the passenger train world.
> 
> This spreads the money across the country and will be a good test of support for high speed rail outside of the northeast corridor.


Why sell yourself short? Those are big populations that present relatively modest build costs. Disinterested yokels such as myself are much more comfortable with trains for you salt-of-the-earth midwesterners than systems in California or NY. Save the rail-straightening projects for the Schnectady to Albany route.


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## volkris (Apr 17, 2009)

WhoozOn1st said:


> Raising the issue of HSR funding, this L.A. Times editorial advocates, as do I, jacking up gasoline taxes to help pay for the network(s), as opposed to funding it with debt.
> "High-speed rail networks might very well be the "smart transportation system" of the 21st century, as President Obama declared Thursday. The trouble is, we're using a very 20th century method to pay for them."


Yeah, and we're spending dollars on this project too... but dollars have been around since the 18th century!

Anyway, we shouldn't raise the gas tax on auto commuters to pay for others' wants, and the "discourage driving" argument is a bit silly: they have plenty of reason to avoid the road as is. From crowded, dangerous streets and the cost of car maintenance, to the time it takes to commute, to the already significant cost of fuel... if despite all of that they'd still rather drive than take the train then how can we justify charging them for something they so thoroughly reject?

They WOULD take the trains if they invested now and rode when the service was expanded? Great! Treat it like any other investment selling bonds, futures, and government investments that cost all people. Expanded service benefits all society? Great! Let all of society pay for it.

But it's fundamentally wrong, in my mind, to charge this one particular group of people for something they do not use, have not demanded, and will not derive sole benefit from (if any).


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## Joel N. Weber II (Apr 17, 2009)

volkris said:


> But it's fundamentally wrong, in my mind, to charge this one particular group of people for something they do not use, have not demanded, and will not derive sole benefit from (if any).


One of the thought experiments I've seen proposed is: what if we got rid of the ``wasteful'' operating subsidy on the NEC (if there even is one), discontinued all the Acela and Northeast Regional service, and poured enough concrete that all those Amtrak passengers could take single occupancy vehicles instead. Turns out that construction is pretty expensive.

If we build mass transit on routes roughly parallel to existing highways, that benefits those who continue to use those highways because they encounter less congestion. Those drivers also probably benefit from lower gas prices because of the laws of supply and demand, and probably benefit from cleaner air.


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## Joel N. Weber II (Apr 17, 2009)

birdy said:


> Finally, its not unreasonable to expect the states to kick in 10% of the construction cost, allowing probably one whole extra system to be funded over the next ten years.


If you require the states to pay 10% of the construction costs, that means you're subjecting HSR construction to all the state budget difficulties that are going on right now. MA and CA are certainly in pretty bad shape, with MA threatening to discontinue weekend and evening MBTA Commuter Rail service.


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## WICT106 (Apr 17, 2009)

One should just see all of the comments going on at some places like SFGate, in San Francisco. The comments are enlightening, to say the least. There is a lot of resistance to the 110 incrementally higher speed rail, though. Some would say that these folks who live on the coasts have a sort of "end point" mentality, totally ignorant of how transportation networks generate traffic.

"States compete for high speed rail funds."


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## sportbiker (Apr 17, 2009)

volkris said:


> Anyway, we shouldn't raise the gas tax on auto commuters to pay for others' wants, and the "discourage driving" argument is a bit silly: they have plenty of reason to avoid the road as is. From crowded, dangerous streets and the cost of car maintenance, to the time it takes to commute, to the already significant cost of fuel... if despite all of that they'd still rather drive than take the train then how can we justify charging them for something they so thoroughly reject?
> They WOULD take the trains if they invested now and rode when the service was expanded? Great! Treat it like any other investment selling bonds, futures, and government investments that cost all people. Expanded service benefits all society? Great! Let all of society pay for it.
> 
> But it's fundamentally wrong, in my mind, to charge this one particular group of people for something they do not use, have not demanded, and will not derive sole benefit from (if any).


Here's another way to look at it. I remember one of my econ profs in college telling us that charging for a student parking sticker wouldn't do much of anything to reduce parking demand, unless the sticker were ridiculously priced. Why is that? A sticker is a once-a-semester fee, so once it's paid, parking is "free." To reduce parking demand, require a payment every single time a space is used.

By the same principle, people don't seem to consider the true costs of driving. In my experience, people price a drive based on the gasoline it'll take. There's no consideration for all the other expenses (tires, oil, depreciation, maintenance, insurance, pollution, etc.), because those expenses _don't have to be paid at the time of the drive_. Therefore, driving seems artificially cheap.

Even beyond that, study after study has shown that drivers do, in fact, not bear the true cost of the drive, once externalities are taken into account. There are different ways to tally the figures, but it seems that a tax of between $2-4 per gallon would be required to recoup the hidden subsidies.

So, your argument falls apart because we are all paying every time a driver gets in a car, even though some of us drive very little. Raising taxes, provided the revenue goes to its intended purposes, isn't "discouraging" driving, it's simply making the driver internalize the true costs of that next mile. And that, conveniently, makes efficient forms of travel (such as trains) much more competitive.


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## AlanB (Apr 17, 2009)

volkris said:


> Anyway, we shouldn't raise the gas tax on auto commuters to pay for others' wants, and the "discourage driving" argument is a bit silly: they have plenty of reason to avoid the road as is. From crowded, dangerous streets and the cost of car maintenance, to the time it takes to commute, to the already significant cost of fuel... if despite all of that they'd still rather drive than take the train then how can we justify charging them for something they so thoroughly reject?
> ..... Snipped ............
> 
> But it's fundamentally wrong, in my mind, to charge this one particular group of people for something they do not use, have not demanded, and will not derive sole benefit from (if any).


Gee, I wish someone had thought like you back when it was decided years ago to put a fuel tax on the diesel fuel that freight and commuter RR's buy. A tax that, for close to 30 years I believe, went directly into the Highway Trust Fund. That effectively forced the freight RR's to help build their main competition's highways.

That said, it is important to note that the Federal gas tax does help to fund light rail and heavy rail projects at present. It doesn't help fund high-speed rail, but a few years back Congress did raise the gas tax and allocated about 2.8 cents per gallon to the Mass Transit Account.


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## AlanB (Apr 17, 2009)

sportbiker said:


> By the same principle, people don't seem to consider the true costs of driving. In my experience, people price a drive based on the gasoline it'll take. There's no consideration for all the other expenses (tires, oil, depreciation, maintenance, insurance, pollution, etc.), because those expenses _don't have to be paid at the time of the drive_. Therefore, driving seems artificially cheap.


Very true, I agree 100% that most people don't appreciate the full costs of their taking a drive.



sportbiker said:


> Even beyond that, study after study has shown that drivers do, in fact, not bear the true cost of the drive, once externalities are taken into account. There are different ways to tally the figures, but it seems that a tax of between $2-4 per gallon would be required to recoup the hidden subsidies.


Well considering that the Highway Trust Fund required an cash infusion from the general budget of $8 Billion last year in order to stay solvent, it's quite apparent that we aren't paying enough for our roads via the gas taxes. It's estimated that the HTF will need a bailout of $9 Billion this year and next, jumping to $12B in 2011 & 2012, unless Congress increases the amount of the Federal gas tax and soon.


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## volkris (Apr 17, 2009)

sportbiker said:


> So, your argument falls apart because we are all paying every time a driver gets in a car, even though some of us drive very little. Raising taxes, provided the revenue goes to its intended purposes, isn't "discouraging" driving, it's simply making the driver internalize the true costs of that next mile. And that, conveniently, makes efficient forms of travel (such as trains) much more competitive.


Some people on this board want to raise gas taxes explicitly to discourage driving. Not, it seems, because they want drivers to pay the true cost of driving, or because they want to make sure roads are funded, or anything like that; they simply want to make it harder for people to drive because driving is bad. I have a problem with using the tax system that way.

But anyway, it would be great to present the true costs of driving to people in ways they can better wrap their heads around, but I believe there are better ways to accomplish that than taxation. How can a tax really show someone the dollar figure of the wear they put on their car? The government receiving the funds isn't going to pay for the oil change or transmission rebuild, is it? And the connection between operational costs and fuel use, while there, isn't THAT precise. Other ways, including maintenance plans and GPS-based taxation, would probably be more effective.



AlanB said:


> Gee, I wish someone had thought like you back when it was decided years ago to put a fuel tax on the diesel fuel that freight and commuter RR's buy. A tax that, for close to 30 years I believe, went directly into the Highway Trust Fund. That effectively forced the freight RR's to help build their main competition's highways.


So let's fix that. The past is gone and can't be undone, but we can work toward ending that practice today. Don't tax rail to pay for roads, and don't tax drivers to pay for trains. Each hides the true costs from the other group, and each requires people to pay for the choices they have rejected.


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## Joel N. Weber II (Apr 17, 2009)

volkris said:


> GPS-based taxation,


What's wrong with odometer-based taxation? GPS-based taxation opens up a bunch of new privacy issues.

One of the long term challenges we have if battery powered cars (the kind that plug into the electric grid, not the kind that use a gasoline engine and regenerative braking exclusively to charge their batteries) become popular is that we can no longer pay for wear and tear on the roads by simply collecting petroleum taxes, if we do want to charge drivers directly for that wear and tear.


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## AlanB (Apr 17, 2009)

volkris said:


> AlanB said:
> 
> 
> > Gee, I wish someone had thought like you back when it was decided years ago to put a fuel tax on the diesel fuel that freight and commuter RR's buy. A tax that, for close to 30 years I believe, went directly into the Highway Trust Fund. That effectively forced the freight RR's to help build their main competition's highways.
> ...


I agree it can't be undone, but it can be mitigated by reversing the policies until we've restored the balance that we disturbed in the first place. Once that's done, then I would agree that we probably shouldn't be taxing one mode to the benefit of the other.


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## sportbiker (Apr 17, 2009)

volkris said:


> it would be great to present the true costs of driving to people in ways they can better wrap their heads around, but I believe there are better ways to accomplish that than taxation ... Other ways, including maintenance plans and GPS-based taxation, would probably be more effective.


Which side are you arguing? Let's not use taxation, or let's use taxation? And need I point out that a fuel tax and a GPS-tax are both mileage-based? There ain't much daylight between them!


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## Green Maned Lion (Apr 17, 2009)

The Interstate Highways are an un-needed, dehumanizing social and economic drain on our country. I suggest we bulldoze, detonate, and otherwise remove these poorly conceived monstrosities from the era where accomplishment and progress were considered one and the same. People driving from place to place can do so on back roads. There is no need for a car to be a quick method of transportation.

If there is volume to warrant the presence of a highway, there is volume to warrant replacing that highway with more economical rail transport. If there isn't volume for rail, there isn't volume to justify the presence of the highway in the first place. Either way, it should be demolished.

We have spent the past hundred years investing in the fallacy of sustained personal mobility. It will take us twice that long to correct this mistake. Its not like this was even what people wanted in the first place. Do any of you remember National City Lines, where rubber tire manufacturers and automakers got together and bought up city transit so they could replace steel-wheeled trollies with rubber-tired busses?

Eisenhower got his inspiration from a certain Austrian named Adolf's grand plan for moving people and things through Germany during the war. Indeed, the highways were marketed as a defense spending measure! The highway as we know it is the work of the ****s. It should be destroyed.


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## Joel N. Weber II (Apr 17, 2009)

Hmm, Godwin's Law seems to be about **** _metaphores_ and not actually blaming the ****s, if Wikipedia is to be believed.


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## sunchaser (Apr 17, 2009)

Green Maned Lion said:


> The Interstate Highways are an un-needed, dehumanizing social and economic drain on our country. I suggest we bulldoze, detonate, and otherwise remove these poorly conceived monstrosities from the era where accomplishment and progress were considered one and the same. People driving from place to place can do so on back roads. There is no need for a car to be a quick method of transportation.
> If there is volume to warrant the presence of a highway, there is volume to warrant replacing that highway with more economical rail transport. If there isn't volume for rail, there isn't volume to justify the presence of the highway in the first place. Either way, it should be demolished.
> 
> We have spent the past hundred years investing in the fallacy of sustained personal mobility. It will take us twice that long to correct this mistake. Its not like this was even what people wanted in the first place. Do any of you remember National City Lines, where rubber tire manufacturers and automakers got together and bought up city transit so they could replace steel-wheeled trollies with rubber-tired busses?
> ...


So in your world, we should not travel except by train if there is enough of a base to travel that way? So that means I could not go to see family in California because I cannot afford the train trip. We would have to take 2-3 trains one way. And in the future, there would be no guarantee that a more direct route will be available. We would have to have at least a roomette on each train. My only brother passed away April 9th, from pancreatic cancer. I've been scrambling to fly down to see my 83 yr old mom. She's all alone now, he was living with her. I have some cuz nearby, but I know she needs me there too. You are saying I shouldn't go. Can't drive the car, it wouldn't make it. Have to fly, but really don't want to.

There are many others I'm sure that would disagree with you. We don't really drive all that much, but we do take occasional trips requiring the highways. Besides, if we all took backroads, wouldn't this cause more waste of fuel/pollution?

Please understand that I'm not trying to be difficult or start an argument.


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## volkris (Apr 18, 2009)

sportbiker said:


> Which side are you arguing? Let's not use taxation, or let's use taxation? And need I point out that a fuel tax and a GPS-tax are both mileage-based? There ain't much daylight between them!


The problem is, there's more and more daylight between the two, and the daylight is not in line with what we've been discussing.

Does a super efficient car, which would pay less in taxes, really put that much less wear or require that much less expansion of the highway system than a similar car with average efficiency? Note that I'm not comparing a Prius against an SUV here, but, say, a Prius against an average sedan.

We were talking about helping the driver to realize his costs in terms of wear and tear--costs that are often overlooked; does a high tech hybrid with so many complex systems have that much less wear and tear than a study V6? And again, does the driver's taxes somehow cover the cost of the wear and tear when it's time to pay up?

The differences between fuel-based and mileage based are pretty significant. Mileage-based taxation helps show the true costs of driving, so long as it's actually channeled into maintenance of the infrastructure needed for driving and not diverted to other pet projects, be they trains or additional congressional pages.


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## Alice (Apr 18, 2009)

Green Maned Lion said:


> The Interstate Highways are an un-needed, dehumanizing social and economic drain on our country. I suggest we bulldoze, detonate, and otherwise remove these poorly conceived monstrosities from the era where accomplishment and progress were considered one and the same. People driving from place to place can do so on back roads. There is no need for a car to be a quick method of transportation.
> If there is volume to warrant the presence of a highway, there is volume to warrant replacing that highway with more economical rail transport. If there isn't volume for rail, there isn't volume to justify the presence of the highway in the first place. Either way, it should be demolished.
> 
> We have spent the past hundred years investing in the fallacy of sustained personal mobility. It will take us twice that long to correct this mistake. Its not like this was even what people wanted in the first place. Do any of you remember National City Lines, where rubber tire manufacturers and automakers got together and bought up city transit so they could replace steel-wheeled trollies with rubber-tired busses?
> ...


One important client of interstate highways is shippers. Sure there are many truckloads on the highways that ought to be on rail. However, there are a huge number of loads that get split up as they cross the country.

You want to decimate a town? Just say that their single factory can only ship once it gets an entire truckload unloading in one place, instead of the current practice of putting together a load that will partially unload at several (or numerous) spots.

You want to eliminate just-in-time processes? Most of these shipper/consignee partners want a single carrier who will guarantee a delivery date and time, and take responsibility for the load from factory to destination. Rails are no good at this. Take the recent problems in ND. A truck can detour around the problem while trains are delayed.

Taxation for roads is an interesting problem. Heavy trucks do the most damage to the roads, so there are good philosophical arguments that trucks should pay more fuel and mileage taxes than they do (thus raising product prices). There are also good arguments that cheap shipping benefits everyone, so fuel and mileage taxes on trucks should be reduced or eliminated. The current system collects part of the cost to maintain roads from trucks, part from car users (gas tax), and part from the public (general fund/income tax). What is the best balance between these funding sources? Philosophically? I don't know. Practically? I want someone else to pay, so I want more of the balance to be in something I don't do much of.

When is it philosophically sound to promote behavioral changes through taxes? Right now, we try to encourage home ownership through the tax code, and it worked. But then, here in California, people said this discriminated against renters, so we have a small renter's tax credit, reducing the effect of those tax and interest deductions. California also raised the tax on tobacco products to promote child health. Makes sense, kind of, except now those programs are out of money on account of reduced smoking. Tribal stores also saw increased sales after the last tax hike, and will probably see even more for our most recent tax boost. I believe the same is going to happen if you try to use taxes to reduce people's driving. If you want to tax driving to raise money, then do it honestly: say you want more money, and here is how individuals and/or society will benefit from those funds, choose more than one way to accumulate the funds, and then make sure the public sees the promised effects.

What is a "good" tax, anyway? Probably it ought to be "fair" (whatever that means, but graduated income taxes and user taxes are usually looked at as good at this), easy/cheap to collect (like charitable organizations, you don't want to spend a high percentage of your take in collection expenses), and difficult to cheat (a major problem with income taxes, and benefit of real property taxes). So we use a combination of lots of taxing mechanisms to muddle through this issue, and I think that is probably a good idea.

One more point for GML: I often use back roads. From LA to Oroville is around 8 hours on the interstate (at least the part where the interstate runs), or 1.5-2 days taking "blue highways" (the blue lines on a map), depending on traffic. I probably use about twice as much gas on the slower routes. Is that what you want? Do you also want all those trucks running through town, increasing tragic interactions with pedestrians, bicycles, and buildings? (I didn't list cars, since you want to eliminate them).


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## sportbiker (Apr 18, 2009)

volkris said:


> The problem is, there's more and more daylight between the two, and the daylight is not in line with what we've been discussing.
> Does a super efficient car, which would pay less in taxes, really put that much less wear or require that much less expansion of the highway system than a similar car with average efficiency? Note that I'm not comparing a Prius against an SUV here, but, say, a Prius against an average sedan.
> 
> We were talking about helping the driver to realize his costs in terms of wear and tear--costs that are often overlooked; does a high tech hybrid with so many complex systems have that much less wear and tear than a study V6? And again, does the driver's taxes somehow cover the cost of the wear and tear when it's time to pay up?
> ...


You're right that as cars move to higher mileages or alternative fuels that a gallon tax makes less and less sense (and cents), but up to now it's been a rough approximation of a mileage tax. I'm was simply arguing that you didn't want to use a tax system, but then suggested a tax as an alternative.

The costs of driving are far beyond normal maintenance: there are all the societal costs that are externalized, and those need to be recouped somehow if drivers are to know the true cost of that next mile, and so make a more rational decision about what mode of transport to use. See, for example, "The High Cost of Free Parking" by Donald Shoup, or "Suburban Nation: The Rise of Sprawl and the Decline of the American Dream " by Andres Duany, or "The Elephant in the Bedroom: Automobile Dependence & Denial : Impacts on the Economy and Environment" by Hart and Spivak, or "Asphalt Nation: How the Automobile Took Over America and How We Can Take It Back" by Jane Holtz Key. (Why are authors so infatuated with the colon?)

The car will always be with us, and that's not a bad thing. However, so long as its costs remain hidden and externalized, it will always appear to be the cheapest mode, and so it will always be over-consumed.


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## birdy (Apr 18, 2009)

Aside from the fact this "sackcloth and ashes" approach to the funding requirements is completely unnecessary, given the chump change costs required for a robust system, have you all considered that funding HSR in this way will lead to the proliferation of stations, slowing down the systems considerably? Drivers forced to pay for the HSR will rightly assume that the system is meant to be a glorified commuter rail. Having paid for the system, each little 'burb will want its own station.

The people in Rochester Minnesota seem to be pretty convinced that they will be able to travel 80 miles to Minneapolis for $8-9 when their system is built.


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## jackal (Apr 18, 2009)

Green Maned Lion said:


> The Interstate Highways are an un-needed, dehumanizing social and economic drain on our country. I suggest we bulldoze, detonate, and otherwise remove these poorly conceived monstrosities from the era where accomplishment and progress were considered one and the same. People driving from place to place can do so on back roads. There is no need for a car to be a quick method of transportation.
> If there is volume to warrant the presence of a highway, there is volume to warrant replacing that highway with more economical rail transport. If there isn't volume for rail, there isn't volume to justify the presence of the highway in the first place. Either way, it should be demolished.
> 
> We have spent the past hundred years investing in the fallacy of sustained personal mobility. It will take us twice that long to correct this mistake. Its not like this was even what people wanted in the first place. Do any of you remember National City Lines, where rubber tire manufacturers and automakers got together and bought up city transit so they could replace steel-wheeled trollies with rubber-tired busses?
> ...


Alice addressed the points I thought about as I read your post much better than I'm in a frame of mind to now, so I'll simply say ditto to her post.

I did want to point out one thing, though: if good rail completely obliterates the need for good road transport, then why does the rail mecca of Europe also have such an extensive and intricate network of highways that are, in some ways, more extensive and better than our interstate system?


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## Steve4031 (Apr 18, 2009)

We need all modes of transportation for this country to be successful. Our interstate highway system is world class, and in cases where I can't take the train because of logistics, I am grateful for the efforts put into building them. They are falling apart do to heavy use and lack of repair. Historically, there has been an unbalance in funding that favored the roads, and now the country has to play catch up. High speed trains in corridors east of the Mississippi river, and along the route planned in CAlifornia, will significantly decrease traffic in areas where the worse congestion is. Californian's, a car happy lot, crowd their trains that don't even reach top speeds of 79 mph in areas do to terrain. If you build it, they will ride it, if it is connecting the right cities.


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## JayPea (Apr 18, 2009)

As for there being no need for a car being a quick method of transportation, I think that police, firefighters, EMT's, ambulance drivers, etc, might beg to differ, as would the people whose lives and property they saved.

As it happens, there are no interstates within 50 miles of where I live, but the area where the nearest one is is a rural area. And spread out. You might have to respond to an accident, fire, or medical emergency 30 miles away. I guarantee that lives would be lost and property destroyed if emergency vehicles had to drive on back roads to get to the emergency rather than the interstate.


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## Joel N. Weber II (Apr 18, 2009)

Alice said:


> One important client of interstate highways is shippers. Sure there are many truckloads on the highways that ought to be on rail. However, there are a huge number of loads that get split up as they cross the country.
> You want to decimate a town? Just say that their single factory can only ship once it gets an entire truckload unloading in one place, instead of the current practice of putting together a load that will partially unload at several (or numerous) spots.


Maybe we need better infrastructure for moving roughly airliner sized shipping containers between rail and truck.



Alice said:


> You want to eliminate just-in-time processes? Most of these shipper/consignee partners want a single carrier who will guarantee a delivery date and time, and take responsibility for the load from factory to destination. Rails are no good at this. Take the recent problems in ND. A truck can detour around the problem while trains are delayed.


I think this may be more about the current approaches taken by the freight railroads than about what is possible with rail.

220 MPH freight has the potential to actually expand just in time processes. Somewhere there was discussion of how much it costs to buy a new automobile, vs buy a kit of parts for auto parts dealers to end up with a complete automobile. I think a lot of the cost with the latter comes from the amount of warehousing that happens with auto parts because we don't have the ability to just ship any part from Kansas City overnight to anywhere in the country at an affordable price. Cut the cost of overnight shipping of heavy parts that can't be economically moved that fast with Jet-A, and suddenly we might have less capital tied up in warehoused auto parts.



Alice said:


> Taxation for roads is an interesting problem. Heavy trucks do the most damage to the roads, so there are good philosophical arguments that trucks should pay more fuel and mileage taxes than they do (thus raising product prices). There are also good arguments that cheap shipping benefits everyone, so fuel and mileage taxes on trucks should be reduced or eliminated. The current system collects part of the cost to maintain roads from trucks, part from car users (gas tax), and part from the public (general fund/income tax). What is the best balance between these funding sources? Philosophically? I don't know. Practically? I want someone else to pay, so I want more of the balance to be in something I don't do much of.


If we would eliminate property taxes for railroad property and raise the taxes on cargo carried by road, we'd probably see a mode shift which might not result in increased prices for consumers. It might even decrease prices for consumers in the long run.


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## birdy (Apr 18, 2009)

> If we would eliminate property taxes for railroad property and raise the taxes on cargo carried by road, we'd probably see a mode shift which might not result in increased prices for consumers. It might even decrease prices for consumers in the long run.



Railroads are already very favorably treated under something called the 4R Act. Basically, if they don't like their property tax bill, they get to take their issue before a Federalist Society federal judge who acts as a state board of equalization to readjust the assessment. Unlike other federal issues, its a real nitty-gritty reexamination of the tax bill, not just a meta-view as to whether the locals followed standards.

The intermediate fast rail projects are going to be a very considerable subsidy to the railroads. they will have their tracks upgraded to 110 mph at government expense, and my expectation is that the railroads will prevail in having their own gandy dancers make the improvements, too, at a considerable mark up to Uncle Sam. Of course they will have to promise priority to passenger rail, but we all know that maybe they observe that, and maybe they won't.


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## Joel N. Weber II (Apr 18, 2009)

birdy said:


> Railroads are already very favorably treated under something called the 4R Act. Basically, if they don't like their property tax bill, they get to take their issue before a Federalist Society federal judge who acts as a state board of equalization to readjust the assessment. Unlike other federal issues, its a real nitty-gritty reexamination of the tax bill, not just a meta-view as to whether the locals followed standards.


But does that result in property tax bills that are truly competitive with the property tax bills the trucking companies don't pay for the highways?



birdy said:


> The intermediate fast rail projects are going to be a very considerable subsidy to the railroads. they will have their tracks upgraded to 110 mph at government expense, and my expectation is that the railroads will prevail in having their own gandy dancers make the improvements, too, at a considerable mark up to Uncle Sam. Of course they will have to promise priority to passenger rail, but we all know that maybe they observe that, and maybe they won't.


I think we've also seen Pan Am asking for improvements to some tracks in New Hampshire, in preparation for the possibility that we might someday see commuter rail there (with faster speeds than that track currently supports, but probably slower than 110 MPH; I believe the existing MBTA Commuter Rail equipment is limited to 88 MPH, and I'm not sure they even expect to hit 88 MPH there). I've not seen any evidence that Pan Am is terribly concerned about making sure that any actual passenger stations are completed at approximately the same time the track work is.


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## Kramerica (Apr 18, 2009)

birdy said:


> ...have you all considered that funding HSR in this way will lead to the proliferation of stations, slowing down the systems considerably? Drivers forced to pay for the HSR will rightly assume that the system is meant to be a glorified commuter rail. Having paid for the system, each little 'burb will want its own station.


What's wrong with a lot of stations? If all trains stop at all stations, then yes it would be bad. But if there's a proliferation of stations because of demand, we'll safely assume there'll be a proliferation of train runs. And some will be express and some will have stop at most of the stations. That's a good thing. It'll serve more people and garner more support for trains. Don't worry, there'll always be demand for express trains even on lines with a lot of stations.


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## Joel N. Weber II (Apr 18, 2009)

Kramerica said:


> What's wrong with a lot of stations? If all trains stop at all stations, then yes it would be bad. But if there's a proliferation of stations because of demand, we'll safely assume there'll be a proliferation of train runs. And some will be express and some will have stop at most of the stations. That's a good thing. It'll serve more people and garner more support for trains. Don't worry, there'll always be demand for express trains even on lines with a lot of stations.


The concern I see is whether there's enough track capacity for all the different stopping patterns people want at the frequencies they want. But in the worst case, that just means we have to build more track, and if we end up with that being a serious problem, there will probably be lots of political support for adding more tracks.


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## Green Maned Lion (Apr 20, 2009)

sunchaser said:


> So in your world, we should not travel except by train if there is enough of a base to travel that way? So that means I could not go to see family in California because I cannot afford the train trip. We would have to take 2-3 trains one way. And in the future, there would be no guarantee that a more direct route will be available. We would have to have at least a roomette on each train. My only brother passed away April 9th, from pancreatic cancer. I've been scrambling to fly down to see my 83 yr old mom. She's all alone now, he was living with her. I have some cuz nearby, but I know she needs me there too. You are saying I shouldn't go. Can't drive the car, it wouldn't make it. Have to fly, but really don't want to.There are many others I'm sure that would disagree with you. We don't really drive all that much, but we do take occasional trips requiring the highways. Besides, if we all took backroads, wouldn't this cause more waste of fuel/pollution?
> 
> Please understand that I'm not trying to be difficult or start an argument.


You aren't thinking in scale, SunChaser. I want you to add up all the costs you incur from your car. There are a lot of them, keep in mind. Depreciation; fuel; insurance; parking; maintenance; road tax; taxation costs- Federal, state, AND municipal; and cleaning it, if you do that. Now, add them all up. I think the average person spends an easy $25k a year on that crap, on a per-car basis.

Now imagine all those expenses going away. Do you not think you could afford to travel by train after all that stuff goes away? I'm not talking about simply bulldozing our highways and replacing them with rail, man. I'm talking about re-engineering the way our society moves around what works rather than what we want.

New transit. New mechanisms. A new community. A new world, dude. A place where people don't feel the need to be locked up in their own car trying to drive whenever moving. We have turned into a society of isolated self-serving a$$holes. We must un-do what the car has done.



Alice said:


> One important client of interstate highways is shippers. Sure there are many truckloads on the highways that ought to be on rail. However, there are a huge number of loads that get split up as they cross the country.
> You want to decimate a town? Just say that their single factory can only ship once it gets an entire truckload unloading in one place, instead of the current practice of putting together a load that will partially unload at several (or numerous) spots.
> 
> You want to eliminate just-in-time processes? Most of these shipper/consignee partners want a single carrier who will guarantee a delivery date and time, and take responsibility for the load from factory to destination. Rails are no good at this. Take the recent problems in ND. A truck can detour around the problem while trains are delayed.


YES. I want to eliminate JIT. I want to eliminate un-needed mass production. I want to eliminate excessive production efficiency. I want money to be spent doing things right for a change. I want things to be built properly and in small numbers, to last a long time. I want the prices of goods to go up and the purchasing of them to go down.

We ruined our economy with over-efficiency and buying things un-needed and disposable. It is time for all this nonsense to be recognized for what it is. Wal-Mart, un-needed personal transportation, and the mess they created are now anachronistic pariahs in this world.



Alice said:


> One more point for GML: I often use back roads. From LA to Oroville is around 8 hours on the interstate (at least the part where the interstate runs), or 1.5-2 days taking "blue highways" (the blue lines on a map), depending on traffic. I probably use about twice as much gas on the slower routes. Is that what you want? Do you also want all those trucks running through town, increasing tragic interactions with pedestrians, bicycles, and buildings? (I didn't list cars, since you want to eliminate them).


I fail to see the need for massive amounts of truck service. We served our factories adequately with rail before. We can do it again. Gas usage isn't important to me. A large intention of my mindset is to reduce overall travel. Some of those car and truck trips will be removed, never to be replaced.

I do not believe that commerce on an international scale has helped. I question whether commerce on a national level is even beneficial. Except, perhaps, allowing people to buy junk they don't need with money they don't really need to have. The number of injection-molded plastic chatchkas in my sisters apartment bears testament to the concept. Our society needs a solid overhaul, and I say it should start at the biggest mistake of all- excessive personal mobility.



jackal said:


> I did want to point out one thing, though: if good rail completely obliterates the need for good road transport, then why does the rail mecca of Europe also have such an extensive and intricate network of highways that are, in some ways, more extensive and better than our interstate system?


Who said it is the rail mecca? If any place is the mecca of rail, it is New York City. Of the great cities of the west, it has the lowest automobile ownership. Coincidence? Of course not. New York hasn't built a new highway in decades. Most of its system is crumbling and under-maintained. Its illogical, poorly planned, and honestly I think the BQE should be the starting point of road demolition. Followed in short order by the Belt and LIE. Last person who seriously lobbied for an expressway on Manhattan Island kinda lost his job- his name was Robert Moses, by the way.



JayPea said:


> As for there being no need for a car being a quick method of transportation, I think that police, firefighters, EMT's, ambulance drivers, etc, might beg to differ, as would the people whose lives and property they saved.As it happens, there are no interstates within 50 miles of where I live, but the area where the nearest one is is a rural area. And spread out. You might have to respond to an accident, fire, or medical emergency 30 miles away. I guarantee that lives would be lost and property destroyed if emergency vehicles had to drive on back roads to get to the emergency rather than the interstate.


Ya know, the car has only been around for a hundred-odd years. We seemed to survive as a race without emergency vehicles traipsing about multi-lane expressways. I betcha we could continue to survive if they ceased to do so.


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## Neil_M (Apr 20, 2009)

Green Maned Lion said:


> Our society needs a solid overhaul, and I say it should start at the biggest mistake of all- excessive personal mobility.


Very true. People going to Chicago just to eat Pizza is a waste of resources and should be banned. How do those pizza ingredients get to the kitchen? Train? Horse and cart? Someone who claims to go somewhere to eat a pizza just because its 'better' than the pizza you could eat down your street is obviously suffering from excessive personal mobility, or a hypocrite.


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## Neil_M (Apr 20, 2009)

Green Maned Lion said:


> If any place is the mecca of rail, it is New York City. Of the great cities of the west, it has the lowest automobile ownership. Coincidence? Of course not.


New York has more rail service than most places in the US, but a "mecca"? Hardly. A crummy subway, falling to bits, a few commuter railways and minimal Amtrak service? Its just about satisfactory, that's it.

Car ownership is always lower in densely populated cities, more poor people, more congested roads and a reasonable amount of public transport make it so.

Poor old GML does seem so unhappy living in the modern world, selling his precious cars and moving over to North Korea might be more use to him!


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## Neil_M (Apr 20, 2009)

Green Maned Lion said:


> Ya know, the car has only been around for a hundred-odd years. We seemed to survive as a race without emergency vehicles traipsing about multi-lane expressways. I betcha we could continue to survive if they ceased to do so.


Just wait till your house is on fire then, luddite child! Crying like a baby wanting the firefighters to get there quicker!


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## jackal (Apr 20, 2009)

Green Maned Lion said:


> jackal said:
> 
> 
> > I did want to point out one thing, though: if good rail completely obliterates the need for good road transport, then why does the rail mecca of Europe also have such an extensive and intricate network of highways that are, in some ways, more extensive and better than our interstate system?
> ...


I was speaking on a large-scale basis. Perhaps NYC's car ownership ratio is the lowest of the great cities of the West, but I would be willing to bet it's not that much higher in many of the other great cities of the West. I've done London, Paris, and Rome car-free and have had no trouble. The difference is that if you want to go out of NYC itself, there's a good chance you need a car. Many NYers rent cars to go Upstate to visit family or otherwise get out of the city. In Europe, a Londoner wanting to holiday in Bath, visit Shakespeare's house in Stratford-upon-Avon, or relive history at Hastings' battle site, or a Parisian who wants to see the beautiful cathedral at Reims or go wine tasting in the small village of Beaune, can get there by train.

A New Yorker can't get to the important college town of Ithaca or the comparatively large cities of Binghamton or Scranton, PA (both of whose metro populations greatly exceed all of the European cities I listed).

Between a fairly extensive blanket of rail coverage and connecting buses for the tiny dorfs that it would be unreasonable to expect rail to serve (should a train really be built to connect my friend's house in the 9,800-person town of Stephanskirchen?), it is much easier to live a car-free life than even in New York, since not only do you not need a car in the city, you don't need one to go outside of the city. Yet Germany's Autobahnen are some of the biggest and most technologically advanced roads in the world, and France's autoroutes and England's motorways are not only nicer than many Interstates in the U.S. but also busier.

And this is with Europe's smaller, less-comfortable cars, higher gas prices, and much greater availability of both long-distance _and_ local public transit. This in and of itself should show you that expecting the world to give up wholesale the very notion of road transport is ludicrous. Why are all of these countries _expanding_ their road networks even as their rail networks are continuing to expand? If it can't be done in Europe, with its shorter transportation distances and denser populations, I doubt very much it can be done here, no matter how much money we throw at it. It's _much_ more reasonable to aim rail towards reducing aviation congestion and providing alternatives for local high-density transportation, but you can never eliminate the need for good road transport in today's economy. (And if you want to revert to a previous economy, well, good luck getting people to give up, despite its downfalls, the highest standard of living the world has ever enjoyed.)


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## jis (Apr 20, 2009)

Green Maned Lion said:


> Who said it is the rail mecca? If any place is the mecca of rail, it is New York City.


Compare to London or Paris or more broadly speaking Southeast England or Ile de France? I guess everyone is entitled to an opinion after all


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## sunchaser (Apr 20, 2009)

Green Maned Lion said:


> sunchaser said:
> 
> 
> > So in your world, we should not travel except by train if there is enough of a base to travel that way? So that means I could not go to see family in California because I cannot afford the train trip. We would have to take 2-3 trains one way. And in the future, there would be no guarantee that a more direct route will be available. We would have to have at least a roomette on each train. My only brother passed away April 9th, from pancreatic cancer. I've been scrambling to fly down to see my 83 yr old mom. She's all alone now, he was living with her. I have some cuz nearby, but I know she needs me there too. You are saying I shouldn't go. Can't drive the car, it wouldn't make it. Have to fly, but really don't want to.There are many others I'm sure that would disagree with you. We don't really drive all that much, but we do take occasional trips requiring the highways. Besides, if we all took backroads, wouldn't this cause more waste of fuel/pollution?
> ...




GML,

I am thinking in scale. The costs of driving our older vehicle are minimal, at best. We bought it used for under 1K. We drive it 3-4 times a week, maybe 30 miles total. We don't pay for parking, & not driving to work. So hubby & I are way below average on the money spent for car stuff. We would not be able to maintain a car by spending 25K a year. At this point, it needs major work. We will probably get another used car for under 1K, and fix this one up as a second or sell/give away.

I know you are talking new transit. For many years, when our kids were growing up, there were times when we did not have a functional car. We walked, took the bus, or caught rides sometimes. And yes we took the bus for work & buying groceries. But there are times you cannot use a bus. I have several pets, including a Macaw. When he needs to go get his nails trimmed every 3 months, I cannot take him by bus. A Cab would be way too much. It's way too far too walk (about 20 miles). So we use our van. All these years taking the bus hasn't changed much. When we got Trax here (light rail) it was supposed to make things faster & better. But where we lived at the time, it slowed our commute & added the rail into it. It went from 40 min to 60 each way. And it only runs north to south, very little east-west as with the buses.

Saturday we went & picked up the luggage we ordered for the train trip. I had it shipped to the store to save on delivery charges & of course gas. We also did our shopping that we do every two weeks.

Remember not everyone has the ability to select all modes of transport. When you get outside of SLC, it is pretty rural.

Usually we try to take 2 camping trips each summer. The campsites are about a 2 hour drive from here. There is no other way to get there. This year we will miss the first one because of our train trip. Don't know if we'll make it to #2.

And again I remind you, I must go to my brother's memorial & we have to fly (early may). Im ok with trying to conserve what we have, but I also realize that mass transit is not always the way to go. I read all the trip reports knowing we will not ever be able to ride most of those trains. We just don't have that kind of income. Not whining, just stating fact.

I know we are not the average family as far as travel & car usage. That is my point. To travel by train to So Cal, we would need to take the CZ, (18 hrs) the CS, & then another train, OR fly down & catch the TE. Too much $ & time at this point. There is no direct route from SLC anymore. (which I would take in a heartbeat)

Oh DUDE BTW- I'm definitely a woman, wife, mother & grandmother. :blink: Maybe I should change my nickname to something more girly? :unsure: Haven't posted a pic because I don't want to scare anyone!!!! :lol:

Edited for spelling.


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## jackal (Apr 20, 2009)

sunchaser said:


> Green Maned Lion said:
> 
> 
> > You aren't thinking in scale, SunChaser. I want you to add up all the costs you incur from your car. There are a lot of them, keep in mind. Depreciation; fuel; insurance; parking; maintenance; road tax; taxation costs- Federal, state, AND municipal; and cleaning it, if you do that. Now, add them all up. I think the average person spends an easy $25k a year on that crap, on a per-car basis.
> ...


I'll agree with sunchaser that not everyone spends $25,000 per year on their car and associated costs. I think you (GML) are severely overestimating the cost of maintaining a vehicle.

As best I can calculate, I spend about $3,000 per year on my transportation. Here's my breakdown:

Gas: $1,500 per year (12 gallons of gas each week)

Insurance: $1,200 per year (and hopefully about to go down when I turn 25!)

Registration: $60 per year ($120 every two years)

IM: $40 per year ($80 every two years)

Miscellaneous repairs: ~$300 per year

University parking: $300 per year

Vehicle purchase: $400 per year (for the five years I've owned the car; it goes down the longer this car lasts me)

Even rounding up, I'm hard pressed to figure out how my car costs me more than $4,000 per year.

So, driving a 12-year-old car may put be below average, but even if someone buys a $30,000 car new and you factor in the monthly payment, you're still under $10,000. Maybe it would be $25,000 if you bought a BMW or Mercedes and lived in New York, but that's probably .01% of the nation's population--hardly the "average person."

Granted, even the $4,000 per year I spend on my car far exceeds the $600 an Anchorage PeopleMover bus pass would cost me for 12 months, but without the car, I'd bet you my annual income would be cut by a lot more than $3,400 per year since I'd need to find a new job that would allow me to ride the bus to and from work (I currently get off work after the bus system stops running) and still fits in my school schedule. Plus, I'd need to factor in that I'll be running a lot less efficiently since my 15-minute commute to work would turn into 2.5 hours (or whatever it was I calculated in the other thread), not to mention my options for doing things (shopping, classes at remote campuses, going out to eat, meeting up with friends, etc.) would be severely curtailed.

I'll keep my car, thankyouverymuch.


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## Ispolkom (Apr 20, 2009)

jackal said:


> As best I can calculate, I spend about $3,000 per year on my transportation. Here's my breakdown:
> Gas: $1,500 per year (12 gallons of gas each week)
> 
> Insurance: $1,200 per year (and hopefully about to go down when I turn 25!)
> ...


You probably ought to consider the cost of externalities: transportation infrastructure, the pollution you car is responsible for when it is created, run, and junked, the cost of foreign adventures to guarantee supplies of fossil fuel. I wouldn't care to guess what these costs might be, but they are there.

In general, though, I haven't found attempts to legislature Virtue to be of much use. The results rarely match the goals.


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## AlanB (Apr 20, 2009)

Neil_M said:


> Green Maned Lion said:
> 
> 
> > If any place is the mecca of rail, it is New York City. Of the great cities of the west, it has the lowest automobile ownership. Coincidence? Of course not.
> ...


While I'm not sure that I'd call NYC a mecca either, at least compared to other cities in the world, it definately is here in the US. And the subways aren't that crummy, in fact they've done quite a bit of work to them in the past few years. The average age of the fleet is probably down around 15 years right now, maybe even less. Many of the stations have now seen an overhaul, especially the major ones. The outlying ones probably are about half and half. So it's not quite falling to bits at this point in time and it still moves the equivilent of 3/4ths of this city's population each weekday.

As for those commuter RR's, there many only be three of them, but between them they take more than 700,000 people into and out of the city each weekday, and there are plenty more who board those trains to travel between intermediate points without ever setting foot in the city.

And you couldn't be more wrong about minimal Amtrak service. The only state with more Amtrak passengers than NY is California, NYP remains the busiest Amtrak station in the system more than double the number of passengers of the second busiest station, and while I haven't actually counted them I strongly suspect that NY sees just as many train movements as California or very close.

By the way, NYC doesn't rank in the top 10 US cities for most time lost commuting to work in one's car. And NYC, unlike most other major US cities, has no freeways that are wider than 3 lanes in each direction.


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## sunchaser (Apr 20, 2009)

Ispolkom said:


> jackal said:
> 
> 
> > As best I can calculate, I spend about $3,000 per year on my transportation. Here's my breakdown:
> ...


We are closer to less than 3K per year. Minivan is 20 yrs old. Cannot purchase a new car. Credit is shot. Unlikely for credit to be repaired enough to get a new car w/o overpaying for it. We are on a fixed income, because hubby is medically retired.

I hope you are not going to blame me for the pollution that was made when this car was built? As for foreign ventures, if we in the US would get over NIMBY, & create better cars, that would go a long way.

I do not believe that this is an issue of Virtue. It is more of balance & responsibility; if we improve vehicles enough, & they are cheap enough, then, great. Maybe we should all ride horses!!! :lol: But then people would complain about the CO2 they would create!! We should take care of our planet, of course. The key question is how can we do this in an affordable manner that will not damage or destroy it or the economies nationally & worldwide.

The thread is about HSR, while we a little off topic, in our situation, and all current plans for HSR in our area, would not be something that would be usable for us. To my knowledge, there is no plans for HSR connecting from SLC to anywhere I would want/need to go.

We should be planting more trees, which consume CO2.


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## jis (Apr 20, 2009)

AlanB said:


> As for those commuter RR's, there many only be three of them, but between them they take more than 700,000 people into and out of the city each weekday, and there are plenty more who board those trains to travel between intermediate points without ever setting foot in the city.


The one glaring problem with NYC's commuter rail network is the complete lack of circumferential lines, without which travel from one suburb to another is difficult, thus making it hard to dispose off ones auto if one lives out in the burbs. This is where London or Paris have a bit of leg up on NY. But it is also true that as you get further out of the city even those start resembling NY, Paris more so than London.



> By the way, NYC doesn't rank in the top 10 US cities for most time lost commuting to work in one's car. And NYC, unlike most other major US cities, has no freeways that are wider than 3 lanes in each direction.


For wider Freeways you have to cross the river to NJ and experience the wonders of 10 and 12 lane highways. That of course if you ignore all the lanes on GW Bridge and Verrazano Narrows Bridge and even Staten Island Expressway. Of course true New Yorkers do not consider Staten Island to be part of New York City except when it comes to collecting taxes I am told  Afterall, it ison the other side of the Hudson Ocean


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## AlanB (Apr 20, 2009)

jis said:


> AlanB said:
> 
> 
> > By the way, NYC doesn't rank in the top 10 US cities for most time lost commuting to work in one's car. And NYC, unlike most other major US cities, has no freeways that are wider than 3 lanes in each direction.
> ...


Actually I do consider SI to be part of the city, and the SI expressway is predominately 3 lanes in each direction. There is one short stretch right at the merge with the West Shore where its 4 lanes in each direction, and a recent addition puts a bus/hov lane westbound off the bridge which could sort of be considered a 4th lane, but I didn't count that since it's not a general travel lane.

There is also about a mile on the Long Island Expressway in Queens where the road is 4 lanes in each direction, and for an even shorter distance within that same segment, 5 lanes in each direction. Additionally there is a section of the Grand Central Parkway that's also about a mile long and 4 lanes in each direction. But as a general rule there are no highways with more than 3 lanes in each direction for any significant and useful distances within NYC.

As for bridges, you actually forgot about the Triborough, now RFK, Bridge that has 4 lanes in each direction over the bulk of its length. And again all the bridges aren't sufficiently long enough in length to be significant, and they are already choke points since all bring multiple highways and local streets together at one point.


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## George Harris (Apr 20, 2009)

Without addressing some of the spicifics given: Here are a few thoughts:

Any solution that drives people toward poverty is the wrong solution. That includes all solutions that result in restraints on mobility. I am not talking about increases in efficiency of mobility. That is needed, but solutions that are determined to reduce energy use, polution, or whatever by making mobility difficult or expensive are simply wrong. Those constraints fall hardest on those least able to afford it.

I am a believer in improved rail passenger service, and high speed trains as a means of increasing mobility without signicant increases in energy consumption, and possibly with reductions in energy consumption. It can happen.

If you want to see a country where there is a heavily used railway system that works, go to Japan.

Sitting here in San Francisco, I can and do live without a car. There are occasions when we rent one.

If I retire back to the semi-rural area I came from, I will need a car. There is no public transit there.


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## Green Maned Lion (Apr 20, 2009)

Neil_M said:


> Just wait till your house is on fire then, luddite child! Crying like a baby wanting the firefighters to get there quicker!


At which point I will get off my ass, get a hose from my neighbors house, and put the bloody thing out. Gee, that was hard.



jackal said:


> If it can't be done in Europe, with its shorter transportation distances and denser populations, I doubt very much it can be done here, no matter how much money we throw at it. It's _much_ more reasonable to aim rail towards reducing aviation congestion and providing alternatives for local high-density transportation, but you can never eliminate the need for good road transport in today's economy. (And if you want to revert to a previous economy, well, good luck getting people to give up, despite its downfalls, the highest standard of living the world has ever enjoyed.)


Ya know, a hundred years ago, we got by with a lot less of this moving around stuff. The world has gotten too small. Traveling fifty miles should be an event, not a commute.



sunchaser said:


> GML,I am thinking in scale. The costs of driving our older vehicle are minimal, at best. We bought it used for under 1K. We drive it 3-4 times a week, maybe 30 miles total. We don't pay for parking, & not driving to work. So hubby & I are way below average on the money spent for car stuff. We would not be able to maintain a car by spending 25K a year. At this point, it needs major work. We will probably get another used car for under 1K, and fix this one up as a second or sell/give away.


You are neglecting to include the money you pay in non-directed taxes that go towards maintaining the infrastructure. You paid for the Big Dig in Boston, even if you will never see it. I know you happen to be on a fixed income, but the fact of the matter is, you pay a lot of money towards having a car that you don't even realize you pay to that.



sunchaser said:


> Oh DUDE BTW- I'm definitely a woman, wife, mother & grandmother. :blink: Maybe I should change my nickname to something more girly? :unsure: Haven't posted a pic because I don't want to scare anyone!!!! :lol:


I know, but the masculine encompasses the feminine in 3rd person and non-directed pronouns.



jackal said:


> I'll agree with sunchaser that not everyone spends $25,000 per year on their car and associated costs. I think you (GML) are severely overestimating the cost of maintaining a vehicle.
> As best I can calculate, I spend about $3,000 per year on my transportation. Here's my breakdown:
> 
> Gas: $1,500 per year (12 gallons of gas each week)
> ...


The purchase price of a car is not one of its costs, thats just a conversion of assets. The cars annual cost is the difference between the price of acquisition and the price of sale divided by the number of years owned. But that's not really relevant.

As I pointed out to Sunchaser, how much do we all spend in taxes to maintain and operate massive and excessive road infrastructure? How much less would we spend if we replaced the 12 lane highway with a 2-track railroad?



George Harris said:


> Without addressing some of the spicifics given: Here are a few thoughts:
> Any solution that drives people toward poverty is the wrong solution. That includes all solutions that result in restraints on mobility. I am not talking about increases in efficiency of mobility. That is needed, but solutions that are determined to reduce energy use, polution, or whatever by making mobility difficult or expensive are simply wrong. Those constraints fall hardest on those least able to afford it.
> 
> I am a believer in improved rail passenger service, and high speed trains as a means of increasing mobility without signicant increases in energy consumption, and possibly with reductions in energy consumption. It can happen.
> ...


What's poverty? Not owning a PS3? We drive people to poverty by creating a society so focused on the possession of unimportant material possessions. What do we need to live comfortably? A roof over our head, sufficient food on the table, a secure income? Everyone has to work 90 hours a week, live in a freakin' mansion, own enough electronics to consume the entire electrical grid of New York City circa 1890, drive a car- and it better be a 'nice' car- and eat insanely tasteless prepackaged 'gourmet' food from supermarkets!

That's just silly. So much pursuit of unneeded junk. So little pursuit of happiness. This has to change.


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## Ispolkom (Apr 20, 2009)

Green Maned Lion said:


> What's poverty? Not owning a PS3? We drive people to poverty by creating a society so focused on the possession of unimportant material possessions. What do we need to live comfortably? A roof over our head, sufficient food on the table, a secure income? Everyone has to work 90 hours a week, live in a freakin' mansion, own enough electronics to consume the entire electrical grid of New York City circa 1890, drive a car- and it better be a 'nice' car- and eat insanely tasteless prepackaged 'gourmet' food from supermarkets!
> That's just silly. So much pursuit of unneeded junk. So little pursuit of happiness. This has to change.


What's poverty? Being stuck in a jerk-water town. Following the south end of a horse (or worse, a mule) 14 hours a day. Not having a clean change of clothes. It's very easy for youngsters to speak of "unimportant material possessions" such as, I suppose, modern medicine and fresh vegetables in January. Eat cabbage every day for lunch and dinner a few months and your opinion might change. Have friends who cannot get medicines as simple as beta-blockers to treat high blood pressure and you opinion might change. Heck, plant potatoes by hand for a few days on a collective farm, and your opinion might change.

And consider your audience. It's going to be hard to sell the members of a *transportation* forum that they ought to travel less.

Oh, and your experience with house fires must be much different than I. I am very grateful for professional firefighters. And fire insurance, for that matter.


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## sunchaser (Apr 20, 2009)

Green Maned Lion said:


> Neil_M said:
> 
> 
> > Just wait till your house is on fire then, luddite child! Crying like a baby wanting the firefighters to get there quicker!
> ...




OH NO!!!! I've been encompassed!!!!!!! :lol: :lol: Should I feel comforted?

I can however agree in part that we as a country overall are obsessed with consuming & have to have the biggest & the best, and of course look like somebody else's idea of beautiful. We do seriously need to focus on the more important things in life, the things that cannot be replaced. Relationships, the planet, etc. Unfortunately, we do not get to choose the projects we want funded by taxes paid out. Nice concept though! I have seen the Big Dig- in the Die Hard movie!!! :lol:


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## Guest_timetableflagman_* (Apr 20, 2009)

I agree with Mr. Harris' last comments here. The capacity and orderliness of rail can make it the most efficient form of overland transport. That can bring down the cost of it.

For AMTRAK, or whatever rail passenger service, to be an all-purpose rail passenger service by serving local and through travelers can make the most of its capacity if done orderly. The railroads have arguably operated like taxi services increasingly since their adoption of train dispatching and their disdainful ditching of the timetable as being "insufficient" for "modern" railroading.

We see that modern outlook in how people drive. The fact that driving is desireable is in its perceived individualized expediency. That's what makes it so problematic. Mass expediency results in mass congestion without any prediction of when or if it will abate.

We can waste the $8 billion or $5 billion more on a few miles of maybe only one fanciful, "true" high-speed line that will swoosh its wide-eyed passengers on a fun and technologically dazzling ride in only an hour-- so they can go board their plane and go back home, etc., in the same amount of time some 500 milea away. Or, we can use about that same amount of opportune funding to upgrade perhaps the SILVER METEOR, CAPITOL LIMITED, CALIFORNIA ZEPHYR and COAST STARLIGHT lines to 110-mph speed, affording overnight connections between Washington, DC, Chicago, Miami and Boston; Chicago and Denver; Salt Lake City, Seattle, San Diego/Los Angeles and Oakland/San Francisco as well as rush hour commuting within about two current AMTRAK stations of each of these cities.

Of course, even our current, 79-mph system could give us that same "corridor" service, if scheduled to do so, between Boston, New York and Buffalo; Charlotte, Florence and New York; Miami and Savannah; Atlanta, Memphis and New Orleans; Cleveland, Cincinnati, Carbondale, St. Louis, Kansas City, Omaha, Minneapolis/St. Paul and Chicago; San Antonio and El Paso; Tuscon, Flagstaff, Reno and San Francisco Bay/Sacramento; Spokane, Eugene and Seattle; Denver and Salt Lake City and Little Rock and Dallas. AMTRAK could use the revenue from the excessive ridership and undercapacity problems that rush hour commuter and overnight travel might cause it to have.


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## Steve4031 (Apr 20, 2009)

Can't we all just talk about trains? I just scrolled to the end of this thing hoping find out more about the high speed rail, and all I see is an argument. I can get those at work from the girls.


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## Green Maned Lion (Apr 20, 2009)

Ispolkom said:


> What's poverty? Being stuck in a jerk-water town. Following the south end of a horse (or worse, a mule) 14 hours a day. Not having a clean change of clothes. It's very easy for youngsters to speak of "unimportant material possessions" such as, I suppose, modern medicine and fresh vegetables in January. Eat cabbage every day for lunch and dinner a few months and your opinion might change. Have friends who cannot get medicines as simple as beta-blockers to treat high blood pressure and you opinion might change. Heck, plant potatoes by hand for a few days on a collective farm, and your opinion might change.
> And consider your audience. It's going to be hard to sell the members of a *transportation* forum that they ought to travel less.
> 
> Oh, and your experience with house fires must be much different than I. I am very grateful for professional firefighters. And fire insurance, for that matter.


I think we should all do real work, and working behind a mule is a good place to start.

I don't have any friends, besides a girlfriend who, for the most part, thinks the same way I do. I'm not confused as to why or anything.

This world is overpopulated. I'd like to see the majority of modern medicine disappear.

I'm not going to sell my ideas to anyone but similar people. I'm just putting them out there. Even though I fully believe they will work, I don't expect them to happen. I'm crazy, not stupid.


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## Joel N. Weber II (Apr 20, 2009)

Green Maned Lion said:


> At which point I will get off my ass, get a hose from my neighbors house, and put the bloody thing out. Gee, that was hard.


And just how much training do you have in not getting yourself killed in the process?



Green Maned Lion said:


> Ya know, a hundred years ago, we got by with a lot less of this moving around stuff. The world has gotten too small. Traveling fifty miles should be an event, not a commute.


Maybe you should chat with some MBTA Worcester Line riders about how they like the OTP there. Their experience might be the sort of thing you seem to be asking for.

Most people want transportation to just get them somewhere efficiently so they can get something else done. I don't see how you're ever going to get a meaningful number of voters to agree with you.



Green Maned Lion said:


> You paid for the Big Dig in Boston, even if you will never see it.


Parts of it are visible from the MBTA's SL1 bus, if anyone coming to the Gathering does want to see it.



Green Maned Lion said:


> What's poverty? Not owning a PS3?


A PS3 plus a 24", 1920x1200 display costs about the same as a year of monthly MBTA LinkPasses. That doesn't even cover the express buses or much of the Commuter Rail system or sleepers on the LSL to Chicago (a roomette at low bucket, round trip, seems to be about as much as a year worth of MBTA LinkPasses).



Green Maned Lion said:


> Everyone has to work 90 hours a week, live in a freakin' mansion, own enough electronics to consume the entire electrical grid of New York City circa 1890, drive a car- and it better be a 'nice' car- and eat insanely tasteless prepackaged 'gourmet' food from supermarkets!


Are you asserting I'm not a person? I don't work anywhere remotely close to 90 hours a week, can't afford a mansion, haven't driven an automobile in over 6 months, and very much enjoyed the vegan pad thai I picked up at Whole Foods a couple hours ago, was moved from a large pan into a pint size or something container while I watched (though I have nothing against eating meat).


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## sunchaser (Apr 20, 2009)

Steve4031 said:


> Can't we all just talk about trains? I just scrolled to the end of this thing hoping find out more about the high speed rail, and all I see is an argument. I can get those at work from the girls.


I did a quick search to try and get Obama's HSR plans, but found nothing but blogs & forums. But I did find this link with a report by the GAO. There are details & rail projects on pages 8 & 9.

http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d09317.pdf

I would like to see more detail on Obama's plans too, like the ones he wants to fund.


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## George Harris (Apr 20, 2009)

Green Maned Lion said:


> I think we should all do real work, and working behind a mule is a good place to start.


Try this for a couple of years, and then call us and see if you still think it is a good idea. I am old enough and from a place where this sort of thing was still a reality for a lot of people in the early part of my lifetime. I don't see any of them wanting it back.

In a word, you have no idea of the reality of what you are talking about.


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## AlanB (Apr 20, 2009)

sunchaser said:


> Steve4031 said:
> 
> 
> > Can't we all just talk about trains? I just scrolled to the end of this thing hoping find out more about the high speed rail, and all I see is an argument. I can get those at work from the girls.
> ...


That's because there are no plans yet, not to mention that they aren't Obama's or the Federal Governments plans.

The Fed will draw up a set of rules and conditions first. Then each State that is hoping for a slice of the pie to start working on a project will have to submit a plan if they qualify under the rules. Then the DOT, probably in conjunction with the FRA, will decide which projects have the most merit, can put shovels into the ground within 6 months or so, and dole out the monies.


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## saxman (Apr 20, 2009)

sunchaser said:


> Steve4031 said:
> 
> 
> > Can't we all just talk about trains? I just scrolled to the end of this thing hoping find out more about the high speed rail, and all I see is an argument. I can get those at work from the girls.
> ...


Here's the official announcement of Obama's HSR plan:

http://www.fra.dot.gov/us/content/31

Here are the details of that plan:

http://www.fra.dot.gov/Downloads/RR...rategicplan.pdf


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## sportbiker (Apr 20, 2009)

Ahh, to be young and revolutionary...


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## sunchaser (Apr 21, 2009)

saxman66 said:


> sunchaser said:
> 
> 
> > Steve4031 said:
> ...


Thanks! Here's the map-

http://www.fra.dot.gov/Downloads/RRdev/hsrmap.pdf

No Vegas/LA run..

Edited for incorrect content.


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## PetalumaLoco (Apr 21, 2009)

sunchaser said:


> Thanks! Here's the map-
> http://www.fra.dot.gov/Downloads/RRdev/hsrmap.pdf
> 
> No Vegas/LA run, no HSR for California Zephyr..


Did you really expect to see all 2438 miles of the CZ high speed?


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## sunchaser (Apr 21, 2009)

PetalumaLoco said:


> sunchaser said:
> 
> 
> > Thanks! Here's the map-
> ...


No, I guess I misspoke. A guest was talking about CZ running at 110 mph- I am now assuming thats not considered high speed for trains?

Having trouble quoting more than one message. Sorry I guess I'm more tired than I thought.


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## PetalumaLoco (Apr 21, 2009)

sunchaser said:


> PetalumaLoco said:
> 
> 
> > sunchaser said:
> ...


No problem, I get dinghy too.


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## Green Maned Lion (Apr 21, 2009)

Joel N. Weber II said:


> And just how much training do you have in not getting yourself killed in the process?


Iono, I've put out fires before. I'm sure I could do it again.



Joel N. Weber II said:


> Maybe you should chat with some MBTA Worcester Line riders about how they like the OTP there. Their experience might be the sort of thing you seem to be asking for.Most people want transportation to just get them somewhere efficiently so they can get something else done. I don't see how you're ever going to get a meaningful number of voters to agree with you.


I mean that it should be undertaken with the frequency and for the importance of something that is considered an event. People shouldn't be traipsing 50 miles from home to work every day. Ridiculous.



Joel N. Weber II said:


> A PS3 plus a 24", 1920x1200 display costs about the same as a year of monthly MBTA LinkPasses. That doesn't even cover the express buses or much of the Commuter Rail system or sleepers on the LSL to Chicago (a roomette at low bucket, round trip, seems to be about as much as a year worth of MBTA LinkPasses).


You so completely missed my point this time, I'm not even going to try.



Joel N. Weber II said:


> Are you asserting I'm not a person? I don't work anywhere remotely close to 90 hours a week, can't afford a mansion, haven't driven an automobile in over 6 months, and very much enjoyed the vegan pad thai I picked up at Whole Foods a couple hours ago, was moved from a large pan into a pint size or something container while I watched (though I have nothing against eating meat).


Yes. Clearly you are actually some kind of hamster. :unsure:

Obviously, I was talking in generalized hyperbole.



George Harris said:


> Try this for a couple of years, and then call us and see if you still think it is a good idea. I am old enough and from a place where this sort of thing was still a reality for a lot of people in the early part of my lifetime. I don't see any of them wanting it back.
> In a word, you have no idea of the reality of what you are talking about.


Why make such an assumption, Mr. Harris? I spent quite a bit of my early years working on farms in worse conditions than that. I think its a bit lacking in creature comforts, but I also think it makes a better person out of you. More fulfilling.


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## Neil_M (Apr 21, 2009)

Green Maned Lion said:


> Neil_M said:
> 
> 
> > Just wait till your house is on fire then, luddite child! Crying like a baby wanting the firefighters to get there quicker!
> ...


Of course you would. You are full of words, but I suspect little action.


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## Neil_M (Apr 21, 2009)

Green Maned Lion said:


> People shouldn't be traipsing 50 miles from home to work every day. Ridiculous.


So how far do you travel to work every day?


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## jackal (Apr 21, 2009)

Ispolkom said:


> You probably ought to consider the cost of externalities: transportation infrastructure, the pollution you car is responsible for when it is created, run, and junked, the cost of foreign adventures to guarantee supplies of fossil fuel. I wouldn't care to guess what these costs might be, but they are there.
> In general, though, I haven't found attempts to legislature Virtue to be of much use. The results rarely match the goals.


Isn't a good bit of transportation infrastructure on a federal funding level paid for by fuel taxes? I already factored the cost of fuel, which includes fuel taxes, in. On a local level, I'd estimate that no more than $200 per year of property taxes (we don't have income or sales taxes here) goes towards paying off the transportation bonds that pop up (and usually get approved) on local ballots. Of course, I have no hard data with which to confirm that.

Your other two points are predicated on political arguments that I don't agree with, so I can't factor those in.

I will agree with your last paragraph, though!


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## AlanB (Apr 21, 2009)

sunchaser said:


> PetalumaLoco said:
> 
> 
> > sunchaser said:
> ...


Actually under the current designations in this country 110 MPH would be considered high-speed. Unfortunately much of the CZ's run will never see that speed without a major realignment, a realignment that would eliminate most of the best scenery. In fact right now, much of the CZ's run isn't even at 79 MPH.


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## AlanB (Apr 21, 2009)

jackal said:


> Ispolkom said:
> 
> 
> > You probably ought to consider the cost of externalities: transportation infrastructure, the pollution you car is responsible for when it is created, run, and junked, the cost of foreign adventures to guarantee supplies of fossil fuel. I wouldn't care to guess what these costs might be, but they are there.
> ...


Up until last year, for perhaps the last 10 years or so one could say that the bulk of the Interstate Highway system was being paid for via fuel taxes, although it could still be argued that even that's not a true statement since Congress was not allocating the funds that the DOT estimated it actually needed. Under the current five year plan approved by Congress, they authorized $79 Billion less than the DOT estimated it needed to maintain a state of good repair.

However, starting with last year the fuel taxes fell far short of covering everything. Congress was forced to move $8 Billion from the general budget into the Highway Trust Fund to keep the HTF from going belly up and missing payouts to the states. It was estimated, before the high gas prices of last summer futher drove down revenues, that the HTF will need $9 Billion this year and next. That amount jumps to $12 B in 2011 & 2012. All of this assumes that Congress doesn't raise the Federal portion of the fuel taxes at some point along the way.

And then of course we come to the fact that the Stimulus paackage included highway funding projects and of course what many people are also considering as a subsidy, the bailouts to the Detroit automakers.


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## George Harris (Apr 21, 2009)

Green Maned Lion said:


> George Harris said:
> 
> 
> > Try this for a couple of years, and then call us and see if you still think it is a good idea. I am old enough and from a place where this sort of thing was still a reality for a lot of people in the early part of my lifetime. I don't see any of them wanting it back.
> ...


But for you it appears to have been a choice, not a necessity. Would you have been without sufficient food if you had a crop failure? Would risk losing the farm if the cotton price did not pay you enough to cover the mortage on your farm? I know one couple (now deceased) that talked about one year clearing $400.00 and they sat at their kitchen table and cried becuase it was they most money they had ever had at one time in their lives. And, that had to keep them going until the next crops came in the following year. No, I am not talking about it as an experience, but as a life.


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## Green Maned Lion (Apr 21, 2009)

George Harris said:


> But for you it appears to have been a choice, not a necessity. Would you have been without sufficient food if you had a crop failure? Would risk losing the farm if the cotton price did not pay you enough to cover the mortage on your farm? I know one couple (now deceased) that talked about one year clearing $400.00 and they sat at their kitchen table and cried becuase it was they most money they had ever had at one time in their lives. And, that had to keep them going until the next crops came in the following year. No, I am not talking about it as an experience, but as a life.


Short of my family picking up and going back to the states, yes we would have.

And I still think my formative years spent there were the most useful and, frankly, enjoyable I've ever had.


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## sportbiker (Apr 21, 2009)

jackal said:


> Isn't a good bit of transportation infrastructure on a federal funding level paid for by fuel taxes?


Federal fuel taxes are a small percentage of the cost of roadways, even assuming the Highway Trust Fund be fully-funded. The most serious investigation I'm aware of was done by the Texas DOT. It looked at the cost to build and maintain a highway vs. the estimated fuel taxes collected from the cars that used the highway. Results varied by road, but no road was better than 50% funded, and one highway recovered less than one-sixth of its cost. That is, gas taxes would have to have been 6-1/2 times higher (between @2.25-$2.50/gallon) to make the roadway break-even.

To my knowledge, that study didn't even consider other costs associated with road use: police and fire resources dedicated to road safety, a highway patrol, hospital/medical costs for injured drivers not reimbursable by insurance, city public works funds, the list goes on. Then there are the opportunity costs associated with the land: the land under roads isn't on the property tax roles and it doesn't generate sales taxes. That's all lost revenue.

Beyond that, there are additional costs, although the accounting becomes more vague. For example, the freeway corridor between the Los Angeles / Long Beach ports and the inland distribution centers is filled with poorly-maintained, owner/operator diesel big-rigs hauling shipping containers. Neighborhoods surrounding the freeway have statistically-significant increases in respiratory illness traceable to diesel exhaust. What price do you put on that?

Roads are f***ing expensive whether or not you personally use them.


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## ALC Rail Writer (Apr 21, 2009)

sportbiker said:


> Roads are f***ing expensive whether or not you personally use them.


At least with rails you don't go around fixing them every year... How much does it cost to build track? On average I'd imagine more than to build the same stretch of pavement. But in the long term I see that costs of maintaining the track versus road will benefit the consumer. (not to mention track is maintained by private companies versus the DOT)


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## volkris (Apr 22, 2009)

sportbiker said:


> Federal fuel taxes are a small percentage of the cost of roadways, even assuming the Highway Trust Fund be fully-funded.


And the message to take from this: fuel taxes don't even pay the cost of roadway maintenance, so they certainly shouldn't be diverted to paying for rail too.



ALC_Rail_Writer said:


> But in the long term I see that costs of maintaining the track versus road will benefit the consumer.


So we should increase the auto fuel taxes to pay for more (or all) of the costs of auto infrastructure and rail fuel taxes to pay for a similar share of rail infrastructure. If rail consumers really are benefited AND accepting of train travel, they'll migrate over there. If not, then the advantages of cars are just too much to be overcome by the cost benefits of rail.


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## birdy (Apr 22, 2009)

Again, the cost of a "true" HSR system build out is trivial. The entire transportation budget of the federal government is only 3% of the federal budget. My back-of-the envelope calculations suggest that a $100 billion ten year program would provide the service (ten $10 billion 300+ mile systems) to roughly 75 million Americans, not counting the NE corridor, which supposedly can be improved significantly by a mere $5 billion.

The system would have to be paid for with taxes. Taxes are not necessarily user fees. Like any network, HSR has long-term, unintended positive effects which are huge. They may not be very well quantified by economists, but the markets have identified them, which is why countries all over the world with very different agendas are building them. Those that have the systems only build more.

Simply by NOT passing Sen. Kyl's estate tax cut would supply about all the money needed.


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## volkris (Apr 22, 2009)

birdy said:


> Again, the cost of a "true" HSR system build out is trivial. The entire transportation budget of the federal government is only 3% of the federal budget. My back-of-the envelope calculations suggest that a $100 billion ten year program would provide the service (ten $10 billion 300+ mile systems) to roughly 75 million Americans, not counting the NE corridor, which supposedly can be improved significantly by a mere $5 billion.


It's a mistake to get caught up in relativism. Sure it's important to keep a sense of context--yes the cost of HSR is small compared to the budget of the entire US government--but that doesn't somehow give it a pass from valuation, making it a necessarily worthwhile expenditure. I see such an argument made frequently in this forum. $100 billion, or $10 billion a year, is not a trivial amount of money in any worthwhile sense. Hell, this week Obama's administration was working hard to scrape up just $100 million!

Billions of dollars are nothing to sneeze at, regardless of how many people may live in areas near the service.



> They may not be very well quantified by economists, but the markets have identified them, which is why countries all over the world with very different agendas are building them. Those that have the systems only build more.


That's an amusing thing to say. Countries "all over the world" are building these systems because of political dictate, not market demand, and the solutions you're suggesting here are more of that. Right or wrong, let's not pretend this is a market-driven effort.



> Simply by NOT passing Sen. Kyl's estate tax cut would supply about all the money needed.


So what you seem to be saying is that if we don't "waste" our money on HSR we'll be able to have an estate tax cut? The point being, this is also a foolish argument as there are any number of ways to rebalance funding in the government... pointing out one particular way doesn't mean much.


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## ALC Rail Writer (Apr 22, 2009)

> It's a mistake to get caught up in relativism. Sure it's important to keep a sense of context--yes the cost of HSR is small compared to the budget of the entire US government--but that doesn't somehow give it a pass from valuation, making it a necessarily worthwhile expenditure. I see such an argument made frequently in this forum. $100 billion, or $10 billion a year, is not a trivial amount of money in any worthwhile sense. Hell, this week Obama's administration was working hard to scrape up just $100 million!
> Billions of dollars are nothing to sneeze at, regardless of how many people may live in areas near the service.


Actually ten billion is rather trivial. Consider our defense budget which FY 2008 was somewhere around 430 billion. Obama's plan will bring defense spending down (to the chagrin of the right) to possibly Clinton-era spending which was only around 200 billion. Even if it is bottomed out at 300 billion that leaves a 100 billion dollar surplus in FY 2010 of which 10% can go to HSR, 10% to education (which desperately needs funding as well) and 80% to trying to pay down the massive debt we will incur.


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## George Harris (Apr 22, 2009)

If it is a good idea and needs doing, it is a good idea and needs doing whether or not the estate tax law changes, whether or not other countries are doing it or what their reasons are for doing it. Going around in circles on these things adds confusion and clouds things up, it does not bring clarity.

I think high speed rail and major improvements in passenger rail otherwise needs doing for several reasons including but not likely all of them:

1. Population and travel continues to increase and we have a fixed land area.

2. Travel demand in many corridors has increased to the point that the mass trasportation capabilitys of rail make good sense.

3. You can fuel these things with many fuel sources other than oil, which so far does not appear to be a likely near term possibility with planes, and only borderline so with automobiles.

4. A well utilized railroad carries a lot more pople than any roadway covering similar ground space.

5. It is becoming more and more impractical to stuff additional automobiles and roadways into our urban areas.

6. It is far easier to serve medium size urban areas between major cities by rail than it is by air.

7. Use of rail will reduce air pollution which is a not incidential benefit but whether it does or not additional travel by rail is a good thing regardless for the reasons previously given.

8. I am not mentioning "global warming" because I am a skeptic on that one. I fear that when, a few years down the road, we discover that the whole global warming whoop de doop was simply a natural cycle that had little to nothing to do with the acts of man, the things that we should be doing anyway to reduce our oil consumption will lose their credibility because they had been promoted on a false premise. "Global Warming" is only the latest of a long series of gloom and doom scenarios that come up every decade or so, and is like a lot of them to prove to be nothing more than a bandwagon on which many people can jump to use as a basis to do things they want to do anyway, and for this one, for the politicians in power to gain a lot more control over eveyone's daily activities.


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## Joel N. Weber II (Apr 22, 2009)

ALC_Rail_Writer said:


> Actually ten billion is rather trivial. Consider our defense budget which FY 2008 was somewhere around 430 billion. Obama's plan will bring defense spending down (to the chagrin of the right) to possibly Clinton-era spending which was only around 200 billion. Even if it is bottomed out at 300 billion that leaves a 100 billion dollar surplus in FY 2010 of which 10% can go to HSR, 10% to education (which desperately needs funding as well) and 80% to trying to pay down the massive debt we will incur.


If you consider dollars leaving the US to buy oil, is using 80% of that to pay off the debt (and perhaps start saving up for the costs of dealing with the interactions between rising oceans and people's homes, should the oceans indeed be rising) and buying a more oil really a better deal than spending $100 billion a year on high speed rail, reducing greenhouse gas emissions, and reducing the number of US dollars we have to ship overseas to get oil?

(Admittedly, the trade balance and the federal debt aren't the same thing. But I suspect a stronger dollar has some potential to help with the federal debt problem, too.)


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## ALC Rail Writer (Apr 22, 2009)

Joel N. Weber II said:


> ALC_Rail_Writer said:
> 
> 
> > Actually ten billion is rather trivial. Consider our defense budget which FY 2008 was somewhere around 430 billion. Obama's plan will bring defense spending down (to the chagrin of the right) to possibly Clinton-era spending which was only around 200 billion. Even if it is bottomed out at 300 billion that leaves a 100 billion dollar surplus in FY 2010 of which 10% can go to HSR, 10% to education (which desperately needs funding as well) and 80% to trying to pay down the massive debt we will incur.
> ...


Hey, I am an advocate for HSR!

Just because I think 10 years of $10 billion each is wiser than a $100 billion lump some doesn't mean I don't want it!


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## AlanB (Apr 22, 2009)

volkris said:


> ALC_Rail_Writer said:
> 
> 
> > But in the long term I see that costs of maintaining the track versus road will benefit the consumer.
> ...


The problem with your final argument is the fact that we've spent the last 30+ years stacking the deck against rail. We've taken fuel taxes from rail to help build our roads, we've dumped billions of other funding dollars into roads, and of course we've dumped billions of gas tax dollars into our roads. This has resulted in such a huge imbalance that at this point in time, most people have no choice but to choose a car over rail. That's playing with a stacked deck.

No amount of tax on RR's at this point can fix that imbalance. We have the same situation with airplanes too; we built the system up to a point where taxes and fees almost do pay for the bulk of the overhead expenses. Until we rebuild the rail lines to such a point where it really is viable to impose meaningful taxes to support the system on its own, we need to provide some alternative form of funding. I don't really care if it's via gas tax, extra tax on airplanes, estate taxes, incomes taxes, or what. But to base rail's viability on whether people will choose it or not, when it isn't a choice for them, isn't the way to decide things.

Besides, when given a viable choice to use rail, people do choose it. Consider Long Island, where the LIRR carries more people each day into Manhattan than the 3 major highways can carry. The LIRR puts more than 150,000 people into Manhattan each weekday. The 11 lanes of highways on LI can at most carry about 70,000 people during a 3 hour rush period. And the LIRR also carries people who never enter Manhattan, or enter via subways from Queens & Brooklyn.


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## Joel N. Weber II (Apr 22, 2009)

George Harris said:


> 1. Population and travel continues to increase and we have a fixed land area.


I think in the US as a whole, we have a plentiful supply of land. The problem we do run into with transportation and land area is that we have urban highways and airports that are at or beyond capacity which cannot be expanded within the same mode of transportation without dislocating their neighbors. Rail has the potential to provide many times the transportation capacity per land area as a highway, and also has the potential to help with congestion at airports where expansion is impractical.



George Harris said:


> 2. Travel demand in many corridors has increased to the point that the mass trasportation capabilitys of rail make good sense.


Yes.



George Harris said:


> 3. You can fuel these things with many fuel sources other than oil, which so far does not appear to be a likely near term possibility with planes, and only borderline so with automobiles.


But to play devil's advocate, if we didn't have automobiles using any oil at all, domestic US oil production exceeds consumption by airplanes in the US, if you're unconcerned about the environmental issues.

I'm still not sure what to make of all the Tesla Model S. They're claiming it seats 7, goes 300 miles on a charge, and will cost a little over $57k without government rebate. Is the argument against it that it costs three times what a similar gasoline powered car would cost, and you're still stuck using the overly congested highways to get to downtown office buildings that don't have enough parking?



George Harris said:


> 5. It is becoming more and more impractical to stuff additional automobiles and roadways into our urban areas.


Yes, and I think we should be requiring that any highway widening project that gets federal funding have a study of what mass transit alternatives could provide the same peak travel hour capacity, what the relative costs would be, whether after adding one automobile lane worth of mass transit capacity there's a cheap upgrade path to more automobile lanes worth of capacity by running more trains on the same track, how much more oil we'll have to import with each option, and how much more pollution we'll get from each option, along with public hearings and opportunities for written comments from the public.



George Harris said:


> 6. It is far easier to serve medium size urban areas between major cities by rail than it is by air.


I'm not sure about this one, either. Are you thinking of something like Quad Cities when you talk about a medium size urban area? If you have to maintain a hundred miles of track for the benefit of passenger service for a single city, whether that's 79 MPH track or 220 MPH track, the track doesn't come free. Is the track any cheaper than maintaining the airport? Is capacity in the hub city an issue? How does the capacity of a station with two lead tracks to the east, two lead tracks to the west, and four platform tracks compare to a typical airport (both on a good weather day and on a poor weather day) if that train station can handle 50 inbound trains an hour and 50 outbound trains an hour?

Mostly 220 MPH hour long commutes (think Albany to New York City, Springfield to New York City, Springfield to Boston) are something that may be difficult to do with any technology other than HSR. There's too much boarding/disembarking overhead with air travel, and the airports generally aren't close enough to downtown, and with the congestion problems discussed above, I don't think it would make any sense to try to build highways that would support 220 MPH single occupancy automobiles.


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## Joel N. Weber II (Apr 22, 2009)

ALC_Rail_Writer said:


> Just because I think 10 years of $10 billion each is wiser than a $100 billion lump some doesn't mean I don't want it!


I think the amount of HSR we ought to be building is likely to cost $1-2 trillion. If you spread that out over 10 years, $100 billion a year is the right order of magnitude.


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## ALC Rail Writer (Apr 22, 2009)

Joel N. Weber II said:


> ALC_Rail_Writer said:
> 
> 
> > Just because I think 10 years of $10 billion each is wiser than a $100 billion lump some doesn't mean I don't want it!
> ...


That's one hell of a HSR network! There is a point where you do have to draw the line, and I mark mine at a couple hundred billion...


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## Joel N. Weber II (Apr 22, 2009)

ALC_Rail_Writer said:


> Joel N. Weber II said:
> 
> 
> > ALC_Rail_Writer said:
> ...


A $1 triilion HSR network will probably have less than half the route miles of the existing Interstate Highway system.


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## volkris (Apr 23, 2009)

ALC_Rail_Writer said:


> Actually ten billion is rather trivial. Consider our defense budget which FY 2008 was somewhere around 430 billion.


So when I point out that relativistic arguments are flawed you answer with another relativistic argument? 

The cost is trivial or not trivial regardless of whatever else the government spends. I consider tens of billions of dollars to be a significant amount of money, so we can't dismiss the expenditure as insignificant: it should go through the responsible process of determining whether it contributes to the direction the country wants to go... which has basically nothing to do with other expenditures that the government takes on.



AlanB said:


> Besides, when given a viable choice to use rail, people do choose it. Consider Long Island, where the LIRR carries more people each day into Manhattan than the 3 major highways can carry. The LIRR puts more than 150,000 people into Manhattan each weekday.


That's a very, very specific case that can't be generalized throughout the entire country. If that's the model you want to propose, though, then fine: let's get the national government completely out of the discussion and let the locality decide whether such commuter service is right for its particular needs. And, if the residents of Long Island can't afford the service they need to support their standard of living, then why should I help fit the bill? Let them figure out how to work their local society; it's none of my business.



Joel N. Weber II said:


> A $1 triilion HSR network will probably have less than half the route miles of the existing Interstate Highway system.


Not only that, but it would have all of the downsides that come with rail, including the inflexibility for passengers and problems with scaling to larger numbers of destinations.

HSR makes sense in some cases, but let's not delude ourselves into seeing it as some sort of national necessity or panacea just because we, personally, would like to see it happen.


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## Green Maned Lion (Apr 23, 2009)

volkris said:


> ALC_Rail_Writer said:
> 
> 
> > Actually ten billion is rather trivial. Consider our defense budget which FY 2008 was somewhere around 430 billion.
> ...


Mein GOTT! We have a resident NIMBY on our board.


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## volkris (Apr 23, 2009)

Green Maned Lion said:


> Mein GOTT! We have a resident NIMBY on our board.


Funny, I already have an Amtrak line running through my back yard, and I'd love to see a HSR line put right next to it. Hell, I'd even donate a strip of my back yard to see it happen!

I'm just looking for honest discussion of the matter: maybe $100 billion is worth it, but let's not claim that's an insignificant amount of money, and sure rail is great in many places, but let's not pretend it's a godsend for every situation.

It's really a matter of recognizing that regardless of what I personally want to happen, these costs will be born by citizens across the country, from a variety of backgrounds and with a variety of needs and wants. I don't really look forward to paying for improvements that help Long Islanders get to and from Manhattan because they choose to live and work in a place that requires that, but by the same token I don't feel like I should be demanding that Texans, with their huge swaths of emptyness, pay for my rail services between Virginia's relatively closely spaced towns.

Do I want first rate HSR? Of course! And I'd like a puppy and world peace, but like those things it may not be worth the costs or even reasonable to look for.

Anyway, green maned lion, I don't say any of this for your benefit as I'm with those who believe your perspective comes from an entirely different reality. But maybe it will clear things up for others to where I'm coming from. NIMBY? No. Accountant and observer of the political structures? Maybe.


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## AlanB (Apr 24, 2009)

volkris said:


> AlanB said:
> 
> 
> > Besides, when given a viable choice to use rail, people do choose it. Consider Long Island, where the LIRR carries more people each day into Manhattan than the 3 major highways can carry. The LIRR puts more than 150,000 people into Manhattan each weekday.
> ...


Actually it can be generalized throughout much of the country. I choose that example simply because I know the numbers by heart and I know how many lanes each freeway has, so it was quite easy for me. But the simple reality is that one can find similar results in other places of the country. Even if one can't find such a pristine example, where there are only a few highways that lead to one city and parallel a commuter line, the reality is that there are plenty of systems out there taking cars off the roads.

California's subsidized Amtrak trains move almost as many people every day as Amtrak's Acela does. That represents thousands of cars not on California highways. Chicago's highways are a nightmare every day during rush hour, even sometimes during normal off peak hours. I'd hate to see what those highways would look like if we shut down METRA.

Besides, that wasn't the main point of my arguement anyhow. I simply choose that as an example of when people have a choice between rail and road, they often do choose rail. When they have no choice, then they choose road because it is the only choice.

We need to restore the balance that we disrupted when we choose to focus on roads to the detriment of rail.


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## AlanB (Apr 24, 2009)

volkris said:


> It's really a matter of recognizing that regardless of what I personally want to happen, these costs will be born by citizens across the country, from a variety of backgrounds and with a variety of needs and wants. I don't really look forward to paying for improvements that help Long Islanders get to and from Manhattan because they choose to live and work in a place that requires that, but by the same token I don't feel like I should be demanding that Texans, with their huge swaths of emptyness, pay for my rail services between Virginia's relatively closely spaced towns.


But that is exactly how this country runs and has run for years basically since its birth, and I see no way to ever change that formula without hurting this country in multiple ways. We have to work together for the collective good of the country, even if sometimes it seems like our area is getting less.

I've no doubt that some of my federal monies have ended up in VRE, especially with the federal funding that they just got for new engines, and I've no doubt that a few of my tax dollars helped paved an Interstate Highway in Virginia.


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## volkris (Apr 24, 2009)

AlanB said:


> But that is exactly how this country runs and has run for years basically since its birth, and I see no way to ever change that formula without hurting this country in multiple ways. We have to work together for the collective good of the country, even if sometimes it seems like our area is getting less.


I don't believe that's true. The scope and influence of the federal government was not nearly as great a hundred years ago, and it certainly wasn't that way since the founding. Remember state appointment of senators? That was in place specifically to maintain the significance of states in the face of a federal government that was threatening to become what it has become today.

And it's not about one area getting less or more; to me it's about the homogenization of the country where we're all expected to live under the same regulatory details, asserting that we all have the same values, when in reality our values vary quite a bit. With this philosophy that we have to pick a single direction and set of priorities handed down by the congress in DC we lose the diversity of experience and thought that, in my mind, made this country the vibrant place that it has been.

Coming back to earth now, let's let California and the NEC build the rail infrastructure they want without having to beg Washington for cash--without having to seek approval of the other states for whom rail is simply not a priority. The current need to "work together" ends up translating to congressmen bribing each other into agreement, and spending us all to death.


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## birdy (Apr 24, 2009)

volkris said:


> Green Maned Lion said:
> 
> 
> > Mein GOTT! We have a resident NIMBY on our board.
> ...


Well Volkris, I admit I sometimes have trouble understanding Libertarian arguments. I tried to make the point that the cost of a decent high speed rail system was chump change in terms of the national budget. You criticize this as "relativistic" Well, yes, that is the nature of any discussion of money so far as I know. It is significant, for example, that Bernie Madoff stole $45 billion dollars rather than 45 cents. The reason we have money instead of a barter economy is to encourage relativistic thinking.

As far as your criticism about having to help pay for the Long Island railroad, this is the deconstructionist dead end that is Libertarian thinking. I probably have never been to your town. I will never send you a postcard. I will never benefit from your training in accounting. I will never call you on the telephone. Therefore: You should not have a post office, a federally regulated long distance telephone system, a federal judiciary, protection from the military (unless you happen to live in a place that is strategically important to me). To the extent your University education was federally subsidized in any way, you owe the rest of us a refund.

I notice that you seem to favor local government as far as I can see, although you don't explain why. Where do you draw the line? Is a commuter system bought by a village OK? If so, what is wrong with a rail system paid by a county or a state? And if a state run system is OK, why not a national system? If smaller government is always better, then the Indian reservations would have total, not partial sovereignty, and the Indian tribes themselves should be able to subdivide into ever smaller factions and localities, all with full sovereign attributes. If the Indians can do this why can't any random county turn itself into a country?

I'm struck with the ease with which you argue with the markets when they disagree with your preconceived notions. To be sure, governments are "responding to political forces" when they buy a system, but that says nothing. A 13 year old girl who buys expensive lipstick is "responding" to fashion rather than attempting to maximize a utilitarian purchase of lipstick, but she is no less a participant in the markets. There are a million non-utilitarian decisions that go into a large purchase, but only the Marxists reject the validity of non-utilitarian reasons. The point is, the governmental purchaser has any number of competing purchases which to some degree satisfy political pressures and other needs which may or may not be utilitarian. The purchassers of HSR always want more. You either believe in markets or you don't. If you believe in a market economy you have to accept that the serial purchase of HSR by so many disparate market participants shows that HSR probably serves an important purpose, even if you don't recognize it. I merely suggest that the cause is probably powerful network effects that are not well described, much less predictable, by academia.

Your final point, that many people who would not use the system would object to paying for it, is fair, but entirely relativistic. In a relativistic vein, I merely point out that forgoing a tax cut that benefits 0.75% of the population, would benefit 75 million people.


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## volkris (Apr 24, 2009)

Who said I was a libertarian? Certainly my support of government-subsidized rail and HSR programs puts me at odds with them.

Really my perspective comes from living in various parts of the country and seeing that the peoples' attitudes really are different. Watching the news, reading various studies, and looking at how states handle their own policies only underscore what I've see with my own eyes. Through all of that I'm really tired of watching the crowd in Washington work so hard to form consensus among people who honestly and simply disagree on matters of subjective opinion. Then I get sick to my stomach watching that consensus formed through what amounts to bribery: the gentleman from Texas hands California some of Wyoming's money for HSR in exchange for the gentlewoman from California handing back some of Iowa's money to fund steer research. You see what I'm saying.

The need to force agreement between people who simply disagree leads to corruption, debt, and withholding, as nobody gets what they want while the politicians trade their favors.

How local is local enough? People who study the geography of attitudes are certainly able to group people with similar feelings. It varies from issue to issue and from location to location. Heck, it doesn't even have to be a contiguous area: a piece of California might just join up with all of the North East, for example, to prioritize rail, and they'd be able to do it much more quickly than under the current mindset where all of the states, through Congress, have to agree on the plan.

Anyway, so no, it's not about Republican, Democrat, or Libertarian; it's about giving areas more of an option of finding which one of those they'd rather lean towards, about letting peoples' governments reflect their values more closely, and, of course, about letting states try different things, learning from each others' failures and successes.

Just think: Californian or New England HSR might have become a reality a decade go, had DC been bypassed, demonstrating just how trains can apply to modern American society, and other states in turn might be honestly clamoring to get on board after seeing the successes.


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## Chris J. (Apr 24, 2009)

Noticed the HSR plan got a mention on the BBC website:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/8010221.stm


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## Green Maned Lion (Apr 25, 2009)

volkris said:


> Anyway, green maned lion, I don't say any of this for your benefit as I'm with those who believe your perspective comes from an entirely different reality. But maybe it will clear things up for others to where I'm coming from. NIMBY? No. Accountant and observer of the political structures? Maybe.


Ah yes, an accountant. A man who understands the cost of everything, the value of nothing. The world can't be run thinking of spending today, or the ROI over a 5 year plan. I understand the working of money, too, damnit. I have a B.S.B.A. and am working on an M.B.A. and studying to take my C.P.A. too, dude.

No, we must think of the ROI over the course of 100 years, 200 years, 500 years, even a thousand years. The accountants said the Brooklyn Bridge was overbuilt and overpriced. Stand on the shore of Manhattan or Brooklyn and tell me that again! Hundred and thirty years after it was built, it still stands. The basic structure needs little work. And the return on investment? Dangit, that overbuilt investment created the first steps to make New York the city it is today. Because lets face it, it was built not between Manhattan and Long Island, but between New York City, and the City of Brooklyn.

I don't live in an alternate reality. I live in the same reality you do! I just happen to have the foresight, the intuition, and the power of observation to consider it untenable. I long for a world that can continue on sustainably. I am not naïve enough to think it will happen. I think my generation may be the last to live out its natural life expectancy, honestly. I just wish you people wouldn't sit around talking about pointless trivialities and get down to doing something!


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## volkris (Apr 25, 2009)

Yes, that's right, we'll measure the ROI not in terms of long range budgets, but in units of smiles and warm fuzzies it gives the guy with a cartoon in his signature.

What's that? The rest of the country doesn't like the direction the green maned lion envisions for them? Who cares! The negatives of his proposals sentence us all to decreased standards of living, decreased freedoms, and what many perceive to be dehumanizing conditions? Never mind all that! He's here to tell you what's for the best, and darn it, you'll like it!

The arrogance is just striking.


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## Spokker (Apr 25, 2009)

I fear that without a federal push for a greater focus on passenger rail in this country, it simply won't happen. California's network is based on getting 1/3rd of funding from the feds, 1/3rd from private investors and 1/3rd from the state. Would Prop 1A have passed if the funding scheme was half state and half private? I don't know, but I doubt it.

California is a donor state anyway. It deserves some money back from the feds. If Montana, and South Dakota, and North Dakota, among others, complain, well, we've been paying for their toys for years.


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## Neil_M (Apr 25, 2009)

Green Maned Lion said:


> I just wish you people wouldn't sit around talking about pointless trivialities and get down to doing something!


Perfect irony.


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## Spokker (Apr 25, 2009)

I'm not sure what this lion guy expects us to do. I write letters and try to inform people about passenger rail of all types. I go to school full-time and work part-time, so I'm not exactly in any position to do anything more and I'm sure others feel the same way.


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## volkris (Apr 25, 2009)

It's not that California deserves to get some money back from the feds, it's that they deserve to have kept their money in the first place to put toward rail if they feel like it.

Instead of waiting for the entire country to agree to give California back its money so it can have that third of its funding, imagine if it was able to just keep the money in the first place and fund the rails as soon as the private share came in.

If we operated our government the way it was intended we wouldn't need the federal push; the states would be able to do it themselves when appropriate.


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## Spokker (Apr 25, 2009)

Good point. I have no argument against that.


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## Green Maned Lion (Apr 25, 2009)

volkris said:


> Yes, that's right, we'll measure the ROI not in terms of long range budgets, but in units of smiles and warm fuzzies it gives the guy with a cartoon in his signature.
> What's that? The rest of the country doesn't like the direction the green maned lion envisions for them? Who cares! The negatives of his proposals sentence us all to decreased standards of living, decreased freedoms, and what many perceive to be dehumanizing conditions? Never mind all that! He's here to tell you what's for the best, and darn it, you'll like it!
> 
> The arrogance is just striking.


Well lets see, first of all my girlfriend designed that signature of mine, and I'd really like you to give me a solid reason why that is at all, in any way, relevant to this discussion. Its not? That's what I thought. I might be a radical rail advocate on the edge of sanity, but dear lord, thats like breaking out the "jo momma" jokes.

But while we are at it, what the hell is "volkris"? Sounds like one of the bloody transformers. Uh, does your having what I consider to be a silly name have any bearing on the validity of YOUR arguments? How dare I consider thinking such things? Right back at ya pal.

I don't like the idea of decreased freedom, decreased standard of living, and all that. But first of all, your freedom has not now, nor has it ever, entitled you to hinder other people's standard of living or freedom. You driving your car around, powered by the most outdated concept of them all, a gasoline fired engine, and smogging up my town and my standard of living is absolutely disgusting.

There is a balance between individual freedom and the good of man kind. Standing here right now, I have heard that our planet has a carrying capacity of about 3 billion humans. We have, what, 6.7? With the world far above its carrying capacity, for me and my posterity to enjoy living at all, things need to happen. They don't happen because people are greedy and selfish.

I'm here on a public forum to give you my opinions. I don't have plans on world domination. Since I do not intend to rule the world, or even to run for city dog catcher, I sincerely doubt that my opinions are going to take away squat from you. I'm certainly not a afraid that libertarians are ever going to get even a toehold on American politics apart from lobbying. Americans are dumb, but not that dumb.



Spokker said:


> I'm not sure what this lion guy expects us to do. I write letters and try to inform people about passenger rail of all types. I go to school full-time and work part-time, so I'm not exactly in any position to do anything more and I'm sure others feel the same way.


I was talking about the world in general.


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## Joel N. Weber II (Apr 25, 2009)

Green Maned Lion said:


> No, we must think of the ROI over the course of 100 years, 200 years, 500 years, even a thousand years. The accountants said the Brooklyn Bridge was overbuilt and overpriced. Stand on the shore of Manhattan or Brooklyn and tell me that again! Hundred and thirty years after it was built, it still stands. The basic structure needs little work. And the return on investment? Dangit, that overbuilt investment created the first steps to make New York the city it is today. Because lets face it, it was built not between Manhattan and Long Island, but between New York City, and the City of Brooklyn.


So are you saying that you think it's a good thing that the ferries were replaced with the bridges such that Brooklyn could become a part of New York City?

If so, how do you feel about HSR bringing ALB and Springfield within reasonable commuting range of Manhattan to make them a part of the greater New York City area?


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## Green Maned Lion (Apr 25, 2009)

I dislike it. As you know, Joel.

I do like the idea of consolidating cities and governments, sooo.


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## AmtrakWPK (Apr 25, 2009)

Looking at the proposed Corridors map, I find it interesting and a bit strange that there would be continuous HSR corridor from Maine & Eastern Canada down the east coast all the way to Miami EXCEPT from Jacksonville to Orlando.


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## birdy (Apr 29, 2009)

AmtrakWPK said:


> Looking at the proposed Corridors map, I find it interesting and a bit strange that there would be continuous HSR corridor from Maine & Eastern Canada down the east coast all the way to Miami EXCEPT from Jacksonville to Orlando.


Yeah, I noticed that too. I think they are still working off that old FRA map from a few years ago. I guess that's OK as a starting point for discussion, but I certainly hope that they don't feel beholden to that thing. There must be 15 or 20 appropriate city pairs and right now we have zero HSR. I'd like to see that gap filled quickly as part of any build out. The upper-midwest Chicago to Minneapolis seems reasonable, hopefully with a stop in Milwaukee. Atlanta to Charlotte also seems like a really appropriate route. Those places have big populations and more predictable build costs, I suspect.


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## PaulM (May 5, 2009)

I recently had a conversation on the New Mexico Railrunner Express with a frequent rider who was taking the devil's advocate position against tax funding of rail. It just came out of my mouth to the effect that while I could support public financing of existing highway maintenance, my philosophy is that all future highway construction, especially that which promote sprawl, should be financed by private enterprise.


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