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America's Long Distance Trains

joG said:
Only if we want the good to be produced inefficiently will a society leave it in the hands of the community. It is a private good with respect to its economic attributes. So it requires making a set of property rights for entrepreneurs that define the optimum for the companies at the economic optimum. Community ownership will never do that as communities have conflicting interests that result in waste.
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You might have heard that privatizing British Rail has lead to a huge jump in ticket prices and a drop in safety, as well as a drop in service quality to include I believe travel times to the point that there are now huge calls for the government to take it back.
 
Hawkeye10 said:
You might have heard that privatizing British Rail has lead to a huge jump in ticket prices and a drop in safety, as well as a drop in service quality to include I believe travel times to the point that there are now huge calls for the government to take it back.
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The Brits only showed the world how not to set the property rights, though, only the argument of safety is really valid in socioeconomic terms. If the cost of production is high and the price is set cheap, that is money lost to other government projects. If service is of higher quality than passengers want to pay for, then that is money lost for for innovation.
Japan seems to do okay as do private rail companies in some parts of the European continent. It is all a matter of getting the rule right. If politics gets in the way, the railroads are as inefficient as were the government to run them themselves.
 
joG said:
The Brits only showed the world how not to set the property rights, though, only the argument of safety is really valid in socioeconomic terms. If the cost of production is high and the price is set cheap, that is money lost to other government projects. If service is of higher quality than passengers want to pay for, then that is money lost for for innovation.
Japan seems to do okay as do private rail companies in some parts of the European continent. It is all a matter of getting the rule right. If politics gets in the way, the railroads are as inefficient as were the government to run them themselves.
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BINGO

And this is why America cant have nice things, we are too lazy and too stupid and too much in love with street brawling to get the most important things right, like government.

America will not make any progress till we fix Washington, and almost no one can be found who in interested in that!

WE BE STUPID
 
katzgar said:
Hi speed trains go perhaps 200 miles per hour at best. Air travel is at about 500 miles an hour. simple really.
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Trains leave you off at city centers while planes often require long trips to and from the airport. Not to mention the lines for security and delays due to weather. Plus there is the inefficiency of fighting gravity as well as air resistance when flying.
 
Hawkeye10 said:
I say this is yet one more place were America spends way too much for way too little....just look at all that High Speed Rail stimulus money we spent, all for slow rail because we cant seem to tell the truth anymore, and how little bang for the buck we got.

America has become the "Cant do unless gobs of money are handed over, and probably not even then nation.

SAD
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America has been defunding rail for generations. China has been building new everything, including high speed rail. That's what happens when we fund highways and air systems.
 
MTAtech said:
America has been defunding rail for generations. China has been building new everything, including high speed rail. That's what happens when we fund highways and air systems.
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Re HSR:
Huang Xin of China Railway Corp. said the first 10,000 km took 11 years and has since doubled in only three years, and is expected to nearly double again by 2025 and reach 45,000 km in 2030.
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https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2016/09/china-high-speed-rail-network-has.html

America has 55.

Let that sink in.
 
RabidAlpaca said:
As fun as it would be to live in a country where the poor and lower middle class have no transportation, K-12 education, or healthcare of any kind, no thanks. If you'd like to live in a more Darwinian society there are some nice places in the third world where you might be happy.
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A nice standard liberal meme... "If I'm too dumb to figure out how to make something work, then it's someone else's responsibility to do it for me." Private/public alliance in education would be massively successful, making people responsible for their own healthcare (with a safety net) is the best way to drive down costs, transportation infrastructure is paid for by our taxes and that means that WE pay for it.
 
MTAtech said:
America has been defunding rail for generations. China has been building new everything, including high speed rail. That's what happens when we fund highways and air systems.
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Our Airports are almost third world, our air traffic control system is ancient and the upgrade is something like a decade late and ten times projected cost....so yes we sorta fund the air system but that is not the end of the story.....the story the Basic nearly universal American Story....we spend way too much to get way too little, because AMERICA is THE CAN'T DO NATION

https://www.wired.com/2015/02/air-traffic-control/
 
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iguanaman said:
Trains leave you off at city centers while planes often require long trips to and from the airport. Not to mention the lines for security and delays due to weather. Plus there is the inefficiency of fighting gravity as well as air resistance when flying.
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true. the transportation guys figure that trains and air are competitive up to about 500 miles. One advantage air has is the right of way is free.
 
RabidAlpaca said:
Prove it. That is a completely, absurdly false statement you pulled directly out of your ass. Reality conflicts with your uneducated political views so you just make up things that make you feel good. The gas tax goes to road construction and maintenance, which is why I haven't even seen a pothole in this country in many years.

Nowhere in Europe is healthcare free. People pay affordable insurance premiums based on their incomes and it is intrinsically cheaper than our incredibly inefficient system.
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I can cut & paste this crap all day long. I also have probably rode on more trains throughout Europe than most Americans on this board.

Why gas in the U.S. is so cheap - May. 1, 2008

Higher gas taxes most certainly do got to healthcare in Europe.
 
katzgar said:
true. the transportation guys figure that trains and air are competitive up to about 500 miles. One advantage air has is the right of way is free.
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What they figure may or may not be right.

The Chinese figure that they are wrong.
 
Hawkeye10 said:
Are worse than they were the year I was born(1962)...they take longer, the food is not as good, the stations are worse to nonexistent, the sleepers are like ten times inflation adjusted price, the service is way worse......and the American taxpayer subsidizes each ticket to the tune on the average of $300.

Discuss.
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A good passenger rail system in the age of airplanes would require socialism. And, we all know how America feels about that.
 
calamity said:
A good passenger rail system in the age of airplanes would require socialism. And, we all know how America feels about that.
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After all the traction Sanders got, do we really?
 
Hawkeye10 said:
After all the traction Sanders got, do we really?
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Traction is not wining. But, time will tell.

IMHO, we probably should adopt a more Swedish type system than one seen in Russian, Brazil or Mexico. But....that seems to be the battle right now. Libertarian, government should do nothing vs Socialist, government should do a lot.
 
Hawkeye10 said:
What they figure may or may not be right.

The Chinese figure that they are wrong.
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the chinese have a primitive highway system and a primitive air transport system not to mention a really densely packed huge population, the comparison doesnt work.
 
katzgar said:
the chinese have a primitive highway system and a primitive air transport system not to mention a really densely packed huge population, the comparison doesnt work.
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True enough but this alleged 500 mile limit gets repeated as if God said it, but I have never seen a convincing argument for it, and I get around.

Sure the "experts" decided, but we all know how that tends to go.

Most of the time they are full of it.

I need to see the case/argument.

If there is one.
 
Hawkeye10 said:
True enough but this alleged 500 mile limit gets repeated as if God said it, but I have never seen a convincing argument for it, and I get around.

Sure the "experts" decided, but we all know how that tends to go.

Most of the time they are full of it.

I need to see the case/argument.

If there is one.
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The 500-mile thing is obviously just a rule of thumb. The balance is Trains being substantially slower than planes vs getting through an airport being much more onerous than getting on a train. The 500 number is something I heard years ago and I suspect since TSA the balance has shifted a few more miles in rails favor.
 
katzgar said:
The 500-mile thing is obviously just a rule of thumb. The balance is Trains being substantially slower than planes vs getting through an airport being much more onerous than getting on a train. The 500 number is something I heard years ago and I suspect since TSA the balance has shifted a few more miles in rails favor.
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The Brain Trust looked at what happened to the european air system after HSR got built, and assumed that that in city pairs where I think they said 70% or more of the plane seats vanished because rail took over then rail was "competitive". then they measured the miles. However this was back when we could walk into an airport 15 minutes before flight time, which does not happen anymore. They also ignore the overnight option. They also ignore how sensitive to cost Americans are, and that the cost of rail versus the cost of air is very adjustable should we choose to take on the effort.They also ignore that in the meantime HSR has gotten faster.

So you see...
 
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RetiredUSN said:
Texas and California alone would take up most of the European land mass.

It makes sense for the Europeans to invest in rail given their congested population and little room for roads, and not to mention gas rounding out to be between 4-6 bucks a gallon to pay for that free healthcare. ;) I would be stuck on a train every day in many parts of Europe............screw that!
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Western Europe perhaps, but not continental Europe (ie all the way to the Ural mountains.

Texas is about the size of France
 
Hawkeye10 said:
The Brain Trust looked at what happened to the european air system after HSR got built, and assumed that that in city pairs where I think they said 70% or more of the plane seats vanished because rail took over then rail was "competitive". then they measured the miles. However this was back when we could walk into an airport 15 minutes before flight time, which does not happen anymore. They also ignore the overnight option. They also ignore how sensitive to cost Americans are, and that the cost of rail versus the cost of air is very adjustable should we choose to take on the effort.They also ignore that in the meantime HSR has gotten faster.

So you see...
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200mph vs 500mph
 
katzgar said:
200mph vs 500mph
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No, first gen Europe (what the brain Trust used to decide the 500 mile limit) was 125mph, fastest now is 220mph. These are scheduled times, trains can almost always go faster but faster causes more wear and tear, especially on the rails around curves, so a balance between speed and cost is always established.
 
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Hawkeye10 said:
It takes a lot longer to get through the airport now, and I was reading just the other day that flight times have gotten longer as airlines slow their plane and fly around weather to save gas (AKA money).

Air travel is slower and crappier that it was in the past, but you are right, ticket prices do reflect the modern chintzy product.

However: Air travel is at the end of the day yet another thing that we can no longer manage to do well.
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Well when someone blows up a train itll take longer there too. Air travel is FASTER though, from take off to landing. Its a jet after all. And if it wasnt done well, there wouldnt be such demand and growth.

IATA - IATA Forecasts Passenger Demand to Double Over 20 Years
 
Hawkeye10 said:
America has no HSR to speak of ....there is I think 34 miles of the NEC that is rated, and we cant get much more because the line has way too many curves. The cost of making the NEC HSR in the currently regulatory and court environment is pegged at over $100 billion. We do put HSR trainsets on the NEC though, and tell people that they are getting HSR, and charge more per mile than anyone in the world charges for real HSR, and thus We The Chumps often think we have HSR..but we dont.

I understand that they are currently building (very slowly, at outrageous costs) in Cal. but trust me, that will never get done in my lifetime, not even the first line.
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If the US wants HSR, they need to subcontract the building to Chinese companies. They have made building the lines an art form and very efficient
 
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