"Trains are for Tourists"

[saxman]

NPR.org, March 19, 2009 · When I went to Europe, I loved to ride the trains, especially the French TGV and other high-speed trains. So President Obama's goal of building high-speed rail in the United States sounded good at first.
But when I looked at the details, I discovered that — while high-speed rail may be good for tourists — it isn't working very well in Europe or Japan.

Randy O'Toole is at it again with distortion of the facts and saying HSR in Europe is not working.

Surprisingly this is from NPR. Story Here

Read some of the comments too.

 

[Upstate]

Trains are for the elite?

My mother refuses to ride on the train because she thinks that only poor people ride it.

 

[George Harris]

But when I looked at the details, . . .

Another instant expert :angry2: I wonder what "details" he looked at? Never been to Europe, but having played tourist in Japan for a week, the crowds on the trains looked like mostly locals to me.

 

[p&sr]

Never been to Europe, but having played tourist in Japan for a week, the crowds on the trains looked like mostly locals to me.

Certainly true in Europe as well. There can be NO gripe about European Train service or utilization. Perhaps he has a "Funding issue", sharing the common American Bias against public funding for a public benefit that is appreciated and utilized by ALL of the public. For the European, "that's what government is FOR".

 

[AlanB]

Never been to Europe, but having played tourist in Japan for a week, the crowds on the trains looked like mostly locals to me.

Certainly true in Europe as well. There can be NO gripe about European Train service or utilization. Perhaps he has a "Funding issue", sharing the common American Bias against public funding for a public benefit that is appreciated and utilized by ALL of the public. For the European, "that's what government is FOR".

He works for the Cato Institute, an organization founded by an oil baron.

 

[Green Maned Lion]

Some people just see things in terms of profit and loss. Actually a lot of people do. Which is why we are in the mess we are in now.

You know, its funny. Making a lot of money is pretty easy, if all you care about is making a lot of money. No big accomplishment. People who have a lot of it are usually the people who don't care what they have to do, who they have to hurt, or how much of their soul they have to sell to Satan.

This is why I am perpetually broke. *sighs*

 

[sunchaser]

NPR.org, March 19, 2009 · When I went to Europe, I loved to ride the trains, especially the French TGV and other high-speed trains. So President Obama's goal of building high-speed rail in the United States sounded good at first.
But when I looked at the details, I discovered that — while high-speed rail may be good for tourists — it isn't working very well in Europe or Japan.

Randy O'Toole is at it again with distortion of the facts and saying HSR in Europe is not working.

Surprisingly this is from NPR. Story Here

Read some of the comments too.

Interesting story- but several issues that I think are incorrect. Historically, train travel was not just for the 'elite'; there was plenty of regular passengers. The 'elite' had their own coaches, sometimes for their own train, or attached to the back of other trains. They still do that. Didn't Obama just ride a special train into Washington for his inauguration? I guess you could call him 'elite' then. My first thought was when I read that statement was Hobos, then I remembered that my father ran away as a teenager and rode freight. Not very elite.

He also states that roads are paid for by 'gas taxes & user fees'. Actually, they are subsized as well. And in our state, smokers pay taxes to cover the roads as well as property owners. He states that trains are heavily subsidized. I'm not sure which (road or train) gets more money, I would bet roads. Remember the stimulus package(s) includes funds for roads.

He also says that people of all income levels travel by car. Simply not true, or we would not need buses or planes!

I think what he is trying to get to in a round about way is that passenger trains should carry freight. (I think)

When planes were first introduced to the general public, they stressed comfort, speed & affordability. As a teenager and young adult, we did not fly because it was too expensive. I guess it's all in your perspective. If riding the train makes me 'elite', I guess. But we are far from it!!! :lol: Actually, I thought the whole article was humorous!!!!!

 

[nr272]

I'm surprised NPR would publish this sort of propaganda. So much for the "liberal media" myth.

 

[amtrakwolverine]

Some people just see things in terms of profit and loss. Actually a lot of people do. Which is why we are in the mess we are in now.
You know, its funny. Making a lot of money is pretty easy, if all you care about is making a lot of money. No big accomplishment. People who have a lot of it are usually the people who don't care what they have to do, who they have to hurt, or how much of their soul they have to sell to Satan.

This is why I am perpetually broke. *sighs*

enough with the political comments. if i want to read political views i would go to a polictcal forum. i want to read about trains not your political views.

 

[Green Maned Lion]

What I want is some media that doesn't lean one way or the other. Facts. I just want the freakin' facts presented with Cronkitian stoicism. Seriously. I can form my own freakin' opinion, chrissake.

enough with the political comments. if i want to read political views i would go to a polictcal forum. i want to read about trains not your political views.

You don't have to actually read them.

 

[Neil_M]

What a clown.

"TGV lines carry no freight". Correct. That's the whole point. Move the fast passenger trains onto the new lines and free up capacity for freight and slower trains on the existing track.

Maybe all those TGV trains I have been on full of people speaking French are all full of actors pretending to be French and a passenger.

The man is a muppet.

 

[George Harris]

Maybe all those TGV trains I have been on full of people speaking French are all full of actors pretending to be French and a passenger.

I love it, I love it. Liek all those Japanese actors I saw riding around on the Shinkansen and every other train we rode on in Japan.

He works for the Cato Institute, an organization founded by an oil baron.

No more needs to be said. If trains are so useless, then why whenever a rail project is proposed do these people pull out all the stops to oppose it?

These people are wind up dolls. You pull their string and get one of several standard responses regardless of the nature of the rail project being discussed. Normally they can be summed up with:

1. No one will ever ride it

2. It will cost too much

3. The line will destroy its surroundings. (A road doesn't?)

4. You are lying in your analysis of operations, run time, fuel consumption, whatever.

Or some variation and combination of the above.

 

[AlanB]

He works for the Cato Institute, an organization founded by an oil baron.

No more needs to be said. If trains are so useless, then why whenever a rail project is proposed do these people pull out all the stops to oppose it?

These people are wind up dolls. You pull their string and get one of several standard responses regardless of the nature of the rail project being discussed. Normally they can be summed up with:

1. No one will ever ride it

2. It will cost too much

3. The line will destroy its surroundings. (A road doesn't?)

4. You are lying in your analysis of operations, run time, fuel consumption, whatever.

Or some variation and combination of the above.

They also love to spin the statistics in such way as to promote what they are saying. One of my favorites that I saw him print recently was:

How successful is light rail? In 1980, before Portland began building light rail, 9.8 percent of the region's commuters took transit to work. Today, it is 7.6 percent.

Sounds terrible, doesn't it? But what he left out is the fact that the population of Portland increased at a greater percentage than did transit's carrying capacity. I don't have the precise numbers, but think of it this way. If transit had the capacity to carry 10% of the population in 1980, and you increase the capacity of transit by 5% over the years, while the population of the city increases 20%, then obviously the percentage of people carried has to go down.

 

[Neil_M]

I love it, I love it. Liek all those Japanese actors I saw riding around on the Shinkansen and every other train we rode on in Japan.

You imagined it all.

 

[birdy]

Maybe all those TGV trains I have been on full of people speaking French are all full of actors pretending to be French and a passenger.

I love it, I love it. Liek all those Japanese actors I saw riding around on the Shinkansen and every other train we rode on in Japan.

He works for the Cato Institute, an organization founded by an oil baron.

No more needs to be said. If trains are so useless, then why whenever a rail project is proposed do these people pull out all the stops to oppose it?

These people are wind up dolls. You pull their string and get one of several standard responses regardless of the nature of the rail project being discussed. Normally they can be summed up with:

1. No one will ever ride it

2. It will cost too much

3. The line will destroy its surroundings. (A road doesn't?)

4. You are lying in your analysis of operations, run time, fuel consumption, whatever.

Or some variation and combination of the above.

Just laziness on the part of NPR. They want to have balanced programing, so they get a random Cato guy on to say whatever he wants, without checking facts such as: "110mph for train" I've searched all over for any definitive statement, and president Obama always seems to talk in terms of true HSR. To be sure there is a lot of grass roots support for 110 mph, but its not official policy, just supposition of Cato guy.

Anyone with a rudimentary knowledge of the issue would know that HSR competes directly with air travel and should be judged as such.

Euros have spent as much as U.S. on interstate highway system on HSR? Almost certainly not. Constant dollar value of interstate system is roughly $400 billion. MAYBE on a non-constant dollar value basis, i.e. 1963 construction costs of system compared to 1995 cost of HSR. Probably its a confabulation of the truth, which is that HSR costs about as much to build per mile as a divided highway. But what the heck? Why bother with the truth when a half-truth (or more accurately "grain of truth") is so much more convenient?

Same fossil fuel use as planes and cars? Not from any source I've ever read. TGV pulls 4.4 MWH roughly $300 per hour pulling maybe 400 passengers. Same fuel usage as a Plane? hardly. Anyway, the French use nukes. Probably he recognized that both forms of transportation use energy, therefore they use "equivalent" energy as in same kind if not same amount, but again, why let facts get in the way of a good argument?

 

[Upstate]

Anyone with a rudimentary knowledge of the issue would know that HSR competes directly with air travel and should be judged as such.

Airlines don't need federal subsidies to operate and if HSR directly competes and should be judged with it then HSR should not need federal subsidies either.
Sorry, gotta play devils advocate

 

[jackal]

I'll just add another datapoint in the event that O'Toole stumbles across this thread:

On the TGV to and from Dijon as well as the bus to Beaune and the TER back to Dijon, I think my traveling companion and I were the only two English-speaking people on board.

FWIW, Cato is a libertarian think tank, and libertarians basically advocate that government interfere with and pay for as little as possible. On those grounds, it fits their frame of reference to stand against publicly subsidized rail transportation, and I can appreciate that stance, although as a train nut[job?], I disagree with it for purely self-indulgent reasons. However, outright untruths like "high-speed rail is only good for tourists" deserve challenging regardless of your political stance.

 

[Ryan]

Airlines don't need federal subsidies to operate

I beg to differ, they receive their ability to operate from the government paid FAA.

 

[Ptech]

What an O'Tool...

 

[AlanB]

Airlines don't need federal subsidies to operate

I beg to differ, they receive their ability to operate from the government paid FAA.

Correct, the FAA got some $900-950 Million dollars in direct subsidies last year. In 2007 it was around $1.1 to 1.2 Billion.

 

[volkris]

I'm a bit of an outsider here, so please take this as constructive criticism from someone who might have a more neutral point of view.

*deep breath*

You guys are distorting what the guy is saying.

Here's the core of his argument:

Japan and France have each spent as much per capita on high-speed rail as we spent on our Interstate Highway System. The average American travels 4,000 miles and ships 2,000 ton-miles per year on the interstates. Yet the average resident of Japan travels only 400 miles per year on bullet trains, while the average resident of France goes less than 300 miles per year on the TGV

He's saying that so far the interstate highway system has been far more cost effective, in terms of miles traveled and freight shipped per dollar spent on infrastructure, than high speed rail in Japan and France. I take exception with his use of the term "elite", as he didn't present much backing for that claim, but then you guys aren't exactly countering his argument by saying "I saw lots of non-tourists that time I rode!"

Perhaps his analysis was off. Could be. He probably didn't have time to fully outline it in the segment NPR gave him, and it would be interesting to see NPR do a full report on the claim. So maybe someone here can do digging and verify the per capita costs of the interstate system and TGV.

Maybe the experiences in Japan and France would be different over here where things are more spread out. That's also a fine criticism of the guy's argument. But that seems like a difficult claim to prove as well.

And maybe we shouldn't be judging the effectiveness of high speed rail using the metric of cost per person vs miles traveled and freight shipped per person in the first place. It could be argued. But then, I don't think his is an entirely unreasonable metric to use. It should at least be considered.

We know this guy's from Cato, so we know he's going to lean away from government programs like high speed rail, but then the responses here haven't been stunningly neutral either. In fact, it looks like a lot of you missed his argument entirely, so I thought I'd emphasize it.

 

[julieandrews]

The fact is that domestic air travel within France is at an all time low due to the excellent train service. The train is the #1 choice when travelling within France. The Eurostar is now getting to be more popular as a means of travelling between France, Belgium and the UK than flying. I work in the UK and my company has headquarters in Belgium. The Eurostar is ALWAYS used on these business trips - I've never once heard of someone making this trip by plane

Of course the difference is that these countries are much smaller than the US - everything is on a much smaller scale. However I do believe that it can also be put in to place on certain routes in the US. Like LA to NY will never be a viable train route to beat flying, but there's no reason why there can't be a high speed rail link between say places like LA and SF, or any other relatively close cities that you can think of. The Acela is certainly a step in the right direction. Of course it needs a big change in attitude, but anyone who has used trains in Europe of Asia knows just how normal it is to hop on a train to go somewhere - people normally log on to the train websites first to look for a seat before they even think about logging on to an airline website for the same journey!

 

[Neil_M]

He's saying that so far the interstate highway system has been far more cost effective, in terms of miles traveled and freight shipped per dollar spent on infrastructure, than high speed rail in Japan and France. I take exception with his use of the term "elite", as he didn't present much backing for that claim, but then you guys aren't exactly countering his argument by saying "I saw lots of non-tourists that time I rode!"

But you (and he) miss the point. The LGV lines in France are not used to move freight. The roughest dirt track in Montana probably sees more freight.

As for the non tourists thing thing both Mr Harris and myself have disagreed with that.

I have travelled a hell of a lot in France on TGVs. Generally they are full of people speaking French. Unless the whole of certain parts of Canada are all on the same train, you have to assume they are French people! If the concept is so bad, why are there more LGV being built right now and why did SNCF move to double decker TGVs instead of single deck? Unlikely to be because less people are travelling......

I think the problem Mr Beardy Fool has is he just can not get his head around the fact that some countries use their rail systems as part of the nations assets and to provide decent fast affordable transportation to the people, not just to make money.

 

[julieandrews]

Also on the topic of rail freight in Europe, I can only speak for the UK and Ireland as this is where I lived the most. In those two countries freight is mostly run at night so day time passanger and nighttime freight don't interfere with each other. Obviously long distance routes in the US run through the night so thats not easy, but if you have a train route from LA to SF as in my last example, a fast service should be able to do it in about 4 hours so well within a daytime service.

Another helpful factor is that for example in the UK, the tracks are run by an independant company who has nothing whatsoever to do with either passanger or freight companies. So it's not like the time I took the CZ and the train had to wait to get permission from the freight company who owns the line to proceed, in the UK both passenger and freight work on a timetable where a train has it's own alloted slot on the line where it should be in a certain place at a certain time. Obvsiously it's not perfect and the British rail service isn't exactly a shining example at the moment, but at least thats an example of how it's done elsewhere

 

[volkris]

But you (and he) miss the point. The LGV lines in France are not used to move freight. The roughest dirt track in Montana probably sees more freight.

Maybe he does miss the point, but you miss his. He's not complaining that the line doesn't see freight; he's saying that not only does the line not transport people as far, it doesn't move ANY freight at all. The lack of freight means that the cost effectiveness, as he proposes to measure it, is even lower.

Sure the TGV isn't supposed to move freight... that's not his point. More likely he's saying it should move more people farther to make up for the lack.

As for the non tourists thing thing both Mr Harris and myself have disagreed with that.

Right, but you disagreed in an anecdotal way. If you showed statistics proving O'Toole wrong that would be one thing, but he presented information suggesting (but not proving) that the natives don't ride much (compared with the interstate highway system, not a great comparison, certainly). If the natives aren't riding, but the trains are full, then that pretty much leaves tourists, right?

If the concept is so bad, why are there more LGV being built right now and why did SNCF move to double decker TGVs instead of single deck? Unlikely to be because less people are travelling......I think the problem Mr Beardy Fool has is he just can not get his head around the fact that some countries use their rail systems as part of the nations assets and to provide decent fast affordable transportation to the people, not just to make money.

Again, you miss his point. He's saying that high speed has not been cost effective using this one proposed metric, and that trains aren't the environmentally friendly alternative most people believe. Maybe France and Japan are happy to do non-cost effective things, and maybe the US is fine with it as well. But he'd have us at least be aware, as we make the investment, that it hasn't been all roses in countries who've done it already.