So why are trains so popular in Europe? Simple: Europe is smaller. My Basel to Paris trip is 250 miles; Denver to New York is 1,625 miles. Why is Amtrak popular in the Northeast? Because, here we go, the distances are comparable to Europe: Washington, DC, to New York is 203 miles.
To make train travel competitive, you’d need to raise airline ticket prices about 15 times, say with an excise tax or a tariff. Raising the airline ticket prices 15 times would, of course, pretty well end the airline industry as we know it; rock stars and CEOs would be about all that was left. Although I suppose they’d give their occasional traveler a second bag of peanuts if asked.
New technology won’t help all that much for a nationwide system, either. The French TGV train ”” I love French: train à grande vitesse just sounds so much inherently cooler than “really fast train” ”” really only travels about 200 miles an hour; even maglev trains are not a lot faster. That would cut the travel time in half, making the total travel time to New York only, hoo-hah, 45 hours.
I can’t follow his mathematical calculations. If he is traveling at 200 mph and it takes him 45 hours to get there, isn’t he traveling a distance of 9,000 miles? Is he taking the train to New York from Guam?
The headline is overly dramatic. He means [i]national[/i] rail service. By his own admission, [i]regional[/i] rail service in the US can and does work quite well.
Arguing that a NY to LA line will never be independently viable is like arguing a London to Ankara line will never be independently viable. So What?
An intra-California line is viable, an intra-Texas line is viable, a Rust Belt line is viable. The several States are actively planning such lines. Amtrak should be devolved and the Feds should cater to the states in their efforts. In short, the Bush Administration Policy.
I agree, I think a smart energy policy would include investing in passenger train infrastructure in this country. To say that it can’t be viable is to overlook the past. Trains used to be the most reliable transport in this country before the commercial airline/freeway system was invented.
I grew up in a small town north of Knoxville, TN. In fact, we lived on “Depot” street because back in the day there was a train depot in the town. People would commute back and forth from the mine that was in our town to Knoxville all the time. As soon as the depot closed, the town died. Regional trains are the way to go, but it will take some serious money in infrastructure to get back to that.
I think rail service would work well in Florida, if a private company ran it rather than the incompetent Government. Tallahassee to Pensacola or to Jacksonville is about the same distance — around 200 miles either direction. To West Palm Beach via Jacksonville, around 450. Orlando even closer, Tampa about the same. If Orlando was a ‘hub’ city (as Disney wants), it would work out very well.
So maybe not national, but inner-state-wide services would be great.
Jim Elliott
I would like to add my vote for regional high speed trains linking downtowns to downtowns and also airports. While I would not consider taking a train from here (Tucson) to New York, it certainly would be great to have the option to take one to Phoenix, LA or San Diego.
The real culprit is infrastructure for passenger trains. In many areas of the country Amtrak relies on right of way from the freight system. But since the freight rail owns the tracks, they have first priority and Amtrak is forced to yield. I live in St. Louis and passenger rail travel to Chicago and Kansas City should be reasonably convenient. However, there is not sufficient track to KC and delays destroy Amtrak’s reliability. It used to be very common for local Boy Scouts to take Amtrak to Philmont Ranch in New Mexico with a change of trains at KC. Too many troops missed their connections in KC causing huge complications so they charter busses now. The Chicago run is better but there are still reliability issues.
I took the Capitol Corridor between Sacramento and Berkeley while I was in seminary, and doing so has made me a huge fan of regional rail transit. California will get a chance to approve a $10 Billion bond measure this November for a high speed rail line between San Francisco and Los Angles, but a large budget deficit and a recent history of using large bonds to do everything from refinance past overspending to stem cell research, it is going to be a real fight to get it to pass. Both my state and the federal government are spending huge amount of money on things I find objectionable and immoral. I wonder what it would take to get them to divert some of that money in to clean, efficient transportation infrastructure that doesn’t rely on fuel at $4.70 a gallon.
John Miller, regional rail transit is fine, and I am going to vote for it. What we need in the more rural counties like Merced, Stanislaus, and others in the Central Valley, though, is LIGHT RAIL; linking Los Banos, Merced, Turlock, Dos Palos, and Tracy. The bus system in Merced County, which is fine if you live in Merced itself, stinks!
Yes, it runs once an hour on the average, and you can take a bus to Merced, but you’re very limited as to where you can get on and off! We have dial-a-ride available, but you have to call their office to ask for a ride home, and depending on the time of day, you could have a considerable wait.
If you’re an orthopedically handicapped person, it’s worse! So, no thanks……I’ll drive, and I’ll gladly pay for the gas! Unfortunately, we have a very long wait ahead of us before we get a Light Rail system in our valley.
There has been some talk in Texas about a rail system using the I-35 corridor right-of-way. Intra-State that would connect Dallas/Ft. Worth, Austin, San Antonio and Laredo. Extended north it could serve Oklahoma City.
A similar approach with I-10 right-of-way could connect El Paso, San Antonio, Houston and New Orleans.
For long trips between LA and NYC, it isn’t likely that rail could compete with air. But isn’t the real comparison between private motor vehicle and rail? In virtually any comparison, rail will win that contest.
Is it too deep to point out that if there was a market for passenger rail service, entrepeneuers would be creating a supply?
Are private companies allowed to offer rail service in competition with Amtrak? Even if they are, the barriers to entry are huge due to the cost of creating new rail lines.
[blockquote]Are private companies allowed to offer rail service in competition with Amtrak? Even if they are, the barriers to entry are huge due to the cost of creating new rail lines.[/blockquote]
Particularly since they would be competing against heavily subsidized air and automobile transportation.
Not neccesarily. Freight roads compete primarily with trucks, using those same highways. My former employer, CSX, showed a net profit margin of 12.94% in the first quarter with a gross profit of $1.59 billion. The Union Pacific posted broadly similar profit figures (10.37%) But their land costs have been paid off for many decades. New start ups would have a huge real estate bill. Though perhaps they could use track from the old frieght lines, much like Amtrak? I’m not sure how the relevant law is framed.
Well, there’s a trade-off.
To a certain extent, passenger rail in the States is bad because our freight rail system is good, and the freight rail system in Europe is much worse than ours(yes, it is) because their passenger rail is good. When it comes down to it, it makes much more sense to ship the coal in train hoppers and the people in cars than vice versa.
You really have to have two parallel rail systems for both passenger and freight rail to work efficiently. Right now the US has one, and it’s unambiguously for freight.
The problem does boil down, to a large extent, to the size of the country. There are nearly twice as many people living in Europe, in half of the space.
To say that rail doesn’t work in the US, though, is simply not correct. It works well in the Northeast, largely through Amtrak and commuter rail. I really don’t understand the hostility some have to rail-government rail-given how well it actually works here. In my experience the trains are as predictable as the planes, and far more predictable than road travel.
What is need is a series of regional networks and better commuter lines. I imagine that the Great Lakes region, Texas, and the West Coast, at the very least, have great potential for regional networks.
Randall