High-Speed Rail to Nowhere
February 8th, 2011 - 5:58 pm
The money train never stops! Here’s the story from the WSJ:
Vice President Joe Biden unveiled a $53 billion plan Tuesday to upgrade and build intercity passenger-rail networks.
Mr. Biden, along with Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood, announced the plan at Philadelphia’s 30th Street Station. The six-year program is designed to give 80% of Americans access to passenger-rail service within 25 years—a goal President Barack Obama set in his State of the Union Address—and to create jobs.
Maybe it’s indicative of the chances of getting the GOP Congress to approve any of this nonsense that Biden made the announcement, but I still say: “We don’t have any money left. Cut it out.”
Meanwhile, Hillary has gotten a facelift and a new hairdo and she’s on t.v. talking about Egypt. I wonder if Joe Biden ever fantasizes about being Dick Cheney.
…The area for Washington/Oregon looks a LOT like what Amtrak already has, and I think the route that goes from Seattle to Spokane picks up the St. Paul/Chicago connection, with routes to DC.
I know they have an LA/San Diego route, too.
Someone should maybe compare these to where we ALREADY have passenger rail?
We need stretch goals to become great again.
The trains should run at 90% of the speed of light, and be powered by wind energy.
Yes we can!!!
I took the train a couple years ago, when gas was $4 a gallon, the train ticket was less than the cost of driving. I went from Toledo OH to Newport News VA. It took 21 hours, while driving takes 11 hours. It’s not that the train was slow, it’s that there are places it had to go slow (through towns, up steep hills) and then there are all the stops for boarding & departure. I just do not see how squeezing some more mph in the spots where you can do it makes up for the slow spots & stops. And if you want everyone to use it, you have to have lots of stops for boarding/departure.
True, that train ticket was less than the cost of driving, but I wonder how much of the actual cost of the trip was subsidy?
Well, consider the government subsidy to airlines (air traffic control) and driving (interstates, highway maintenance). Trains just got the short end of the stick.
Though we should balance any spending here with cuts elsewhere.
Roads are paid with things like the gas tax, and some tax on businesses that are able to run because there are roads.
Getting the gov’t ATC out of the tower is a rather popular suggestion, too.
Passenger trains, on the other hand, aren’t mostly taxing their own passengers.
Aviation gasoline is taxed about 20 cents a gallon. According to Avweb, the current tax on general aviation (non-military and non-airlines) jet fuel is 21.8 cents per gallon. According to the article, the Senate is considering a 65% increase in the tax to 35.9 cents per gallon. Airlines also pay taxes on their fuel consumption, reportedly 4.4 cents per gallon. Even a 737 sized airliner will use thousands of gallons of fuel on a flight over a few hundred miles. In addition, airline passengers are taxed on a per ticket basis.
Using the money collected with these taxes on aviation expenditures like airport improvements and ATC are hardly subsidizies. This is a case where the users are paying for the system, quite likely much more than the costs of operating the system. Similiarly, state and federal gas taxes go to highway construction and maintenance when they aren’t siphoned off to the general fund.
Railroads, on the other hand, tend to be subsidized. Amtrak has been a massive moneyloser for decades and wouldn’t exist outside of the northeast corridor without government subsidizies.
I still think his point holds. Highways are paid for somehow, of course, but the bill is divided many ways through many forms of taxation. The cost of the airport is included in the ticket price, but the air is free. Same with shipping–the dock costs bucks, but the ocean does not.
The railroads are the only transportation service that directly pay the full cost of the infrastructure.
Make of that what you will as for the ocean and the air, but any particular class of user of the highways is receiving massive subsidies from the other classes and the taxpaying public in general.
The only way for high speed rail to work is if the tracks are straight and there were few stops.
Even with coercive eminent domain, 51 billion won’t nearly cover the land costs, let alone construction costs. And we can only imagine the environmentalist reaction to what would have to be plowed under along the way. As for few stops, how much you want to bet one of those stops will be in Wilmington, DE?
Not to mention, passenger rail interes with the much more important and efficient freight rail.