Amtrak: Operating Deficit, Government Operation, etc.

There's a problem with his metaphors.

As an example - yes, word processors replaced typewriters. But word processors didn't, over time, get overcrowded and make writing slower than it had previously been on typewriters. That's what's happened with our highways and air corridors.

djlong wrote:There's a problem with his metaphors.

As an example - yes, word processors replaced typewriters. But word processors didn't, over time, get overcrowded and make writing slower than it had previously been on typewriters. That's what's happened with our highways and air corridors.

Not to mention, we haven’t abandoned the use of typed English even if we aren’t sitting down at our Underwoods or Selectrics anymore. O’Toole has a way of simplifying the argument rather too far, which is my personal problem with the Cato Institute in general.

djlong wrote:There's a problem with his metaphors.

As an example - yes, word processors replaced typewriters. But word processors didn't, over time, get overcrowded and make writing slower than it had previously been on typewriters. That's what's happened with our highways and air corridors.

Rail corridors get overcrowded too. Ever seen in Japan how they squeeze more passengers into a train than what can fit comfortably. When train corridors become congested, they use the same formula everything else uses, they make the corridor wider by adding more tracks and they make stations larger by adding more platforms.

The idea that rail transportation will not become congested is a huge lie that everyone who rides a train stopped at a signal waiting for another train to pass knows very well.

Promoting an American public policy based on individual liberty, limited government, free markets and peaceful international relations.

>smokingbenaffleck.jpg

Also rails can get congested, yes. However there's far greater capacity in far lesser space if you have 1000 people on a maxibomb compared to 1000 people turning the Podunk Belt ExpressParkHighway into a parking lot.

Metro North's New Haven Line comes to mind.

ConstanceR46 wrote:

Promoting an American public policy based on individual liberty, limited government, free markets and peaceful international relations.

>smokingbenaffleck.jpg

Also rails can get congested, yes. However there's far greater capacity in far lesser space if you have 1000 people on a maxibomb compared to 1000 people turning the Podunk Belt ExpressParkHighway into a parking lot.

Trains also park overnight and during the day in huge yards along the tracks. It's not the number of tracks in the railroad corridor that limits the growth of the VRE serving northern Virginia, it's the size of the yards in D.C. that limits its' growth.

Have you seen how large the parking lots are at train stations along the tracks in the suburbs? People still park their cars, just not as many downtown. So less space wasted for parking isn't as much an advantage as you think. Even in the Netherlands, they have problems with bicycle parking capacity at train stations. Yes, bikes instead of cars - but it is still a parking problem. Only in the most dense areas within an urban environment will you see most passengers walking to the train stations.

Discussing bikes brings up another problems, the moving goal posts for bike advocates. First they asked for posts to lock their bikes to, second they ask for shelters so they can lock their bikes in a protected shelter, and after the transit agencies spend a small fortune accommodating their bikes at the stations, they then switch their demands to allow bikes on the trains where each bike displaces at least one human. Moving goal posts makes pleasing them extremely difficult and expensive.

You know what you do about not-enough-downtown-train-storage-parking-lots?

Turn the trains around and send them out to the suburbs like they do in normal countries

Rail traffic certainly won't get congested if you don't build it...

bdawe wrote:You know what you do about not-enough-downtown-train-storage-parking-lots?

Turn the trains around and send them out to the suburbs like they do in normal countries

If you store the trains away from where they are needed, then you have to pay to run them empty. So you have increased operating costs.

BandA wrote:If you store the trains away from where they are needed, then you have to pay to run them empty. So you have increased operating costs.

It’s a tradeoff between land value and time value, like how LIRR has some of its trains stored at PSNY and Atlantic but runs others out to Sunnyside or Jamaica. Sometimes the extra power and wages are worth it, even without reverse commuters.

CHTT1 wrote:If Randall O'Toole "loves passenger trains," how come he's opposed every passenger train effort -- from transit to LD -- ever presented in the past 30 years or so? Strange sort of love.

He might respond that he likes passenger trains, but that he doesn't think that governments should be in the business of supporting them.

So he's a libertarian/conservative economist, not a train lover.

Moderator Note: merged a couple topics together. Usual noice about respect, no ad hominem attacks, etc.

CHTT1 wrote:So he's a libertarian/conservative economist, not a train lover.

Apologies for nit-picking but IMO it is inappropriate to refer to O'Toole as an economist. He has an undergraduate degree in forestry and he did some graduate work in economics back in the 70s, but he did not finish the degree. He has repeatedly demonstrated that he knows nothing about the pivotal aspects of modern economics, most notably increasing returns to scale / agglomeration economies. While he dies know a bit about budgeting, calling him an economist is roughly equivalent to calling someone who flunked out of medical school a doctor.

lpetrich wrote:

CHTT1 wrote:If Randall O'Toole "loves passenger trains," how come he's opposed every passenger train effort -- from transit to LD -- ever presented in the past 30 years or so? Strange sort of love.

He might respond that he likes passenger trains, but that he doesn't think that governments should be in the business of supporting them.

O'toole maintains a streamliner-age nostalgia blog. His fondness for historic passenger transportation is geniune. He's just convinced himself that trains are obsolete https://streamlinermemories.info/,