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Riding the Rails
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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Member Comments
Posted By: bfredline @ 07/31/2008 10:15:27 AM
Comment: 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.
Posted By: Skallywag @ 07/24/2008 10:36:35 AM
Comment: First, this country needs mass transit in the major population areas. I'd give up my drive to work in a hearbeat if we even had a transit system that didn't take 3 hours to get me to work. History shows us that auto manufacturers loved the idea of killing public transportation so they could sell more cars. They lobbied hard for more federal highway money, less rail money. Our inter-city trian system is so limited that passenger trains use the same tracks as freight. In europe, much of the system is designed to be seperate where ever possible, Thus they have a better rail system. The Europeans also never took the attitude of "it's my car, I'll drive it everywhere." They usually walk (overall they are more physically fit than Americans). take the bus or train for getting around. Cars are a luxury in Europe; not so much for economic reasons (but Europeans would rather spend part of a years worth of car payments on a really nice vacation) as for space limitations. Our public transportation system needs to take a real close look at how the Europeans did it - not just the engineering, but the economics and the psycology of getting people to ride. We need to change our attitude towards cars. No more, I have it, I'll use it,. We should take the attitude of "I'll walk or take the train instead.." It's better for us individually and as a society.
Posted By: KennyF @ 07/23/2008 3:33:03 PM
Comment: I agree a mass transit system has to be expanded, but I don't see how we can avoid a big public investment. A tax exemption large enough to attract private companies would require so much revenue leaving the treasure (thru tax grants, rebates and the like) it would be the same as a tax increase to pay for a publicly developed system.
I agree with lrh1942, you have to slant the system to make people keep riding the rails or, at the first temporary drop in energy cost will suck all the people out of the rail system. Conservative will b*tch about a subsidized ticket (paying $30 to go 400 miles destroys a $400 plane ticket) but I consider the alternative to be a national security issue, just the way the interstate highway system was pitched to the country in the 1950's.
We need a rail system so badly, that it is worth the extra tax bite.