It gets them closer to their dream of eradicating their conservative counterparts...
Posted on 08/04/2010 8:30:43 AM PDT by Willie Green
The next-to-last paragraph of Chuck Mai's "Ferry travel leads to idea for ride here" (column, July 27) was the wisest, most helpful thing I've read in The Oklahoman in a long time: "Of course, first we need passenger train service from Oklahoma to Chicago."
When Dave Herbert was a state senator from Midwest City, he tried hard to get rail service to Newton, Kan. From there we could go east to Chicago or west to Los Angeles. Since Herbert is no longer in the Senate, no one is championing this cause.
I'm a senior citizen who has many friends who want passenger train service. We can't drive long distance and plane service is unavailable to many cities and towns that would be on a train route.
From Wikipedia:
Several proposals for extending the route of the Heartland Flyer or providing additional service over all or parts of its route have been made over the years. Expansion planning revolves around portions of the former Lone Star route and the state-owned route from Oklahoma City to Tulsa, Oklahoma.
The line to Kansas City would stop at Wichita's Union Station and follow the route of the Amtrak Southwest Chief north of Newton Kansas. Recent interest in Kansas and Oklahoma communities has been sparked by the proposal and many towns have released resolutions supporting the idea and requesting stations should the route ever be extended. Some of these cities include Wichita, which lost its train service with the discontinuance of the Amtrak Lone Star in 1979. Emporia was eliminated as an Amtrak stop in the mid nineties but may once again have a train station. Nearly a dozen other communities ranging in size from the tiny community of Strong City Kansas, pop. 570, to Wichita, with nearly 358,000 residents have passed these resolutions.
A study conducted by Amtrak in 2009 resulted in four proposed service extensions:
According the August 2010 issue of Trains Magazine, which hosts this report, a combination of options one and two as noted above is not out of the question, either, allowing for day and night service, plus perhaps thru-car service to/from the Southwest Chief.
Why? No one will ride it.
If there is a demand for such a rail, the private market will build it.
If there is not, and government builds it anyway, the result is a dislocation of market resources. It’s wasteful and destructive to the ends of freedom and liberty.
The free market brings the best combination of prices, quality, and rising economic liberty. Government interference is said market destroys all three.
No. OK does NOT need a passenger rail to Chicago. THAT is evident by the fact that such a rail does not exist. And NO. The gov’t has no right nor need to steal my money to bring such a market-inefficient concept into being.
I suspect most Oklahomans would prefer not to waste money on a passenger rail link to that cesspool.
Willie’s mind is made up...don’t confuse him with logic or facts...
They are VERY limited in where they can go (where there are tracks.) They do not easily adjust to the needs of the market (shifting population centers.) The fastest ones are 1/2 the speed of planes. The slowest ones are slower than busses.
Is it the union jobs they produced in droves?
As soon as they get a mag rail that can go nearly 600 MPH, they may have something. Until then, heavy rail is already doing what it’s doing well in the USA, which is connecting 2 large urban areas together.
The free market brings the best combination of prices, quality, and rising economic liberty.
That is not true. Mergers and acquisitions lead to market consolidation and oligopolistic behavior that stifles true market competition.
Government intervention is necessary to restore true competition to the marketplace.
I agree that many more cities should have passenger train service, but no government money should be used, for this purpose. Train companies should spend their own money, like airlines and bus companies. If the federal government gives money to Amtrak, it uses some money that is earned by people who will never ride on the trains.
Hear, hear. Our (Boise) Mayor, Comrade Dave Bieter, has his shorts in a knot to put in a trolley, even though we have no tourist attractions to support it. His bid for a $40 million federal grant just fell through, but he's still bound and determined to shove it down our throats. So he spent $65,000 of our money to hire a PR firm to "educate" us about the need for a trolley.
To say this guy spends money like a drunken sailor is an insult to drunken sailors.
Scouts Out! Cavalry Ho!
The Government does indeed have a role in preventing monopolies: in other words, it has a role in preserving free trade and the free market.
But it’s irrelevant to this discussion, which is about the use of taxpayer money to buy things that the free market has not created for itself.
There are legitimate niches for this kind of Government intervention - for instance - the creation and upkeep of the Armed Forces, the Police, the Fire Department etc. But the construction of railways is not one of them.
It gets them closer to their dream of eradicating their conservative counterparts...
I can fly Delta from OKC to Chicago for $243 round trip, probably less if I shop a little. And I can be there in 2 or 3 hours.
For the same $243 I can get to Memphis on the train. Leaving at 8:30 am in the morning and arriving at 2 pm the NEXT DAY. And I still wouldn’t be in Chicago.
I love trains, but thanks, I’d rather fly.
I’m not worried that noone would ride it. I’m worried that we would be flooded by those kind of people.
| "...we need passenger train service from Oklahoma to Chicago."
They don't do that anymore. Customers informed them that the trains were no longer needed. The customers did that by stopping the practice of buying tickets for train rides. There ya go. |
It’s not only lefties who like rail services, although it IS the lefties that want the government to pay for it. If you don’t enjoy traveling by rail, that’s fine, but please don’t lump those of us who do into such an offensive grouping.
I fear you may be on to something...
Only the Government can really run a free market, right Willie? And you wonder why people call you a socialist or a liberal...
And how much will this rail line cost? You have NEVER stated a price for any of your fantasies! How much will this one cost to deploy? How much of OPM will you demand to get your choo choo?
There are legitimate niches for this kind of Government intervention - for instance - the creation and upkeep of the Armed Forces, the Police, the Fire Department etc. But the construction of railways is not one of them.
You are wrong.
Whether we are discussing airways, highways, roadways, railways, seaways, waterways, pathways or sidewalks... government provision and maintenance of transportation infrastructure is a legitimate government function.
I would like to see one from Tulsa to OKC.
They don't do that anymore. Customers informed them that the trains were no longer needed. The customers did that by stopping the practice of buying tickets for train rides.
That's because during the era of cheap oil, government policies subsidized the growth of the airline and Interstate highway industries.
The cheap oil era is over.
Now we have to resuscitate our passenger rail network and adjust to a more fuel efficient lifestyle.
There ya go.
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