Packed trains at rush hour are a good thing. Most cities with rail systems would need to double or more their freeway lane-miles to get the same throughput.
What's cheaper and more aestehtically pleasing? 20+ new lanes of expressway into a city (with a concomittant increase in parking lots and automobile servicing businesses), or a basic rail system to handle the peak load?
Depends on licensing fee collections and various vehicle-related taxes. In the 2000, for example, total revenues from user fees, licensing, vehicle related taxes, and, where the roads are tollways, toll collections totalled $101.5 billion. Total construction and maintanence costs spent on them were $124 billion. Made up about 82% of its costs in various fees.
By comparison, light rail brought in $0.2 billion in fares and user fees but cost $1.8 billion, or 9 times as much, to operate. Rail made back only 11% of its costs.
Packed trains at rush hour are a good thing.
Not necessarily, and I say that having lived in cities with trains and used them frequently. They do carry volume, but at high costs - the cost of tax subsidy for their operation and the cost of the space the above-ground ones occupy, which often consumes space that could easily and more effectively be turned into two or more freeway lanes.
Most cities with rail systems would need to double or more their freeway lane-miles to get the same throughput.
Do you have statistical evidence of this? The numbers I have seen indicate that freeways are significantly more efficient uses of space.
What's cheaper and more aestehtically pleasing? 20+ new lanes of expressway into a city (with a concomittant increase in parking lots and automobile servicing businesses), or a basic rail system to handle the peak load?
I don't know about you, but I'll vote for the freeway any day over a dirty grafitti-covered train car. Educate them of the cost inefficiency of rail, and most people would probably agree with me.