Not so. Homesteads were limited acreage giveaways that contained provisional contingencies WRT the land being farmed and used. Railroads got adjoining lands to their tracks as an incentive and could use those free lands to reap profits. Either way though, it still demonstrates the error of your original claim about RR's not recieving government perks. Government perks were a crucial element to building the vast majority of them.
This was done in the form of low interest loans. The railroads repaid this many times over by hauling government consigned freight first for free, and then for very deep discounts.
Not sufficient. Most government-backed railroads including the first two transcontinentals teetered on the brink of bankruptcy throughout the late 19th century. They turned no substantial profit to give back to themselves much less the government for all the free track land and adjoining right of ways they got. At best they gave the feds some minor perks that only went part of the way to filling the gap. And of course, whether they paid back or not it still remains that your initial statement was wrong.
This is especially true for the trolley lines in cities and for electric interurban railways (rather like your light rail line in Houston) dedicated mostly to hauling people.
It wasn't true of Houston by any sense. Look at city council's transit policies from 1870 straight on through to 1940 and you will see nothing but protection, perks, incentives, bailouts, and regulations all to the benefit of the streetcar operator.
I don't know about Houston, but common practice up here was for the right to build tracks in the streets came with the obligation to perform all streets maintenance along side of and between the tracks.
That "obligation" is generally the case in most cities, I suspect, but if one looks at it carefully it is shown to be neither an excessive burden nor anything that the streetcar operaters shouldn't have been required to do in order to "earn" the perk they were given. Very few if any cities required them to pave the whole street - only that slender portion of it to either side of their tracks often extending not more than a foot. This made the streetcar tracks safer from an engineering perspective and it made them more user friendly (stepping onto pavement while exiting is a lot easier than stepping into a mud puddle). The city came in and paid for the rest of the roads.
This obligation is maintained today, and SEPTA, our transit agency, is still liable for all street repairs near its tracks.
As it should be within reason. It's in the interest of transit user safety that the tracks rest on a stable and easily accessed foundation. If a pothole emerges a foot away from the track in a loading area the agency has a safety obligation to fix it.
It was not willing to spend the billions that would be spent starting in the 1920's for modern paved roads with modern engineering standards.
The Leesburg Greenway outside of Washington and several privately financed tollways in CA say otherwise.
Bravo to the few. You can count them on one hand.
And you know why? It ain't because they don't want to build them. It's government itself. Very few states have provisions in place that even allow private companies to build roads. To my understanding, VA and CA are among those few, and they are extremely bureaucratic. It takes years to get through the bureaucracy so otherwise willing builders are deterred and delayed by government. In Virginia for example there are probably a dozen or more proposals for private bridges or roadways or tunnels under the state's public-private partnership laws in any given year. One, maybe two, will make it through the bureaucracy before they even obtain various use permits on property that they themselves pay for and own.
Why not apply the same model by selling the interstate highway system and making it tolled?
VA and CA are evidently heading in that same direction. The Leesburg Greenway, for example, is a strong case to go by. It's a full-sized multi-lane highway that serves hundreds of thousands of people. But other states have to first adopt provisions that let private companies do that sort of thing and then lower the bureaucratic barriers to building one.
The Railroads have to jump through the same hoops for new construction.
...yet most of the major railroad lines are already in existence and have been for a century. Private highways are almost always a new startup and most states don't even have the process that allows companies to build them, let alone a bureaucracy to go through.
You think so, but you are wrong.
Oh, I'm correct to be certain. The statistics back up everything I've said.
Lets posit a modern freeway through an urbanized area, as in Houston. Cost of land aquisition and construction is about $100 million per mile per lane couplet.
You are severely overestimating for Houston, where land is (a) generally cheaper than the national average and (b) is in some cases already owned by the government along the highway expansion corridors being considered. A major interchange on I-10 for example was recently estimated at $59 million and as a rule of thumb interchanges cost several times that of flat mileage. They've been reconstructing and building up sections of Loop 610 in Houston for the last several years at a cost of about $30 million per 3-4 mile segment.
The biggest current expansion project is on I-10 where they are going from 11 lanes to 18 or 20 lanes (including HOV and feeders). It is a 40 mile corridor expansion. 100 feet of defunct freight railroad right of way plus 300 feet of existing I-10 right of way plus 35 feet of county-owned right of way on Old Katy Road give us a total of 435 feet of government owned right away ALREADY EXISTING to build the expansion. The remainder will come from property acquisition - mostly at existing feeder intersections and the sort - along the route and is estimated at $180 million. And that is not per mile. It's $180 million spread out across the entire 40-mile corridor! Construction itself is estimated at about $850,000, so you're looking at just over $20 million per mile plus $4.5 million a mile in ROW giving us just under $25 million a mile to add some 8 new lanes in each direction over a 40 mile stretch. That means you overestimated the total fourfold.
So if it has 8 lanes, it would cost $400,000,000 per mile. Lets say each lane is packed with an average of 1500 cars per hour all day long (recognizing less traffic at night and more at rush hour). That is 288,000 vehicle miles per day.
You severely underestimate Houston highway usage. Our major freeways approach some 390,000 vehicles a day, each travelling on average a commute in the 20 mile range both too and from work (which is more than southern CA and probably makes them the most travelled roads on the north american continent) for a total of about 40 VM/D per driver (the most recent govt estimate said 37.6 IIRC). So if we have 390,000 vehicles on a major Houston freeway each travelling 37.6 miles a day that gives us, oh, about 14.6 million vehicle miles travelled daily on that corridor.
If we make gas mileage 25 mpg
That's another overestimation, especially for city driving. You're probably looking at somewhere around 17-18 mpg.
and $0.40 of the cost is taxes, 1/25 of 40 cents is collected per vehicle per mile per day, or $4608 per day per mile of 8 lane freeway.
Wrong again! Per our previous calculations, you're looking at $862,588 in gas taxes on average. Divide that by 37.6 and you're looking at $23,000 per mile per day. Times that by 365 and we get $8.4 million in revenue per mile per year. Maintenance costs on the Katy Freeway are currently about $200,000 per mile, or $8 million total for the 40 mile stretch. That leaves us ahead by $8.2 million per mile, meaning the construction costs are recovered in about 3 years.
Are you seriously trying to tell me that $1.7 million per annum is going to finance and pay for $400 million in construction?
No, because your stats are so far out of sync with reality as to render them no better than arbitrary numbers drawn from thin air (which is likely where you got them to begin with). As shown above using the actual cost figures for the Katy Freeway, you severely underestimate usage and revenue while severely overestimating costs.
To say nothing of paying for maintenance and police and lost property tax revenue?
Most of the Katy Freeway's ROW property is already government-owned and therefore does not pay taxes. That small portion which does is more than offset by increased property values subsequent to the expansion as is generally the case with all freeways. Maintenance currently is a tiny $8 million a year over 40 miles. Even if you double that figure you're still ahead by $8 million per mile. It is also not unreasonable to expect that police and emergency costs will DECREASE following the expansion because of a decrease in congestion-induced accidents, which otherwise consume the majority of policing and emergency expenses.
Over the 35 year life of the road before a total reconstruction is needed, you'd collect about $60 million to pay for a $400 million facility.
Wrong again. See above. It should also be noted that you overestimate reconstruction costs. Loop 610 has been reconstructed at about $10 million a mile give or take a few (divided out at roughly $30 million per 3 mile stretch).
They got every other square mile I believe, which limited the usefulness of the land.
Government perks were a crucial element to building the vast majority of them.
Again, this is only true for the western trunklines, which accounted for about 1/10th of the total mileage built. Apparently that is "vast majority" by Texas math.
Not sufficient.
Well, only according to you, whose view on the matter really doesn't matter, does it?
Most government-backed railroads including the first two transcontinentals teetered on the brink of bankruptcy throughout the late 19th century.
Mostly because the west was still undeveloped. As development occurred between 1890 and 1930, they became very prosperous.
They turned no substantial profit to give back to themselves much less the government for all the free track land and adjoining right of ways they got.
They didn't need to give the government profits, they gave them free shipping!
At best they gave the feds some minor perks that only went part of the way to filling the gap.
The total value of free and then discount shipping given far outstripped any money given by the government. This is a historical fact.
It wasn't true of Houston by any sense. Look at city council's transit policies from 1870 straight on through to 1940 and you will see nothing but protection, perks, incentives, bailouts, and regulations all to the benefit of the streetcar operator.
Well, Houston being the small backwater that it was, was probably atypical. The streetcar firms in the midwest and northeast (where the vast majority of Americans lived up to the 1950's) generally had an adversarial relationship with the city government.
And you know why? It ain't because they don't want to build them. It's government itself. Very few states have provisions in place that even allow private companies to build roads.
Its no different with railway expansion. Burlington Northern has been working for 23 years to build a 103 mile railroad in Wyoming and Montana to tap more coal mines and shorten their existing route by over 100 miles. Its not been built because of bureaucratic inertia. There is now a second proposal by Dakota, Minnesota, and Eastern to build a 260 mile railroad extension from South Dakota into Wyoming coal country. This project also appears to be going nowhere fast.
The major cause of this is the beserk environmental review laws from the 1970's.
They've been reconstructing and building up sections of Loop 610 in Houston for the last several years at a cost of about $30 million per 3-4 mile segment.
I looked this up. It shows $233 million just for the awarded contracts including a couple still to be let (doesn't count design and DOT costs, nor any financing costs) for about 8 miles of freeway reconstruction as is (no expansion). That's $30 million per mile just to keep things where they are.
http://www.texasfreeway.com/houston/historic/newsletters/houston_newsletters.shtml
You severely underestimate Houston highway usage. Our major freeways approach some 390,000 vehicles a day, each travelling on average a commute in the 20 mile range both too and from work
No, it appears pretty accurate. My estimate was for an 8 lane road. 12 lanes might haul 390,000 vehicles. Your 8 lane roads such as I 610 are under my estimate in vehicles per day.
that gives us, oh, about 14.6 million vehicle miles travelled daily on that corridor.
Total miles is irrelevant. All that matters is the vehicles going over any 1 mile of road to compare to per mile costs.
That's another overestimation, especially for city driving. You're probably looking at somewhere around 17-18 mpg.
Driving on freeways is by definition not city driving. City driving is driving on streets with stoplights. I suppose you might stretch it to include severe stop and go freeway driving. Driving at 40 mph on the freeway in rush hour though, is not city driving.
Wrong again! Per our previous calculations, you're looking at $862,588 in gas taxes on average. Divide that by 37.6 and you're looking at $23,000 per mile per day.
Using your numbers, this implies really high gas taxes. 390,000 vehicles * $0.40 per gallon / 17 miles per gallon = $9200 per day = $3.36 million per year. $23,000 per mile would need $1 per gallon in gas taxes.
No, because your stats are so far out of sync with reality as to render them no better than arbitrary numbers drawn from thin air (which is likely where you got them to begin with). As shown above using the actual cost figures for the Katy Freeway, you severely underestimate usage and revenue while severely overestimating costs.
They are accurate for freeways up here. US 202 in Chester County cost $250,000,000 to reconstruct and add one lane in each direction, and we paid another $250,000,000 for its new interchange with US 422 and I 76. Those costs worked out to $0.05 per mile per car and $0.25 per car traversing the interchange.
You mention cheap land as one factor in cost. I'd mention a much bigger one - lack of topography around Houston. Any idiot can pave a prarie for cheap.
Wrong again. See above. It should also be noted that you overestimate reconstruction costs. Loop 610 has been reconstructed at about $10 million a mile give or take a few (divided out at roughly $30 million per 3 mile stretch).
You are only off by a factor of 3 for the costs quoted by texasfreeways.com. What's $20,000,000 per mile among friends?