Posted on 10/22/2014 4:25:31 PM PDT by QT3.14
It's been 21 years, and John Moore still eagerly leans against his passenger window to watch the landscape pass by as the train he commutes on every day roars over the Moodna Viaduct in Cornwall, New York.
The green hills and vibrant leaves just below the elevated track make the trestle one of the prettiest scenes on the 57-year-old's trip. For more than two decades, the senior business analyst has been traveling about 67 miles for work from his home in Cornwall to lower Manhattan. His total commute time is 2½ hours each way.
(Excerpt) Read more at edition.cnn.com ...
That's what I was thinking. A woman would have to get up at 4:00 to get ready.
At 5:00, a 30-minute ride to the train station
5:30 board the train
8:00 arrive at other end. Walk from train station to work.
Leave work at 5:00, walk to train station.
Catch 5:30 or 6:00 train
8:00 to 8:30, arrive at the other end. Drive home 30 mins, now it's 9 p.m.
Where does any life happen in that? Spouse, kids, soccer, homework?
Yep that’s holding up. Here are the official 2014 numbers:
an initial cost of $68 billion and 31.8 million riders per year
Let’s say they sell $68B in 30-year 5% bonds. I don’t see them getting a break on the interest rate because they are famously out of control all the time on the budget. I used a mortgage calculator to determine that a similar loan of $68,000 would be a monthly payment of $365. You can scale both of those up directly by a factor of a million to get a $68 billion loan with a monthly payment of $365 million.
Now take that $365M x 12 for 12 months in the year, divide by their maximum ridership figure of 31.8 million riders, and that’s $138 per rider. Using their minimum ridership figure of 19.6 million riders gives us $223 per rider. The midpoint is $180 per rider per trip.
But note the “third party estimate” of ridership of only 5 to 7 million riders per year. Call it 6M. That would be $730 per rider, every rider, every day, for forty years. And, as I said, plus operating costs.
I love trains too, but by the end of his time here Willie had notched the old subsidy throttle into "Run 8." His posts became sort of like the condensed versions of rail industry magazine editorials wherein Uncle Sugar needs to extract more taxpayer tribute to balance out the highway and airline largesse.
Amtrak is fine if you can tolerate all sorts of possible annoyances and don't care how/when you finally arrive. Airline travel has become so distasteful to me that I would welcome a competent railroad alternative, but Amtrak ain't it, aside from a narrow commuter bailiwick.
Mr. niteowl77
Yep train travel is coming back. Just ask the Ilkegals from Central America. Infact, we should be expecting another boxcar koads of them.
Just wait, the TSA shall work their special magic with commuter rail.
For a long distance commute, I would take the train. I don’t want to spend hours of my life sitting in a car. And I’m tired by the time I arrive at my destination. Then a train ride becomes very attractive, indeed.
When a Freeper, in spite of being refuted again and again with logic and reason, consistently posts ludicrous big government-supporting opinions on this forum, at some point it ceases to be a matter of gentle correction and moves into the realm of entertainment.
I can’t wait for the City of Phoenix to install trains. They could call it Phoenix Area Rapid Transit, or PHART.
I’ll try to do it on the OpenOffice or whatever I guess.
IIRC, Katrina wiped out a LOT of rail, and they chose not to replace it, leaving most states in the South without rail service.
My brother has recently become a FL/NY traveler with overnight accommodations. He had always driven, but now loves the train. His fare includes a dinner and (Continental) breakfast, with a private lounge at NYC’s Penn Station while he awaits his connecting train to upstate NY.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.