Railroads' new golden age...

[Spiffor]

Originally posted by DanS
passenger rail loses money the world over.

I scoff at you!

[aneeshm]

I do not think that the Indian railways lose money , but I am not sure , and am too lazy to confirm it .

[notyoueither]

I think Dan is more familiar with the Americas, and they do lose money here.

We have regional airlines with 12 seaters that make money flying people from 500 pop communities to the cities. There is no room for the rails, given the distances involved.

There is also very little respect for fuel economy, because it has always been cheap. Cheaper than bottled water. That may change.

[DanS]

Originally posted by Spiffor

I scoff at you!

Add in the capital costs!

[Spiffor]

Originally posted by DanS
Add in the capital costs!

They're externalities!

[Dinner]

To be fair if we're going to look at externalities then we'll have to look at all externalities including polution per person per mile. Cars wouldn't be worth a damn if the government hadn't spent trillions of dollars (inflation adjusted) building freeways and roads every where. Why does the government pay for roads, airports, and seaports, yet not rail lines? It would make perfect sense for the government to make a national highspeed rail network for intercity transit of medium distance and subsidize rail for intra city movement instead of always paying for more roads, streetlights, and parking stuctures.

[Spiffor]

Originally posted by Oerdin
Why does the government pay for roads, airports, and seaports, yet not rail lines?

Because you're in a country whose governments suck

[BlackCat]

Originally posted by Oerdin
Why does the government pay for roads, airports, and seaports, yet not rail lines?

Don't know about the roads, airports and railways, but the american government doesn't pay for the seaports - that is done by danish companies.

[Chemical Ollie]

My corporation recently made huge investments to switch from lorry to railroad transports. We are one of the largest goods transporters in Europe. And the reasons for the change is purely capitalistic/economic.

[Dinner]

Originally posted by BlackCat
Don't know about the roads, airports and railways, but the american government doesn't pay for the seaports - that is done by danish companies.

Traditionally the Feds paid for all ports as a way to increase commerce. Our Republican friends deicded they'd just abdicate their responsibilities and sell monopolies to operate certain ports to the highest bidder. Personally, I think we'd be better off with the government owning the port and there being multiple companies all operating out of the port as airlines do at airports.

Hell that would also be the best way to run railroads as well. The government should own all track and be responsible for maintaining it while any company who could get the rolling stock together could apply to operate along a route. The users would be charged a fee to support operations just as airlines and passengers are charged to help pay for airports. That would be real competition instead of the current monopoly system we have.

[Adam Smith]

Lots of things to say:

Thanks for the link Dan.

First, to give a sense of perspective, in the US the number of passenger miles of passenger traffic is almost exactly equal to the number of ton-miles of freight traffic. So every time you see a passenger moving, somewhere, sometime, there is a ton of freight moving the same distance as well. Since both passengers and freight contribute to road congestion, a system that moves primarily freight can still be helpful at relieving congestion.

Second, railroads still carry the most freight in the US. There is significant over-reporting of truck freight (and under reporting of rail) because truck-rail intermodal service has become largely seamless. If a shipment leaves a factory by truck, goes five miles down the road, and travels the rest of the way by rail, for all the shipper knows it went the whole way by truck, and is counted as such.

Third, most growth in rail traffic has been low-sulfur coal from Wyoming to everywhere, and truck-rail shipment (known as intermodal) shipments, especially imports from Asia. The railroad industry's largest current customer is UPS.

Fourth, there would be more passenger rail in the US if we paid the full social cost of automobile travel, which would mean adding about 50 cents per gallon to the gas tax. I'm not sure this would save Amtrak, which still has high costs and poor management, as I have mentioned before. Passenger rail does not make money in many other countries in spite of very high gas taxes and other disincentives for automobile use. I suspect this is due to over expansion of the passenger system to many small, out of the way towns. Frequent bus service would be better and cheaper.

Fifth, I don't think that having the government own the right of way would be a good solution in the US. The US rail industry is a going concern as is. Well over 90 percent of railroad traffic is subject to some form of competition from other railroads, trucks, barges, alternative products (e.g., natural gas vs. coal for electricity generation), or alternative sources (e.g., eastern vs. western coal), so monopoly is not an issue (See my response to Kid a few weeks ago), and there is effective regulation in cases where it is.

Lastly, political influence causes governments to do a really lousey job of pricing infrastructure. For example, the rental rates that Amtrak pays to freight railroads are frozen at 1956 levels. Cities usually own port facilities and lease them to long-term tennants, but much of the dredging, etc is done virtually for free by our dear friends at the Army Corps of Engineers. A fully loaded truck does as much damage to US highways as 10,000 cars, but pays only about 60 percent of its marginal infrastructure cost in taxes. But the all time champion example comes from Canada, where the Crow's Nest Pass rate agreement froze grain rates at 1897 levels for almost 100 years. This had a substantial negative effect on Canadian railroad investment and traffic to the Pacific Rim.

edit: formatting

[Victor Galis]

Originally posted by Oerdin


It leaves something to be desired but it would be a start. Personally I'd like to see a train going up the I15 corridor and and another going up the rest of the I5 corridor between San Diego and Los Angeles since that would cover about 50% of the state's population and provide a rail link to Las Vegas which is a major travel destination. Further more the San Francisco to Sacramento line should be extended all the way to Lake Tahoe. Eventually a coastal route covering cities like Santa Barbara, San Luis Obesbo, and Monterrey could be built along the Highway 101 (or even the US 1) corridor.

I took Amtrack to Lake Tahoe once, but it would be really nice if there were a train instead of the Sacramento -> Stateline bus Buses = teh suq. Technically speaking, the track is there. There's track all along I-80, seeing as that's the original transcontinental route, but I don't think there's any passenger traffic along it.

As for passenger vs. freight... when I become an inanimate object, I will care more about freight...

[Mao]

I used to have an economics professor that was a big fan of freight trains as well. He bemoaned that we don't invest enough into them and so many of them are not only so very old, but also that many are only a single-track. Thus, he would warn us every week or so that if a terrorist group wanted to bring down the US economy to its knees, all they'd have to do is find a few of those single-line railroads in relatively deserted areas and blow them up.