I love riding the train and I think passenger rail should come back, but it has to be commercially feasible (and there are places where it can be). That is, it has to go from one place to another where enough people actually want or need to go, and it has to have enough commercial potential to attract private investment as well.
While people pay for their own individual cars, all our highways, bridges and other automobile infrastructure are paid for by our tax dollars, at one level or another. So I don’t see why it’s worse for this to be the case with trains. There are certainly rail projects that are just pork, but there are also boondoggle roads and bridges to nowhere, built simply to provide pork for a constituency. Both highways and railroads have got to have a real reason for being, and not just as spending projects.
Also, I don’t see why people believe trains and cars are mutually exclusive. Cars and airlines coexist perfectly well, and trains are simply another part of our transportation system, especially now that air travel has become so overloaded and cumbersome. People can use trains for distance travel (and rent a car when they get where they are going, just as air travellers do) or use them to travel into densely populated areas (and take a taxi from the station to their destination, the way people do in New York or most big cities). I don’t see why it’s an either/or.
Here is the main fact: Passenger Rail in America is dead..
What good are passenger trains if they go through areas hundreds of miles away from where you live?
I live on the Front Range, and we have a govt-subsidized bus service between Denver and Colorado Springs that has very few customers, Someone calculated that it would be cheaper just to buy a car for each of the regular passengers than to continue the service.
A year ago the CS Gazette had an article about a Denver panhandler who bought a daily bus ticket to take him from liberal Denver to the very conservative town of Monument, because the conservatives in Monument were a lot more “liberal” with their cash that the liberals in Denver.
Supposedly by the so-called highway trust fund funded by fuel taxes. IE. That means the people who use them are the ones who pay for them. This is NOT the case for trains. People who never set foot on one are being forced to pay for them.
So I don’t see why it’s worse for this to be the case with trains
If you don't see the difference between using tax dollars for something that's used by 95% of the population and paid for by those who use it contrasted with something that is used by 1/100th of a percent of the population yet paid for by those who don't use it, then I don't think anything anyone says here will enlighten you.
People can use trains for distance travel (and rent a car when they get where they are going, just as air travellers do)
Wrong. Last time I looked there were no car rental agencies or significant parking at train stations. To compare trains to air travel is especially dishonest since you can usually go by car faster than you can by train. Particularly when you factor in all of the stops that trains make for no apparent reason. So let me see.
While I think a true self-supporting train system might work the way you envision, I’m just not sure it is feasible in the US.
I remember being quite impressed with the public transport systems in Europe. You could take a bus from your home to the train station, ride the train, then take another bus to your destination. The busses and trains always seemed to be well filled (if not outright packed). But then, in France and England, where I had those experiences, there are no vast regions of little or no population such as we have in the US. Every mile of track costs a certain amount to maintain; while it may be cost effective to run a train between major towns/cities that are maybe 50 miles apart, when the towns/cities are hundreds of miles apart, the cost rises significantly.
Can you imagine the mess, if all the people who currently drive, suddenly had to start taking a train to commute or travel?
For one, there is no way that the rail/train system could handle the load. There would be waiting lines and lists spanning weeks, even months ahead.
They’ve brought the commuter rail to Austin, TX this year. Ha, what a freakin’ joke. No one wanted it but Gov. Perry forced it on us. It rides along side the highway so you can see inside the cars... make that the very empty cars. Perry also brought us the toll road last year. Personally, I can’t see it’s helped anything. Some like it but there’s no where I need to go that I can’t skirt around it with equal drive time and save my $$$.
>While people pay for their own individual cars, all our highways, bridges and other automobile infrastructure are paid for by our tax dollars, at one level or another. So I don’t see why it’s worse for this to be the case with trains. There are certainly rail projects that are just pork, but there are also boondoggle roads and bridges to nowhere, built simply to provide pork for a constituency. Both highways and railroads have got to have a real reason for being, and not just as spending projects.
The money for federal highway projects comes from the gasoline tax. Hence the drivers are paying for the roads and infrastructure they use (we don’t need to get into the disproportionate wear and tear inflicted by commercial trucks, suffice it to say they get subsidized).
The passenger rail system (Amtrak) is heavily subsidized by people who don’t use the system at all. That money comes from the general fund, and even if you’ve never seen an Amtrak train in your life, you still pay.
How ‘bout car service?
You show up at the train station, hand the keys to a valet, wait an hour in a lounge at the station, then board a comfortable, elegant train. You ride for hours or even days, get to the destination, wait for an hour in a lounge at the station, walk out and the valet has your car waiting.
If its no more expensive than a plane ticked, I’d be all over it...