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Old 03-11-2024, 09:11 PM
46H
 
1,650 posts, read 1,398,714 times
Reputation: 3615

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Quote:
Originally Posted by cheech14 View Post
You vastly underestimate your driving costs.
Nope
Quote:
Originally Posted by cheech14 View Post
It's not just gas. Every time you drive, your car's value is depreciating.
No. A couple trips a month from Cleveland to Columbus does zero to the value of a car over the lifetime of a car. Highway driving is the easiest use of a car.
Quote:
Originally Posted by cheech14 View Post
Your tires are being degraded, your oil is being used, all of which have to eventually be replaced.
Tires can last 50k miles. Oil changes are up to 7500-10,000 miles now.
Quote:
Originally Posted by cheech14 View Post
Your car use contributes to road and highway maintenance necessities, which do cost you in the long run.
Heavy trucks do 90% of the damage to highways. Passenger cars contribute almost nothing to road damage.
Quote:
Originally Posted by cheech14 View Post
Let's also not forget about insurance costs.
We pay a price for insurance whether we use the car or it sits in the driveway. Insurance is a sunk cost. Since we need a car to live in most of Ohio, we have to have car insurance. The more miles we drive, the cheaper the car insurance gets per mile.

Quote:
Originally Posted by cheech14 View Post
And you didn't even bother to factor in the price of parking.
Is parking at the choo-choo stations going to be free? What if the final destination is my mom's house and driveway? I know for a fact that parking at my mom's house is free.
Quote:
Originally Posted by cheech14 View Post
In cities, that's certainly not going to be free in most cases, and "free parking" is not actually free to begin with. It gets subsidized by taxpayers- assuming you are one of them.
You are going to bring up the pretend calculations about "subsidized" free parking in a discussion about choo-choos? Every passenger train in the USA is subsidized.

Quote:
Originally Posted by cheech14 View Post
All of that adds up over time, so you can't just say "$35 in gas" as if that's the only cost of your trips. Estimates of the true cost of driving only (no parking included) range from $0.25-$0.35 per mile, meaning the 223-mile trip between Cincinnati and Cleveland will actually run you from about $56 to $78. This price also assumes a $3/gallon price of gas and a relatively high gas mileage standard for your car. Any small changes will cost you even more. Once you factor in parking and other incidentals, your trip really isn't all that different in price than rail.
The cheapest Amtrak coach round trip rail ticket between Boston Back Bay to NYPenn (187 miles) is $239.

How much will Cinci to Cleveland cost? How much does it cost to get to the train station in Cinci? How much does it cost to get from the train station in Cleveland to your final destination? How much time will all these journey legs and waiting add to your trip? If you add another person on the train, the train price will almost double - unlike a car where if you add another person your cost is cut in half.

There is a ton of slack time that has to be built into a train trip. A car will be cheaper and take less time and, in the business world, time is money.

At these distances and costs, there will never be enough drivers convinced to use rail.

FYI - despite the term using choo-choo, I am not a rail hater, just a rail realist.
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Old 03-11-2024, 10:15 PM
 
1,212 posts, read 501,942 times
Reputation: 1437
Quote:
Originally Posted by cheech14 View Post
We can't do it right because a bunch of Boomers who childishly refer to rail transit as a "choo choo" still make dishonest arguments about it and its effectiveness.
Interesting pejorative. You folks have an entire dictionary of them.
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Old 03-11-2024, 10:28 PM
 
1,212 posts, read 501,942 times
Reputation: 1437
Quote:
Originally Posted by JR_C View Post
I don't know if it was you or one of the other anti-train people, but one of you seemed pretty sure that the future of Ohio's expanded rail service depended on the political whims of the current elected officials? So, doesn't that equate to the people posting here?
People are not anti train, some just explain that it's wasteful government spending. I like trains, and I have no interest riding one in Ohio. A bullet train in Japan sure. Amtrak is spending 2 million to "study" this. And maybe by 2035 it happens.
https://media.amtrak.com/wp-content/...ble-Slides.pdf
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Old 03-12-2024, 01:53 AM
 
1,099 posts, read 1,143,440 times
Reputation: 883
Quote:
Originally Posted by 46H View Post
Nope

No. A couple trips a month from Cleveland to Columbus does zero to the value of a car over the lifetime of a car. Highway driving is the easiest use of a car.

Tires can last 50k miles. Oil changes are up to 7500-10,000 miles now.

Heavy trucks do 90% of the damage to highways. Passenger cars contribute almost nothing to road damage.
Not to mention that cars last 20 or 30 years these days and can easily go 250,000 MI without a sweat. I'm still driving a 2004 by choice, not because I can't afford a new one. There's nothing really I like out there and the car runs perfectly fine. Residual value doesn't matter to me.

When it comes to damage to the roadways, all you have to do is take a look at the average residential street and compare it to the highways. No truck traffic on local streets and they are generally in pretty good shape.
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Old 03-12-2024, 01:55 AM
 
1,099 posts, read 1,143,440 times
Reputation: 883
Quote:
Originally Posted by Karl Lagos View Post
People are not anti train, some just explain that it's wasteful government spending. I like trains, and I have no interest riding one in Ohio. A bullet train in Japan sure. Amtrak is spending 2 million to "study" this. And maybe by 2035 it happens.
https://media.amtrak.com/wp-content/...ble-Slides.pdf
They can't even equal the time spent in a car let alone best it. They are insane if they think hordes of people are going to take 9 hour train rides from Cincinnati to Chicago.
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Old 03-12-2024, 06:52 AM
 
Location: Youngstown, Oh.
5,509 posts, read 9,486,726 times
Reputation: 5616
Quote:
Originally Posted by Karl Lagos View Post
People are not anti train, some just explain that it's wasteful government spending. I like trains, and I have no interest riding one in Ohio. A bullet train in Japan sure. Amtrak is spending 2 million to "study" this. And maybe by 2035 it happens.
https://media.amtrak.com/wp-content/...ble-Slides.pdf
And here's where I think the root of the problem is. You seem to feel that, because you're not interested, no one will be. But I have no problem believing that half a million people will use this each year.

I'm only 47, but I've seen a lot of success stories that started out with a lot of people claiming they would be a failure and were a waste of money because those people couldn't see that their lack of interest wasn't everyone's lack of interest.
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Old 03-12-2024, 07:13 AM
 
21,884 posts, read 12,936,608 times
Reputation: 36894
Quote:
Originally Posted by PerryMason614 View Post
They can't even equal the time spent in a car let alone best it. They are insane if they think hordes of people are going to take 9 hour train rides from Cincinnati to Chicago.
Maybe not young working people or families on a schedule, but I'll bet "hordes" of retirees would love it. We have both the money and time to spend on such a trip and often don't want to drive or even ride long hours in a car for one reason or another. Some entrepreneurs should start organizing senior group travel by Amtrak rather than charter bus!
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Old 03-12-2024, 07:50 AM
 
4,516 posts, read 5,090,184 times
Reputation: 4834
Quote:
Originally Posted by otterhere View Post
Maybe not young working people or families on a schedule, but I'll bet "hordes" of retirees would love it. We have both the money and time to spend on such a trip and often don't want to drive or even ride long hours in a car for one reason or another. Some entrepreneurs should start organizing senior group travel by Amtrak rather than charter bus!
I thought this thread was about discussing possible new Amtrak routes for Ohio (finally), which seems a strong possibility and is very promising. Unfortunately, it has dissolved into a rail-hating/rail justifying thread. Leave the backward, rail-hating troglodytes and let them establish their own thread -- best suited for politics section -- rather than allowing them to poison this (what should be) positive thread. We have no reason to justify increasing passenger rail and all of its concomitant benefits to these people and let's keep this from devolving into a trolling thread, which it is at the moment.
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Old 03-12-2024, 08:38 AM
 
1,212 posts, read 501,942 times
Reputation: 1437
Quote:
Originally Posted by JR_C View Post
And here's where I think the root of the problem is. You seem to feel that, because you're not interested, no one will be. But I have no problem believing that half a million people will use this each year.

I'm only 47, but I've seen a lot of success stories that started out with a lot of people claiming they would be a failure and were a waste of money because those people couldn't see that their lack of interest wasn't everyone's lack of interest.
Nope not about me. I have already posted that from Cincy to Chicago they get a whopping 8K a year. There is no demand between Cincy and Cleveland. If there was there would at least 1 direct flight. There's 10 daily direct flights between Cincy and Chicago. Cbus is too close to both Cincy and Cleveland. You might get some weekend folks and families that use it to go to Cincy and Cleveland for Reds/Guardians games.

I also predicted what would happen with the Cincy streetcar thing when it was in the planning stages. 1) eventually it would be free, 2) The bulk of the ridership would be in the spring/summer when folks from the suburbs drive to downtown, park at the Banks, then jump on the streetcar and ride around like it's Disneyland.
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Old 03-12-2024, 09:04 AM
 
Location: Elsewhere
88,509 posts, read 84,688,123 times
Reputation: 114946
Quote:
Originally Posted by cheech14 View Post
We can't do it right because a bunch of Boomers who childishly refer to rail transit as a "choo choo" still make dishonest arguments about it and its effectiveness.
It seems that "bunch" is exactly one.

Hyperbole and exaggeration just make you sound ignorant. Don't do it.

This Boomer is for more rail transit.
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