Ride the Train
My how times change: “Louisiana’s transportation department plans to request federal dollars for a New Orleans to Baton Rouge passenger rail service from the same pot of railroad money in the president’s economic stimulus package that Gov. Bobby Jindal criticized as unnecessary pork on national television Tuesday night.”
I love passenger rail, but it’s hard to see this as being high on the list of useful high-speed rail endeavors. The distance is right, but metro New Orleans is the country’s 50th largest metro area (bigger than Tuscon, smaller than Rochester, NY) and Baton Rouge is 67—smaller than Worcester, MA but bigger than El Paso. Which isn’t to deny that a quality rail link could be useful; only to observe that there are a large number of potential projects—basically everything on the existing HSR corridor list plus all kinds of littler things like Phoenix-Tuscon, Worcester-Boston, DC-Norfolk, DC-Richmond—that would seem like a better idea.
93 Responses to “Ride the Train”
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February 28th, 2009 at 8:31 am
He wants money for the ‘magnetic levitation’ trains now?
February 28th, 2009 at 8:59 am
Tucson, dammit, Tuc-son! Lern to spel!
February 28th, 2009 at 9:06 am
There already is passenger rail service between Worcester and Boston. It’s just not very fast.
February 28th, 2009 at 9:16 am
Um, Matt, did it occur to you that perhaps he’s asking for the money so that he’ll be denied, and can then claim that the LA-to-LV fix was in all along?
February 28th, 2009 at 9:29 am
“There already is passenger rail service between Worcester and Boston. It’s just not very fast.”
That’s one of the crappiest trains I’ve ever taken. It’s slightly above Vietnamese standards, but that’s not saying much. That line could use some federal money.
February 28th, 2009 at 9:30 am
@3: That’s a good argument for investing in faster service. There’s also crappy rail service between DC-Richmond, but a lot more people would commute on it if it were high-speed.
I also think Matt’s argument was that it doesn’t make all that much sense to spend money on high speed rail between Worcester and Boston, but still make a lot more sense than spending it in Louisiana.
February 28th, 2009 at 9:32 am
Ok, you love passenger rail, then take up train spotting. Just stop advocating that people be taxed out of their cars and be forced to ride these crappy things for the sake of your sick and tyrannical pleasure.
February 28th, 2009 at 9:39 am
I think we should just dwell on the very fast, hysterical, off-camera change of heart that the sanctimonious SOB had.
February 28th, 2009 at 9:39 am
IPH:
There are those of us who would gladly give up our cars and roads if we could live in an environment where other transportation alternatives were available. It’s not about forcing people, it’s about making alternatives viable for those who want them.
And you’ll note this post was about *where* allocated transit dollars should be spent, not advocating more rail spending.
February 28th, 2009 at 9:44 am
Ok, you love cars, so start watching NASCAR. Just stop forcing people to have no other option but riding these shiny metal death boxes that destroy the climate for the sake of your fascist pleasure.
February 28th, 2009 at 9:44 am
This is a good thing. Aside from demonstrating rank hypocrisy, it’s perfectly reasonable to connect a state’s capitol with its biggest draw city, in every state. We don’t have to pay for it with federal dollars, just allocate some reasonable sum of money given the other requests that will come in.
February 28th, 2009 at 9:51 am
IPH: Trains don’t have to suck. They’re actually quite nice in Europe. Hell, they’re pretty decent in New Jersey. It’s nice to not stress out about asshole drivers. Sit back and relax with a good book. When the trains are decent, it’s much better than driving. In some countries, even when the trains do suck, their roads are even worse. India’s trains are far from pleasant, but it still beats driving. It’s all about where you spend your money. If we spend more on our trains, people will want to take them.
February 28th, 2009 at 9:55 am
I see your point, but remember that Baton Rouge’s population swelled following Katrina as people from New Orleans relocated. Many folks still have business and family ties to the city, and many of the government officials in Baton Rouge travel regularly to New Orleans. Also, I-10 really is the only interstate connecting the two. Good rail service might actually make sense on this route even through the two metros are relatively small.
February 28th, 2009 at 10:21 am
JQ’s point is really the right one. There’s no real need for high speed rail, but a decent regional rail connection between the two cities would do a lot. Especially if there are free tickets for me and Bobby McGee.
February 28th, 2009 at 10:22 am
There already is passenger rail service between Worcester and Boston. It’s just not very fast.
Or frequent. It would be nice to have something better.
February 28th, 2009 at 10:26 am
I don’t know if commuter rail between New Orleans and Baton Rouge is the right prescription, but something needs to be done to make it less soul-crushing to drive a car in Baton Rouge. It’s the only city in the top 100 in which congestion increased last year.
February 28th, 2009 at 10:30 am
Matt,
The idea of restoring rail passenger service between Baton Rouge (my home town) and New Orleans, has been under serious study for 10 years or so. LaDOT has finished the studies showing a fair level of potential ridership, and the idea is similar to the regional train service run by the NC DOT using Amtrak equipment.
I doubt seriously, haveing seen many of the public documents, that this would be high-speed rail, but rather LaDOT operating Amtrak equipment. New ORleans is still a rail gate way in the Amtrak system, and if you want to go to LA from Florida, you go through there. Likewise if you are headed to Chicago from anywher ein the south, you go through there. So it’s more like adding another spoke to the wheel then building a new wheel entirely.
And given the size and complexity of the stimulus, I am not sure that LaDOT is even after the HS rail portion of the package. There is at least one other pot of rail related money in there, maybe two.
February 28th, 2009 at 10:37 am
Andrew Dupont,
Do you have a link to that congestion data? I am interested in seeing where the other cities fall.
February 28th, 2009 at 10:38 am
fostert says: Trains don’t have to suck…Hell, they’re pretty decent in New Jersey. It’s nice to not stress out about asshole drivers. Sit back and relax with a good book. When the trains are decent, it’s much better than driving.
Couldn’t agree more! I’ve commuted in the NYC area for years and a ride on NJTransit is definitely preferred to sitting behind a spewing tailpipe or jockeying for position at the Lincoln Tunnel.
The problem we have now is that many people commute between suburbs, not into NYC. And it’s nearly impossible to get between suburbs in any timely fashion via public transportation. I’d be satisfied with some bus routes, much less expensive and much more responsive to population movements between suburbs.
February 28th, 2009 at 10:51 am
The problem with the Worcester/Boston line is that a freight operator (CSX) owns the tracks, which has prevented the MBTA from improving service quality. Fixing this route has long been a priority for MA, and recently the state reached an agreement with CSX to buy the tracks — so service along this line should improve dramatically over the next few years. It is part of the commuter rail system, so it isn’t exactly high speed, though.
February 28th, 2009 at 10:52 am
Cap’n Transit, February 28th, 2009 at 10:21 am:
… but remember that “HSR” in Congressional legalese means both 220mph bullet trains and 110mph Rapid Rail …
… and it certainly makes sense to connect the nations 50th largest metro area with the 67th largest metro area by Rapid Rail if they are close enough together to be under three hours at 90mph – 100mph.
But connecting the 3rd, 18th and 198th would be a higher priority, as would be connecting the 24th, 25th, 32nd, and 59th, or the 3rd, 25th and 79th, or the the 22nd, 25th and 88th (noting that all the SMAs ranking lower than the end points of the NOLA/BRLA line are metro areas along the alignment).
(BTW, those are, respectively, the Chicago / St. Louis in the MWRRS, the Triple-C in the Ohio Hub, Chicago / Cleveland shared between the MWRRS and the Ohio Hub, and Cleveland / Pittsburgh in the Ohio Hub).
February 28th, 2009 at 10:57 am
Tim, February 28th, 2009 at 10:51 am
A critical question is whether there is space on the Right of Way for more track. If there is, then it is possible to establish a Rapid Rail class of HSR line for much less money than a bullet train class of HSR line … after all, the Triple-C, Cleveland / Columbus / Dayton / Cincinnati, would be $2b or less all up, including trains.
If the existing track is owned by a passenger rail operator, it could be upgrade in longer sections for 60mph minimum speed limits (which would speed up all services), and then the main requirement for 110mph tilt trains to be added would be signaling and four quad, speed-sensitive crossing gates. It would not be as fast as a dedicated Rapid Rail line, but it could be as fast as the Acela in the NEC.
February 28th, 2009 at 11:06 am
At about 70 miles, the distance between Baton Rouge and New Orleans is near the limit for practical commuting. While a passenger rail line surely would attract other sorts of riders, it isn’t likely to have much appeal to everyday commuters.
February 28th, 2009 at 11:10 am
New Orleans could also use a quick and cheap way out of town in case of another hurricane. Public transit can be utilized in those situations, so hopefully the entire gulf coast and other affected areas will think about upgrading.
February 28th, 2009 at 11:21 am
This would also be the first portion of a future HSR link from New Orleans to Houston.
February 28th, 2009 at 11:40 am
M and JonF have the right points. This is a needed way to get people out of here for storms, a starting point for connecting NOLA with Houston, and a better way to link LSU and their med school in New Orleans… along with many, many other good reasons. I live here and I want it. If we can get it and it’s shovel ready, why keep kicking us when we’re down, Matt?
February 28th, 2009 at 11:53 am
Peter, February 28th, 2009 at 11:06 am
I’m not sure that a 40 minute train ride is the outer limit for commuters … of course, the type of rail line people are describing as “commuter rail” would take much longer than 40 minutes, so it would not be used to commute between NOLA and Baton Rouge, but rather would be leaving each end mostly empty and would pick up commuters along the way …
… but the 110mph class of HSR line could certainly be used to commute from the one to the other.
However, where it makes the most sense is as part of an eventual Houston / Baton Rouge / NOLA corridor, since with the NOLA / Baton Rouge section already in place, it could make for 3 hours NOLA/Houston and 2 1/2 hours Baton Rouge / Houston. Still not as high priority as the ones I listed above … but at least a better case.
February 28th, 2009 at 11:56 am
between 6 and 6 pm, there are 5 or so Greyhounds from Baton Rouge to New Orleans, making a less than 2 hour trip for $20 or less. Is that so wrong?
February 28th, 2009 at 11:59 am
This “getting people out for storms” thing is pretty nutty. You’d need a lot more rolling stock (and would need to have it all in or en route to the right place quickly) to accomplish that than you would to accomplish an uneconomic commuter service.
February 28th, 2009 at 12:22 pm
Because the proposal as it stands isn’t “do we fund it or not” it’s “where do we want to spend the set budget for rail, so that it benefits the most people?”
February 28th, 2009 at 12:29 pm
Anyone else from Baton Rouge absolutely love the idea of being able to get trashed in NOLA and return home the same night without so much as getting your car out of the garage?
February 28th, 2009 at 1:03 pm
But gee, DTM, the greyhound stops at intermediate points between Baton Rouge and New Orleans, providing valuable transportation services all along the way. Why would you want to harm those people with your HSR? (Actually, of course, the usual greyhound users would not be able to afford HSR trips, and the 7 or 8 potential HSR users wouldn’t dream of sullying themselves with greyhound.)
A 40 minute trip how many times a day? High value passengers value frequency of service along with headway time.
HSR between Baton Rouge and New Orleans, the mind reels at the utter fecklessness of it, and BP probably nails a major trip purpose — although there likely wouldn’t be a “redeye” from NOLA to BR. Perhaps another leg could be added to provide high value service to those weird riverboat gambling operations in Mississippi. Interstate commerce and all that. Utterly amazing.
February 28th, 2009 at 1:13 pm
How many of us here have ever driven the road between Baton Rouge and New Orleans? Spy it some time on Google Earth if you want. It’s the single ugliest stretch of landscape in the country outside of northern New Jersey’s horror show of factories, warehouses, and razor wire. HSR is the only sane way to traverse it. Hermetically sealed. Windows painted with a Disney landscape. 40 minutes of forgetfulness on the Carcinogen Express.
February 28th, 2009 at 1:15 pm
That’s one of the crappiest trains I’ve ever taken. It’s slightly above Vietnamese standards, but that’s not saying much.
And the really sorry thing is that’s the mainline between Springfield and Boston, or Springfield and points west like Albany, Buffalo, Cleveland, Chicago… I checked my March 1956 edition of The Official Guide to the Railways. The schedules for long distance trains and local trains are about the same, around five minutes longer today. So they have service just slightly worse than they had in 1956. And only between Boston and Chicago, no service to other destinations as in the past.
February 28th, 2009 at 1:15 pm
I think Philip H. hit the nail on the head – Louisiana’s not after HSR money, but just the regular rail money that was added to establish commuter rail. Which is perfectly reasonable for the state, but hypocritical for the governor.
February 28th, 2009 at 1:38 pm
@ 33, DTM strikes at the flasher.
@ 34, the troll tries to set the hook.
DTM, don’t feed the trolls. Just don’t.
February 28th, 2009 at 1:43 pm
In essence, all you are pointing out is that HSR and bus service serve different markets. Which is fine, so we can have both.
We could have both, but HSR would be a terrible waste of money.
February 28th, 2009 at 1:44 pm
“the greyhound stops at intermediate points between Baton Rouge and New Orleans, providing valuable transportation services all along the way.”
Trains can do this too. In fact, you can have trains that go directly between Baton Rouge and NOLA and also trains that stop in Laplace and Gonzales. On the same line. The logistics are not all that hard.
February 28th, 2009 at 1:44 pm
DTM, February 28th, 2009 at 12:36 pm
… like continuing from NOLA to Baton Rouge to Houston, in one direction, or continuing from Baton Rouge to NOLA to Mobile, in the other.
DTM, the troll knows perfectly well that the HSR and the Greyhound Bus serve almost entirely different transport markets, he/she’s just trying to muddle the question.
February 28th, 2009 at 1:45 pm
Re: This “getting people out for storms” thing is pretty nutty. You’d need a lot more rolling stock (and would need to have it all in or en route to the right place quickly) to accomplish that than you would to accomplish an uneconomic commuter service.
Obviously you couldn’t evacuate the whole population of NOLA by train. But if a future Katrina threatens most people will drive out anyway, as they did in 2005. The trains would be a huge help though in evacutaing those without cars, albeit buses would be needed too.
February 28th, 2009 at 1:46 pm
That is the thing about trains: you have to get used to the fact that a given stretch of rail may be serving a lot more than just the endpoints of that stretch.
Yes, but the more midpoints, the less the “h” in the “hsr”
February 28th, 2009 at 1:59 pm
the HSR and the Greyhound Bus serve almost entirely different transport markets
They would probably not be “almost entirely” different, but they would be very different. Even with massive subsidies, HSR ticket prices would be much higher than bus ticket prices. Just like they are on the routes served by the Acela. So HSR riders would tend to be wealthier. A lot of business travelers. That’s what makes HSR subsidies even more obscene. Not only are they a massive transfer of wealth from the many to the few, but they are massive transfer of wealth from a poorer majority to a richer minority.
February 28th, 2009 at 2:19 pm
DTM is a sockpuppet of BruceMcF and serial catowner.
February 28th, 2009 at 2:44 pm
bdbd is not a troll, but I guess it’s a compliment of sorts to be called one.
whoever or whatever charles is, he’s on the mark about another aspect of this at 45. I say that as someone who travels on the Acela when on business and on the cattle car (or a greyhound when circumstances warrant) when traveling on my own dime.
February 28th, 2009 at 3:13 pm
@Adirondacker:
I am hopeful that within 20 years, this country will have the same or better electric interurban rail service we had 80 years ago.
February 28th, 2009 at 4:08 pm
DTM,
It is true that high speed intercity travel, by any mode, tends to end up disproportionately serving the business community–indeed,
I doubt that. What share of intercity air travel is business travel?
But I don’t see an inherent problem with that. Other people are still getting some of the externality benefits, including in the form of lower congestion on alternative modes of transportation.
Taxpayer subsidies up to the value of the social benefits–sorry, I mean “positive externalities”–of an HSR service may be justified. But why should taxpayers pay any more than that? Why should taxpayers subsidize the benefit HSR riders get from riding the train, especially when those riders are disproportionately wealthy? If the riders are unwilling to pay the full cost of providing them with that benefit, why should taxpayers pay it for them?
Meanwhile, there is good evidence that promoting regional business interconnectivity is good for the overall regional economy.
So what? Is it your position that any plan that is good for the overall regional economy is justified regardless of its distribution of costs and benefits across the population of that region? In fact, since any real-world HSR plan would most likely rely heavily on FEDERAL subsidies, many or most of the people who pay the costs of the plan wouldn’t even live in the region.
As usual, the bottom line is that not every individual government project is going to benefit everyone equally, and infrastructure investment in general has a tendency to disproportionately benefit the wealthy, since they are already in a position to capture more of the benefits of anything that increases total economic growth. But if you do enough government projects with a high expected return, you have more to go around, and thus you can solve any resulting distributional issues by other means.
What means do you propose to use to compensate the lower-income people for the taxes you want them to pay to subsidize expensive HSR train tickets for higher-income riders? What assurance can you offer those taxpayers that they’ll get at least as much in benefits as you want them to pay in costs?
February 28th, 2009 at 4:31 pm
charles, February 28th, 2009 at 1:59 pm
This is pointless quibbling over semantics. If they are “very different”, then the markets only overlap by a relatively small percentage of riders of each, and so they are almost entirely different markets.
Running on state provided infrastructure and without operating subsidies, Rapid Rail ticket prices will be higher than Greyhound Bus prices and lower than flying an equivalent route. It is of course obvious that Baton Rouge to New Orleans would be silly as a free-standing Rapid Rail route (let alone a bullet train).
But recall that the Acela, while it has a high top speed, can only run at its top speed for short distances north of New Haven Connecticut … the New York to New Haven stretch has too many curves to run above 90mph without tilting, and the track is laid too close together to allow the train to tilt. Meanwhile the overhead wiring between DC and NYC was installed in the Great Depression, and does not support operations faster than 135mph.
So while the Acela can get funded as HSR on the technicality of its top speed in service, in practice it does not presently operate at the effective speed of a normal 100mph class tilt-train, let alone the effective speed of a 200mph bullet train.
Where the transport capacity provided by the HSR is cheaper than the equivalent transport capacity provided by road construction and airport construction, why is it obscene to spend the money more efficiently because 40% of HSR travelers will be in business class? Indeed, its the ability to offer a business class that allows HSR services around the world to run operating surpluses, in countries where the regular speed rail services require ongoing operating subsidies.
February 28th, 2009 at 5:06 pm
DTM — HSR is an absurdly costly way to test your propositions.
charles is right about commercial aviation, and the ability of airlines to price discriminate among types of travelers continues to fall.
I don’t think there’s a looming shortage of “regional business interconnectivity” — that’s bogus, the sort of gibberish that pops up in “economic impact studies” and the like.
I rather doubt that any of these HSR services would pull enough load off existing modes to affect congestion meaningfully (especially if these HSR vehicles are not going to be stopping door to door to pick up these passengers — the congested roadways are the ones taking passengers to the stations, not the ones taking folks from one city to another).
I believe Amtrak operates in the black in the Northeast Corridor (where passenger rail makes sense demographically).
February 28th, 2009 at 6:09 pm
BruceMcF,
Running on state provided infrastructure and without operating subsidies, Rapid Rail ticket prices will be higher than Greyhound Bus prices and lower than flying an equivalent route.
Assuming “Rapid Rail” is supposed to mean HSR (if not, what is it?), its ticket prices would almost certainly be higher than bus tickets for the same route, and probably also higher than discount air fares. But the point is that HSR riders would almost certainly be richer on average than the people you want to subsidize them through taxes. It would be a massive transfer of wealth from a poorer majority to a richer minority.
I don’t understand the relevance of your comments about the Acela at all. My point is that Acela riders tend to be higher-income than the general population. According to Amtrak, 80% of Acela passengers are traveling on business. Acela subsidies are a huge form of corporate welfare.
Where the transport capacity provided by the HSR is cheaper than the equivalent transport capacity provided by road construction and airport construction, why is it obscene to spend the money more efficiently because 40% of HSR travelers will be in business class?
You haven’t shown that HSR would be cheaper than equivalent transportation capacity provided by road construction and/or airport construction. Even if there are routes where HSR would be cheaper in terms of total costs than the alternatives, that doesn’t mean it would be a better deal for taxpayers. Maximizing returns means maximizing the difference between benefits and costs, not simply minimizing costs. And even if HSR produced a higher total return than any of the alternatives, it would still be a worse deal for taxpayers if it produced a worse return for them than an alternative investment. The distribution of costs and benefits matters as well as the total return.
February 28th, 2009 at 6:26 pm
I believe Amtrak operates in the black in the Northeast Corridor (where passenger rail makes sense demographically).
Only if you ignore the capital costs and compare revenues to operating costs. It’s as if the government had bought all the planes in the commercial airplane fleet using taxpayer dollars, and given away the planes to the airlines for free. And also funded construction of all the airports and other aviation infrastructure from general taxes, instead of charging most of those costs to airlines and passengers in the form of landing fees, passenger facility charges, freight waybill taxes, and other forms of user fee.
February 28th, 2009 at 7:55 pm
The one study DTM has actually cited purporting to show that HSR is a good deal for taxpayers actually showed the opposite. Costs to the taxpayers exceeded benefits, in the form of “positive externalities,” by almost a billion dollars.
Of course, even if DTM could produce any credible academic study concluding that HSR would produce more in benefits for taxpayers than it would cost them in taxes, that still wouldn’t show that HSR was a better deal than all of the alternatives.
February 28th, 2009 at 8:51 pm
I haven’t bothered to check your numbers, but if they’re accurate that means most trips by air (or, at least, most “long distance” trips by air) are not business trips. In contrast, Acela trips are overwhelmingly business-related.
By the way, Acela ridership in January was down 14% compared to January last year. Amtrak is now offering steep discounts on Acela tickets to try and attract more leisure travellers and fill up the trains. But that’s going to cut into Acela’s “profit” and may even wipe it out.
February 28th, 2009 at 9:23 pm
charles, February 28th, 2009 at 7:55 pm
Generically? That would be silly to attempt to do. Whether bullet train HSR, Rapid Rail HSR, Express Intercity Rail, additional highway lanes, or additional airport capacity is a “better deal” for inter-metropolitan transport is going to depend upon the specifics of the case. The strongest HSR routes will tend to perform well, the weakest will tend to perform less well.
Sure, the CAHSR bullet train is a better deal than highway and airport construction, but OTOH California is quite like Spain in terms of size, population, and population distribution, and Spain is a recent bullet train success story, so that’s not too surprising. The Bay and the LA Basin are too far apart for Rapid Rail services between the two in under three hours, and even then Rapid Rail services would require expensive capital works to connect out of the Bay and the LA Basin into the Central Valley. OTOH, they are well over normal population thresholds for bullet train system end-points, and inside three hours travel time for express services … so just like Madrid / Barcelona, its a natural for a bullet train system.
OTOH, it seems highly unlikely that we could under anything like the present price of jet fuel justify a bullet train from Texas to Southern California or Colorado to Northern California … the intervening population centers are too small and too far apart. Unless conditions change substantially, those would not make the cut.
February 28th, 2009 at 9:38 pm
A major theme of the past few decades in commercial aviation is the commodification of the airline seat, and the increasing presence of nonbusiness air travel.
In the previous large scale national survey of “long distance travel” (which means trips farther than 50 miles from home — Baton Rouge – NOLA barely counts!), the 1995 American Travel Survey, business air trips accounted for nearly 50% of all air trips (Table 1 in http://www.bts.gov/publications/1995_american_travel_survey/long_distance_leisure_travel_in_the_united_states/entire.pdf ) — the trend is toward more riff raff on airplanes.
In the 1995 survey, the definition of “long distance trip” was “100 or more miles from home” but since virtually no air trips are between 50 and 100 miles, the difference in definitions is irrelevant to the trends in the distribution of trip purpose for air trips alone.
February 28th, 2009 at 9:51 pm
Generically?
Either generically or for any specific HSR route.
the CAHSR bullet train is a better deal than highway and airport construction,
There’s no credible evidence that the CAHSR would be a better deal than highways and airport construction. Fortunately, the thing would be so expensive that there’s little chance it will actually get built.
February 28th, 2009 at 10:14 pm
DTM, as I pointed out, the definition of “long distance trips” changed between the two surveys. 100 miles in the first, 50 miles in the second. I expect the vast majority of trips of length 50 to 100 miles are non business as well as non-air.
I realize you are trying to create a compelling case that most HSR patrons would be business travelers from comparisons to air travel. If HSR is so useful for these folks, they should find a way to pay for it themselves, rather than mooch off the rest of the population. And since relatively few of the travelers now congesting the motorways are not on business trips, per your presentation of the data, the “HSR will get them off the roads and reduce congestion for the hoi polloi” doesn’t work so well.
February 28th, 2009 at 10:32 pm
DTM,
I looked at those two BTS tables. Your numbers are meaningless. You can’t calculate the share of long-distance trips by trip purpose for personal vehicles from the data in those two BTS tables, because personal vehicles can be used for both short-distance trips and long-distance ones. Table 2 provides shares by purpose for long-distance modes, but not by trip length.
February 28th, 2009 at 11:06 pm
DTM,
In fact, you can do the same calculation I did for personal vehicles, and it turns out 14.1% of business trips are by personal vehicle, again as compared to 15.9% of all trips by any mode.
You didn’t describe your calculation, so we can’t do it. How did you arrive at those numbers? Show us your math.
This just isn’t a rational standard for public projects.
He didn’t say it was. We’re talking about HSR, not public projects in general. A standard that may be appropriate for one type of public project, such as low-income housing, may not be appropriate for another, such as an HSR system that mainly serves wealthy business travelers. If those travelers are not willing to pay the full costs of providing them with their expensive HSR rides, why should taxpayers pay those costs for them? Answer the question.
Indeed, consider a simple hypothetical example. A political unit is going to build three bridges. Each member of the population will use one bridge, but only 1/3 of the population is going to use each particular bridge. So, if you look at any given bridge in isolation, it looks like a transfer from 2/3s of the population to 1/3, since the whol population pays for the bridge but only 1/3 benefits. But overall, there is no transfer, because these effects offset each other.
Your hypothetical is completely irrelevant to the issue we are discussing. You want taxpayers to pay more in costs to fund HSR than they get back in benefits. You cannot just assume that they will somehow recover that net loss through a net benefit they will get from some other project or set of projects that you cannot identify.
February 28th, 2009 at 11:20 pm
charles February 28th, 2009 at 9:51 pm
How much are you arguing it will cost in road construction and airport construction to provide the transport capacity of CAHSR Stage 1?
With the passage of the $9b state bonding for the CAHSR, the major threat to whether it could be built was whether the Federal government would provide federal HSR funding. That threat has clearly faded … I guess the last recourse for people who wish to predict that it cannot get built would be to go for the “decade long global depression that eliminates the ability to generate private finance” scenario … but the last time that happened, the Federal government stepped up as it had repeatedly since the 1790’s to finance big infrastructure projects.
February 28th, 2009 at 11:46 pm
DTM,
So, for example, to get the percentage of personal vehicle trips which are business trips, you multiply .793 by .159, then divide by .895, which gives you .141 after rounding, or 14.1%.
Right, but that doesn’t support your claim about disproportionate shares of business trips. Show us how you calculated the share of all long-distance trips by modes other than air that are business trips.
March 1st, 2009 at 12:01 am
BruceMcF,
How much are you arguing it will cost in road construction and airport construction to provide the transport capacity of CAHSR Stage 1?
I’m not. I’m arguing what I said. Namely, that there’s no credible evidence that the CAHSR would be a better deal than highways and airport construction.
With the passage of the $9b state bonding for the CAHSR, the major threat to whether it could be built was whether the Federal government would provide federal HSR funding.
I’m not sure how you arrived at that conclusion. They have to, you know, actually sell the bonds to raise the state’s share of the funding. Given the state of the economy in California, the nation and the world, and California’s bond rating (lower than every other state) and budgetary catastrophe, it doesn’t seem likely that they will.
That threat has clearly faded …
Huh? Even according to their own absurdly optimistic cost estimates, they’re going to need around $15 billion from the feds. How much do they have? And they need another $15 billion from private investors. How much have they lined up in private funding?
Even if by some miracle they manage to get funding, there will be additional enormous technical, political and environmental problems to overcome.
March 1st, 2009 at 12:35 am
DTM,
But if you want to do that calculation, it isn’t hard: you just take the combined share of everything but the mode you want to exclude (which is 1 minus the excluded mode’s ratio) in each relevant column, then perform the same sequence of operations as above.
That calculation wouldn’t produce the statistic I asked for. There is no information in the table about trip length, so you can’t distinguish shares for long-distance trips from shares for short-distance ones.
You claimed: “while business trips account for 15.9% of long distance trips in general, they account for 38.3% of long distance trips by air” How did you get those numbers? Again, show us your math.
And to get back to the central issue, you still haven’t explained why taxpayers should pay the cost of providing HSR riders with the benefit they get from riding the train. If HSR riders are unwilling to pay these costs themselves, why should taxpayers agree to pay them instead? I’m asking you. bdbd is asking you. What is your answer?
March 1st, 2009 at 10:25 am
This is all tiresome and duplicative of similar exercises in the past. Fortunately for the public purse it’s all quite hypothetical, and utterly hypothetical for BTR-NOLA. If the issue is congestion and improving access to this and that, I think this table is quite informative. http://www.bts.gov/publications/america_on_the_go/long_distance_transportation_patterns/html/table_14.html
Among people who are going to use a public transportation mode to make a long distance trip, it is more likely that they will use a personal vehicle to get to the access point. I’m comfortable assuming that getting to most public transportation access points involves driving on congested urban roadways. Congestion is less of a issue (and often is not an issue at all) when traveling by car from city to city. Thus use of public modes for intercity travel contributes to (or at least does not detract from) congestion where congestion matters, and substitutes for travel in personal vehicles in circumstances where congestion does not matter so much.
March 1st, 2009 at 11:01 am
That calculation wouldn’t produce the statistic I asked for.
And we all know that Mixner is dying to agree with someone who presents the evidence he asks for. He has a long history of arguing in good faith and accepting evidence presented to him on that basis, and of providing countervailing evidence when appropriate. That’s why it’s a good idea to do his googling for him: it’s always a worthwhile exercise in political/policy discussion.
Bwahahahaha! Hooo, boy! Seriously, people, mockery is the only logical response at this point. You’re just not going to teach algebra to that cow no matter how hard you try.
March 1st, 2009 at 11:10 am
That’s hilarious, DTM. a) I don’t see where my intuition comes into it. I identified some data (from a source that provided you with data you seemed quite happy to do all manner of long division and ciphering with) that tell me that in most settings in the US, HSR doesn’t necessarily speak to congestion issues that matter. b) If you think these “fairly sophisticated models” don’t get built up from intuitions, kludges and some hand waves, along with accepted techniques for processing data under restrictive assumptions (hence many of the intuitions, kludges and hand waves, to get the data into shape), you don’t know much about such models (or you’re kidding yourself about them and their uses for advocacy rather than analysis). c) It’s OK if you like to ride the train, so do I. So does the President (but he gets to pull the whistle!) But that’s a poor basis for building up an elaborate public policy charade.
equally amusing is your “sit down son, smarter people than you will take care of this” tone. First, yammering fools call me a troll for daring to disagree about a sacred topic, then condescension. This one has been a full ride. But here comes my stop, so I”ll disembark.
Don’t forget, the Administration is calling for aviation system user fees to replace some ticket taxes, starting in FY2011. That will be a change that has repercussions in more than just a few blog comment threads.
March 1st, 2009 at 12:01 pm
Just wanted to point out the link that shows the NO to BR route as *part of* the pre-designated HSR routes Matt says would be preferable to the NO-BR route: http://www.fra.dot.gov/us/content/649
March 1st, 2009 at 12:22 pm
DTM,
The table is only for long distance trips.
No, it’s for long-distance modes, not long-distance trips. Read the title.
You still haven’t explained why taxpayers should pay the cost of providing HSR riders with the benefit they get from riding the train. If HSR riders are unwilling to pay these costs themselves, why should taxpayers agree to pay them instead? I’m asking you. bdbd is asking you. What is your answer?
March 1st, 2009 at 1:15 pm
The table itself is labeled “trips,” not “long-distance trips.” Other tables in the series that do refer to long-distance trips are qualified as such. The table notes also make no reference to trip distance. The meaning of the data is unclear.
You still haven’t explained why taxpayers should pay the cost of providing HSR riders with the benefit they get from riding the train. If HSR riders are unwilling to pay these costs themselves, why should taxpayers agree to pay them instead? I’m asking you. bdbd is asking you. What is your answer?
March 1st, 2009 at 1:16 pm
No, it’s for long-distance modes, not long-distance trips.
This crucial distinction shows that you’re full of it!!!1!!11! Until you prove that it doesn’t, at which point I’ll find some other incorrect interpretation of a tangential triviality that indisputably symbolizes your wrongitude!!one!!!!1!
Aren’t you glad we’re spending this quality time together?
March 1st, 2009 at 1:36 pm
DTM, what does this have to do with HSR?
March 1st, 2009 at 1:55 pm
DTM,
If Table 2 does refer only to long-distance trips, there’s a more basic problem with your claim. You wrote: “It is true that high speed intercity travel, by any mode, tends to end up disproportionately serving the business community.” To support this claim of truth, you need to show that the share of high speed intercity trips by any mode that are business trips is greater than the share of all trips that are business trips. If it isn’t, your claim of disproportionality is false. You can’t do that using data on trip purpose and mode that is limited to long-distance trips.
March 1st, 2009 at 2:51 pm
To clarify, it is the “high speed” part I was suggesting tends to lead to attracting the business community, not the “intercity” part.
It doesn’t matter. You still can’t support your claim without data on short-distance trips as well as long-distance ones.
March 1st, 2009 at 3:02 pm
DTM,
Indeed, consider a simple hypothetical example. A political unit is going to build three bridges. Each member of the population will use one bridge, but only 1/3 of the population is going to use each particular bridge. So, if you look at any given bridge in isolation, it looks like a transfer from 2/3s of the population to 1/3, since the whol population pays for the bridge but only 1/3 benefits. But overall, there is no transfer, because these effects offset each other.
This is really dumb. In the real world, total bridge use is not equal for everyone. It’s not even close to being equal. Some people use bridges much more than others. Where it’s feasible, we charge usage fees for bridge use in the form of tolls. For the vast majority of bridge use, that is not feasible, but we still charge indirect usage fees in the form of gasoline taxes and vehicle taxes. We do the best we can within practical limits to charge people for what they actually use.
There is no practical obstacle to charging HSR users for their usage of that service. We already have a perfectly practical usage fee mechanism in the form of tickets. So your bridge hypothetical has nothing to do with HSR. It doesn’t even have anything to do with how we fund bridges in the real world.
March 1st, 2009 at 3:51 pm
To review why DTM’s bid is insufficient: The mere fact that it would be tough to prevent HSR attracting a disproportionate number of business travelers does not explain why other people should subsidize HSR riders instead of demanding that they pay the full cost of the benefit they get from riding. The fact that so many HSR riders would be business travelers just makes the subsidies even harder to justify.
March 1st, 2009 at 3:57 pm
No, I mean there are business trips of less than 50 miles. Those trips need to be included to support the claim that “It is true that high speed intercity travel, by any mode, tends to end up disproportionately serving the business community.” And to support the same claim except with the word “intercity” omitted.
March 1st, 2009 at 4:11 pm
Even for bridges that charge tolls, they often receive a subsidy from general funds as well. The same goes for road systems partially supported by gasoline taxes–they also often receive general funds.
So what? I didn’t say there were no subsidies at all. I pointed out that your hypothetical is a complete distortion of how we actually use bridges and fund that usage, and has nothing to do with HSR.
The HSR project Mixner is referring to would likely have the same structure: revenues would cover much of it, but the public would contribute some from general revenues.
As has already been pointed out, taxpayer subsidies up to the value of the “positive externalities,” if any, of an HSR service may be justified. Taxpayers should pay for the benefits taxpayers get. That’s not the issue in dispute. The question is why taxpayers should pay any more than that. Since tickets provide a perfectly practical mechanism for charging HSR users the cost of their usage, why should this cost be funded by taxpayers?
March 1st, 2009 at 4:24 pm
DTM,
That’s a completely different claim from the one I quoted you making earlier. A disproportionate share of intercity travel services is not the same thing as a disproportionate share of all travel services.
March 1st, 2009 at 4:50 pm
DTM,
To try and help you understand charles’ and scott’s point, let’s put some numbers on it.
Cost of providing HSR service: $300 per ride.
Value of “positive externality” benefits: $50 per ride.
Cost of providing HSR service – value of “positive externality” benefits = cost of providing user benefits = $250 per ride.
Therefore, the price of a ticket should be $250. That is the cost riders should pay, because that is the cost of providing riders with the benefit they get from riding. Taxes should pay for the $50 in “positive externality” benefits per ride, but not for any more than that.
I don’t know why you’re having so much trouble understanding this.
March 1st, 2009 at 5:14 pm
DTM,
And my point is that for good reasons there is no strict requirement that for each particular project, each taxpayer who contributed to the project should receive more in benefits than they paid in funding.
No one said there is. Some projects are obviously designed and intended to redistribute wealth, for purposes such as social justice and political equality. Examples include tax-funded K12 education and tax-funded housing subsidies for low-income families.
But we’re not talking about those projects. And we’re not talking about public projects in general. We’re talking about High-Speed Rail projects. Why is the massive redistribution of wealth from poorer to richer that HSR would produce justified? Why should taxpayers agree to subsidize high-speed train rides for affluent businessmen?
Your latest ludicrous response to this problem is to assert that somehow, in some way you cannot explain, through some other project or set of projects you cannot identify, the wealth will be redistributed back to the taxpayers from the HSR riders so that it all ultimately evens out and there is no net loss to to the taxpayers. It’s absurd. If someone made that same claim to you in any other context you would rightly reject it as ridiculous.
March 1st, 2009 at 5:30 pm
DTM,
There are so many errors in your post 106, but rather than go through all of them I’ll focus on the central absurdity of your position yet again. After purporting to correct jason’s numbers, you finally admit that your modifications do not change his conclusion that taxpayers would get screwed by the HSR project unless riders pay the full cost of their rides. You write:
if you take the taxpayers who are not consumers, they are paying more in taxes than they are getting in benefits. That is true. For the reasons I have given, it is also no reason to avoid this project, and instead we should do the project but make sure that one way or another we deal with this distributional issue.
But you haven’t dealt with the distributional issue. You’ve just waved your hand and declared that somehow, through some mechanism you cannot explain, if we agree to build a HSR project that massively redistributes wealth from ordinary taxpayers to affluent HSR riders, the taxpayers will somehow get that wealth back through some other public project. You offer no evidence or argument to support this absurd claim. Which isn’t surprising, since there is no such evidence. It’s just yet another DTM fantasy invented for the express purpose of trying to justify HSR.
March 1st, 2009 at 6:02 pm
DTM,
So in a last ditch effort to save his point…
Neither of your silly quibbles affects his point that you are proposing a massive redistribution of wealth from taxpayers to riders. The fact that there will be some overlap between those two groups is wholly irrelevant to that point. Here’s your ludicrous argument in a nutshell:
DTM to taxpayers: Give me money to fund this expensive HSR system I want to build.
Taxpayers to DTM: Why should we?
DTM to taxpayers: Because the total benefits will exceed the total costs.
Taxpayers to DTM: But those benefits will be concentrated among a small group of people who already have more money than we do. We’ll get less in benefits than we pay in costs. You’re trying to screw us.
DTM to taxpayers: Don’t worry. SOMEHOW, you’ll recover that loss, through some other mechanism. I can’t tell you how. I’m just sure it’ll happen one way or another.
I’m surprised even you have the nerve to make an “argument” of such utter stupidity. It’s beyond absurd.
March 1st, 2009 at 6:53 pm
charles,
DTM has actually conceded your argument, but he doesn’t seem to realize it. He said that “we should do the [HSR] project but make sure that one way or another we deal with this distributional issue.” The only way to “make sure” that the distributional problem is dealt with is to resolve it in the same legislation that authorizes the HSR spending. No HSR law or proposal I have ever seen does this, or even addresses the distributional problem at all. The new stimulus bill provides $8 billion for HSR, but contains no provision for addressing the distributional problem that spending would create. California’s Proposition 1a authorized $9 billion in spending on HSR, but contained no provision to address the distributional impact of this spending on California’s taxpayers. So by his own argument, DTM should oppose the $8 billion for HSR in the stimulus bill and oppose Prop 1a and oppose every other HSR proposal that has actually been made.
March 1st, 2009 at 8:54 pm
jason, March 1st, 2009 at 4:50 pm
This is, of course, assuming no subsidy for other modes of transport. We know that assumption is not valid, since in the US driving does not even support all of its own operating and capital costs, so external costs are not taxed at all, which is a substantial subsidy.
Under the law of the second best, there is no reason to expect it to be jointly optimal to optimize only one market when a rival market is not allowed to arrive at its optimal level.
In general, with one form of transport subsidized far beyond the optimal level and another not, there will be a suboptimal allocation of usage between the two modes.
March 1st, 2009 at 9:22 pm
This might make some kind of weird sense if we were the Soviet Union and our spending was determined by central government planners with five-year plans who could “balance” distribution in the way you say, but we’re not. Public spending is chaotic and unpredictable, determined by political and economic pressures that vary by time and place. You just can’t say “give me HSR and I’ll make sure you get X to balance it out.” The American political and economic system doesn’t work that way. You have to show that your proposal is justified on its own merits.
Another problem is that there is no basis for assuming that you could maximize the return of your HSR without a large net redistribution of wealth in favor of riders. If you use some other policy to reverse the redistribution of wealth caused by your HSR you reduce the effective subsidy to riders, which reduces ridership and lowers the total return.
March 1st, 2009 at 9:49 pm
Obviously I disagree with you that the only way to deal with the distributional effects of any given government project is to be deal with them in the same legislation that authorizes the spending.
You’re not disagreeing with me, because I didn’t say that. I said the only way to make sure (your words) that the distributional effects are dealt with is to use the same legislation. If you seriously believe there is some other way, describe it clearly.
Even if you could somehow offer a guarantee to taxpayers that you would compensate them in some other way for the net loss your HSR plan would impose on them, you could only do so by destroying your economic argument for the plan. You need the redistribution to fund the rider subsidies to attract enough riders to make the plan viable in the first place. But you can’t offer any such guarantee, so the point is moot anyway.
March 1st, 2009 at 9:59 pm
DTM,
The bottomline is that a society which insisted on each individual project or each individual piece of legislation having no distributional effects
For the umpteenth time, no one has insisted on that, so you don’t need to keep repeating this strawman. No one is insisting that spending on public schools or low-income housing or the military have no distributional effects. In fact, social welfare spending is often intended to redistribute wealth. But we’re not talking about social welfare projects. We’re talking about a specific type of transportation project, high-speed rail. So stop pretending that anyone has suggested that government redistribution of wealth is never justified. No one has said that, or anything like it.
March 1st, 2009 at 10:36 pm
The normal way that most countries address the “distributional effect” of HSR is to charge higher prices for business class than for regular class. Regular class is still much more comfortable than traveling in a flying sardine can, with more legroom and more recline on the seats.
As far as the distributional effects of paying less for capital investment in inter-metropolitan transport capacity through HSR than through additional highway lanes and investment in additional airport capacity, it seems as if the discussion is proceeding in a vacuum, acting as if interstate roads and airports do not receive capital subsidies from taxpayers.
We are, after all, talking about a specific type of transportation task, common carrier passenger transport between metropolitan areas. As far as the argument that governments should not subsidize infrastructure in support of that transport task because the weighted average of the income of those travelers is higher than the national median income … its bizarre to introduce that for HSR but not for public subsidies for air travel infrastructure or public subsidies for road travel infrastructure.
March 2nd, 2009 at 10:37 am
This “has Mixner in a tizzy” claim does not test out. The same bias in the consumer surplus toward the top of the income ladder occurs in the ongoing subsidy of intercity road transport, and he has never found that to be an issue of concern.
Rather, the more plausible explanation is that seems to be a basis for political wedge attack … at a minimum, for spreading FUD … for HSR, that a disproportionate share of intercity travel all up is on business, which also applies to HSR, and if it can be framed as a peculiarity of HSR alone, some of the support from the business hating DFH’s can be peeled away from HSR.
As a political argument, the problem is that, unlike intercity road transport, there are well-established ways to get most business travelers to pay extra for the privilege by setting up a business class and charging more for the business class seat, and there are few people that are upset by the idea of having wealthier travelers pay more for their seats and increase the operating surplus available to support expanding the system.
March 2nd, 2009 at 12:20 pm
DTM,
Starting from the end, the proposal was justified on its own merits by the conclusion that the project would have a large surplus of total benefits over total costs, and that some public funding optimized the project.
No, the mere fact that a project is estimated to produce a positive return, even a large positive return, does not justify it. The return would need to be greater than that of all alternative projects to address the same need. It wouldn’t be enough to show that your HSR project could satisfy a transportation need and produce a positive return. You would need to show that the return was greater than that of all the alternatives such as expanding highway or air capacity.
Even if you could pass that test, we don’t evaluate public spending simply on the basis of total return. If the project would cause a serious adverse redistribution of wealth, that is a reason for rejecting it even if it would also produce the highest total return. Since HSR would almost certainly cause a serious adverse redistribution of wealth, that alone would be reason to reject it, independently of the issue of total return.
You have yet to produce even one single solitary example of an actual real-world HSR proposal that would even pass the first test of maximizing total returns, let alone one that could satisfy that requirement without also producing a massive adverse redistribution of wealth from poor to rich.
As for our political and economic system, in fact this is exactly how it works.
No, that’s not how it works. There is no mechanism in our political and economic system to “make sure” that an adverse redistribution of wealth caused by one project will be reversed by another. This is just pure fantasy on your part. The only way you could provide any reasonable assurance to the taxpayers you want to fund your HSR project that they would suffer no net loss of wealth would be to address the distributional problem in the same legislation that authorizes the HSR spending. Simply saying ” Don’t worry, you’ll get the money back SOMEHOW” is absurd.
March 2nd, 2009 at 1:11 pm
DTM,
This is a small issue because obviously I don’t think we need to “reverse” the distribution of benefits, but instead think it is preferable to simply have these sorts of projects achieve a rough balance taken as a whole. But in any event, the way you can make this work is to have the redistribution occur regardless of whether the people in question actually ride the train.
Incomprehensible. The point, which you seem to have completely failed to understand, is that you’re relying on the redistribution of wealth from poorer to richer to produce the benefits of your HSR project. You need the redistribution to fund the subsidies. You need the subsidies to attract enough riders to produce the benefit you’re using in your cost-benefit analysis. If you reduce or reverse the redistribution through some other policy, you reduce the effective subsidy to riders, which reduces the number of riders, which reduces the benefit. Your entire argument is fundamentally dishonest. You’re assuming the redistribution will occur to produce your estimate of the total return, and then pretending that the redistribution could be reduced or reversed without affecting the return. You can’t have it both ways. Either the riders get the full subsidy you’re using in your cost-benefit estimates or they don’t. If they do, someone else has to pay that subsidy. There has to be a redistribution in favor of the riders. If the riders don’t get the full subsidy, because of some other policy that redistributes part of all of it back to the taxpayers, then your cost-benefit analysis is invalid.
March 13th, 2009 at 9:32 pm
You’re not fooling anyone, ‘charles’ and ‘jason’.
March 15th, 2009 at 4:46 am
And ’scott’ too, for that matter.
Three socks in one thread, all wanking each other off.
[golf clap]
April 16th, 2009 at 10:12 pm
Greeting. The first duty of a leader is to make himself be loved without courting love. To be loved without ‘playing up’ to anyone – even to himself.
I am from Honduras and also am speaking English, tell me right I wrote the following sentence: “You can book airline tickets, rail tickets, hostel rooms and travel insurance.”
Thanks for the help 8-), Marisela.