RAILforum: You have GOT to read this!

This is topic You have GOT to read this! in forum Amtrak at RAILforum.

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Posted by M190 (Member # 3009) on :

A wee off topic perhaps, but laughably biased. Enjoy.
http://www.texaspolicy.com/press_releases_single.php?report_id=555

Posted by M190 (Member # 3009) on :

Sorry, wrong URL
http://www.texaspolicy.com/index.php

Read "Great Rail Disaster"

Posted by panamaclipper (Member # 3058) on :

Sounds like more brilliant thinking from Texas - where else!

Posted by Big Merl (Member # 3251) on :

Anyone that has spent any amount of time in New York City knows that has to be a joke of an article. Or the writer forgot his tin foil hat that day.

Posted by espeeboy (Member # 3346) on :

Didn't I see that Dubya had appointed this geek to the Amtrak board (or was it the NTSC?)

Posted by espeefoamer (Member # 2815) on :

I want some of what that guy is smoking!!!!

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Trust Jesus,Ride Amtrak.

Posted by Mike Smith (Member # 447) on :

In Houston, our little 7 mile excursion into light rail has nailed 50 vehicles so far this year. And it cost us $400 million dollars. And it is well below the projected ridership. And the stops cost us $500,000 each to design and build. And there is no plan for commuter rail from the suburbs.

As an FYI, commuter rail costs about $4,000,000 a mile versus our little $55,000,000 per mile light rail.

Posted by TwinStarRocket (Member # 2142) on :

In Minneapolis, most of our 12 mile Hiawatha light rail line opened a month ago. On opening day it was free, and 3 hour waits were reported to get on. Traffic jams for major league sports events have vanished. Initial daily ridership was projected to be 9,500, but is now averaging 12,000. The local paper reported that it cost 80 cents less per passenger to operate than a bus. When complete in December, projected ridership is 19,000/day. Price tag was $715 million, much of which was spent fighting moronic opposition.

Crunching these numbers gets me about 11 years until savings over the smelly loud buses has paid for the project. A leader in getting this done right was Gov. Jesse Ventura, a proponent of very small government and more rail. The leader of the opposition is now Governor. One of my favorite billboards the opposition had all over town was a picture of an old passenger engine with the caption: "Rail, like the bus only slower".

My son-in-law now takes this train to school, and his 45 minute bus ride is now a quiet, smooth 5 minutes on the train.

Posted by rresor (Member # 128) on :

I started to respond to this on Friday, but then changed my mind because the argument is actually pretty complex.

What's been happening in the US (and for that matter, in Europe too) for the last forty years is that people have moved to the suburbs and jobs have followed. This pattern was made possible by cars and roads. Build roads, people buy cars and move to the 'burbs. Eventually, the jobs follow. Since O/D pairs are so diverse and volumes between each pair so small in suburb-to-suburb commuting, they're tough to serve with ANY kind of public transit. Result: transit market share goes down.

That's basically what this "study" says, and it's correct as far as it goes. That is what has been happening. But there are some signs that folks are getting fed up with longer and longer commutes in heavier and heavier traffic. In Chicago, there's an enormous boom in inner-city housing. Whole neighborhoods near the Loop are being completely redeveloped. People are moving back to the city.

The back-to-the-city movement is only possible because of public transit. These folks would NEVER move to loft condos west of Chicago Union Station if they had to drive to work. Get real.

So the authors of this "study" do a good job of telling us what has been happening for forty years, and they endorse more of the same, apparently. The problem is that those of us in the transportation business know that miles driven can't continue to increase at three times the growth in population -- we won't have enough room for all the roads we'd have to build.

So what to do? Diss transit because "nobody rides it" and condemn us all to gridlock in the near future?

Let's get started with building more transit.