I would also enjoy a restored train to Halifax, but I started the thread after reading an angry, anti-rail comment on a newspaper story about passenger service in Maine. The commenter basically said that trains were as out of date as horse-drawn carriages. My first thought was that that is ridiculous, because modern trains are an important part of transportation in many rich countries: Japan, many parts of Western Europe, in some places along the NE Corridor in the US. My next thought, though, was that service between Greenville and Brownville Jct., Maine; Rosedale and Jasonville, Indiana, and a bunch of other small towns with decent roads between them actually IS out of date. Trains' basic advantage is that they can move hundreds of of people simultaneously on private rights-of-way, so that a well-designed and well-signaled and well-operated railroad can carry many more people per hour or per day than the same amount of land used as a road. In the process, that railroad will use less fuel produce fewer deaths and injuries from accidents.* This is a real argument for using existing railroads more intensively and building new ones or rebuilding old ones. It does not make sense from Rosedale to Jasonville, but it does make sense in some places. In those places, trains are not obsolete and nostalgic. They make perfect sense. Also in those places, cars are not unsubsidized money-makers; they are at least partly pains in the neck.
I can make the argument for trains in densely populated areas where many people want to make the same trips. I will still face people who think that the car beat the train (and the bus) in a free competition. They (some of you) say it is natural and obvious that everyone who possibly can drive will drive because that is the best way to go, whereas public transportation can only compete with cars with the help of subsidies, taxes on cars, tolls, etc. But I can honestly point out that cars only got so dominant in the US, even in most big cities, because the various levels of government for almost a century have simply assumed that highways and city streets are necessities that must always be funded (city streets mostly from property taxes, not gas taxes), but that public transportation is up for debate all the time. That is, our governments and our voters have subsidized driving with general revenue without even admitting that we are subsidizing it. Out in the country, or in small towns, on the other hand, the argument stops making sense. Frequent service with trains carrying many people through dense areas can easily use less energy, and (if it prevents highway construction) less land and less money than sending the same people in cars. Maybe even less than using buses. That is where I can argue on efficiency, not on nostalgia. I love a long-distance train ride and fried eggs in a dining car, but I can't really say that keeping one-a-day going on those long, long routes is a great use of money or resources. (OK, if it fits between the freights and doesn't add much cost for signaling, sidings, etc., maybe it's efficient, but for example if 100 people ride Denver-SLC on the CZ one day, that's just two or three minutes of one highway lane with a car every two seconds. Drop in the bucket.) On the other hand, when I tell people in Terre Haute that I am going to drive 1:20 to Effingham and ride the train four hours to Chicago, reading or working along they way, because parking in the Loop is $40 a night and driving there is not the easiest thing in the world, a lot of them nod their heads because they see my point, even though they know I also do it because I like trains.
*OK. There are some other possible advantages. Electric railroads have worked reliably for a century and a quarter. Battery-electric cars and buses still aren't that good, and depend on scarce minerals going into batteries that later become hazardous waste. In some big cities there are railroad rights of way that still exist and can be used to move people without needed to destroy buildings or parks to make more roads. Supposedly, if you have very frequent servcice, street-running trolleys are cheaper over the long term than buses are. But even these advantages depend on high passenger volume, whether carried by very frequent schedules or very large trains or both.
- we are talking corridors of a few hundred miles, not multi-day thousand-mile journeys that are a three hour flight away. For instance, Halifax-St. John or Boston-Montreal.
