The Coming Competitive Milieu

David Benton wrote:Would it not be reasonable to expect that the proceeds from a carbon tax would be used to improve energy efficent modes such as amtrak , public transist etal ?

So, in other words, we'll tax people in Iowa for heating their home with natural gas so we can provide even more money to help build the 2nd Ave subway in Manhattan... helping to move extraordinarily wealthy residents of the Upper East Side. Sounds like a plan.

The residents along Second Avenue in upper Manhattan are not "extraordinarily wealthy". Nor are the residents of First Avenue or York Avenue. Sutton Place South is the location you are thinking of, and those people drive. Do you think that Harlem and the Bowery are filled with the "extraordinarily wealthy" also?

MudLake wrote:

David Benton wrote:Would it not be reasonable to expect that the proceeds from a carbon tax would be used to improve energy efficent modes such as amtrak , public transist etal ?

So, in other words, we'll tax people in Iowa for heating their home with natural gas so we can provide even more money to help build the 2nd Ave subway in Manhattan... helping to move extraordinarily wealthy residents of the Upper East Side. Sounds like a plan.

The heck you say.

Just wait 'til we jack up the price of ethanol to pay for those carbon taxes. You in Manhattan will feel ill used to be sure.

David Benton wrote:Would it not be reasonable to expect that the proceeds from a carbon tax would be used to improve energy efficent modes such as amtrak , public transist etal ?

Would it not be reasonable to expect that the proceeds from a gasoline tax would be used to improve the roads, which is the justification for imposing the tax? And yet the various *TEA* funding goes to everything but roads (one of the destinations is my own love: rail-trails, and I STILL don't like it.)

Call me cynical if you want, I call myself realistic, but whenever politicians get more power, they never give it up. All of the plans I've seen for addressing global warming (or a lack of passenger rail in the US) start with "We'll give the government the power to ....". This cannot end well.

Please, gentlemen; we had a respectful exchange of opinion in this thread earlier today. Let's not turn it into a flame-fest.

Mr. Nelson, as a conservative, I can readily understand your resentment of the manufacture of a "crisis", by Al Gore and his shamless collection of wannabee trednies, technophobes, and touchie-feelies.

But the fact remains that the United States may be about to absorb the third blow of a 3-punch combination: international terrorism and the undeserved ill will engendered by our response to it, a weakening domestic infrastructure aggravated by a quantum shift in the price of petroleum, and finally, a severe economic slump.

If there is a bright spot in all this, it's that the old cop-out that the continuing upward trend in fuel prices is engineered by the oil industry is not as readily parroted as in the spasms of '74. '80 and '00. But that resentment is evolving into a distrust of all centralized authority, which has been with us since Colonial times, and has been sustained by successive waves of immigration. I don't see that as a negative if the underlying problems can be addressed by other means.

Though our freight car fleet appears its shoddiest in memory, and passenger-equipment building facilities are minimal, and an increase in short-haul raill traffic would require a disproportionate increase in physical infrastructure, the technical knowledge to rebuild our transportation infrastructure remains available. and facilities to start a crash program can be quickly converted if the syncophants of the Beltway mentality can be restrained from turning it into a bloated boondoggle.

Finally, much of this could be accomplished by private or, at worst, indirect public financing, if the signals are clear and not allowed to be changed by state fiat once displayed. The problem is not so much the presence or absence of regulation, but inconsistency in formulating and applying the rules.

HoggerKen wrote:

MudLake wrote:

David Benton wrote:Would it not be reasonable to expect that the proceeds from a carbon tax would be used to improve energy efficent modes such as amtrak , public transist etal ?

So, in other words, we'll tax people in Iowa for heating their home with natural gas so we can provide even more money to help build the 2nd Ave subway in Manhattan... helping to move extraordinarily wealthy residents of the Upper East Side. Sounds like a plan.

The heck you say.

Just wait 'til we jack up the price of ethanol to pay for those carbon taxes. You in Manhattan will feel ill used to be sure.

Mr. Ken, I don't live in Manhattan, I heat my home with natural gas, and I'm not "extraordinarily wealthy". I'll remember to turn on the sarcasm indicator next time.

NellieBly wrote:
And I do find the idea of the European Union imposing sactions to be pretty amusing. The European Union couldn't decide what (if anything) to do about the civil war in Yugoslavia. We had to help them make up their minds. They couldn't decide what -- if anything -- to do about the genocide in Rwanda and Darfur. And you expect them to "impose sanctions" on the US? That'll be the day!

Nellie has it right. Even when it is relatively self-evident what needs to be done, the EU has problems finding the collective will to actually take some action. The idea that they would impose meaningful sanctions on a major trading partner, such as China or ourselves, is a non-starter. At the most, they will limit their actions to symbolic protests -- giving Al Gore the Nobel prize comes to mind.

I believe it is up to us to find our way forward and certainly better transportation solutions are a major part of that in many portions of the country.

Dakguy201 wrote:Even when it is relatively self-evident what needs to be done, the EU has problems finding the collective will to actually take some action.

Well in fairness, theres more than enough vacillation coming out of Washington. And even when our government can arrive at any sort of a concensus, its more often than not a less than well thought out decision.

This weekend I was at my local grocery store--it's a full line supermarket, not some crunchy hippie co-op--when the person ahead of me in the check-out line asked for a pack of cigarettes. The employee at the cash register said that the store quit selling cigarettes! She said that hardly anybody buys them anymore and it's such a pain to keep them stocked and inventoried. The store wasn't making any money off cigarettes so they just discontinued tobacco sales. No grandstanding or political agenda on the part of company, just simple economics: they don't make money for the company, so they're gone.

Of course it's taken 40+ years of government effort to point out that smoking has a tremendous cost to the individual and to society and to direct us away from cigarette smoking. I'm also sure that the gentleman who wanted the cigs walked or drove across the street to the neighboring gas station/c-store and bought his cigarettes; but to me, the grocery store discontinuing cigarette sales shows what we need to do to address the looming transportation problem in our country.

The inefficiencies of our existing transportation system will put a tremendous cost on the individual and on society if we don't redefine the future options for inter-city travel. Like cigarettes, petroleum will part of our society for a long time. In the future, I'm sure that people will still be able to get in their cars, light up a Marlboro and drive 150 miles in a gasoline powered car. But for the benefit of all, we need to start reducing our consumption of petroleum and encourage people to look at benefits of using less petroleum (and tobacco). In 1958, if you told the grocery store manager that in the year 2008 his store would no longer sell cigarettes, he would have thought you're crazy. How crazy is it to say that in the year 2058, the best option for travelling 150 miles might be the train?

David Benton wrote:If the american transportation policy does not change to reflect the issues of climate change , then it is heading for isolation .
Likewise the idea that amtrak cannot acomdate more riders due to under investment is disingenous in relation to transport planning .
obviously the answer is that passenger rail needs more ivested in it pretty quickly .

I have been in Florida for the past three weeks. I can see that there will be very large problems adapting to the need to phase out oil products. They have unplanned housing developments all over the area I have seen which would be worthless if people can't drive as cheaply as they wish. It would be impossible to provide public transport to many of them.
Someone in another thread observed that house prices are holding up in areas near a rail station, while falling in other areas. Oil is going to go up in price whether carbon taxes are implemented or not.

(Of course, in the medium term Florida's problems will be solved because as a climate expert I was talking to last month observed, it will all be under water.)

Greyhound is not the typical bus company. Greyhound is simply put, falling apart.

The rest of us are way too conservative.

I am on the lunatic fringe, so we will survive the fuel and insurance spikes. Many will not. Amtrak is becoming more useful because it is going back to its roots, namely Thruway connections. As the timekeeping improves, long distance bus and rail can work together. Right now, it is strictly Amtrak's timekeeping that is making them not useful.

Buses don't have to be big and neither do trains. I think that the next step forward for Amtrak would be the use of self propelled equipment in certain markets. The Colorado DMUs are rumored to burn only 50% more fuel than a bus and that could make the economics a lot more interesting.

Moderator's Note:

Thank you, Mr JA, for placing your post in the context of Amtrak.

I've been on extended shiftwork the last two weeks. Please bring your thoughts to a context of how Amtrak can operationally/politically leverage the situation, otherwise, as Otto noted, this is general political discussion, and subject to being locked.

Thank you in advance.

george matthews wrote:They have unplanned housing developments all over the area I have seen which would be worthless if people can't drive as cheaply as they wish. It would be impossible to provide public transport to many of them.

Then obviously they're not UNplanned, it's just that you disagree with the plan. In a free-market economy like the US mostly retains, your insight should be reason for you to create housing with a different plan which includes public transport and access to Amtrak. Don't worry about the money -- there's always money available to people with a plan that will make lots and lots of money.

Someone in another thread observed that house prices are holding up in areas near a rail station, while falling in other areas. Oil is going to go up in price whether carbon taxes are implemented or not.

Sounds like the start of a business plan! Get cracking!

(Of course, in the medium term Florida's problems will be solved because as a climate expert I was talking to last month observed, it will all be under water.)

If that's true, then the price of housing in Florida should be falling. Is it?

The recent exchange between Mssrs. mathews and Nelson brought back a memory of an old joke about a man who won the grand prize of the "Martian" lottery -- he was to get $1 a year, for ten million years.

But that serves to illustrate that several of us here have major differences of opinion as to just how far a society can responsibly plan ahead, and the long horizons involved in many forms of transportation, reinforced by the political process, can lead to some serious distortions in costs and benefits.

As has been previously pointed out, except for the special case of piplelines, all the major modes of transport have sustained huge losses at some point in their history, and one, the air carriers (who are most subject to the fluctuations of politics), have shown a collective loss when measured over their entire existence.

The greater the proportion of an enterprise's capital is tied up in immovable fixed plant, the greater its vulnerability to short- vs. long-term planning and thinking. And the railroad, with the the advantage of energy efficienty inherent in its technology, has beeen around several times longer than any of us here, and is likely to be around much longer.

As a couple of paralells, the trucking industry, which has low cost of entry and a government-funded fixed plant, went though a complete reorientation in recent years with little pain, while the Erie/New York State Barge Canal went from a state-funded experiment to a huge success which altered the course of history, to an economic basket case run as "middle-class welfare".

We have all been served notice by the markets that the rules which served us for the past 60 years no longer apply, and planning for a shift away from the highway age is, simply put, a crapshoot. We don't know exactly how the private passenger vehicle will evolve, and I suspect that its freight-oriented cousins face an even biggger challenge.

Finally, it must be understood that individuals will always behave much differently than institutions, The environmental movement relies heavily on appeals to foresight, but the workings of politics at all levels damage the credibility ot that argument. The emerging and third worlds aren't ready for Mr. Gore's "inconvenient truth".

Given thoose points, we need to argue for a proven, easy-to-implement system of short-distance corridors based on proven technology, from which higher speeds and better service can be allowed to evolve.

If that's true, then the price of housing in Florida should be falling. Is it?

Yes.