4 ms·

Did you read that article at all? First, there is no point looking at current prices, because it is a service running on relatively unsubsidised ifrastructure.

• kirse 18y ago
  300 mile sweetspot Yet again, Southwest.com is $200 from Philly to Pittsburgh, and Amtrak is $110. Except then I'm spending 14 hours on a train round-trip. If I'm going to spend 14 hours on my trip, then I might as well drive to Pittsburgh which takes me 10 hours round trip and about $30 less, not to mention I have a car to get me around. Of course we could build the high speed network and subsidize the benefits to cut that down to ~5 hours, but then we get to pay the additional cost anyway come every April 15th. Trains are still a lose-lose. The highway system is already subsidized and we lose money on that, there's no reason to subsidize more transportation. Pardon me for trying to cut the fat when I'm going to be paying my country's debt for the next 20 years.
  • jonknee 18y ago
    Do you not understand what highspeed means? The train you're booking today goes really slow. That's not being argued. The trains they want to build go much faster. There are other up sides too, such as internet access and phone service, not having to go through the TSA, being able to take your car for an added fee, etc. It won't work for all routes, but considering how well Amtrak already does in NE, there's demand out there.
  • thingie 18y ago
    I have yet to see a transportation system that can pay for itself, stay profitable and still be useful. Measuring real benefits of transportation with current economics seems to be very hard. Almost everything has to be subsidized or accompanied by something that is, otherwise it doesn't work. And you're certainly not going to propose abortion of every transportation, as then you would maybe have less debt, but also no country, so it wouldn't matter anyway. Trains are a real thing that is going to work for 100 years or something, that n billions are mostly some meaningles number flying around... (well, yes, that's only my point of view)
  • carbon8 18y ago
    "Except then I'm spending 14 hours on a train" HIGH. SPEED. RAIL. TGV does that distance in 2 hours.
  • roc 18y ago
    You don't think high speed rail will move more people, more efficiently than continued expansion of air traffic and highways?
  • ibsulon 18y ago
    Let's count the cost of trains against the cost of airport expansions and highway expansions. We're already spending billions down in Tucson to move to four lanes, and we'll have to move the entire highway between Phoenix and Tucson to 3 lanes from two soon. We are trading costs in a case like that. Remember, our population isn't going down in this country anytime soon. Highway expansion, without an alternative, is a given.
• anamax 18y ago
  > First, there is no point looking at current prices, because it is a service running on relatively unsubsidised ifrastructure. Umm, if it's actually cheaper, it doesn't need subsidized infrastructure.
  • kirse 18y ago
    Thanks for being a voice of reason in this thread. People don't seem to understand that subsidized does not mean cheaper, nor do I get how exactly they think faster and better technology (aka extremely high-speed rail lines) are somehow cheaper to operate than their predecessor - standard Amtrak service.
  • frossie 18y ago
    Sure it does. Traveling with a car is cheap. Cars travel on a massively subsidised infrastructure (they are called roads). The purpose of subsidising an infrastructure is to make operating a service on it profitable. I don't understand why people are objecting to high speed train networks as if they are a totally novel idea. They are a true and tested transportation solution - I have yet to encounter a country that built one only to regret it, or have it unused. We are not talking about putting a man on Mars here.
    • anamax 18y ago
      > Cars travel on a massively subsidised infrastructure (they are called roads). Roads aren't subsidized and neither are traffic police. They're paid for by car- and truck-specific taxes and fees. We've played this game before. You'll bring up a study that supposedly shows that cars have expenses that are not covered by taxes. I'll point out that said study ignores one or more large taxes paid for because of cars that pretty much covers the gap and then some. (The dumb version is that you'll point to the cost of building some road and assert that it couldn't possibly have been paid for without subsidies.) > The purpose of subsidising an infrastructure is to make operating a service on it profitable. In the case of train passenger trains, that almost never happens. The cost of running the train exceeds the revenues. Even the CA proposals don't claim that they'll run without subsidies. Instead, they argue "other job creation". (They also claim that folks will pay to build highrises in Fresno over the train station, generating enormous profits.) Here's an easy test that almost every proposal fails. Take the projected revenue (which they never hit) and divide it by the projected number of jobs (which they usually exceed). Ask yourself if the average salary plus benefits is going to be that low. (The proposal will often tout "high paying jobs".) Notice that this figure doesn't account for non-salary operating costs.