Being a huge fan of the railroads ever since I was 4, I can't tell you how much this new interest in the rials has me excited. I knew that if the price of oil ever really jumped (which it did), folks would be lined-up at the stations in hordes. I am just sad that it took a ecnomic kick in the pants to get Americans looking at rail again. People ask why we don't ride the rails like the Europeans? Several reasons, actually. FIrst, gas has always been hig in Europe. When we lied in Germany in the 70's, gas was already over a dollar. They didn't subsidize their highways like we did. So the incentie to ride was always stronger than in the states. Many people forget that it was actually the US that pioneered high-speed trains. The Limiteds were carreening across the landscape at speeds over 100! (Not bad for a steam engine). But as many people have pointed-out, we pulled-up the tracks, forced our passenger trains to wait for heay freights to lumber by. While in Europe, they run on dedicated welded rails, nice and smooth. The other thing is, Europe is a lot smaller than the US. Germany is about the size of Washington & Oregon together, France is a touch bigger. So flying in the US is and was a lot faster and attractive. And then there is the political landscape. Most European countries were quasi-socialist, so the government could do more in the name of the common good. And they didn't hae powerful lobying groups like GM, Standard Oil and Firestone driving the construction of the highways and steering money away from public transport and into the coffers of local highway departments (not to mention every road construction comapny, cement company, bus company, ect. across the country). So, this sudden surge in oil prices may have a silver lining after all. Not just because people will ride less or because I just love trains, but because America will remember that she has a forgotten asset lying in the backuard. Just waiting to be reborn. Railroads built this country, they can help build her back up.
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Riding the Rails
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Which U.S. routes could see the most immediate improvement.
If you look at Chicago to Detroit ... it's a complex railroad, but for less than a billion dollars, you could make that a high-speed passenger corridor. Some of the lines around Chicago are practically ready to go to support 110-miles-per-our travel. We'd like to look south of Washington, heading toward Richmond. In Florida, many of the routes are the right distance for a lot of improvement.
High costs have been a strong deterrent to the service. Will increased ridership translate to changes in ticket prices?
Well, this year, we're going to grow more than 10 percent in ridership. We're near sell-out conditions on some of the trains, like on the Northeast Corridor [between Boston and Washington]. Changes in ticket prices is really a public-policy question that the taxpayers and the Congress need to decide. But we're working hard on increasing efficiency.
Where oil is now, costs are rising. Where's the future of American passenger rail travel?
There is a growing consensus that we have to increase our overall ability and capacity for passenger rail. There's plenty of bipartisan support for that in the government. I think the system will grow substantially. We're already growing incrementally.
Speed is certainly factor in how people choose to get around. The top American trains go 150mph. European trains top 200.
Those trains run on dedicated right-of-ways reserved just for them. We'd love to be the TGV if we had a spare hundred billion dollars to create separate right-of-ways and spend the next 20 years in court on eminent-domain proceedings to build out in some of the most densely populated areas. I believe that there will eventually be high speed in the country like that, but it'll probably start farther west where they'll be less trouble putting in dedicated routes.
© 2008
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