Author Peter Richmond insisted in his November 4 Parade magazine article, "A Better Way to Travel?" that with Americans stuck in traffic jams and airport security lines and made to suffer through flight delays, another government program could save the day: Amtrak.
"One solution is staring us in the face," Richmond asserted. "Many transportation experts insist that the best answer to transportation gridlock is efficient intercity rail travel."
Richmond boasted that Amtrak commuter numbers were "up for the fifth year in a row, reaching record levels," and in the Northeast, where Amtrak introduced faster trains, the number of commuters between Washington, D.C., and New York City has increased by 9 percent.
But The Heritage Foundation's Ronald D. Utt said although Amtrak's numbers have increased in 2007, 2006 was not a good year for the train system and makes for a faulty comparison. In fact, 2007's numbers are barely higher than 2005's - making Richmond's assertion that there were a record-level number of riders questionable.
The Reason Foundation's Michael W. Lynch found in 2002 that Amtrak cost $3.37 for every $1 it took from passengers. In the second half of 2005, Reason's Adam Summers said, for every $1 Amtrak receives in revenue, it spends $1.61.
"When a private company gets caught lying and cheating, it pays. At Enron, voluntary investors and employees take the hit when the company turned out to be a poorly managed product of slick PR and questionable, perhaps criminal, accounting," said Lynch. "While Amtrak deserves to come crashing down, it never does. Taxpayers are forced to pay billions in bills to keep the employees in their jobs and the politicians happy."
—Paul Detrick is a Research Analyst at the Business and Media Institute.
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Rockefellers destroyed intercity Rail 80 years ago
November 6, 2007 - 16:40 ET by Lame CherryThis will never work as Rockefeller inc will make no money on rail systems...........and the hillarious part about rail is no one rides the thing once cities like Minneapolis spend of fortune on it.
As I posed to Fred Thompson and Newsbusters in a plea for a debate on the subject, an entire high speed rail system in America would benefit all IF the cartel was cut in, if Detroit could build the trains and if the airlines could get a cut into the deal and not think their golden goose of transportation was cut.
These liberals all just see herding people, but one has to factor economics to make it all pay. Long distance rail would pay for intercity rail and shipping.
As one sees jobs in Detroit, jobs for Boeing in Washington, jobs in every state constructing the tubes.....the entire nation starts to benefit and gets good jobs in this 2 decade construction bubble.
IF one simply coupled rail with my doctrine of taking the billions going into global warming and being wasted now on aids "research" and put that money into grants for homeowners to build survival shelters and stock them, the US economy would bloom in 2 years to a non inflationary, sound dollar and secure resource abundant society.
If America wants to be titans they deep sea mine, do not tax the profits and sell to the Eurasians. The balance of trade will make the US a multi trillion dollar LENDER NATION in 5 years.....bringing such military and economic security that we would not be attacked and could leverage enough financial power to stop having to "do Iraq wars"......and leave the Islamocommunist to prey on each other or the Russians and Chinese.
If Ann Coulter loves Newsbusters.........and so many Conservatives of substance and book deals worship here.......then come on and take the challenge to building America by forcing the GOP runners to formulate policy on the above.
Build America then Americans have enough to pay for their own care and America being strong is not going to be attacked as we have the resources here and do not need Muslim dictatorships antagonizing Islamocommunits like Zawahiri.
*HIC IACET ARTORIVS REX QVONDAM REXQVE FVTVRVS
Unrealistic in flyover country
November 6, 2007 - 16:42 ET by nkviking75Mass transit is of little value in sparsely populated regions. The lack of people makes it impossible to run a service profitably, or to provide enough routes to make it convenient for riders.
When you put the clowns in charge, don't be surprised when a circus breaks out.
Bingo viking. The thing
November 6, 2007 - 16:47 ET by bassndudeBingo viking. The thing that is constantly overlooked by the mass transit crowd. They point to Europe and their model. But they fail to see the crowded conditions there are there, a little burg every 3 Km. Train pulls in, folks get on, train pulls out. That, and they still haul their hay in wagons pulled by mules, in some areas. Funded by the massive cradle to grave goverments.
Save a SeAL, club a liberal!!
Density
November 7, 2007 - 07:03 ET by UnsaneThat, and the northeast and Europe have one thing in common.
Very dense populations virtually stacked on top on one another. The more dense the population, the more efficiently mass transit works. Once it gets spread out, its effectiveness diminishes.
Res tantum valet quantum vendi potest.
That complaint I believe
November 6, 2007 - 16:42 ET by dscottThat complaint I believe can also be made for the light rail he advocates as well. The Washington DC Metro would be a classic example. All the municipalities have to give the Metro authority millions of dollars a year despite all the fair hikes and peak time charges on the commuters. The light rail system is nice to use, but ultimately is it cost effective????? Especially when millions of dollars have to be pumped in each year.
So my question for you Paul and the Heritage Foundation is this: Can Amtrak or Light Rail such as DC Metro be justified economically if the Department of Transportation in each municipality can avoid building more roads/widening them and maintaining them afterwards by shifting people to light rail???? Can it be reasonably quantified? If it can be reasonably quantified what the cost savings would be from shifting people to light rail, would the cost savings be enough to justify using light rail? That's the multibillion dollar question.
Hanlon's Razor: Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity. dscott's corollary: The line between malice and stupidity is called depraved indifference.
Light Rail?
November 6, 2007 - 18:04 ET by Del DolemonteLight Rail is the biggest boondoggle going. Just look at all of the LR projects that have failed miserably in attracting riders-it's happened in New Jersey, California, and Texas.
But that hasn't stopped the friends of pork in politics from trying to get more systems built. They immediately saw LR as the savior when that Interstate highway bridge collapsed this summer in Minnesota, and currently the far-leftists running our 50th state are trying to get their own "Springfield Monorail" approved by the gullible saps in Honolulu.
More people should use it
November 6, 2007 - 18:12 ET by balboaMore people should use it in the cities that have it, but people love their cars so they don't. It's just like in "Singles," when the guy played by Campbell Scott wanted to sell the mayor of Seattle on a train system.
We force out trains long ago, now they'll never come back.
"Springfield Monorail"
November 6, 2007 - 18:15 ET by Chris NormanGet out the doughnut sign anchor... :)
PS: Isn't it required that you've got to have a rail system to prove your city is a bigtime "world class" city?
AMTRAK
November 6, 2007 - 16:48 ET by billbAmtrak may work well in the Northeast corridor, but just try to go cross-country! I tried for 2 months to get a sleeper from DC to San Francisco! The only person I'm aware of that was able to get a quick reservation with a sleeper was a guy named Hsu. Hillary's campaign finance guru.
We love trains..or did
November 6, 2007 - 17:39 ET by DEVILDOCMOMSince my husband and I both had fond memories of many train rides-even as recent as 12 years ago-we decided to take the train from Tucson to Chicago, travel around by car and return by train to Tucson.
We were able to find a bedroom cabin on fairly short notice-a few weeks. Frankly, the tiny bedroom is the only way to travel even tho' it was not that clean. Since Amtrak travels on rails owned by the freight lines the Amtrak train must pull onto a siding if the freight lines want to go past-makes for on time arrival a joke. In fact the train arrived almost 6 hrs late for us to depart.
I won't go into all the problems, but on the return trip a freight train dumped gravel all over the tracks in Texas. We sat for 4 hrs. or so until they bused us to the next city and just left 200 people or so standing at a train stop at 0200 with no help, no one to tell us what was happening, and no where to sit.
Fortunately, my husband saw a sleeper train way down the tracks and found out it was the sleeper we were on...we at least had a few hours sleep. The rest of the people stood outside until 0800 when the next train arrived.
Most of the people who work for Amtrak did not seem to care about any of our concerns-I guess their jobs are set for life and they are well paid.
We still have fond memories of train rides, but I doubt that we will ever ride a train again...
AMTRAK is a Joke
November 6, 2007 - 18:01 ET by Del DolemonteI took AMTRAK from Boston to DC to attend the wedding of one of my cousins in 1999. The only reason I did so was to humor my soon-to-be sister in law, who is afraid to fly. I could have gotten from New Hampshire to Baltimore-Washington airport in 1 hour on Southwest, but the train took all day.
On the return overnight trip, we were stopped on the tracks in the middle of the night somewhere in Connecticut for several hours. We were never told what the problem was, nor given an apology. Never again.
Just curious-does anyone know if the Democrat who ran for President in 1988 is still helping to run AMTRAK's choo-choos?
Except for a couple of our
November 6, 2007 - 20:46 ET by jdhawkExcept for a couple of our biggest and most densly populated cities, local commuter rail makes as much sense as the city bus system where you live. If you don't believe me, go down to the local bus station some time and see how many busses leave the station with just the driver on board. It most cases, it would be cheaper for the city to have a horde of vans that you could call up and they would pick you up and deliver you to your exact destination. Again, if you don't believe me, go to your city managers web site and look up what it cost you, the taxpayer, to provide busses driving around empty 99% of the time.
Also, light rail cost 40 to 50 million dollars a mile on average. Freeways cost half that. A mile of light rail doesn't move 1/1000 of the people that a mile of freeway does.
In Charlotte, North Carolina, the dimocrats have been busy gobbling up billions of dollars of tax payer money (not just local, but state and federal dollars, too!) in a light rail system. The cost over runs will make the "big dig" in Taxatussetts look like chicken feed before they are done.
I've had my suspicions about
November 6, 2007 - 21:50 ET by dscottI've had my suspicions about the cost effectiveness of mass transit, government boondoogles are frenquently a first cost bonanza for those who sell the land, the kick backs from the contractors and all the under the table bribes. Then the citizens get the privledge to pay the high on going costs to maintain the white elephant. You know those property taxes have got to be spent on something to justify their reason for being.
Hanlon's Razor: Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity. dscott's corollary: The line between malice and stupidity is called depraved indifference.
"Also, light rail cost 40
November 7, 2007 - 13:43 ET by Del Dolemonte"Also, light rail cost 40 to 50 million dollars a mile on average."
A few posts above I mentioned the proposed Honolulu light rail project. That line will cost $120 million per mile.
Don Newman, a grassroots activist in Hawaii, did some research and came up with these stats:
City - Rail Type - Percentage of Passengers Per Rail Mile versus per Freeway Mile
Considering these statistics it becomes clear that investing in rail is far less efficient and cost effective than investing in multilane highways that service the same passengers. For the cost of elevated rail, as is being considered on O’ahu, several lanes of High Occupancy Toll (HOT) lanes could be built along the same corridor that would service anywhere from 4 to 16 times the number of commuters.
So looking at those with
November 7, 2007 - 14:20 ET by dscottSo looking at those with close to what we would call successful utilization the following have either met the objectives or close to it but the rest have failed to produce as advertised:
Atlanta Heavy rail 94%
Chicago Heavy rail 85%
Boston Heavy rail 153%
Washington Metrorail 125%
BART 105%
NY - Metro-N 86%, PATH Heavy rail 216%, NYC Subway 351%
Now back to my point, of these rail systems which ones actually breaks even where the commuter is paying the full freight without substancial subsidy????? I know Washington Metrorail does not by virtue of the millions of dollars all the jurisdictions are required to pay annually on top of commuter revenue collected. So what this really means is the most cost effective public transportation is car pooling.
Funny, you know there is a law on the books for large companies over a certain number of employees to actually require a company sponsored car pooling, van pooling and public transport plan. Interesting that no one so far has enforced the Law...
Hanlon's Razor: Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity. dscott's corollary: The line between malice and stupidity is called depraved indifference.