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How do you know they are inflated, and not in line with what privateers would charge for the same service?
I dont....but what I do know is that if you want rail to be viable..then it needs to be easier, more convient, faster, and cheaper...which is is notr any of those
I dont....but what I do know is that if you want rail to be viable..then it needs to be easier, more convient, faster, and cheaper...which is is notr any of those
That is why I see Europeans (specifically, the Germans and the French) and the Japanese, vying for contracts in countries choosing to move on. Americans? They're lost, still believing and taking oil for savior.
or better yet make them (all commercial roads) toll roads...you use it , you pay for it
The transportation "playing field" has to be leveled somehow.
- Privatize it all
- Spend a few billion less on roads/highways and use that to fund alternate forms of transportation, or
- Just spend more on alternate forms of transportation, since so many people would throw a hissy-fit if less money was spent on their roads.
But don't act like rail is evil because it doesn't pay for itself. (even though it comes closer to paying for itself than the interstate does--80%+/- vs. 50%+/-)
Actually, the interstate transportation system, including roads, airports, trains, is all the responsibility of Congress according to the Constitution. The Constitution only mentions interstate roads, but the others were included in later Supreme Court decisions.
Modern locomotives use electric generators for their tractive power. Only the generators are run with fuel oil. This allows a train to pull hundreds of tons more weight than an airplane, thousands more than a truck, and is cheaper than all of them by hundreds of times. This is why the rail freight industry continues to thrive against faster competition, using old rail beds that prohibit the most effective speeds, which further boost the economy of the rails.
My earlier post that mentioned the 70mph average of a UP Yellowstone locomotive was using 100 year old technology. That same route, with modernized rail beds and modern locomotives could easily travel at 90-100 mph average, and that would not require a super-train's 200 mph speeds and technology. At 100 mph, a passenger could be 1/3 of the way to Boise while an airline passenger is still waiting for his flight to arrive and be cleared through the DHS maze. Even with a full array of Homeland Security requirements, a passenger train will never fall out of the sky- that alone adds a lot to the extended wait times at all airports now.
And since a train car can be larger than an airliner's cabin, a modern train car could easily be more comfortable without needing to be crowded for maximum efficiency and costs. Unlike airplanes, rail cars can be added or removed depending on passenger demand.
The cost of train travel does not need to be expensive; once the investment of the line building is done, the line lasts with much less need of repair for a much longer time. Railroads do not need to constantly upgrade their fleets as airlines do.
Another advantage of re-building America's rail system is it would make air travel more efficient as well. While there would be fewer passengers, the airlines would no longer have to sacrifice everything that is now becoming an added-on charge to be marginally profitable, and terminal delays due to airplane jams would become a thing of the past.
Interstate roads would also become cheaper to maintain, as there would be a decrease in traffic, especially heavy truck traffic which is a major cause of road deterioration. The trucking industry would still do fine, as the trucks would become more directed to the traffic that makes them the most profitable.
If a modern rail system was built, UPS, FedEx and other centralized carriers would also profit by running their own high-speed express trains on the same tracks. There would be better delivery to secondary terminals that could serve smaller cities and surrounding rural areas, with much less wear and tear on their delivery trucks.
As has been mentioned, we pay for it all one way or the other. Our continued reliance on oil is only going to make what we have now more expensive and shakier in security for filling our present needs with every passing year. The rest of the world is fast approaching the place we are now, where almost everyone owns a car, and there is nothing we can do to limit the growing international demand for oil.
We can either continue to be asleep and continue to catch it in the shorts for our short-sightedness, or we can become the bold risk takers our ancestors were and pull America out of it's present doldrums.
Every great venture, from the building of the transcontinental railroad to the creation of modern air travel to the creation of the Interstate highway system has been done as a joint enterprise between the government and private industry.
We showed the world how to do it right- every one of them proved to be profitable, and each made America's transportation faster and better than the last. I hope we haven't forgotten those obvious lessons our forefathers taught us, and I hope we still have the guts and fortitude they had to build the best 21st Century system the world will see.
That's what we used to do all the time before we turned into a nation of price whiners. Every great venture is expensive. None are done on the cheap, and this is an area where nothing should be cheap.
I hope we never become a nation of sniveling malcontents, but I fear we're headed in that direction.
Congress just scrapped a bill that would begin the development of HSR. This is a bad thing. Our political leaders are not visionaries. They are just concerned about keeping the status quo.
I blame voters, for not choosing the right people to represent them.
Congress just scrapped a bill that would begin the development of HSR. This is a bad thing. Our political leaders are not visionaries. They are just concerned about keeping the status quo.
Maybe they scrapped the bill because the country is already broke and HSR is extremely expensive to build...
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