Comments on: Public Transit’s Real Enemies: Big Government, Big Unions

By: gibberish

gibberish — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 16:54:18 +0000

450 miles is the outer limit of rail compared to air

But when you figure in hours wasted getting to the airport and the security check time plus trains a bit faster it isn't a bad deal. And 90 mph is pathetic - 150 is where high speed starts in the real world

I just did London Paris by train - city centre to city centre took 3 hours. Yes, flight would be 1 hour but getting in and out to the airport makes it more like 6. No surprise that the number of flights on this route is pretty low these days

By: ModerateGal

ModerateGal — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 16:46:02 +0000

sinz, you are right in that the rail would compete with airlines. I live in the south, so the southern routes would be what would appeal to me.

My concern is more about what the cost would be to take my family of four somewhere on it. At some point, it is just more worth it to make the drive than spend the money on tickets.

But it sure would be nice to take some traffic off I-10...

By: sinz54

sinz54 — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 16:25:38 +0000

ModerateGal: I don't know where you live.

But looking at a map here, the distance from San Diego to San Francisco is 450 miles. The Department of Transportation defines "high speed rail" at 90+ mph (the European and Japanese standards are higher).

450 mph at 90 mph, with a 20 minute stopover in Los Angeles along the way, would take 5 hours and 20 minutes.

From Travelocity.com, I find that the same trip from San Francisco to San Diego nonstop by air would take 1 hour and 38 minutes, some 3 hours and 40 minutes less time than by rail.

Rail is just not competitive, even in a dense corridor like the California coast.

By: sinz54

sinz54 — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 16:18:22 +0000

ottovbvs sez: "Mass transit is a combination of transport system and social service with all kinds of social benefits that can't be measured in strict cash terms."

I see. If there's no objective way to measure the benefits of mass transit, then these routes are going to be chosen by politicians as pork for their districts, regardless of whether they are cost-effective on dollar grounds alone.

We actually have such a mass transit system where I live. Buses go by every 15 minutes, nearly empty except for two or three elderly or poor passengers, even during the rush hour. The routes were chosen by politicians for their own inscrutable purposes. Economically, this is such a money loser for the community that it should have been shut down long ago. But they keep it running because of these ineffable "social benefits" that can't be measured. Maybe they give off an aura in hyperspace or something.

By: ottovbvs

ottovbvs — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 14:57:02 +0000

sinz54
7:24 AM
"ottovbvs: Your claim that "mass transit can only happen under the auspices of government" is simply false."

Er....get real....your example was a hundred years ago. The greatest promoter of street railways in US history was Charles Tyson Yerkes who basically built the Chicago system largely by all kinds of practices that wouldn't pass muster today. Similarly the entire rail system was built by private capital in the late 19th century but it was riddled with govt handouts, boondoggles and corruption. Go google Credit Mobilier. In 2009 the only entity with the capital raising abilities, power and reach to build fast transit systems are federal or state govt. The notion that this could be done by private capital is ludicrous because the truth is that in narrow financial terms they don't produce a satisfactory ROI. Mass transit is a combination of transport system and social service with all kinds of social benefits that can't be measured in strict cash terms. The reason most of these transit systems were taken over by the govt is because they were going bust as was the case with Amtrak.

By: ModerateGal

ModerateGal — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 13:27:45 +0000

sinz, the layout I saw on the news about the high speed rail plans were from city to city, not just within cities. I would probably use one that would allow me to travel to other cities easily.Here is the map: http://www.businessinsider.com/obamas-sweeping-high-speed-rail-plans-2009-4Check this out about Spain’s rail:http://www.thinkspain.com/news-spain/16520/spains-high-speed-train-the-envy-of-obama

By: barker13

barker13 — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 13:22:39 +0000

Two EXCELLENT posts, Sinz.

(*WINK*) (*THUMBS UP*)

Now, to touch on one issue JC brings up, we as a society need to do away with pensions.

Pensions are a ponzi scheme of sorts. Ponzi schemes usually end badly for those involved in them. It may take a while... generations perhaps... but once the demographics no longer work that's the end of pensions "working" and the beginning of pensions drawing the lifeblood out of the "owners" (shareholders, private; taxpayers, public) of the "enterprise" in question.

Liabilities are... er... liabilities. (*SHRUG*) Future liabilities may be "future" but they're still "liabilities." And sooner or later the "future" arrives. (That's what happened over time to the Big Three.)

Now I'm not saying that private firms - and even public entities - shouldn't contribute to employees' retirement accounts; I'm simply saying that this is where contributions should end.

I'm not talking disability... that's a somewhat different situation and for those disabled on the job I see nothing wrong with employers paying a certain percentage of salary/benefits throughout said disabled employees "missed" working years until retirement, but sticking to the simple outline of what I'm saying, neither private firms nor government (i.e. the taxpayers) should be on the hook for "pensions" that might end up being paid for far more years of retirement than the employee actually spent working.

Hey... if this means raising salaries so be it. The point is, in simplest terms, there are just too many uncertainties and too much unfairness (on both ends - if you die right after retirement with no spouse or child beneficiaries or if you end up collecting a pension for 50 years or more) inherent in a pension system to justify it.

Private savings, that's the ticket. Real savings, real investment, real wealth is the way to save for retirement, not hoping that somehow in the future someone else will be around to handle "future liabilities."

And yes... this applies to the social security system too.

And yes... I understand people can lose their investment funds or large portions of them and have. My answer? That's life. If you've lost so much that you require government aid to survive... then to those individuals we as a society will provide a safety net - but by safety net I'm talking exactly that... not anything approaching the "ideal" retirement.

I know many folks aren't going to agree with me, but what I'm talking about is reality. Pensions make sense when you can look forward to decades of boom years; I just don't see decades of boom years coming. Even with millions and millions of immigrants, we're not talking the the kind of "load bearing beam" that's required. Nope. More and more pensions - private and public - are being outted as ponzi schemes in the sense that long term... there really are no reasonable prospects of their being able to sustain themselves.

Anyway... points to ponder.

BILL

By: dendup

dendup — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 12:58:06 +0000

Sinz: you may be right - there are a lot of things to consider here. Mass transit expansion is predicated on the idea that build it and they will come because of escalating energy prices.

The suburbs of today are becoming more dense and contain a significant business presence, not the bedroom communities of the past. Can these "Edge Cities" support mass transit? Probably not without further evolution of this trend.

Where and how people live is constantly changing. As the highway system showed, if people are ready for it, a change in the transportation infrastucture can reorder the shape of cities.

"If people are ready for it" being the operational phrase.

But my point was more was that many conservtives have had a more basic objection to mass transit ie that it reduces liberty by forcing people to abondon the suburbs.

http://www.heritage.org/Research/SmartGrowth/bg2260.cfm

http://www.aei.org/publications/pubID.10057/pub_detail.asp

This article makes it seem the only obstacle to expanded mass transit was those mean ol' union workers. It was this articles assumption that improving mass transit is both needed and that meeting that need is a good thing that caught me by surprise.

Omitting past ideological objections made me wonder if people are more ready for it than I would have thought.

By: sinz54

sinz54 — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 11:45:33 +0000

dendup: Obama doesn't seem to understand that rail cannot work without reversing America's basic demographic trends. He said of rail: "Imagine boarding a train in the centre of a city. Imagine whisking through towns at over 100 miles an hour, walking a few steps to public transport, and ending up just blocks from your destination."

I can't imagine that, because I don't live that way. I live in the northern Boston suburbs, near the New Hampshire border. I live there, I work there, I shop in shopping malls there, I eat in restaurants there, I go to movie theaters there. The population and business densities are too low to support mass transit. The buses that are available rattle by nearly empty, even during the rush hour, because they don't go near 90% of the industrial parks where people work, or 90% of the homes where people live, or 90% of the malls where people shop. And I rarely go into Boston, maybe a few times a year.

Business has followed Americans into the suburbs. The type of lifestyle Obama was telling us to "imagine" is long gone, for most of us.

When Eisenhower built the Interstate Highway System, tens of millions of Americans already had cars and wanted better, faster roads. Obama, on the other hand, is building rail that will never be used efficiently, because it assumes a society that disappeared after World War II.

By: sinz54

sinz54 — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 11:24:23 +0000

ottovbvs: Your claim that "mass transit can only happen under the auspices of government" is simply false.

In the early 20th century in New York City, the Interborough Rapid Transit (IRT) Company, a private venture, built New York's first successful subway lines. A sister operation, also private, the Brooklyn-Manhattan Transit (BMT) Company, operated successful subways in Brooklyn that ran to Manhattan and connected at various stations to IRT lines.

The government of the City figured out how to monopolize the system: They started their own public operation, the Independent (IND), to compete by public subsidy with the IRT and BMT and thus drive them out of business. The City approved the construction of IND lines that in some areas like the Bronx would be built only a few blocks from the IRT lines, thus drawing passengers away from them. Ultimately the BMT and IRT went bankrupt, and the City took them over.

That's a lesson for Obama's proposed health care reforms: His public health care option is a stealthy way to drive the private insurers out of the market by subsidizing the public option as much as necessary so it can beat the private insurers on price. Exactly the same way the IND subway drove the IRT and BMT out of business in New York.

Finally, anyone who watches "Honeymooners" reruns will find out that New York City's bus lines were private as late as the 1950s. Again, the City monopolized them too eventually.