Which city is most likely to start work on a substantial metro rail system in the 2020's?
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I guess we can also ask do Highways make money?
We in the US spend a lot more in that type of Infrastructure than any current Rail system.
I’m not a pro highway person at all. But once you factor the two biggest reasons for highways at least in Texas outside of commuting. You will realize they are extremely profitable.
1. Transportation for the military. Texas has a bunch of bases and in the case of an invasion (never going to happen in my lifetime at least) or some sort of crisis, it can move a large volume of people and specifically military vehicles in and out which is gonna benefit all Americans in a way that doesn’t affect their pockets at all.
2. The far more pressing goal though is freight. The Interstate system from what I understand are the lungs of the U.S economy and a significant portion amount of vehicles on highways in Texas are 18 wheelers. Depending on the highway some routes the economic impact of large trucks is just as important or nearing the importance of commuters. There is a strong economic impact from having the most robust and easy to circumnavigate interstate system of all countries worldwide.
Why does transit have to make money? It's a public service, not a for profit business.
It's not about making a profit; certainly that's not realistic in the vast majority of cases.
But fare collection levels still matter, and they're still down significantly across the board since COVID. Revenue is still critical for all public transit agencies, even if it's not fully recouping public investments.
The question is not whether transit should make money. The question is whether a given city can afford to operate their system, much less expand it. If the money's not there, then they can't operate the system, no matter how much of a social good it may be.
If the money's not there it's because the government hasn't made it a priority. That's the real problem that needs to change.
Quote:
Originally Posted by NigerianNightmare
I’m not a pro highway person at all. But once you factor the two biggest reasons for highways at least in Texas outside of commuting. You will realize they are extremely profitable.
1. Transportation for the military. Texas has a bunch of bases and in the case of an invasion (never going to happen in my lifetime at least) or some sort of crisis, it can move a large volume of people and specifically military vehicles in and out which is gonna benefit all Americans in a way that doesn’t affect their pockets at all.
2. The far more pressing goal though is freight. The Interstate system from what I understand are the lungs of the U.S economy and a significant portion amount of vehicles on highways in Texas are 18 wheelers. Depending on the highway some routes the economic impact of large trucks is just as important or nearing the importance of commuters. There is a strong economic impact from having the most robust and easy to circumnavigate interstate system of all countries worldwide.
The US moves a ton of freight by rail also. It's cheaper and more fuel efficient as well. Obviously interstate highways are important for freight, but most of the bypasses, spurs, and loops are just unnecessary and lead to more traffic and pollution.
The question is not whether transit should make money. The question is whether a given city can afford to operate their system, much less expand it. If the money's not there, then they can't operate the system, no matter how much of a social good it may be.
But we never ask this question when it comes to roads and car infrastructure. It seems to be giving in to car dependent talking points rather than supporting public transit.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Duderino
It's not about making a profit; certainly that's not realistic in the vast majority of cases.
But fare collection levels still matter, and they're still down significantly across the board since COVID. Revenue is still critical for all public transit agencies, even if it's not fully recouping public investments.
Why is fare collection critical? We don't collect fares to utilize air traffic controllers. I'm lost as to why a government who's goal it is to provide services, needs to recuperate an insufficient amount of fares when the entire purpose is to simply move people around. Public transit agencies aren't private corporations. There are no shareholders. Acting as if there's some fiduciary responsibility to make money seems completely antithetical to transit advocacy.
If the money's not there it's because the government hasn't made it a priority. That's the real problem that needs to change.
The US moves a ton of freight by rail also. It's cheaper and more fuel efficient as well. Obviously interstate highways are important for freight, but most of the bypasses, spurs, and loops are just unnecessary and lead to more traffic and pollution.
I live in coastal southern New England. I see pretty much zero long haul freight in the interstate highway that passes through my town. I'm always astounded when I drive cross country with the volume of long haul truck traffic. You would think it would be more efficient to use containers and trains.
I'm impatiently waiting for commuter rail to Boston. It was scheduled to go into service by the end of the year and it's slipped to some top secret date in mid-2024.
I live in coastal southern New England. I see pretty much zero long haul freight in the interstate highway that passes through my town. I'm always astounded when I drive cross country with the volume of long haul truck traffic. You would think it would be more efficient to use containers and trains.
I'm impatiently waiting for commuter rail to Boston. It was scheduled to go into service by the end of the year and it's slipped to some top secret date in mid-2024.
Rhode Island, or Connecticut?
The most heavily traveled freeway route between Boston and New York heads well inland from the coast: Massachusetts Turnpike to I-84 through Hartford and Waterbury, then I-684 south once in New York State. I imaging most of the highway freight uses it as well, and there's nowhere near as much of it being generated in Providence or New Haven.
I live in coastal southern New England. I see pretty much zero long haul freight in the interstate highway that passes through my town. I'm always astounded when I drive cross country with the volume of long haul truck traffic. You would think it would be more efficient to use containers and trains.
I recently drove across the country for the first time in years and was amazed by the volume of rail freight traffic paralleling I40 from Barstow, CA to Texas. The rail has always been there but when I drove that route intermittently from 1995-2005 there was nowhere remotely close to the volume of freight being moved by rail as today.
Maybe in your area the freight gets transferred to trucks for final delivery.
I recently drove across the country for the first time in years and was amazed by the volume of rail freight traffic paralleling I40 from Barstow, CA to Texas. The rail has always been there but when I drove that route intermittently from 1995-2005 there was nowhere remotely close to the volume of freight being moved by rail as today.
Maybe in your area the freight gets transferred to trucks for final delivery.
Unless I'm very much mistaken, one type of freight moves primarily by train and the other travels mostly by truck.
Many of the trains you see are "unit trains" that carry huge amounts of bulk products, most of those commodities like oil, coal, or grain. Automobiles travel on unit trains as well.
Most of the domestic mixed freight — the finished goods that you see on your store shelves, prepared and fresh foods that can travel long distances without spoiling (with or without refrigeration), just about anything you order online — travels by truck. (I know an older fellow to decided to make truck driving his second career; he spends most of his time ferrying food over distances of 500 to 1,500 miles.)
Where the two categories overlap are the long trains that have flat cars with truck trailers or shipping containers on them. (The railroads used to call this category of service "piggyback.") These take advantage of the strengths of both methods: the trains can move huge quantities of cargo over long distances more efficiently than trucks can, while trucks are the best choice for making deliveries to multiple points that don't need large volumes of items. I'll wager that if the item you bought didn't have to cross the Mississippi on its journey to you (and even if it did, if both you (or the store where you bought it) and the factory or distribution center are close enough to it), it made the entire journey by truck. But if you're buying tomatoes grown in Florida or California in the off-season and you live in Massachusetts, chances are those tomatoes spent a good bit of their trip aboard "TOFC" ("trailer on flat car") trains. So do most of the goods that travel on those huge cargo ships; the shipping containers are loaded onto double-stack flat cars at the port, then placed onto trailer chassis when they reach the end of their train trip. (Long trains of these containers get broken up into shorter ones, or switched to other long trains headed where they ultimately need to go, in railroad classification yards.)
Some of you may also remember a unit train that carried a single perishable good: Tropicana orange juice. The company featured the "juice train," whose cars all bore the Tropicana logo and character, in its advertising.
Honestly none of them... unfortunately. Our system of building public transit in the US is just ludicrously expensive for political reasons.
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