Posted on 06/11/2010 7:43:40 AM PDT by Willie Green
America has a “waiting problem.”
Think about the time you spend waiting in traffic jams… at the doctor/dentist’s office… at restaurants… at the gas station.
And how about the six months of your life spent waiting at traffic lights? Or the five years you’ll spend just waiting in lines at retail stores, the post office, DMV, etc. (Early buyers of Apple’s products likely spend far more.)
And according to Robert Poole, Director of Transportation Policy at the Reason Foundation, the average air traveler now spends two to three hours waiting at the airport. Granted, much of that is due to more rigorous security screening – time that is generally well spent – but air travel delays and traffic jams are only going to get worse, as more people take to the skies and roads.
In short, we wait an average of 45 to 62 minutes every single day. And that’s less time spent with family and friends, or doing other more productive, enjoyable activities.
Other countries have already recognized the problem and have addressed it for years. But the United States has failed miserably. So how can we improve our “waiting efficiency?” There’s a solution…
A Great Idea… Until Henry Ford Drove it Off the Rails
It’s called high-speed passenger rail.
I’ll get to the high-speed part in a moment. First, a quick overview of the U.S. rail service today.
Much of America’s freight still travels by rail. In fact, more than two billion tons plowed across the country in 2007 (the latest data available). It’s the transport mainstay for coal, lumber and other heavy industrial products and machinery.
Passenger rail service in the United States dates all the way back to 1830 when the “Best Friend of Charleston” – the first steam-powered train – traveled six miles with 141 passengers on board.
Boston, Baltimore and other major cities quickly established major railroads, due to the lack of river access to U.S. inland areas. And the idea of being able to travel, regardless of weather conditions – and at high speeds, too – was a big hit with most Americans.
As a result, passenger rail service soared…
But then Henry Ford came along and changed the playing field. When he introduced the mass-produced automobile in the following decade, rail travel fell by 18%.
And today?
700 Miles and a Tank of Gas Later…
Fast-forward to 2010…
You’d think that in today’s high-tech age, we could combine speed with efficiency and wouldn’t spend so long waiting. But that’s not the case. And with transportation, it’s an increasingly expensive wait for most Americans.
Take the average car, for instance. Fully loaded with five passengers, it gets about 100 passenger-miles-per-gallon (PMPG).
And according to the Department of Energy, the average passenger jet only gets about 36 PMPG. Of course, the trade-off there is speed.
But how about that speed/low-cost equation? Especially for regional travel? Europe and Asia already manage it. And we can here, too.
The answer lies in the method that squeezes out 700 PMPG.
You got it… high-speed trains. You can string their “cars” together and carry far more passengers than the average commercial jetliner. And these trains blast along at speeds of nearly 250 MPH.
So which company is behind this rapid rail transportation?
This Company Feels the Need… the Need for Speed
Take a quick jaunt around the globe and you’ll see this company’s trains in use all over the place…
The company we’re talking about is Siemens AG (NYSE: SI) – the largest manufacturer of high-speed trains in the world.
Its Valero high-speed train technology is the world’s most successful. Siemens currently has 160 trains in operation and hundreds more on order.
And for speed-hungry America, it’s the perfect fit…
“All Aboard!”
Siemens is pushing hard to get its Valero high-speed train technology widely adopted across the U.S. rail network. Interest is high, too. There are several high-speed rail projects in the works…
Critics argue that few people will ride the high-speed rails. But frankly, that’s a myopic view. They’re not counting on expensive gasoline, because cheap gas is a thing of the past.
As if further proof were needed, U.S. politicians simply need to look around the world to see what other countries are investing in transportation and energy infrastructure.
They need to roll up their sleeves and get the same things going here.
And while you wait, you might want to hop onboard the Siemens train and pick up a few shares.
Good investing,
David Fessler
Actually it's pretty accurate. So how about it, Willie? Want to bump up the cost of each ticket by $32?
No, that's a biased study, funded by sources who profit from increased oil consumption.
“It’s called high-speed passenger rail.”
Which are run NO WHERE except as government subsidized systems; which means, an unfettered organic private economy does not support them.
The statistics used for favoring them are “averages” and the longest travel time delays are where two factors are usually simultaneously present - inordinate, inefficient, excessive metro-centralization of work opportunities in the most densely populated areas AND the largest U.S. domestic uses of “mass transit” systems, attempting to offset the delays found there.
“High speed” rail will never be a “commuter” factor there.
It’s only hope is to maybe someday compete with regional air traffic, but it is not proven that it can do so there, economically, without subsidies.
Right now every country that is bragging about their “high speed rail” systems, are simply bragging about running train systems that in economic terms are no different than the now defunct “Concorde” airliners. Not really worth bragging about, when you consider the costs.
So the number that was put forward (without any backing) by Amtrak is a better number to believe, like they’re not biased?
Is that really your contention, Willie? Have you sunk to that level?
An independent study by CATO came to close to $100 per passenger in terms of subsidies... A claim of $8 doesn’t come close to penciling out.
So how about it, bump tickets by $32 each and we’ll increase the gas tax by $0.076 per gallon. You’ll find a lot more drivers, and a lot fewer train riders.
Oh, and these gas taxes go towards maintenance of the highways right now. Not new construction (which is funded with tolls), but maintenance. Amtrak isn’t even covering its maintenance costs, let alone any costs of expansion. You want to use more sleeper cars? Great - raise tickets even further to pay for the new capital costs.
Trains just don’t pencil out. They are more expensive and less convenient than the alternatives we have here in the US. About the only place they come close to working is the DC-to-Boston corridor where you have insanely high density and relatively close distances. The rest of the US? Not a chance.
Why should I pay $1200 for round trip tickets on a sleeper train and food along the way, and spend 3 days traveling from Seattle to LA and back, when I can fly there and back in 5 hours for a cost of $160? Doesn’t make sense.
Heck, I can take a Greyhound BUS from Seattle to LA in less time (29 hours versus 36 hours) and for 30% LESS cost! Yes, the BUS is faster AND cheaper than the train. You tell me how that makes sense.
So the train for $160 (coach seat, like the bus or plane; a roomlette is $573) and 36 hours, the bus for $114 and 29 hours, or a plane for $79 and 2.5 hours.
Hmmm... Not a tough choice there, eh?
an unfettered organic private economy does not support them.
That's pretty silly...
there's no such thing on the face of the entire planet.
Where do you think you're going to find "an unfettered organic private economy???"
Maybe Uranus???
Only because our goobermint will tax the crap out of it to pay for socialist wet dreams like this one.
ALL these systems require massive tax subsidies. NONE are self supporting.
Repeatedly !!
The worst part is, having seen the debacle of the downtown toy train, with its negative effects on hundreds of businesses, its constant wrecks, the immense subsidies to its ridership, ad nauseum, he still pimps for this crap !
An independent study by CATO came to close to $100 per passenger in terms of subsidies..
Cato isn't "independent"
Same as "The Pew Charitable Trusts" (tax shelter for heirs of the Sun Oil fortune), the libertarian Cato Institute is a sockpuppet for co-founder Charles Koch, the billionaire co-owner of Koch Industries, the largest privately held oil company in the U.S.
These are the questions that Willie loves to avoid...Actually, since now you're just throwing out outlandish figures to disrupt this thread,
And yet somehow Amtrak’s numbers are pristine and free of bias...
Willie, you’re a piece of work, I’ll give ya that!
They don't mind being crammed into small spaces with lots of stinky people they'd normally not associate with. Because they've been forced to live that way since feudal days. High speed rail is a really cool technoilogy that solves no real world problem. It will NEVER work in these united States outside of theme parks.America used to have very good rail service. The American highway system was is completely unsustainable and primarily a product of the cold war(it's easy to blow up train tracks, much harder to stop traffic w/ personal vehicles). It will be interesting to see what happens If personal mobility becomes untenable because of energy prices.
We live in a weird and changing world I, for one, have no idea what's going to happen.
Well then, Willie, how about answering the question:
For the $2 trillion that it’ll cost to deploy high speed rail in the US, how do you recommend we finance the system? How do we pay for $7.5 billion a month in interest payments?
If we see ridership skyrocket to 15 million riders a month (nearly half a billion trips every month, compared to the 2.4 million trips a month - an increase of nearly 19,000%) it’ll still cost $500 per month per rider in interest payments alone; not even paying down the principal. Is that an OK use of our money, Willie?
See, you dodge the questions of reality - the new deployment cost, the fact that trains are slow and limited in where they go (my own example - Seattle to LA - has Greyhound buses being cheaper AND faster than the train), the fact we spend $30+ per ticket per passenger per trip to get them on those trains.
Note that the ONLY criticism you have about the $32 subsidy per ticket is “the source takes oil financing!”. Nothing about the methodology, the facts of their research, the realities of the situation. No, just guilt by association. Kind of like extreme leftists love to do, Willie. Are you a closet communist, railing against the bourgeoisie because they happen to be rich? Saul Alinsky would be proud of your use of his rules!
You know, Obama was the number one recipient of Big Oil money in the 2008 election... ExxonMobil, BP, Chevron all sent their money to him (like a 3:1 advantage over the next recipient). He is now espousing trains. Perhaps trains are just an evil Democrat/Big Oil plot!
So come on Willie, how about answering questions about the reality of trains, not the pie-in-the-sky dreams you have?
Anything, anything at all?
Willie is a serious head-case; for instance, I've pointed out in the past that we have 300 years of $25/barrel oil within the US, the whole restriction to it is political willpower. Willie just plugs his ears and shouts his "peak oil!" mantra.
I guess anything to keep his fetish for trains alive...
For the $2 trillion that it’ll cost to deploy high speed rail in the US, how do you recommend we finance the system?I reject your outlandish $2 trillion figure.
Considering the plan is for 17,000 miles of high speed rail lines here in the US, well - do the math. That's close to $3 trillion, if we can keep the costs contained. I've been giving you the benefit of the doubt by estimating only $2 trillion.
Those are real world costs, Willie, costs based on actual go-forward plans by a nation with significant rail infrastructure, and a much less difficult geography as well. One that's not nearly as big and crazy as ours, where you have rails soaking in 125 degree heat and sun (desert SW) and rails in sub-zero freezes for months on end (upper Midwest/NE).
But never mind that, how much do you claim it will cost, Willie? Is it just unicorns and rainbows? What's the real cost estimate? Because you're awfully quiet when it comes to costs. Just claim everyone else is wrong and say nothing beyond.
So Willie, what is your number - how much will high speed rail cost? Because I'm using real-world costs, borne by projects in countries used to doing rail projects. What's your number, Willie, where did it come from? Did it come from Obama-on-high, delivered by a unicorn prancing down a rainbow? Is it just pennies a day?
What's the number Willie?
The point is that - remove all the government arranged revenue collections involving autos or airlines, completely privatize all of it and the economics of either one will not work out to much different a total consumer cost level than they do now. Most of what is collected now from “fuel taxes”, government tolls and transportation fees, would have their equivalents, and at equivalent or less levels from fully private operators. So, the consumer, on a per trip bases would not see much difference, only differences in who was collecting those payments and how.
But rail passengers have never seen or paid their real costs, in any combination of THEIR paying for them, not even in any rail system, high speed of not, anywhere in the world. So, in a fully privatized world, the “sticker shock” of rail transportation would find masses of customers flocking for the airplanes or their cars.
There is no rail system in the world today where what is collected from its users - in all the ways it might be collected - pay 100% just the operating costs of the system. They ALL are propped up by subsidies that are external to the system and its users - not so autos and airlines.
Remove the government and the net economics of autos and airlines won’t change much. Do so with rail lines and their users will leave in droves, except where geographic necessity makes it operationally needed.
The only currently viable COMPETITIVE markets for high speed rail, in the U.S., are limited to a few markets where population density and demand might possibly make them competitive against regional airplane routes, and then maybe still subsidized as well.
As it is now, in one of the highest capacity markets - the NY-Washington D.C. route - the round trip cost of the best rail service is greater than one can get a round trip air fare for, and so most people take the plane, because the door-to-door time-spent is less (with the take-off delays), or they take the bus because it is hugely cheaper and only slightly longer than the train (actually, the bus runs more “non-stop” than the train on that route). It is hard to see how much more costly “high speed” rail on that route will do better, unless it is subsidized even more than AMTRAK is today.
The UK is building a new high speed rail line between London (Heathrow, outside the city limits) and Edinburgh. It's 300 miles or so. And it's $50 BILLION to do this line. That's $166 MILLION per mile for high speed rail, in a country that already has extensive rail.
You must suffer some kind of reading comprehension disability.
The article you cite says that the project requires 1500 miles of track.
That's only $33 million per mile.
Furthermore, nobody's proposing 17000 miles of "state of the art" high-speed technology. The designated high-speed corridors total much less total mileage than that. Many of the projects simply propose upgrading existing Amtrak routes and eliminating bottlenecks for far less than the $33 million/mile new construction costs.
Your greatly exagerated cost estimates have no credibility.
The point is that - remove all the government arranged revenue collections involving autos or airlines, completely privatize all of it and the economics of either one will not work out to much different a total consumer cost level than they do now.
I find such utopian "privatization" fantasies to be unrealistic daydreams unworthy of consideration. There has never been, and there will never be, a modern industrialized nation whose government is not intimately involved with the development of its transportation infrastructure.
Total privatization and elimination of government is ridiculous.
The point is not the politics of the question, but the actual economics of alternative modes of transportation, when you strip the politics out of it.
Actually, from an economic standpoint, a competitive economics standpoint, there is no greater Utopian pipe dream than "high speed rail" systems, at today's stage of scientific development.
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