4 ms·

I never understand this line of thought. We invest in infrastructure to enable people to move between places, commune with one another, and trade goods. We've i

I never understand this line of thought. We invest in infrastructure to enable people to move between places, commune with one another, and trade goods. We've invested a tremendous amount in roads. Why do we expect other things like the USPS, Amtrak, etc. to generate profits when they're an expenditure in infrastructure?

tryptophan 6y ago
The argument goes that if nobody is willing to pay the price for something(passenger rail), and chooses another alternative(driving), then it means that the service is not worth having and subsiding it would just be a waste of taxpayer money. Of course its not that simple, because driving is subsidized(I would prefer every road to be a toll road and get rid of the general taxes that used to go to roads)...but you get the point.
- foota 6y ago
  I mean, the issue is I can't choose to pay for quality rail service because it doesn't exist here. I can't take HSR from e.g., Boston to NYC, SF to LA, or Seattle to Portland/Vancouver. These are all trips I would have gladly made at 100-400 dollar ticket prices in the last year.
  - thu2111 6y ago
    Yes but you're exceptionally rare, and might discover you're wrong about your preferences if someone were to take the big gamble of building such a service. Also the whole era of passenger rail may have been killed off by lockdowns. Train services are basically always hugely subsidised by governments. They could not survive against cars, buses and trucks if they weren't. The subsidies in Switzerland are eye-wateringly high for example. It's effectively a form of government planning designed to boost city/worker density as governments and others believe offices full of workers yields large benefits, and trains are the highest density/capacity form of passenger transport by far. So if you want ultra-dense urban cores you need a lot of trains. But do we actually need those? Governments sure haven't acted like it this year. Now big corps are eyeing their expensive city centre HQs and wondering if the real estate is worth it, the workers are seeing how much they save when they aren't being forced to pay for the very expensive rail tickets, the managers are seeing that many (but not all) workers are happier without the time sucking, cattle-car commutes ... and governments are basically having to give up on the fiction that rail companies were private in order to keep them from going completely bust. But how long can that be sustained, if travel patterns have been permanently altered? No dense urban cores = few commuters paying business rates for rush hour travel = even worse economics for trains.
- hansvm 6y ago
  > I would prefer every road to be a toll road and get rid of the general taxes that used to go to roads Off-topic I know, but I'd only like to see this if the tolls were reasonable with respect to the maintenance of the affected stretches of road. $0.50 per car per mile more than pays off a typical 4-lane interstate in a year, yet tolls are often an order of magnitude larger and drawn out for 20+ years.
  - ashtonkem 6y ago
    A fair toll road system would basically ban semi trucks, since they’re the ones that do the overwhelming majority of the damage.
    - hansvm 6y ago
      That's an interesting idea. I wonder how workable it would be to automate tolling based on axle weight.
      - greenpresident 6y ago
        Germany has a toll system for trucks only: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LKW-Maut https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LKW-Maut From Wikipedia: > Germany's LKW-Maut is a toll for goods vehicles based on the distance driven in kilometres, the emission category of the vehicle and the number of axles. It's meant to compensate some of these damages caused by high weight. If I remember correctly, road damage scales at a power of four of axle weight. It's billed semi-automatically (wireless stations along the road + device in the truck) and you don't even notice it as a normal driver.
        majewsky 6y ago
        Legal side note: Germany also has a vehicle tax that roughly scales with the size of the vehicle. But this only applies to vehicles registered in Germany. Because of the European Single Market, a lot of trucks running on German highways are registered in foreign countries (esp. Eastern Europe since drivers from those countries draw smaller salaries). The toll was enacted specifically to ensure that those foreign trucks contribute towards road maintenance as well. It does apply to German trucks, too, because the EU has rules against laws that discriminate against foreign EU citizens.
rootusrootus 6y ago
It's hard to justify investing in rail. At best, in most parts of the US it is slower, more expensive, and less convenient. There are some edge cases that it makes real sense for, but everywhere else is better served by cars and airplanes.
- Naac 6y ago
  >> It's hard to justify investing in rail. At best, in most parts of the US it is slower, more expensive, and less convenient But that's because we haven't invested in it! Before the 1960s most roads in the US were also terrible, so by that logic we shouldn't have invested in the Highway/Freeway Interstate system.
  - ethbr0 6y ago
    Seriously. Here's the Amtrak network: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/f6/Amtrak_network_map_2016.png/1200px-Amtrak_network_map_2016.png https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/f6/Am... Here's the US freight rail network: https://i.imgur.com/4TYsU_d.webp?maxwidth=1024&fidelity=medium https://i.imgur.com/4TYsU_d.webp?maxwidth=1024&fidelity=medi... You can't tell me we can't do better.
    - rootusrootus 6y ago
      We could definitely have a beautiful, big, fast train network. But most people still wouldn't use it.
      - ashtonkem 6y ago
        Evidence from Europe and Asia shows that this is probably wrong. People in those areas strongly prefer high speed rail for trips that are less than 3-4 hours long, and begin to switch over to airplanes beyond that.
        dodobirdlord 6y ago

tryptophan 6y ago

The argument goes that if nobody is willing to pay the price for something(passenger rail), and chooses another alternative(driving), then it means that the service is not worth having and subsiding it would just be a waste of taxpayer money. Of course its not that simple, because driving is subsidized(I would prefer every road to be a toll road and get rid of the general taxes that used to go to roads)...but you get the point.

foota 6y ago
I mean, the issue is I can't choose to pay for quality rail service because it doesn't exist here. I can't take HSR from e.g., Boston to NYC, SF to LA, or Seattle to Portland/Vancouver. These are all trips I would have gladly made at 100-400 dollar ticket prices in the last year.
- thu2111 6y ago
  Yes but you're exceptionally rare, and might discover you're wrong about your preferences if someone were to take the big gamble of building such a service. Also the whole era of passenger rail may have been killed off by lockdowns. Train services are basically always hugely subsidised by governments. They could not survive against cars, buses and trucks if they weren't. The subsidies in Switzerland are eye-wateringly high for example. It's effectively a form of government planning designed to boost city/worker density as governments and others believe offices full of workers yields large benefits, and trains are the highest density/capacity form of passenger transport by far. So if you want ultra-dense urban cores you need a lot of trains. But do we actually need those? Governments sure haven't acted like it this year. Now big corps are eyeing their expensive city centre HQs and wondering if the real estate is worth it, the workers are seeing how much they save when they aren't being forced to pay for the very expensive rail tickets, the managers are seeing that many (but not all) workers are happier without the time sucking, cattle-car commutes ... and governments are basically having to give up on the fiction that rail companies were private in order to keep them from going completely bust. But how long can that be sustained, if travel patterns have been permanently altered? No dense urban cores = few commuters paying business rates for rush hour travel = even worse economics for trains.
hansvm 6y ago
> I would prefer every road to be a toll road and get rid of the general taxes that used to go to roads Off-topic I know, but I'd only like to see this if the tolls were reasonable with respect to the maintenance of the affected stretches of road. $0.50 per car per mile more than pays off a typical 4-lane interstate in a year, yet tolls are often an order of magnitude larger and drawn out for 20+ years.
- ashtonkem 6y ago
  A fair toll road system would basically ban semi trucks, since they’re the ones that do the overwhelming majority of the damage.
  - hansvm 6y ago
    That's an interesting idea. I wonder how workable it would be to automate tolling based on axle weight.
    - greenpresident 6y ago
      Germany has a toll system for trucks only: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LKW-Maut https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LKW-Maut From Wikipedia: > Germany's LKW-Maut is a toll for goods vehicles based on the distance driven in kilometres, the emission category of the vehicle and the number of axles. It's meant to compensate some of these damages caused by high weight. If I remember correctly, road damage scales at a power of four of axle weight. It's billed semi-automatically (wireless stations along the road + device in the truck) and you don't even notice it as a normal driver.
      - majewsky 6y ago
        Legal side note: Germany also has a vehicle tax that roughly scales with the size of the vehicle. But this only applies to vehicles registered in Germany. Because of the European Single Market, a lot of trucks running on German highways are registered in foreign countries (esp. Eastern Europe since drivers from those countries draw smaller salaries). The toll was enacted specifically to ensure that those foreign trucks contribute towards road maintenance as well. It does apply to German trucks, too, because the EU has rules against laws that discriminate against foreign EU citizens.

rootusrootus 6y ago

It's hard to justify investing in rail. At best, in most parts of the US it is slower, more expensive, and less convenient. There are some edge cases that it makes real sense for, but everywhere else is better served by cars and airplanes.

Naac 6y ago
>> It's hard to justify investing in rail. At best, in most parts of the US it is slower, more expensive, and less convenient But that's because we haven't invested in it! Before the 1960s most roads in the US were also terrible, so by that logic we shouldn't have invested in the Highway/Freeway Interstate system.
- ethbr0 6y ago
  Seriously. Here's the Amtrak network: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/f6/Amtrak_network_map_2016.png/1200px-Amtrak_network_map_2016.png https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/f6/Am... Here's the US freight rail network: https://i.imgur.com/4TYsU_d.webp?maxwidth=1024&fidelity=medium https://i.imgur.com/4TYsU_d.webp?maxwidth=1024&fidelity=medi... You can't tell me we can't do better.
  - rootusrootus 6y ago
    We could definitely have a beautiful, big, fast train network. But most people still wouldn't use it.
    - ashtonkem 6y ago
      Evidence from Europe and Asia shows that this is probably wrong. People in those areas strongly prefer high speed rail for trips that are less than 3-4 hours long, and begin to switch over to airplanes beyond that.
      - dodobirdlord 6y ago