Hey, no time is a bad time to cut our infrastructure spending:
A House panel approved a measure Wednesday that cuts funding for Amtrak, less than a day after a train derailment left at least seven people dead and many more injured.
The Republican-led House Appropriations Committee voted 30-21 to reduce grants to Amtrak by $252 million — a drop of about 15% from last year’s level. The cut would apply only to Amtrak’s capital spending and wouldn’t touch funding levels for safety and operations. The measure still needs to clear the full House and Senate before it would go into effect in October.
Democrats on the panel fought unsuccessfully to boost Amtrak funding by $1 billion, to $2.4 billion. But Republicans argued that such a spending increase would need to be offset by cuts elsewhere in the budget, and they admonished Democrats for pointing to the derailment in an effort to increase funding for the passenger rail service.
“Don’t use this tragedy in that way. It was beneath you,” Rep. Mike Simpson, R-Idaho, said to Democrats.
They don’t give a shit about our roads, our bridges, our rail, or anything, yet keep wanting to pretend that they are creating a business friendly climate. Clowns.
Hunter Gathers
To be fair, they are doing a fantastic job of representing the values of most White people.
WereBear
@Hunter Gathers: I don’t think so. I flatten people with:
“All that money the Republicans say they are saving you… how do you get that back? Because I haven’t seen any of it.”
patrick II
The didn’t want to discuss the number of people “quickly dying” under the republican health plan care either.
The real world effects are not worth discussing, only hypotheticals, unless you are Jeb Bush talking about the Iraq war, then it’s reversed.
Kropadope
They want you to be dependent on cars, oil, and your employer. They claim to be business friendly, but they’re only friendly to favored businesses. They try to tilt everything in favor of their donors, destroying competition.
They make it unprofitable to run a business ethically. If the government doesn’t try to stop businesses from abusing workers and the environment, then abusive firms have a competitive edge. Reductions in quality and availability of education likewise result in fewer people with the skills, credentials, and/or confidence to develop businesses that can compete with the big boys.
WereBear
@Kropadope: Yep. It’s really sick stuff.
And when I explain it to people, most of them don’t believe me.
Howard Beale IV
If Amtrak was smart they would zero out any amount that goes to support routes used by the pols. And then when the pols start bitching they can say: “Sorry: you cut our budget.”
Belafon
It’s the Ayn Rand school of government: Only pay for it if you need it. For those that don’t need it, but own it, they get to keep all the money.
Roger Moore
You didn’t build that, and with the Republicans in charge, your government won’t build it, either.
Kropadope
@patrick II:
No, it seems that neither reality nor hypotheticals regarding the Iraq War are worth discussing for Jeb.
lahru
The (R)’s problem is that they are now have sh*t to offer most Americans that they have to pander to a select group of donators that are on the wrong side of popular opinion. That’s all they have left.
JPL
Amtrak is a successful government program between Washington and Boston. The same reps that voted for it would scream if you tried to cut funds to their towns.
Amtrak doesn’t need to stop in nowhere land for one person.
Baud
@Belafon:
And the indoctrination starts early.
Kropadope
@Howard Beale IV:
Aren’t most of the pols using Amtrak coming from the Northeast? It seems that most of them would be on the pro-financing side of the debate. If I had to guess, and I do, I would guess that nearly all the anti-financing-Amtrak pols fly in. Longer distance to travel from sparsely populated areas.
Hal
Trains?!?! Who takes trains anymore? Can’t people just have their drivers take them around if their Mercedes is in the shop?
Then he added; besides, that’s our job.
JPL
@efgoldman: What they do is cut funding and when accidents occur, say see government doesn’t work. Children and Family Services funds in GA was cut by 20 million and unfortunately, some children died. The repubs spewed the same shit and finally the gov added back a million. A million hires very few people.
jl
@Hunter Gathers:
” To be fair, they are doing a fantastic job of representing the values of most White people. ”
That gives the GOP too much credit. They are pretending to act out the bitterness and frustration of 40 to 50 percent of White people who support the GOP. Which is frighteningly high proportion, I know.
But they don’t have the guts to really do anything decisive, at least with their fingerprints on it. Notice that they are cutting the capital budget, not operations. Cutting operations would affect too many White hypocrites who vote for them, and say that want the GOP to cut cut cut, but who will cry like babies and blame whoever cuts the services they enjoy.
If they cut the capital budget, maybe they can stink up service enough to sell it off at a nice profit to their donors, or cut operations later with less risk of being blamed, or con some hapless corporate Democrat saps into cutting services for them and taking the blame.
Whatever works. One thing is for sure, they simply do not care for anything but their own dishonest political gigs.
Kropadope
@JPL:
Try explaining this to a Republican or a right-oriented libertarian, though.
PsiFighter37
@Kropadope: My thoughts exactly. The government officials who most likely benefit from Amtrak are Democratic politicians, which is just another reason for the GOP to screw them over.
Not that I think the Chinese are paragons of sound fiscal spending (given how many ghost cities they are throwing up to keep their economy going), but the fact that they are spending $128 billion this year on rail – and we are contemplating spending less than 1% of that same amount on Amtrak – is a joke. Someone needs to take those clowns in Washington to Japan to ride the Shinkansen or to Shanghai to ride the Maglev from the airport to understand what high-speed rail really is.
American infrastructure is a goddamn joke. There’s really nothing good that can be said about it. Even in NYC, the subway system is a joke, and we’re spending billions of dollars to add a minuscule amount of rail mileage to the Upper East Side, of all neighborhoods – and it won’t even be done until I’m on the wrong side of my 30s. The whole system is fucked, and when we are driving on dilapidated interstates and racing from one collapsing bridge to another to patch the system, it’s going to be even worse.
Decline and fall, baby – get used to it.
raven
It doesn’t help to have fucking morons like Tweety screaming at the head of the NTSB, “EVERYBODY RIDES THIS TRAIN”. No they don’t Tweety, Joe and Mika.
RaflW
It make one wonder why businesses think the GOP is all that. Of course, when people like Carly Fiorina are held up as great business leaders, I guess I shouldn’t wonder.
I suppose the same people who have looted pension funds and ridden foreclosures to profit think its just fine to strip the basic American infrastructure. They’re rich, they’ll just leave when the Us of A gets too potholed to enjoy.
the Conster
I commute on the commuter rail every day, and the Amtrak that runs that route is often loading at the same time. There are hundreds and hundreds of people on the commuter rails, and on Amtrak. I look out at the bumper to bumper traffic on the highways we cross, and think does anyone sitting in their car being frustrated with the traffic really want all the people filling the trains to start commuting in their single passenger car on those few roads making it ten times worse? Republicans are all just a bunch of fucking nihilist IGMFY raging dicks whose hatred of everyone who lives in this country who is not them is the untold story of our FAIL media age.
raven
@the Conster: It’s shut down now isn’t it?
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@raven: Thanks for taking one for the team and watching that garbage so I don’t have to. Are you ready to go fishin? She asks enviously.
Baud
@raven:
Glad to hear your test came back negative.
JPL
Didn’t Congress want to privatize the Washington to Boston trains under W? They wanted the government to fund the unsuccessful areas. That way they could say, government doesn’t work.
the Conster
@raven:
The AMTRAK tonight was boarding with the announcement that it would go to NY, and cancelled beyond that indefinitely. It was sad, because they announce all the stops every night, through to DC.
Kropadope
@PsiFighter37:
Well, no one wants to pay for it. It’s hard enough to get support for maintaining our current infrastructure, but so many people are convinced that if we actually tried to make dramatic improvements that it would bankrupt us.
First of all, the threat of bankruptcy is way overblown. We spend way too little on building cool things in America and our finances would look way better if we didn’t spend so much money on
defenseoffense.People also worry that we can’t maintain the same standard of living and make these sorts of changes. Like we would have to go to half a day of electricity every day if we started integrating alternative sources into the power grid. However, this is wrong on both ends. Our current energy sources are finite and we won’t be able to maintain our standard of living if we continue to rely solely on these sources. Aside from that, developing new technologies creates opportunities for new industries to develop and for older firms to reinvigorate themselves (should they choose to do so). Then, like I said, Rs are totally against competition.
Gravenstone
@raven: Here’s a good one for you. Remember a couple of days ago when you were talking about the cement truck that rolled onto the car carrying former Mayor Young? Well, I just found out a friend of mine in my online gaming group actually witnessed the truck blow through the light and roll onto the car. Online can be a weird place sometimes.
raven
@a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q): Well, the no cancer was the good news. The bad news is that a nerve is damaged (probably severed) and bright and early I go under the knife to repair it. I tried to weasel until after the trip but the hand surgeon was adamant that it needed to be asap and I deferred since he da man. He indicated it wasn’t going to make it much worse than it is and I emphasized that I WAS fishing but I am concerned. I cancelled the boat trips and I’ll have to play it by ear.
thanks
raven
@Gravenstone: Wow, it was at 14th and Hemphill and my office used to be at 10th and Hemphill!
raven
@the Conster: Damn.
JPL
@efgoldman: Without research, I think Amtrak funding is tied to stops in nowhere town going west. Those would be the same reps voting against additional funds.
Gravenstone
@raven:
Edited to reflect the Tweetycentrism inherent in the statement.
JPL
@raven: definitely good news, bad news. I’m sorry about the damage. Do you think it might be worth a second opinion?
Ruckus
@raven:
Once again, good luck.
raven
@JPL: Nope, it really does hurt and this dude is a major leaguer. Vanderbilt and Emory and my GP spoke very highly. The google confirms the sooner the better and a severed nerve can cause long term problems.
I also have not mentioned that Bohdi has been having back trouble and the vet said the ball playing days are over. We feel awful but it’s in his best interest.
raven
@Ruckus: Thanks. The C was the big worry, this shit is just inconvenient.
Keith P.
“To pay for stuff we want, we’re going to insist on corresponding cuts to stuff you want. That evens things out.”
Howard Beale IV
@Kropadope: Looks like old king coal is teetering on the edge of obsolesence.
Again:
Too bad we can’t get rid of
Colecoal once and for all. (/j/k)Gin & Tonic
@raven: It’s the stretch between Philly and NYC that is shut down (including some of the Philly commuter rail.) But the Amtrak is running OK between Philly and DC, and between NYC and Boston.
Davis X. Machina
How do you adequately fund public anything — transportation, health, education — when half the political nation doesn’t believe the word ‘public’ refers to an actually-existing thing?
How do you even do social provision — old age pensions, medical insurance, survivor benefits — when half the political world don’t believe that society exists?
What’s the compromise position half-way between does and doesn’t exist?
Under those conditions, there can’t even be a politics.
raven
@Gin & Tonic: My geography up there is awful. I had no idea the end of Long Island was off of Lil Rhody till I booked that fluke trip!
Kropadope
@Howard Beale IV: Well, national energy policy favors industries pulling fossil fuels out of the ground and, surely enough, it’s another underground fuel, natural gas, that is destroying coal’s market share right now.
That said, most of our electricity still comes from coal and that will likely be the case for a while.
pseudonymous in nc
As someone said on the Twitters, if the Amtrak crash had happened in China the US reporting would have been about shoddy Chinese infrastructure.
But hey, Americans think that all the important infrastructure was built back in the day and will stay around forever, apart from sportsball stadiums which need to be imploded and rebuilt every 20 years at taxpayer expense.
SiubhanDuinne
@raven:
Only blocks from Lester Maddox’ restaurant The Pickrick.
Howard Beale IV
@Kropadope: Right now coal-fired electricity went down from providing 50% down to 39% bwtween 2007 and 2013. That’s a big-ass drop.
JPL
@raven: My second golden was diagnosed with hip dysplasia when he was two. The vet said no more walks. I got teary eyed and said he’ll die early because of lack of exercise. He lived until sixteen, seventeen. Bohdi might not like it but it will be okay.
Take care of yourself.
SiubhanDuinne
@Baud:
@raven:
I take it your test came back and it was good news?
raven
@SiubhanDuinne: Yep. No C but severed nerve in the fanger, knife at dawn!
SiubhanDuinne
@raven:
Just catching up. Wow, sorry about the nerve damage, and possibly the fishing, but it sounds as though dealing with it now is the best way to go. REALLY sorry about the Bohdi. I’m sure his inner puppy wants to be running after balls all the time, and I know it hurts you to have to tell him you can’t play games any more.
:-(
Be well, both of you.
raven
@JPL: Yea, we are going to go a month without the walks. He feels fine after a week but we’re going with the plan. I’m picking him up and putting him in the van to go to the bakery.
Howard Beale IV
@raven: Ya mean finger?
raven
@SiubhanDuinne: We’re cool. I quit playing basketball 20 years ago and I lived.
raven
@Howard Beale IV: yea, fanger
SiubhanDuinne
@Davis X. Machina:
Paging Schroedinger’s Cat. Schroedinger’s Cat to the white courtesy phone, please.
Kropadope
@Howard Beale IV:
Still more than the 2nd place producer, natural gas, which is at 27%. No clean or semi-clean source is close. This doesn’t have to be the case, but for politicians saying “we shouldn’t be picking winners or losers” upon instituting a competitive advantage for drillers.
the Conster
@pseudonymous in nc:
Japan, that fading paradigm of capitalism that is basically shutting down due to its aging population has built a maglev line whose train just broke all records at 374 mph. 100 mph derails our trains.
SiubhanDuinne
@raven:
The Raven family knows how to cope.
Omnes Omnibus
@Davis X. Machina: The idea of the commons just chaps their asses.
Gin & Tonic
@raven: Yeah, Block Island (RI) is probably more or less the same distance from Point Judith (RI) as it is from Montauk Point (NY.) And Fishers Island (NY), which is off the north fork of Long Island, is only about two miles off the Connecticut shore. I’ve paddled (kayak) to it from Mystic, CT. All of that area, including Long Island and out to Nantucket is glacial outflow from the last ice age, which is why it’s all geologically and topographically similar.
raven
@Gin & Tonic: See, I din know none of dat!
Howard Beale IV
@raven: I had my fanger almost completely severed by a high speed check sorter back when I was 17 whilst I was adjusting the ink pump on the endorser. I pulled my hand back after adjusting the inkflow and my middle finger (yes, that one) got caught in a triple pulley mechanism. I didn’t feel anything for about 5 minutes, then I went into shock. Was slapped into an ambulance and hauled into the nearly hospital, where the plastic surgeon and the intern (doing his last round) sewed it back on. When I got into the hospital the top of my finger was held together by about 2 mm of skin, the joint was whacked. Pretty creepy when the surgeon was taking pictures of the injury, and they didn’t knock me out either-I could hear the snip-snip-snip-snip.
Gin & Tonic
@raven: And now you do. That’s what makes this a cool place.
scav
UrRup has Trains, so Trains are Communist!
Thus we do not taint our finite and morally delicate technical expertise on such a corrupting technology. (Too bad we don’t move military equipment on them.)
Saw a grand comment last night in some thread about the Pope, I think it was on the upcoming green stuff, or maybe some chiding of the rich – pre-Palestine announcement: Catholics were called out as “pagan communists!”.
Davis X. Machina
@scav:
Hey, I’ll cop to the idol-worshiping, but not the state socialism.
Howard Beale IV
@Kropadope: The real problem is that if we let furriners get involved in our domestic energy production system and if TPP/TTIP gets passed then we probably will be slapped with the Vattenfall effect.
NotMax
@Howard Beale IV
Sliced off the top third of the right thumb when a kid back in the 1950s.
Sewn back on in the doctor’s office.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@raven: Damn. You’re taking in a zen fashion, apparently. Smart to stay on the program with the Bohdi. Here’s to an uneventful repair tomorrow.
JPL
@scav: first they came after the roads, and then the trains, what’s next.
I assume tomorrow they cut funding for the FAA. Why the heck not.
Frankensteinbeck
@RaflW:
The Republican Party is the party of MBAs, and provides reliable support for their desire to feel like Galtian geniuses who are better than the lazy, expendable ‘takers’ they employ. Heck, they owe fealty to the GOP over Reagan’s decoupling long-term business success from CEO success all by itself. If you like to feel superior by hurting other people, whether you’re rich or poor, religious or ‘libertarian’, the GOP is there for you.
Omnes Omnibus
@scav:
But we do.
the Conster
@efgoldman:
We used to care about being #1, until President Blackety McBlack got elected twice, then the Republicans decided everyone in the country must be punished, included but not limited to dying of preventable causes.
Kropadope
@Frankensteinbeck:
I can’t think of a class of people who take more of what they don’t earn than Galtian MBAs.
Omnes Omnibus
@raven: Best of luck.
Gin & Tonic
@efgoldman: they mostly run flawlessly
Took the Madrid-Barcelona high-speed train a few years back. About as stressful as sitting on my living-room couch; covers almost 400 miles in 2 and 1/2 hours, and there’s a train every 20 minutes during the busy parts of the day. I could also have been a rugged individualist and have driven, which would have taken over six hours, and added untold stress. Easy call.
Kropadope
@Howard Beale IV: I see what happened there, but I am not sure what you mean by “Vattenfall effect.”
scav
@Omnes Omnibus: There’s actually a bit of the MIC that is scrabbling for infrastructure pennies! Or, maybe that’s why they’re going after Amtrak, they need to clear the rickety rails for some nefarious sneaky invasion through the choo-choos now that the WalMart tunnels have been thwarted. The splodey tank-cars full of oil products are a ruse to lull our suspicions . . .
Kropadope
@Gin & Tonic: Only a lazy taker would expect to be able to travel quickly, affordably, and efficiently.You’re a mooch if you don’t want to spend hours of your life in traffic. Every welfare queen wants to leave her Cadillac in the driveway.
Kropadope
@efgoldman: To Rs, being #1 is not something one has to maintain, but an immutable characteristic. The only way to change our being #1 is to point out what could be improved.
scav
Here, It’s been getting a little grim and I now have a matched set. We’ll consider it SP&T bait. More transportation fun.
Hell-Lo Sailor: Swedish Activists Launch Gay-Themed Sonar System To Deter Russian Subs
Stop? No, Go-Go-Go!: Vienna brings in gay pedestrian crossing lights
MomSense
I have been assured that Republicans aren’t against infrastructure spending, they just don’t want to give the money to unions. If we busted all the unions first, then they would totes want to build and repair all the things.
Bunch of people showed up at a city council meeting in Rockland, ME a couple years ago. They were opposed to widening route 1 because they were convinced the only logical explanation for improving the road was to facilitate faster transport of patriots to FEMA camps.
The city council members had no clue what on earth these people were talking about and you could see the thought bubbles of “wowza these people are nuts” as they listened to them rant.
Even for the less wackadoodle faction of Republicans, the mentality is so bizarre. This is the greatest country in the world. Now let’s starve and neglect it until it crumbles and collapses.
Unsympathetic
And because the oil tank cars run <400 ft from active Minuteman nuclear silos in ND.. we can be sure the industry will self-regulate and choose a safer design!
MomSense
@raven:
Sorry to hear about Bohdi and that you need surgery to repair your hand. I am very relieved to hear that you don’t have the dreaded C.
beth
@JPL:
No, they’ll probably save that for the day after the next major plane crash. Every time I think they can’t sink any lower, the Republicans make a liar out of me. I don’t expect them to want to fund rail transportation and I fully expect them to cut it whenever possible but I would never think they’d do it a day after seven people died in a train derailment. I’m just amazed at how bad this looks and how little they care.
sigaba
@JPL:
There are a bunch of places out west that are serviced by Amtrak that would be otherwise very difficult to get into and out of if you didn’t have a car– big swathes of Montana and New Mexico are nowhere near a proper airport. That said, motorcoaches are actually more efficient than trains for this particular situation (low passenger counts, hauls under 300 miles/6 hours, high supply/demand elasticity).
Amtrak doesn’t turn a profit, but it’s unclear if passenger rail in the US ever turned a profit. Even in the 19th century it was operated primarily as a loss-leader for mail and express parcel services, after the late 50s when jet travel became accessible to middle-income people the train was dead. Go on Amtrak.com and you’ll see that their thru prices for trips over a thousand miles are more expensive than the Southwest saver rate. Trains just aren’t a good way of moving humans, with the important exception of developed, high-density corridors.
Amtrak is weird because they Republicans wouldn’t want to privatize it for exactly that reason- if you were to do like a Bell divestiture to it and break it up regionally, all the mountain and midwestern passenger services would be liquidated, they just aren’t profitable to operate. No more California Zephyr or Empire Builder. I think everyone in the 70s realized this and decided that, no matter what happened, nobody was going to let cross-country passenger rail die on their watch, it’s just symbolically terrible. But now we’re stuck with Republicans that insist that anything that turns in a loss is by definition inefficient and “wasteful,” so tighten goes the belts, instead of actually addressing the structural problem.
MomSense
@efgoldman:
Wiscasset may in fact be the prettiest village in Maine, but that doesn’t mean you want to spend all afternoon stuck in your car in traffic there.
Frankensteinbeck
@MomSense:
Factor in racism, and it makes perfect sense. ‘The greatest country in the world’ means THEM, white conservatives. They are the greatest, no evidence is required, the country is theirs and questioning its superiority is questioning the superiority of the white race. People like Obama are ‘Unamerican.’ Liberals are well known to wants to raise up blacks to be equal to whites, and liberals want… oh, peace, infrastructure investments, education, a safety net… so claiming that any of these things represent problems with America that needs fixing is just blaspheme.
Omnes Omnibus
@MomSense: Worse than Hwy 6 on Cape Cod?
MomSense
@Omnes Omnibus:
NO! The Hampton, NH tolls come pretty close, though.
I didn’t find the video I was looking for but here is one from 2010 FYE. Even has spooky music.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3VcqixNW5D8
JPL
@sigaba: They only want to privatize the profitable section.
MomSense
@efgoldman:
I used to live right around the corner from the trolley museum. My kids loved riding the trolleys and buses there.
Omnes Omnibus
@MomSense: Loonies (not the nice Canadian currency kind).
sigaba
@JPL: This has been proposed from time to time but I think they never actually do it because it would make the unprofitable remnant completely untenable, and it would isolate its constituency to a few western congressmen. As long as the Acela is “Amtrak,” the congressmen on the western routes can keep the congressmen on the eastern seaboard and the congressmen in the midwest in a Mexican Standoff. If the Acela or the (someday) California HSR are separated from “MountainTrak” or whatever the remnant was called, it’d be impossible to justify the existence of MoutainTrak politically.
Amtrak doesn’t work as a business proposition but it’s a delicately-balanced political machine.
Belafon
@sigaba: Does passenger rail in any country turn a profit, or do they rightfully treat it the way we used to treat the highway system (that it, until we decided that paying taxes is bad)?
The Dangerman
I agree, our infrastructure spending is a sick joke, but this has Operator Error written all over it; now, Positive Train Control is infrastructure spending, I suppose, but a far cheaper solution in the short term would be to give the Conductor a GPS so he can tell the engineer to slow the fuck down. This is roughly what happened after Chatsworth circa 2008, i.e., the Conductor has to positively confirm the color of the light.
the Conster
@efgoldman:
Imagine all the T riders and commuter rail riders – from Worcester, Fitchburg, Providence, Framingham, Forge Park, Quincy, Lowell, Newburyport, etc. etc. all having to get in their cars to get their kids to school, then commute to Boston. We got a taste of it this winter, and people LITERALLY couldn’t get to work. Boston’s infrastructure started overloading in the 70s. Transportation is the single biggest quality of life issue in this area.
MomSense
@efgoldman:
I have pictures of my grandma riding those trolleys. She used to take them to her voice lessons near the old Boston Opera House.
MomSense
@Frankensteinbeck:
Unfortunately I think that is true.
Davis X. Machina
@Belafon: Not for a long time, not in this country. Mail subsidies were always the prop and mainstay.
But then, by some measures, the airlines considered as a whole, as Warren Buffett always points out, from the Wright Brothers to the present day, have never actually turned a profit.
sigaba
@Belafon:
Japan. Maybe Britain, I dunno I’m not an expert. Both countries had nationalized systems though the 20th century when the vast majority of the capital improvements were happening, now that everything’s built private companies can collect the tickets. Also both countries are pretty small and have relatively high population density centered on core metropolitan areas — which are, themselves, served by very effective commuter rail/subway/public transit.
There are some good things about privatization. Japanese rail companies, for example, control pretty much all mass transit in their geographic region. In California, if you wanted to get from a particular corner in LA to a particular corner in SF, you’d buy a ticket on the Metro (LA County) or DASH (LA City) to get you to Union Station, whereupon you’d buy a ticket to ride the Coast Starliner to SF (Amtrak). It’d drop you off 6 blocks from a BART where you’d buy a ticket (SF Bay RTD) to get you into the city where you’d catch a tram (Muni) to your destination. In Japan, you’d buy one ticket for the entire journey, rate based on distance, independent of service or mode.
So the system works in this case. But it only works because these countries have built-up infrastructure and all the cities are within a few hundred miles of each other, and once you get TO the city you can get to your final address without too much pain. In the US, jets and buses are better than trains for most of the hops Amtrak is forced to sell. (Until the Hyperloop is invented.)
jl
@Belafon: @Davis X. Machina:
I’d like to see an analysis of airline profitability after all the subsidies are taken into account.
Found a blog that gives operational surpluses of HRS. Not sure what that is worth. A lot of them are run, or at least managed, by private firms, so I guess they can at least pay for themselves if the capital costs are financed and managed properly.
High speed rail operational surplus
http://reasonrail.blogspot.com/2011/06/high-speed-rail-operation-surplus.html
And here’s a recent post on cost recovery of different Amtrak lines.
Amtrak routes by 2014 cost recovery
http://reasonrail.blogspot.com/2014/11/amtrak-routes-by-2014-cost-recovery.html
jl
I found an interesting blog on passenger rail economics, but my comment on it is in moderation.
Why? I guess passenger rail is really sketchy stuff, like p 3 n usss pills and mail order d rr gg zz and P r 0 N 0.
Here’s the blog. click around and you find data on operating margins, and such like.
Reason & Rail
http://reasonrail.blogspot.com/
click back to Nov 2015, you get a rally s e kk ss iiee post on Amtrak operating margins by route. Ohhhh Yeahhhh!
Aleta
And then they blame those who work in those areas, lots of whom do care. And are going nuts trying to keep things working and safe despite being undercut in every way.
How much is air travel subsidized, relative to trains?
Belafon
@sigaba: So, it can be profitable as long as the public absorbs the initial investment.
Aleta
@raven: You go in tomorrow morning?
Omnes Omnibus
@MomSense: I just google mapped your little town. Very Mainey.
KS in MA
We were talking a few threads ago about issues the Democrats should own if we want to be a party that appeals to people. Amtrak is a public-ownership infrastructure issue, and it should be a Democratic issue. When the GOP votes against it, which is always, we should damn well make them pay. You could go to http://www.narprail.org for starters.
sigaba
@Belafon: Exactly, as long as all the capital costs are monopoly money :)
In general though I don’t think you can apply P/L logic to something like transportation. On paper, it may have been true that Southern Pacific lost money on every head it brought to San Fran and LA. However, merely transporting people out led to tons of economic development at the destination, so even if it’s unprofitable to the particular business unit doing the job, there’s a huge external benefit. This is why the government was basically throwing money, in the form of huge right-of-way land grants, at Leland Stanford to get the transcon built. Being able to move reliably from one coast to the other was worth more than just the train’s profits.
The LA Red Car is a similar sort of thing — it was run privately for most of it’s life and it was built mostly by a few property developers in suburbs, in order to make the land parcels they were selling more accessible and thus more valuable. The only time the LA streetcars turned a profit was during WW2, when they were forced to defer maintenance, the city was awash in transient war workers, and gas and rubber rationing kept people out of their cars. After the war the system was a white elephant.*
But, take the system away, let traffic build for 30 years, and the city becomes completely unnavigable. Two hour commutes become the norm. And people start wondering, how many companies are choosing not to locate here because of traffic? How many workers are choosing not to live here because of traffic? Why are some really high density areas full of vacant lots? The ability to move about has external benefits beyond the price of a ticket and the cost of gas.
*I won’t go into the whole Who Framed Roger Rabbit/Streetcar Scandal thing here but it suffices to say, in my opinion, that it was a factor but not the most important one.
Cervantes
@Belafon:
The Japan Rail companies — I believe there are six passenger lines — own (or were granted) much of the income-generating real estate abutting the lines. If you know anything about real estate in Japan, you know that income therefrom can be significant but it can also be cyclical.
Cervantes
@sigaba:
Good points. Thanks.
Mayur
@MomSense: To be fair, it’s all Red’s fault. It would be unbelievably awesome if they could just move it 100 feet to the left.
Mary G
@raven: Glad to hear it is fixable!
MomSense
@Omnes Omnibus:
I’m in an even more Mainey part now. The old timers refer to where I used to live as Epcot Centah. I do miss the beach. White sand and gorgeous dunes and marsh.
@Mayur:
There would be a revolt!
Cervantes
@Mayur:
Reminds me of a joke James Thurber used to tell:
And on that note, have a good (somnambulism-free) night!
Linnaeus
@Davis X. Machina:
Firing squads.
I jest, of course. Well, a little.
Omnes Omnibus
@Cervantes: Odd Thurber related trivia: when he lived in Newtown, CT, he doodled on the walls of his home. The drawings were eventually housed in the Cyrenius H. Booth Library in Newtown.
Omnes Omnibus
@MomSense: Is it someplace named in a Kenneth Roberts novel? Or something by Stephen King?
pseudonymous in nc
@sigaba:
There are a couple of Shinkansen routes that are individually profitable, but it’s all about the damn externalities, and the costs of not connecting those places. The TGV from Paris to Marseilles won’t pay for itself in fares, but the value of connecting the two cities with proper high-speed rail isn’t measured on SNCF’s accounts.
The East Coast franchise in the UK turned a profit while under state ownership, so the Conservatives gave it to Richard Branson, who’ll probably not make a profit but get lots of subsidies.
sigaba
@pseudonymous in nc:
Well, at least he’ll be able to plow all that extra money into his
test pilot murder devicemillionaire’s carnival ridenew frontier in aviation.qwerty42
They don’t give a shit about our roads, our bridges, our rail, or anything, yet keep wanting to pretend that they are creating a business friendly climate. Clowns.
A few days ago, Ed Kilgore observed that if all this “business friendly” stuff were true, Mississippi would be the place to be. (Unlike dystopias like Massachusetts.) And MS has been this way for over a century. Yet it seems not to have happened to MS; and MA does well.
I would add though, that it does not matter what can be shown: the adherents will continue to (fervently) believe this stuff. That dogmatic belief is what has to be recognized.
MomSense
@Omnes Omnibus:
Former town – Kenneth Roberts. Current town’s namesake had troubles.
Lurking Canadian
@qwerty42: Example number million of “Can’t reason a man out of a position he did not reason himself into”
Marc McKenzie
Well, what else to expect? And the ugly, cold blunt fact is that we just sat back in 2014 and let these bastards complete the takeover of Congress. Again, what else did we expect?
If this isn’t a wake-up call to vote these SOBs out next year, I don’t know what else would work. Of course, we can all sit back and whine that the Dems will never get our vote because of Hillary or lack of support for Bernie or whatever.
boatboy_srq
@pseudonymous in nc: Privatisation of British Rail has been something of a mixed bag. Southern’s trains are nice and modern – but not especially on-time; ditto for Southeastern; GWR’s rolling stock sucks out loud with feathers, although the rest of First Group seems OK; etc. The Virgin Voyagers were among the better rides I had last time I was in Jolly Olde: comfortable and on-time in ways that BR wasn’t. I’d give Branson a pass for Virgin Trains: Virgin seems to be doing as well as anyone providing that service. But maybe I was just lucky.
boatboy_srq
@sigaba: The only country I know that’s obsessed with public transit turning a profit is the US. Everywhere else it’s deemed a common good, and if fares make the civic pain of funding it tolerable-or-better that’s nice. The arguments I see on BBC etc are about how close to break-even the systems can get and how safe/timely they are, not whether the public expenditure is worthwhile or appropriate: the monetary arguments like that only happen in the US congress and state legislatures.
pseudonymous in nc
@boatboy_srq:
Virgin’s cross-country franchise is bitty because of the nature of the cross-country routes that converge on Birmingham New Street. The west coast stuff has got better with track and rolling stock improvements.
The East Coast franchise was good for ten years when it was GNER, suffered a bit when it went tits-up, recovered under state management, and has been helped by the addition of Grand Central running its funky service. But it’s still not cheap.
The north-eastern trains are old transitional diesel stock and there was a plan to replace them with old Underground rolling stock (which would make Boris happy, but nobody else). The transpennine trains are nicer but slow, because again, east-west routes other than Great Western out from London have to deal with speed restrictions to get over the hills.
J R in WV
We rode on a train in France a few years ago, and when the conductor came, we had just finished lunch, French bread, French cheese, French red wine, salad, etc. it was great.
So I told the conductor, who spoke pretty good English in spite of saying that he didn’t, that we really admired his train. He looked around himself, not quite rolling his eyes, and said “This?” as if we were stuck on the second tier of trains. And he was right, we were only going 90 or so, as opposed to the high speed trains, which probably had a sit-down dining car with linen and cut-glass goblets, instead of just really good carry-out.
So I said that we had to compare French trains with American trains, and there was no comparison.
We stayed in a small tourist hotel in a very small village in rural France, and they warned us that there were trains until midnight, and they hoped we weren’t disturbed. There were trains, quiet electric trains that went quite slow in town, and then got up to speed in the countryside. I think you can go anywhere in France on a good, comfortable train.
We should be ashamed that our trains are only better than trains in Africa and India, not to dump on those cultures, but we can afford good trains, and don’t need to keep rolling stock that are powered by steam engines. We offered to guide newly arrived guys from India to a tourist train in the higher mountains, unique even for steam trains, but they said they were very used to steam engines, as that was how trains in India run normally.
And I’m sure they try to upgrade those trains as they can, and I’m just a sure we will NOT upgrade our trains as long as Republicans can prevent it.
Think how many long-term high-paying jobs would be created if we decided to upgrade train service to cover everywhere, with new comfortable roomy trains with good dinner service?
Thousands of jobs building high-tech rolling stock, grading high-speed right-of-way lines, forging new stronger rails, even building Mag-Lev lines between Denver and Chicago!!
We could issue a trillion dollars worth of bonds, bought here in America, invested in factory floors, machinery, construction, with thousands of jobs, everywhere. Current interest rates are nearly ZERO, so the cost would be nil for the borrowing, and the bond debt could be repaid with a surcharge on gasoline still burnt in cars and on the tickets for the train travel.
There, my platform for my presidential-race campaign… harharhaha ;-) !!
Hillary may use it at no charge! Or Bernie! We should fix the interstates too, but not until much of the train-oriented investment is sunk, lest the Republican traitors steal train monies for their precious roads.
New electrical transmission systems too! Designed from the ground up to move power omni-directionally, from solar plants all day and from wind-machines at night, etc.