Amtrak’s Losses
A few points about the new study of Amtrak’s per passenger losses that’s being cited by some as an argument against investments in passenger rail. For one thing, there’s all this about the lack of context in the report.
But for a second thing, I would merely emphasize the fact that the whole point of advocacy for high-speed passenger is precisely that Amtrak as it currently exists isn’t a good idea. The United States doesn’t have a real high-speed passenger rail system, and the problems with Amtrak don’t justify that situation, they’re a symptom of it. If you look at the Acela routes, which is the closest thing to HSR we have in the United States, they’re turning a profit. The biggest losses are on low-speed long-distance routes like New Orleans to Los Angeles and Chicago to San Francisco. That’s dumb. To get from Chicago to San Francisco, people should fly. The HSR point is that a reasonably speedy train from Chicago to Milwaukee or from Chicago to Indianapolis would be valuable.
Third, while we probably should try to avoid running routes that involve huge operating losses, there’s no particular reason the government should treat passenger rail investments the way a business would treat investment in a new factory and expect it to earn a financial return. Infrastructure is infrastructure. Highways don’t “make money” they facilitate activity. Transit and intercity rail are the same way. Charging money to avoid overuse and to efficiently allocate scarce spaces makes sense. But the creation of public infrastructure in general, and of passenger rail in particular, isn’t a bad business proposition it’s just not a business proposition at all. It’s a policy proposition.
64 Responses to “Amtrak’s Losses”
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October 28th, 2009 at 11:38 am
Matt, are you too falling for the “Chicago to San Francisco” fallacy? The Chicago-SF train is also the Chicago-Omaha train, the Denver-Grand Junction train, the Salt Lake-Reno train, and the Green River-Sacramento train. Most people on the train are not going between the endpoints, and the long-distance trains represent the only public transportation avaiable between many of the smaller cities they serve. They represent a public service much more important than getting people rather slowly between Chicago and San Francisco.
October 28th, 2009 at 11:41 am
That’s dumb. To get from Chicago to San Francisco, people should fly.
Couldn’t agree more. If wealthy people want to pay huge prices for the novelty of boutique tourism, nostalgia-drenched train rides from Chicago to San Francisco — and if some businessman can make a profit selling such a service — then have at it. But the difficulty of making such a service profitable doesn’t detract from the fact that most Americans live in regions featuring Europe-like, HSR-friendly, population densities.
October 28th, 2009 at 11:45 am
Does Amtrak’s budget include the cost of renting rails and/or maintaining them?
If the government maintains/owns roads, it should do the same for railways.
October 28th, 2009 at 11:49 am
DAS hit on one of the important points. In many countries, the government owns the rail infrastructure and there are a mix of public & private rail lines. Here, it’s sort of the opposite.
October 28th, 2009 at 11:49 am
If you look at the Acela routes, which is the closest thing to HSR we have in the United States, they’re turning a profit
A salient point you missed is that the two most profitable Amtrak routes are the Acela and the Hiawatha (Chicago to Milwaukee). These routes have two things in common: A)medium distance between two big cities and B)Amtrak owns the lines. This is an important distinction because in most Amtrak routes, the rail lines are own by freight companies. Because of that, slow moving freight has the right of way over Amtrak. Just look at how long it takes to ride Amtrak Chicago to San Francisco. You could take a greyhound faster.
That’s why I never understood the vitriol against the high speed rail corridor idea.
October 28th, 2009 at 11:50 am
I would love HSR from Chicago to Indy. Unfortunately, it wouldn’t do people in Chicago all that much good to use it to visit Indy. The public transit in Indy is atrocious and the entire city is pretty much a catastrophic example of out-of-control urban sprawl. There is just no way to function in Indy without a car.
October 28th, 2009 at 11:53 am
The Chicago-SF train is also the Chicago-Omaha train, the Denver-Grand Junction train, the Salt Lake-Reno train, and the Green River-Sacramento train. Most people on the train are not going between the endpoints, and the long-distance trains represent the only public transportation avaiable between many of the smaller cities they serve.
You’re actually proving Matt’s point, relative to the Denver-Grand Junction route. This seems like something that would be best-served by HSR, not a slow train coming more than halfway across the country. As for the rest of your routes — why should a city of 973 (Green River, UT) have train service? That is just plain illogical and points up one of the flaws of Amtrak’s long-distance service. Likewise, what’s the need of Salt Lake City-Reno or Chicago-Omaha passenger service?
October 28th, 2009 at 11:59 am
Well, the Federal Highway Administration’s budget has been roughly $40 billion for the last several years, so that gives you a start at ball-parking the FHwA’s per-passenger losses, but gathering the state data (and separating out the highway component) could be a mess.
October 28th, 2009 at 11:59 am
Highways don’t “make money” they facilitate activity. Transit and intercity rail are the same way.
This also suggests that even from a pure government’s-bottom-line perspective, if the creation of a transportation line facilitates some taxable economic activity, then the tax revenue from that activity should be counted as part of the return on investment.
But in fact, governments exist to invest in society in ways that return to the government only very indirectly. Education, national defense, law enforcement; none of these necessarily turn a profit, nor should we expect them to. We do them because they serve our common national interests, not to make a buck. (FWIW, I think health care is the same way, and that’s why we shouldn’t shrink from using the public purse to achieve our common goal of health. Anyone who doesn’t want to contribute to their fellow citizens’ health is free to renounce their citizenship and go seasteading or something. Why do they hate Americans, anyway?)
October 28th, 2009 at 12:02 pm
This bit about “There is just no way to function in (city of your choice) without a car” is getting really old.
One thing a lot of people will use a HSR train for is day trips to a neighboring city core. Normally you wouldn’t even want a car on such a trip. At least, that is, if you still retain the power of bipedal locomotion.
A century ago a businessman could board a train at 7 AM, have meetings before and after lunch in a neighboring city, and be home by 7 PM- and many of them did.
When you’re going downtown, a personal car is just that much extra luggage to be hauled around and stored. If you’re not staying long, it reduces your mobility instead of enhancing it.
October 28th, 2009 at 12:02 pm
Indy has a downtown convention center and sports facility. Put the train station downtown and there’d be riders.
October 28th, 2009 at 12:06 pm
I notice that the report from Pew also “includes depreciation and overhead when calculating loss or profit per passenger on each of its rail lines, an accounting practice used in other
capital intensive industries.”
My hunch is that calculating depreciation on a complex public-private hybrid like Amtrak leaves a LOT of room for fudge factors. And SHOULD we calculate depreciation? Haven’t Amtrak’s railline properties properly been depreciated, oh say, 80 years ago? Does the government calcuate depreciation on interstate highways and bridges? How much depreciation and overhead owing to payments to private rail lines on their costs should be included?
Somehow I have a feeling that a public finance economist could bend these figures this way or that, depending on the local political winds. So who is this “Subsidyscope”, anyway?
October 28th, 2009 at 12:12 pm
So, should we close down the parts of the Federal Interstate Highway System that are having losses?
Should the Federal Interstate Highway System be self sufficient?
Because, frankly it’s just another way of moving people and cargo and not only is it highly inefficient, it’s enormously subsidized. From the chart I see going through 2006, the Fed is funding well over $30 billion to support the road system – how is that different from putting it into rail?
I know it seems different, perhaps in part because companies with vested interest in the demise of rail have “educated” us as such, but is it really? We also pay for things like the FAA and other aviation subsidies, all of which again don’t get counted when we talk about rail.
In short, the government is already in the business of subsidizing the transportation of people and goods, so why should rail be different?
October 28th, 2009 at 12:21 pm
“I would love HSR from Chicago to Indy. Unfortunately, it wouldn’t do people in Chicago all that much good to use it to visit Indy.”
Obviously, demand is much higher for a route from Indy to Chicago than the other way around. But downtown Indy is very compact and walkable. The convention center, football and basketball stadiums, most government offices, a significant amount of office space, most of the nicer hotels, and a fair amount of retail are within walking distance of Union Station.
Public transportation in Indy is, of course, complete and utter crap. But as with any investment in rail, the goal is for the rail line to become the backbone for other improvements.
October 28th, 2009 at 12:27 pm
This seems like something that would be best-served by HSR, not a slow train coming more than halfway across the country.
And that points to the issue with track ownership and priority. If/when that’s sorted out, the marathon routes can be preserved for “heritage” tourist travel at a premium with facilities to match — I know someone who did NY-Chicago-LA a few years ago — while the shorter routes can be run as more time-sensitive services.
October 28th, 2009 at 12:32 pm
@ColoZ,
I couldn’t have said it better. While some travelers do take the train all the way from Chicago to Los Angeles, most people are making much shorter trips.
Perhaps they take the train because they’re afraid to fly. Perhaps it’s cheaper for them. Perhaps their town isn’t large enough to have an airport.
Don’t forget that while the Acela turns a profit, some of those riders come from other markets. A person traveling from a place without HSR service now might well transfer to Acela at Washington to continue his or her trip to the Northeast. Without the rest of the National Network, overall ridership would drop.
And Acela turns a profit because it’s a premium service. The slower Regional trains, which are only slower because they make more stops, actually don’t turn a profit. Acela trains are all business class and above, and have proven that they are suseptible to recessions like this one, with business travel dropping sharply.
And despite the corridor’s lack of profit-making, it still has managed to capture a significant share of travel in the Northeast Region.
@Mark,
As for Green River, Utah, the stop there represents additional access for the residents not only of the town but those within a driving radius. If the town doesn’t deserve an Amtrak station, it certainly doesn’t deserve the *two* I-70 interchanges it gets.
Stops like Green River, Utah and Toccoa, Georgia offer passengers a chance to stretch their legs, to have a cigarette. But they also offer additional destinations. Green River will never have a major airport, and while it does have an Interstate, her citizens and those of other places deserve other means of transportation.
And deleting stops like Green River and Toccoa only remove more passengers from Amtrak. Amtrak will never capture a majority share of trips between Chicago and Los Angeles, but it can certainly compete in shorter corridors.
Every improvement we can throw at Amtrak will help profitability and usability. We don’t have to have 250 mph trains running between Chicago and LA, but if we can increase the current speed by 10%, we’ve still made a gain.
But the real question here, the underlying subtext, as always, is about priorities. Should we fund rail? Perhaps it is not profitable. Perhaps it is not as quick or as convenient as highways or air. But it is a vital part of our transportation system.
Before we spent billions of dollars to build Interstates and airports, railroads made a profit. Getting rid of Amtrak would not improve our highways or our airports. And if freeing up transport dollars for roadways is the solution you’re hoping for, it’s an unsustainable one.
And until we do a better job of integrating our rail network with airports, we still need long-haul trains. And even if we were able to integrate air and rail travel on a more european scale, college students (or anyone else) headed for South Bend, IN or Norman, OK need the penultimate link in their trip – the one that takes them from the airport or HSR hub to their town, where they can pick up a bus or streetcar to get home.
October 28th, 2009 at 12:51 pm
@Matt: hmmm…I think the point I was making got lost in the typing. I do see what you’re saying in terms of rail as a public provision. I am just not convinced there needs to be rail service everywhere there is highway service — but I do think that HSR in dense areas makes a lot of sense as an alternative.
October 28th, 2009 at 1:33 pm
The public transit in Indy is atrocious and the entire city is pretty much a catastrophic example of out-of-control urban sprawl. There is just no way to function in Indy without a car.
Precisely why HSR service to such a city is a good idea. Just as with transit-oriented development, if you make the investment, the density will come. Downtown HSR stations in major cities would probably be an excellent way to combat sprawl, and will encourage all kinds of core redevelopment.
October 28th, 2009 at 1:45 pm
I would love HSR from Chicago to Indy. Unfortunately, it wouldn’t do people in Chicago all that much good to use it to visit Indy. The public transit in Indy is atrocious and the entire city is pretty much a catastrophic example of out-of-control urban sprawl. There is just no way to function in Indy without a car.
So rent a car when you get there. I don’t think that airlines allow you to bring a car on board, so I’d presume that airline passengers have the same problem.
October 28th, 2009 at 1:51 pm
Heck, why should it have mail service? Amtrak isn’t the only independent government agency throwing money away in Green River.
Anyway, I’m not sure why the government should be involved in such transportation provision anyway. After all, we have private passenger airlines, and they consistently turn a profit, without receiving any money from taxpayers.
October 28th, 2009 at 1:53 pm
[...] The Amtrak losses piece we linked to yesterday didn’t exactly do a great job of contextualizing the issue. 2008 was actually a pretty good year for mass transit, and we can expect “increasing ridership and increasing financial returns on investment.” (CA HSR Blog, Yglesias) [...]
October 28th, 2009 at 2:11 pm
@20: Subtle, but after #13, I doubt you’ll get anyone to bite.
As for Indy, if it has a sports venue and a train station, even if they’re *not* located near each other, the owners of the sports venue have an obvious interest in facilitating transportation between the two on game days, perhaps with some kind of shuttle bus. (Especially since it reduces their need for on-site parking and the amount of traffic congestion experienced by all other fans arriving and departing the same game.) Likewise the convention center.
Aside from solutions specific to those ultra-high-traffic destinations, Indy also seems large enough to support cabs. A train station might attract car rental companies the same way airports do, for the same reason. And of course the more non-car tourism comes to town, and the more local businesses profit from it, the more local government might be inspired to provide services useful to tourists, including less sucky public transportation.
October 28th, 2009 at 2:28 pm
Re: Indianapolis
Precisely why HSR service to such a city is a good idea. Just as with transit-oriented development, if you make the investment, the density will come.
As others have said, there’s actually plenty to do within walking distance of downtown Indy. In addition to the aforementioned stuff, there’s also IUPUI and the various things in White River Park, such as the zoo, the state museum, and the NCAA headquarters.
What sprawls in Indianapolis is the housing and the retail commercial areas. The “points of interest” and most of the corporate stuff are all pretty compact. The two exceptions are the Speedway and Eli Lilly, which has its Corporate Center about 3/4 of a mile from Monument Circle and its Industrial Center about a mile and a half from the Circle, which is still pretty compact. If they were to build an HSR to downtown Indy, it wouldn’t be that hard to have shuttle service to the Speedway on race days or quick shuttles to the Lilly offices on weekdays.
October 28th, 2009 at 2:30 pm
Airports? What airports?
October 28th, 2009 at 2:36 pm
Not sure if you’re aware of this, but they have these things called Taxi Cabs.
And if a taxi doesn’t suffice, then I’ll betcha that Indy’s Union Station has a business that…rents cars.
Kinda like the airport.
also, many of us have working legs.
October 28th, 2009 at 2:37 pm
As for Indy, if it has a sports venue and a train station, even if they’re *not* located near each other … Likewise the convention center.
This is true for cities in general, but it’s worth reiterating that for Indy specifically, the actual, existing Amtrak station is within 300 yards of the convention center, Lucas Oil Stadium (football), and the Conseco Fieldhouse (basketball).
October 28th, 2009 at 2:41 pm
joe, I think that was satire. Airlines get taxpayer bailouts by the truckload and they’re still usually unprofitable, at least in the “post-9/11 world.”
October 28th, 2009 at 2:41 pm
‘Highways don’t “make money” ‘
Well, keep to accounting rules anyway, highways do generate gas taxes which is highly correlated to use. Buses generate fares, as does most transit. Congestion fees are income. Many toll roads do make profits.
October 28th, 2009 at 2:50 pm
A quick point of note – when most of the roads were first built in this country, they were built by private companies as toll roads. However, the tolls were impossible to collect because people would simply go around the toll booths. Anyway, these companies folded, and the various state governments took over – not because the roads were money makers, but because the roads spurred the local economies.
October 28th, 2009 at 2:57 pm
Really? How does that work? Is the population of Indianapolis in a continual state of migrating to Chicago? Do people from Indianapolis take a straight route to Chicago, but take some sort of meandering route back home to Indianapolis, first going to St. Louis, then to Indianapolis or something, obviating their need for a direct from-Chicago-to-Indianapolis route? Take a train in the Indianapolis-to-Chicago direction, fly, drive, or take a bus in the Chicago-to-Indianapolis direction?
Even if Indianapolitans are more likely to visit Chicago than Chicagoans are to visit Indianapolis, they still need transportation both ways, unless they’re moving permanently.
October 28th, 2009 at 3:06 pm
Julian, I have a reputation as a smartass. I know a smartass when I see one. Your post at #30 is not the work of a smartass. It’s the work of a jackass.
You know damn well what I meant, jackass.
October 28th, 2009 at 3:37 pm
Even if Indianapolitans are more likely to visit Chicago than Chicagoans are to visit Indianapolis, they still need transportation both ways, unless they’re moving permanently.
Well, you still need a way to get the trains back to Indianapolis. And since Indy is America’s largest city not on a navigable waterway, the normally sensible idea of packing up the HSR trains on a barge and shipping them back over the course of a week or so is a no-go.
October 28th, 2009 at 3:54 pm
Okay, now this is the work of a smartass. Well done, sir.
Au contraire, mon frère.
October 28th, 2009 at 4:38 pm
It seems to me that the government did not build the network nor does it own the airports and airlines in this country (Although give Bambi some time). Why then, are we going to use tax-payer dollars to build high-speed rail across the country? If the business model is as good as you suggest, then why doesn’t the private sector go ahead with it? Oh, but this isn’t about that is it? Its all about making the government bigger and bigger and bigger. All the left cares about is its power. Not the environment nor the economy and certainly not our freedoms.
October 28th, 2009 at 4:54 pm
Perhaps they take the train because they’re afraid to fly. Perhaps it’s cheaper for them. Perhaps their town isn’t large enough to have an airport.
Well, with respect to (2) or (3), there’s a perfectly good case for subsidized bus service between small cities and towns. But there’s no particular reason for a long distance train which is much more costly (unless the highway is impractical).
As for (1), I shouldn’t have to spend 1 dollar of tax money to pay for some irrational idiot to avoid confronting a stupid fear. Screw ‘em– if they are afraid to fly, I guess they don’t have to travel then. Or maybe they can just get over themselves.
October 28th, 2009 at 5:03 pm
Once again, a right-winger shows that he does not know what he speaks of.
Most, if not all, of the major airports in this country are government owned and operated.
The City of Chicago Department of Aviation owns O’Hare International Airport and Midway International Airport. LAX is owned by Los Angeles World Airports, a department of the City of Los Angeles. Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport is owned by the City of Atlant Department of Aviation. The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, a government unit owned by the States of New York and New Jersey, owns and operates JFK International Airport, LaGuardia Airport, and others. Miami-Dade County’s Miami-Dade Aviation Department runs Miami International Airport.
I could go on, but I would hope you get the picture. Not a single major airport in the United States is privately owned. Not a single Airline in the United States has put up its own money to establish a facility. They all pay rent to the governments that build the facilities.
The airline industry would be tiny, only serving a handful of locations at exceptionally high prices, had municipal governments across the United States not put up the money needed to build the airport network in this country.
The Federal Government, through the FAA, sells rights of way to airlines so that they can fly all the different routes in this country, not to mention air traffic control.
There’s a reason that the only airline in most countries is the national one. Private airlines have to be so massively subsidized that it doesn’t make much sense to keep them in private hands.
October 28th, 2009 at 5:35 pm
The summation of all these comments is: it’s all about the oil and automotive lobby, they are the ones who want us to be addicted to our cars and our highways and they are the ones who control or have controlled the purse strings in congress and in the formation of public policy.
October 28th, 2009 at 5:42 pm
Another great use for HSR would be Minneapolis to Chicago. This route is the most traveled air route out of the Twin Cities. The train route would go through Rochester, MN, (Mayo Clinic), Madison, WI (state capital, huge university,) and Milwaukee in 5 hrs. It takes 6.5 hrs to drive, where travelling by air takes about 5 hours from door to door. But it will save $ billions in future airport expansion at each node.
October 28th, 2009 at 5:47 pm
We need to pass laws regarding right-of-way of rail lines, turning them into public highways for Amtrak et al.
There’s no reason why Amtrak shouldn’t have right-of-way over cargo trains. And until they do, cargo companies have no reason to support allowing other trains onto their rails.
October 28th, 2009 at 5:51 pm
Dilan… Rails are:
1) Less expensive to build
2) Less expensive to maintain
3) Less expensive to run trains than cars
4) Can carry heavier loads
5) Can carry more loads
6) Are environmentally better for emissions; carbon, stormwater, water pollution, air pollution, easier to recycle the parts.
7) Safer
Irrational fear is somewhat lower on the scale. The cost of just a mile of freeway vs a mile of rail and comparison to what they can carry and the emissions they make? It’s not even a fair fight.
Long-distance cars have gotten a free ride for much too long.
October 28th, 2009 at 6:02 pm
My biggest annoyance is that when investment is put in, walking or bicycling is like the last thing considered.
For instance, on the new trains they bought for CalTrain (the San Francisco – San Jose line) it went faster – but held 8 bicycles instead of 32, and half as many passengers. Now bicyclists have to wait for hours to ride on the train, if at all. And all ends of the train are a mile or more from the office cores of the cities it serves.
How do they get away with buying less capacity? Because none of the riders had a say in how it was bought, and capacity didn’t take into account anything it was currently doing aside from the sports arenas (which still use trains from two series’ ago).
If you ask them ‘why did you reduce the number of bicycles’ they say ‘the new trains are not designed to be hooked and unhooked like the old trains’. …Yes, but the old trains held 32 bicycles before you doubled up the bicycle cars at peak times. Now the peak trains hold 8. WTF?
October 28th, 2009 at 6:06 pm
Crissa:
Rails are great for high-capacity passenger routes at high speed. I’d spend a ton of money on that.
They are also great for moving freight.
But we’ve already built the highways that connect small cities with the rest of the country. The marginal costs of maintaining them are low. There’s no reason, with Interstate 40 perfectly capable of carrying traffic, why we need a passenger train between Barstow and Albuquerque. We just don’t. We can subsidize as many buses as are necessary, and by clearing Amtrak off those rails, we make room for more freight cars.
High speed, intercity rail = good.
Freight rail = good.
Low speed traditional passenger trains = unnecessary.
October 28th, 2009 at 6:16 pm
There is no way that an $84 loss per passenger generates sufficient economic benefits to offset the operating loss. Cut the long distance routes and run. Better yet, devolve Amtrak’s assets to states and JPAs that will better manage these valuable resources and which are much, much more responsive to the realities of demand and reasonable operating subsidies. Then states will finally have the incentive to pony up a fair portion of passenger rail investments. Or not, if it doesn’t seem worth it, which is just fine, too.
October 28th, 2009 at 6:45 pm
Julian, I have a reputation as a smartass. I know a smartass when I see one. Your post at #30 is not the work of a smartass. It’s the work of a jackass
Actually, I don’t think Julian was being a smartass at all. I must confess I thought the same thing when I read the comment about much more demand for Indy to Chicago trips than Chicago to Indy trips: how do all the former get back home to Indianapolis?
Now, presumably some of them will indeed purchase only one way tickets, and then find some other means to get back to Indy. But surely the vast majority of folks buy round trip tickets.
But the other factor is this: even if a much larger percentage of Indy residents want to visit Chicago than the other way around, the fact remains that Chicago is a much larger city, with many millions more residents. So you have to take that into consideration, as well.
October 28th, 2009 at 6:53 pm
Hey, don’t dis those long-distance Amtrak routes! Having gone from Portland to Chicago on the northern route and back to the West Coast on the California Zephyr, it’s a real odyssey experience. Yeah, Amtrak is old and clunky, but don’t throw the baby out with the bath water. If we were actually a civilized society and invested in our infrastructure, we could seriously update our urban corridor/commuter train lines (try to approach France and Germany’s advanced train status) and also retrofit the longer trans-continental lines for the train junkies.
The fact that we’re still held at knifepoint by the oil junta at this late critical junction is so insane it’s beyond words. Read the profile of top world climate scientist Hans Joachim Schellnhuber in the latest Nation magazine issue about how we literally have no more wiggle time left to turn the carbon emissions boat around, here, without risking radical & devastating climate change. Updating the trains is an important element in what needs to be done. Also trains are way cool.
October 28th, 2009 at 7:05 pm
One thing to remember is the airline industry is on the edge of extinction. It could happen any time. Their margin for error is butting up against zero. You are talking about an industry that is removing paper cups, toiletries, and magazines in order to decrease weight/ratios enough to save tiny increments of fuel. If they don’t save ounces, most of them won’t make a profit.
One sustained MILD oil shock, say the price of oil hits $110/barrel and stays there for one year, and you can say goodbye to the airline industry.
Personally, as a conservative man, I believe the US should hedge its bets and have a fall back position. But hey, this is the USA. We are not Spain, or France, or Japan, or China. Prudent countries. Sane countries. No, we believe in tiptoeing like a psycho across the abyss on a spider’s thread.
October 28th, 2009 at 7:22 pm
Re Jerry #36
The City of Chicago already tried to sell off Midway Airport, and is now considering selling O’Hare.
October 28th, 2009 at 7:41 pm
Actually, I don’t think Julian was being a smartass at all. I must confess I thought the same thing when I read the comment about much more demand for Indy to Chicago trips than Chicago to Indy trips: how do all the former get back home to Indianapolis?
What he plainly meant was that there are more people in Indianapolis who want to visit Chicago than there are people in Chicago filled with a burning desire to visit Indianapolis. Or, in other words, more desire for Indianapolis to Chicago back to Indianapolis, than for Chicago to Indianapolis back to Chicago.
October 28th, 2009 at 7:49 pm
Unfortunately, this is probably a drop in the bucket compared to the market-distorting subsidies of suburban sprawl, which is driven in large part by irrational idiots seeking to avoid confronting their stupid fears.
October 28th, 2009 at 9:26 pm
YES, a thousand times, YES to HSR between Milwaukee and Chicago. Those of you who aren’t here have no idea how many people drive from Brewtown to the Windy City for work EVERY DAY.
October 28th, 2009 at 9:53 pm
Hey, don’t dis those long-distance Amtrak routes! Having gone from Portland to Chicago on the northern route and back to the West Coast on the California Zephyr, it’s a real odyssey experience. Yeah, Amtrak is old and clunky, but don’t throw the baby out with the bath water. If we were actually a civilized society and invested in our infrastructure, we could seriously update our urban corridor/commuter train lines (try to approach France and Germany’s advanced train status) and also retrofit the longer trans-continental lines for the train junkies.
I actually enjoy long distance trains. But that doesn’t mean they are a good use of taxpayer dollars.
Indeed, as you note, they have a constituency of train junkies. Which is exactly why they should get zero taxpayer dollars. If it gives foamers a hard-on to ride a train for 3 days, let them subsidize a private train and lease the tracks. There’s no particular reason why it’s in the American taxpayers’ interest to subsidize 19th Century transportation just because some people have a fetish for trains.
It is, however, in their interest to subsidize 21st Century transportation, which is why we should have high speed rail.
October 28th, 2009 at 10:28 pm
@Jerry 101 “Not a single Airline in the United States has put up its own money to establish a facility.”
I don’t know about that.
If you mean that no airline has put up its own money to build an entire airport then yes I agree.
If you mean that no airline has put up its own money to help build/refurbish/overhaul an aiport then no I don’t.
American Airlines put up its own money to help build DFW.
United Airlines put up its own money to help build Denver’s new international airport and took an absolute bath on the automated bag system.
Most recently, Southwest offered to build a new terminal building at Boeing field in Seattle and give it to the city – for free! – to take some pressure off of SeaTac but inexplicably the Seattle Port Authority turned them down.
All that being said, I consider myself a supporter of rail – especially light rail and commuter rail – and some of the ideas mentioned above have merit (example: public ownership of rail lines like highways).
October 28th, 2009 at 10:34 pm
Dilan, you make a good point.
I guess I’m a member of that insidious train junky lobby, and want the American people to foot the bill. Ah well, we’ve all got our vices.
October 28th, 2009 at 10:58 pm
I have taken both the Portland-Chicago and Oakland-Chicago Amtrak routes, and I have to say that the comments about the passenger base are wrong and offensive in the extreme. Both trains are full of the kind of people who would never post on blogs but are typically despised by Yglesias commenters who rarely condescend to meet them.
There have been a few rail buffs (and why are they less deserving of subsidy than sports fans?), but I’ve never seen a wealthy boutique tourist. Lots of older black people, older farm couples (very educational to sit with across North Dakota) — even a collection of Lutheran farmers going to a church convention who looked like they stepped out of a Garrison Keillor skit. Hating them is at best distasteful.
October 29th, 2009 at 2:17 am
Gene O’Grady, I agree. I remember particularly on the nothern Empire Builder route a lot of people would be travelling maybe 100, 200 miles for various business, functions, etc. And you do see all types of people, whether or not the Yglesias commentariat would deign to address the teeming multitudes of this great country of ours, well I’d suggest that’s the Y commentariat’s loss, they’d probably be too busy buried in their latest dork band i-tunes, or transfixed by their laptop god, to engage with real people, y’know, that 3-dimensional world thing.
It would be a serious shame to discontinue the transcontinental lines.
October 29th, 2009 at 9:58 am
D’oh!
mds got me.
October 29th, 2009 at 11:46 am
not sure why people think the “last mile” for train trips is some complex problem, especially in cities with limited public transportation: TRAIN STATIONS HAVE PARKING, JUST LIKE AIRPORTS.
October 29th, 2009 at 2:21 pm
(and why are they less deserving of subsidy than sports fans?)
They aren’t. But I don’t think the obscene and unjustifiable subsidies for sports franchises should set the benchmark for how we administer the public fisc.
And to be clear– yes, I love long distance trains, and the people who ride them are nice people. But none of that has anything to do with public policy. They are nice people who are riding an outmoded means of transportation and who, if it’s so important to them, can pay for it themselves. I bet you could probably find some people who’d love to cross the US in a stagecoach as well, but they shouldn’t get a public subsidy.
Meanwhile, our country is starving for high speed intercity rail. We need to redirect our money (and spend additional money) towards that priority.
October 29th, 2009 at 8:25 pm
Yes, funding long-distance trains is a good use of resources. Two reasons why – because the towns in between deserve train service and because long-distance trains actually perform better economically than short-hauls:
1. As ColoZ says, it’s not about taking the slow way between far apart cities, it’s about providing service to places like Green River, Utah. The nature of trains is that they can stop along the way without taking off and landing. The importance of the train to Green River is many times the importance of the train to Salt Lake City, with it’s airports, Greyhound and highway options that are just not available in the fly-over towns. We have a rural essential air service which might be a waste of money but has consistently found high political support. Amtrak service to these small towns carries many more people at much less cost than the rural essential air program and makes a huge difference to the economic and cultural accessibility of small towns across America.
2. If you look at Amtrak’s numbers, the revenue that long-distance trains bring in is very high compared to short-haul routes, and demand is high. Load factors are higher than short-haul routes. The point was made that a long-distance train serves a great many overlapping markets. (Not just San Francisco – Chicago, but from every stop en-route to every other stop en-route). Just like the interstate highways, most trips are short-distance, but combine to equal a full train.
Remember that loss per passenger is a fiction. Most of it is depreciation, but we don’t think about that when we calculate how much gas it will take us to drive somewhere. Much of it is made up of overhead costs that can be allocated in different ways depending on what story we want to tell.
October 29th, 2009 at 9:47 pm
Yes, funding long-distance trains is a good use of resources. Two reasons why – because the towns in between deserve train service and because long-distance trains actually perform better economically than short-hauls
1. They can have bus service. Where is there one shred of evidence that subsidized bus service wouldn’t serve the basic transportation needs of people in small towns?
2. There’s no doubt that foamers and idiots who are afraid to fly, along with some people who genuinely just like a train trip, ride trains in big numbers. But the routes still lose a boatload of money and displace freight trains, which would make money, on the same routes. If we got rid of the slow long distance trains, we could take that money and subsidize high speed rail, which is a desparate necessity and actually fills a real need that can’t be served by buses.
October 30th, 2009 at 9:34 pm
“It seems to me that the government did not build the network nor does it own the airports and airlines in this country”
Actually, various governments built damn near all the airports in the country, and government has bailed out almost every airline in the country. Government built the vast majority road system. Government also paid for a very large portion of pretty much every rail line west of the original 13 states, largely through land grants. And also many of the rail lines south of the Mason-Dixon line were government-built or government-subsidized.
True all-private railroads were built in New York, New England, and the mid-Atlantic. Interestingly most of these went through a government ownership/bailout period (Conrail).
Buses? Despite leeching off the free roads, Greyhound has turned into a near-monopoly in long-distance busing… and is nevertheless heading inexorably towards bankruptcy. Its new competitors save money by not having any stations, making them even more leech-like.
Transportation or people is a public good, and apart from bicycles and walking, in a competent country it will be run largely by government.
October 30th, 2009 at 9:36 pm
“1. They can have bus service. Where is there one shred of evidence that subsidized bus service wouldn’t serve the basic transportation needs of people in small towns?”
Nobody wants to be on a bus for 12 hours! It’s all very well to offer subsidized bus service to a town within 2 hours, or even 4 or 5 hours, of a major city with rail service — but not to a town in the middle of the Mountain West.
October 30th, 2009 at 9:38 pm
By the way, Mr. Esper, you discredit yourself by referring to the most fuel-efficient and modern form of motorized transportation as an “outmoded means of transportation”. If anything is outmoded, it’s the antiquated internal combustion engine.
October 30th, 2009 at 9:41 pm
Dilan Esper wrote:
“But we’ve already built the highways that connect small cities with the rest of the country. The marginal costs of maintaining them are low. ”
Dead wrong. You are incredibly ignorant, sir. Please look up highway maintenance costs. In fact, they are higher than rail maintenance costs for comparable speeds.