Hmmm. Amtrak is increasing its ridership and revenues consistently year on year. The subsidy comes to under $50/rider.
I am trying to find a source for the subsidy of the air travel network to compare with, but meanwhile, I had earlier said I’d try to return with a figure on the cost of inaction, and here it is, sort of, courtesy of the Bush administration.
I think I’ll need to ask you to provide your source for airline funding as the number you claim seems very small to me. The best I can find right now is from that same 2008 Bush budget document:
Which is suspect to me for several reasons - one, as we have discussed in previous threads highway infrastructure is running a huge deficit and current user fees have not been paying for a fraction of needed upkeep - yet they claim it runs a profit?!? Also since then aviation has had some harder times and rail has, as documented above, increased its ridership and revenues year on year. But it’s the best I can find so I will accept that air transport is overall subsidized less per mile traveled than is rail.
I think there has to be a lot more thinking done on this, with an emphasis on intermodal travel, node connection, and making things as seamless as possible.
A lot can be done, frankly - since 1998 intercity bus travel has exploded in the Northeast because it is efficient, cheap, and because private companies are going tooth-and-nail for riders. Round trip DC to NY is about fifty bucks. The amout of time it takes is competitive when travel times and security wait times to and from airports are considered.
Given this, an investment in rail might be wasteful if it is not combined with other rule changes opening up downtown areas and airports to motorcoaches, innovations like the Zipcar and bike rental services, and other things. The train can only combine existing nodes and has to be planned far in advance - this is true of any rail travel. These other services are more flexible, especially if private - if a market exists for transportation it can be served just by routing a bus or placing rental cars there.
And likely faster than flying and cheaper than driving, too.
For other advantages, consider that most cars and all planes use petroleum-based fuels, which is bad from both an environmental and national security angle. Trains, by contrast, would be electric, and we’re already essentially energy-independent for electricity (with maybe some imported from Canada, but that’s not a cause for worry), and we’re a lot closer to green energy sources for electricity than we are for cars.
And when you’re looking at government subsidies for airports, make sure that you look at all levels of government. The federal government probably doesn’t have much to do with most airports, but they usually get sweetheart deals from their state or city (eminent domain land at cheaper than they could get it on the open market, tax breaks, etc.).
Are you projecting that the rail system would significantly reduce car or truck usage? Again, what do you base that on?
As for the national security angle, I’m not sure how significant this is overall. It seems to me that the national security threat due to air craft is fairly small…and while it might be smaller with trains it would still be non-zero. As far as I know, the highest threat to our national security due to a transport method is from ships, but I might be wrong about that.
As for the energy angle, it seems to me that it would probably be a wash…any energy savings you MIGHT get (if the system were actually widely used, which I am skeptical of) would be lost in the massive amount of energy and resources needed to put it in. I will concede that, once in place and assuming it’s in wide spread use that there will probably be some small but significant CO2 savings…but I don’t think it would be worth the effort and expense.
Even if true I don’t see how this helps the case for HSR, since especially initially this will be more the case with rail than with the existing air infrastructure.
I really don’t understand this mania for HSR by 'dopers. Any potential new system is going to cost a LOT of money and going to be pretty limited in service and it’s going to take years (or decades) before it’s even available…and it’s going to have to compete with the existing infrastructure which is going to be more convenient for people to use, especially initially. Cost wise, even if we assume that it will be cheaper (which, again, I’m skeptical of), initially it’s going to cost a lot of money, so would take years to break even…and this after it takes years to actually get build and running. It seems like a really bad idea from every angle I can think of.
Also, if you are staying at work late, you can expect that there will be much less frequent bus and train service, adding a lot of time and frustration to your trip.
I would add that in your scenario, if the train were replaced by a high speed train, cutting the time in half, it wouldn’t come anywhere near cutting the entire travel time in half.
My gut instinct is that high speed rail is basically a cargo cult for swipples and other Europhiles.
Sam, you’ve trotted out this idea in about 8 rail threads now, and really, Detroit is the only example that might prove this notion (ironically, this is because of its overreliance on the automobile, among other things, but I digress). Each time you’ve brought it up, I’ve noted that major cites are where they are due mostly to geographic features and that if say Chicago or Boston or New York or Seattle ceased to be a major city we would probably have bigger problems than an underused rail line. You have yet to respond to this arugment. Would you care to now?
I’m at work, so I can’t look at that cite now, but I’d be shocked if that cite for profitability included the capital cost of building the road. Same with all those toll roads you refer to.
Well, I’m not Sam but, at a guess it’s a valid point. HSR by it’s very nature is inflexible. It’s fixed. So, if the TRAFFIC patterns shift then you’ve lost a major investment, or you are going to have to up the subsidies to maintain the services. So…a major city doesn’t have to die or become a not so major city…there only has to be some shift in traffic patterns for it to adversely effect the (supposed) profit from HSR between two given cities. And this does happen…traffic from, say, New York to DC could shift if a major corporation changed it’s location or there is some other kind of similar shift.
I don’t think that this aspect is a show stopper for HSR btw…just wanted to comment that it could be a factor.
I disagree. Having experienced many train trips in the Quebec-Windsor corridor, I find that train travel between Toronto and Ottawa/Montreal/Windsor is much faster and easier than driving myself, and I see no reason why there cannot be the same choice in the Edmonton-Red Deer-Calgary-Lethbridge corridor.
Tickets? I bought them over the phone or Internet and got from the street to my train in the time it took me to walk it. Car rental? No problem; renting a car at a train station is as easy as it is at an airport. Public transit? Both the Toronto subway and the Montreal Metro were right at the stations. In Toronto’s case, GO trains and buses to take me beyond the borders of Metro were there too. Time to get across town? Driving across Montreal or Toronto can take an hour or more, depending on traffic. I never spent that long driving across Edmonton or Calgary–45 minutes, tops, and often shorter. Your preference for car travel is noticeable, Sam, because your objections to train travel seem to me to be not really objections at all–your concerns are certainly not problems in places where train travel is an option.
However, I think it is also worth noting that other than air, the only way to get between Calgary and Edmonton is one’s own car or the bus. Given that Highway 2 closes down a few times each winter due to weather and accidents caused by weather; and thus halts buses (and cars too), a train that isn’t stopped by weather seems pretty attractive to me.
I agree with your comments about Edmonton Transit; having experienced its LRT and buses myself many times, it is inconvenient and has much room for improvement.
But this touches on what puzzles me, and perhaps it is a chicken-and-egg argument. Do Albertans prefer their cars because Alberta’s public transit (inter- and intracity trains and buses) sucks, or is Alberta’s public transit system prevented from improving because Albertans prefer their cars?
Right, but we aren’t talking about traffic between Cleveland and Columbus. We are talking San Fran and L.A. or New York and Washington. I feel pretty comfortable in assuming that those routes are going to contiue to see heavy traffic. Traffic between, say, Madrid and Barcelona has been going pretty strong for 700 or so years now. I think it’s a good assumption that traffic between two of the largest cities in each of the most densely populated parts of the United States can go for at least 100 more.
But what do you base that comfort on? Traffic patters do change. DC to New York is a prime examples. When I lived in DC I saw it shift several times (including a down turn when the dot com bust happened). These patterns, at least on the business side (where, IMHO and based on nothing but my own experience, is where the majority of such regular travel comes from) DO shift over time.
We’re soon going to have to wean ourselves entirely off of petroleum. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but soon, and for the rest of our lives. But there’s no practical way to make an airplane run on anything but petroleum, so we need some practical alternative to airplanes. Trains can fill that niche.
Oh, there may continue to be some specialized niche roles for petroleum-powered vehicles, fueled from either the dregs of the wells or from synthesized hydrocarbons. The military will probably keep some petroburning vehicles, as well as exploration vessels and the like. But “get from one city to another” is not a specialized niche.
And no, I don’t think that high-speed rail will overlap much with car usage, except in a few applications. Local rail would have a bigger impact on cars, as will electric vehicles and plug-in hybrids. What I do think is that trains can almost completely replace air travel. Just think, for instance, of how many people fly between LA, San Francisco, and Las Vegas: Those travelers could all be better served by trains.
A two ways ticket between Lyon and Paris costs around 100€.
Going by car will cost me:
2x30€ high way toll
500km*2=1000km, my very efficient Sub minivan Opel Meriva with Diesel engine needs around 7L per 100km → 70L for the round trip. 1L Diesel fuel costs ~ 1€ here, → 70€ for the whole trip.
The whole cost of the trip is 2x30 + 70 = 130€. This does not include the costs of financing the car itself, which I needed to buy and which needs to be maintained.
In the US there is no highway toll, granted, but that just means that the same costs are covered by taxes.
Traveling with 2 people would be cheaper by car (200€ vs. 130€), but I still need to drive 4 1/2h vs. a comfortable 2h ride per train. And the last time we went to Paris by car it took us 6h because of the traffic jams.
Drive an SUV, and you will easily double or triple the costs.
This belatedly deserves a comment. I have obviously fallen into the position of defending, what is for right now at least, a fairly modest investment in maintaining/upgrading our current rail system and funding the study of higher speed rail options in select corridors. In the short term those meet all the criteria of appropriate stimulus - fairly quick impact on jobs and some likelihood of longer term positive impact on future productivity. That said I have also in the past supported exactly that idea Bryan, as has Sam, in his own way.
Yes, I do think that the same money being spent on making that vision a reality would accomplish a lot more in the long run. But I selling it would be harder. It does not translate into immediate stimulus impact for one. And the train vision as currently packaged gives each region a reason to think that they’ll get part of the gravy … train. And that will get the basic seed monies passed.
I base my assumption on the fact that pretty much since before the United States existed the corridor from Boston to Northern VA has seen continual, steady, heavy transit. Look up U.S. Rt. 1 on a map, the first ever federal road in the country followed that route. We are 200+ years on now, I think the corridor’s continued usage is a safe bet.
If you think trains are more a replacement for air travel, perhaps a better comparison would be to look at the history and stability of air traffic patterns. You’ll find that they change constantly - by a lot.
Take that Edmonton-to-Calgary run again. If Calgary has a head office of a company that employs 2000 workers in Edmonton and Northern Alberta, that’s going to generate a lot of travel on that corridor. My brother used to drive that highway probably ten times a month between offices. Multiply that by dozens or hundreds of people. But then the oil sands start getting built-up dramatically, so the company moves its head office to Edmonton, and a whole bunch of people move from Calgary to Edmonton to work the Northern oil fields. Suddenly there’s a substantial drop in flow between Edmonton and Calgary, but there’s huge congestion between Edmonton and Ft. MacMurray. Not only that, but freight that used to come up through the corridor might now be flown directly into Edmonton because the quantity is now high enough to warrant the flights. So now the Edmonton-Calgary highway gets even less traffic.
Cities don’t have to crumble and decline for the rail system to lose riders - all that needs to happen is for the pattern of traffic in and out of the city to change.
Now I’ll grant that there are some very stable, very dense corridors, and perhaps an HSR link or two is warranted. But most aren not. Including most of the ones on Obama’s list.
Yet, even after 200 years nobody has ponied up the money (or convinced someone else to) to build a high speed train in that corridor. The stable customer base has been there for centuries. The technology has been here for decades, yet nary a golden shovel has broken ground.
That we can agree on. I don’t think anyone, including Obama, is pushing Japanese-style high speed rail anywhere except for Boston to DC and San Fran to LA.
