7 ms·

I upmodded you because I share your wish, but unfortunately what you're asking for is impossible. Both of my parents have been railroad engineers all their lif

by tx 18y ago

I upmodded you because I share your wish, but unfortunately what you're asking for is impossible. Both of my parents have been railroad engineers all their lifes, and the main thing I learned was this: railroads are not economical at transporting passengers. Nearly all countries with "decent train systems" use government subsidies to effectively sponsor passenger railroad transport. Even subways can't make any profit. And I am against paying more taxes. Period. Therefore, no government subsidies to Amtrak from me.

sethg 18y ago
In the US, highways get an order of magnitude more government subsidy than transit (not just Amtrak but also urban subway systems, etc). Even if you treat the revenue from the gas tax as a user fee rather than a subsidy, there's still a huge subsidy coming from other kinds of tax revenue. Chart and link to more info here: http://www.streetsblog.org/2008/07/22/highway-funding-the-last-bastion-of-socialism-in-america/ http://www.streetsblog.org/2008/07/22/highway-funding-the-la...
- deleted 18y ago
  [deleted]
- tx 18y ago
  I don't get it. We aren't building any new highways (easy to check) yet our expenses are going up. WTF?!
halo 18y ago
So contrary to the initial sentence, you're actually saying it isn't impossible just that you're just against funding it for other reasons...
time_management 18y ago
I'm okay with paying higher taxes if I'm getting something for it-- cheap transportation, universal high-quality healthcare. It's paying high taxes to support Bush's war and tax cuts for the rich that I have a problem with. The problem with the train system now is that it's dilapidated, expensive, and slow, which leads to low use, leading to disrepair... and so on. However, air travel is going that way right now, and something will fill the void. Trains at 80 mph are not competitive with airlines, but maglev trains are capable of 250+.
- mynameishere 18y ago
  It's paying high taxes to support Bush's war and tax cuts for the rich Paying high taxes to support tax cuts for the rich? I'm okay with paying higher taxes if I'm getting something for it-- cheap transportation You do realize that "paying for something to make it cheap" just changes who pays for something, yes? Like...I'm in favor of YOU buying ME a nice present, like cheap transportation. At gunpoint. Basic stuff. A train passes by my office occasionally. I don't think it is subsidized. It carries coal. Now...if it was practical for that train to carry people, it would do so, without subsidies. It's not like government is actually needed to make trains profitable.
  - Hexstream 18y ago
    If the rich pay less taxes then the non-rich probably pay more...
    - william42 18y ago
      That, and you'll have to pay off China.
    - anamax 18y ago
      If by "pay more" you mean "pay less", then yes. Apart from SS, the "rich" pay the vast majority of income taxes in the US. That's not to say that all of the rich people pay taxes - there's a lot of folks who buy Munis and the like for tax avoidance (supposedly reducing the costs of various govt projects) and then there are the folks who have managed their estates so they'll never be taxed (including Warren "the inheritance tax should be higher" Buffet). Yes - it's reasonable to exclude SS. SS is essentially a bad forced savings account. However, SS is progressive in that the less you contributed, the better your return. For folks who pay the max, it's a horrible deal. Both "contributions" and benefits are capped so Perot doesn't get $1M/month. The rich pay a lower fraction of their income in consumption taxes than the poor, but that's because they consume a smaller fraction of their income and they don't consume as much "sin". (Most consumption taxes exempt food, which is a larger fraction of poor people's income, but poor people also spend more of their money on tobacco and alcohol.)
Xichekolas 18y ago
... since we don't pay any taxes towards our road/highway system. Private transportation is subsidized just as much as public transportation if you factor in the cost of all those eight lane interstates. It's all a matter of priorities. I'm not saying that rail travel is a better solution... I'm just pointing out that no matter what way we go about it, the government will spend significant amounts of money. The Federal Budget allotted $67 billion for transportation improvement projects this year.[1] Add to that a huge amount spent by the states and local jurisdictions (I know my state roughly matches it's Federal grants with it's own money.) Contrast this with Europe, which spent 125 billion euros on road projects, and 73 billion on rail subsidies, and has three times as many people.[2] You can't end a debate on rail travel by saying it's not profitable without subsidies. Roads would not happen without massive government subsidies either. Witness the need for the Eisenhower Interstate project to kickstart decent long distance highways in the 1950s. Air travel benefits from the same things. If airlines had to build their own airports, ticket prices would be much higher. The airlines benefit from billions of dollars spent annually by states and municipalities to build nice airports, add runways, and run air traffic control. All that comes out of your taxes too. [1] http://www.dot.gov/affairs/dot1507.htm http://www.dot.gov/affairs/dot1507.htm [2] http://reports.eea.europa.eu/technical_report_2007_3/en/eea_technical_report_3_2007.pdf http://reports.eea.europa.eu/technical_report_2007_3/en/eea_...
- mynameishere 18y ago
  Private transportation is subsidized just as much Don't say "just as much". People buy their own cars, perform their own maintenance, pay their own insurance, and essentially pay a subscription through gas taxes (which, in my opinion, should fund 100 percent of roadwork.)
  - krschultz 18y ago
    So? The cost of roads, traffic lights, snow removal, and police coverage aren't factoring in? I get on a subway car each day with 100+ other people at a time, it probably gets 1,000 people on it a day, everyday, for the last 20+ years. How much could it have cost per person over that time? Sidenote - the MTA in NYC is only 5% paid for by the city, with 95% of its operating budget coming from rider fairs. There is a big complaint from subway riders that it isn't more, the subways make the city possible, shouldn't they pay more into it?
ckinnan 18y ago
We already give Amtrak over $1 billion a year in tax subsidies. The problem is that the company is a monopoly with no incentives to improve service or reduce costs. Passenger rail and subways can make a profit...the New York subway system was built by competing private subway companies, as was the initial national rail network. The problem is the unions and the government now have a stranglehold and there's no competition or innovation.
- Retric 18y ago
  1 billion a year works out to less than 1/2 of 1% of our road subsidies.
  - Prrometheus 18y ago
    How does that work out on a per-passenger-mile basis?
    - Retric 18y ago
      Annual road subsidies are around: (~3 trillion miles / year) / (~300billion / year) = 10c/mile or around 3$ per gallon of gas. Amtrak = $210.31 per passenger per 1,000 miles = 21c/mile but there are significant network effects so some routs are far more subsidized than others. And with such a long history of investments in cars and roads it's hard to calculate what's the better long term value.
mdemare 18y ago
But the government pays for the roads too. Isn't that a subsidy? And without trains or subways much more people would need to use cars - where would they be parked? Who would pay for all that parking space? Trains allow people who can't drive (or can't afford to drive) to travel. And can you imagine the traffic in New York, Paris or London if the "unprofitable" subway networks were shut down? Society has a huge interest in keeping these networks running, even if it's impossible for a private company to start a new railroad and turn a profit. There are a lot of variables involved here. Don't be too sure you see the whole picture.
- Prrometheus 18y ago
  Transportation is a good with a large demand. I am certain that, absent the government, quite a bit of transportation would be demanded and provided in the free market. The quantity of roads or rail produced might be less without all the subsidies, but I'm not sure this would be a bad thing. It would certainly be easier on the environment, since transportation tends to be resource-intensive. The amount of transportation produced in the free market would be equal to the amount that people were willing to pay for, and that seems fair to me. Producing roads that people aren't willing to voluntarily pay for is a social loss. The people paying for the roads would rather use their money for other things. We are taking their consumption away from more highly valued goods and putting it towards lesser valued goods.
  - mdemare 18y ago
    Transportation may be a good, but infrastructure isn't, and there are good reasons why depending on the free market to invest in infrastructure is a bad idea. It is very hard (and wasteful) to charge for roads. Infrastructure forms a natural monopoly (worse even than the telecom industry). There are huge sunk costs. The existence of roads benefits everybody, even those who don't use them, but nobody wants to pay for them. I like free markets too, but whenever there's something like the Tragedy of the Commons or Moral Hazard involved, free markets lose much of their advantages.
    - Prrometheus 18y ago
michaelneale 18y ago
I am pretty sure the London Underground is run at a profit, as are the private railsways that service the country side around London. Of course, the cost of using those services is pretty much the highest in the world, and they have pretty high population density, but still, pretty sure its run at a profit.

by tx 18y ago

sethg 18y ago

In the US, highways get an order of magnitude more government subsidy than transit (not just Amtrak but also urban subway systems, etc). Even if you treat the revenue from the gas tax as a user fee rather than a subsidy, there's still a huge subsidy coming from other kinds of tax revenue. Chart and link to more info here: http://www.streetsblog.org/2008/07/22/highway-funding-the-last-bastion-of-socialism-in-america/ http://www.streetsblog.org/2008/07/22/highway-funding-the-la...

deleted 18y ago
[deleted]
tx 18y ago
I don't get it. We aren't building any new highways (easy to check) yet our expenses are going up. WTF?!

halo 18y ago

So contrary to the initial sentence, you're actually saying it isn't impossible just that you're just against funding it for other reasons...

time_management 18y ago

I'm okay with paying higher taxes if I'm getting something for it-- cheap transportation, universal high-quality healthcare. It's paying high taxes to support Bush's war and tax cuts for the rich that I have a problem with. The problem with the train system now is that it's dilapidated, expensive, and slow, which leads to low use, leading to disrepair... and so on. However, air travel is going that way right now, and something will fill the void. Trains at 80 mph are not competitive with airlines, but maglev trains are capable of 250+.

mynameishere 18y ago
It's paying high taxes to support Bush's war and tax cuts for the rich Paying high taxes to support tax cuts for the rich? I'm okay with paying higher taxes if I'm getting something for it-- cheap transportation You do realize that "paying for something to make it cheap" just changes who pays for something, yes? Like...I'm in favor of YOU buying ME a nice present, like cheap transportation. At gunpoint. Basic stuff. A train passes by my office occasionally. I don't think it is subsidized. It carries coal. Now...if it was practical for that train to carry people, it would do so, without subsidies. It's not like government is actually needed to make trains profitable.
- Hexstream 18y ago
  If the rich pay less taxes then the non-rich probably pay more...
  - william42 18y ago
    That, and you'll have to pay off China.
  - anamax 18y ago
    If by "pay more" you mean "pay less", then yes. Apart from SS, the "rich" pay the vast majority of income taxes in the US. That's not to say that all of the rich people pay taxes - there's a lot of folks who buy Munis and the like for tax avoidance (supposedly reducing the costs of various govt projects) and then there are the folks who have managed their estates so they'll never be taxed (including Warren "the inheritance tax should be higher" Buffet). Yes - it's reasonable to exclude SS. SS is essentially a bad forced savings account. However, SS is progressive in that the less you contributed, the better your return. For folks who pay the max, it's a horrible deal. Both "contributions" and benefits are capped so Perot doesn't get $1M/month. The rich pay a lower fraction of their income in consumption taxes than the poor, but that's because they consume a smaller fraction of their income and they don't consume as much "sin". (Most consumption taxes exempt food, which is a larger fraction of poor people's income, but poor people also spend more of their money on tobacco and alcohol.)

Xichekolas 18y ago

... since we don't pay any taxes towards our road/highway system. Private transportation is subsidized just as much as public transportation if you factor in the cost of all those eight lane interstates. It's all a matter of priorities. I'm not saying that rail travel is a better solution... I'm just pointing out that no matter what way we go about it, the government will spend significant amounts of money. The Federal Budget allotted $67 billion for transportation improvement projects this year.[1] Add to that a huge amount spent by the states and local jurisdictions (I know my state roughly matches it's Federal grants with it's own money.) Contrast this with Europe, which spent 125 billion euros on road projects, and 73 billion on rail subsidies, and has three times as many people.[2] You can't end a debate on rail travel by saying it's not profitable without subsidies. Roads would not happen without massive government subsidies either. Witness the need for the Eisenhower Interstate project to kickstart decent long distance highways in the 1950s. Air travel benefits from the same things. If airlines had to build their own airports, ticket prices would be much higher. The airlines benefit from billions of dollars spent annually by states and municipalities to build nice airports, add runways, and run air traffic control. All that comes out of your taxes too. [1] http://www.dot.gov/affairs/dot1507.htm http://www.dot.gov/affairs/dot1507.htm [2] http://reports.eea.europa.eu/technical_report_2007_3/en/eea_technical_report_3_2007.pdf http://reports.eea.europa.eu/technical_report_2007_3/en/eea_...

mynameishere 18y ago
Private transportation is subsidized just as much Don't say "just as much". People buy their own cars, perform their own maintenance, pay their own insurance, and essentially pay a subscription through gas taxes (which, in my opinion, should fund 100 percent of roadwork.)
- krschultz 18y ago
  So? The cost of roads, traffic lights, snow removal, and police coverage aren't factoring in? I get on a subway car each day with 100+ other people at a time, it probably gets 1,000 people on it a day, everyday, for the last 20+ years. How much could it have cost per person over that time? Sidenote - the MTA in NYC is only 5% paid for by the city, with 95% of its operating budget coming from rider fairs. There is a big complaint from subway riders that it isn't more, the subways make the city possible, shouldn't they pay more into it?

ckinnan 18y ago

We already give Amtrak over $1 billion a year in tax subsidies. The problem is that the company is a monopoly with no incentives to improve service or reduce costs. Passenger rail and subways can make a profit...the New York subway system was built by competing private subway companies, as was the initial national rail network. The problem is the unions and the government now have a stranglehold and there's no competition or innovation.

Retric 18y ago
1 billion a year works out to less than 1/2 of 1% of our road subsidies.
- Prrometheus 18y ago
  How does that work out on a per-passenger-mile basis?
  - Retric 18y ago
    Annual road subsidies are around: (~3 trillion miles / year) / (~300billion / year) = 10c/mile or around 3$ per gallon of gas. Amtrak = $210.31 per passenger per 1,000 miles = 21c/mile but there are significant network effects so some routs are far more subsidized than others. And with such a long history of investments in cars and roads it's hard to calculate what's the better long term value.

mdemare 18y ago

But the government pays for the roads too. Isn't that a subsidy? And without trains or subways much more people would need to use cars - where would they be parked? Who would pay for all that parking space? Trains allow people who can't drive (or can't afford to drive) to travel. And can you imagine the traffic in New York, Paris or London if the "unprofitable" subway networks were shut down? Society has a huge interest in keeping these networks running, even if it's impossible for a private company to start a new railroad and turn a profit. There are a lot of variables involved here. Don't be too sure you see the whole picture.

Prrometheus 18y ago
Transportation is a good with a large demand. I am certain that, absent the government, quite a bit of transportation would be demanded and provided in the free market. The quantity of roads or rail produced might be less without all the subsidies, but I'm not sure this would be a bad thing. It would certainly be easier on the environment, since transportation tends to be resource-intensive. The amount of transportation produced in the free market would be equal to the amount that people were willing to pay for, and that seems fair to me. Producing roads that people aren't willing to voluntarily pay for is a social loss. The people paying for the roads would rather use their money for other things. We are taking their consumption away from more highly valued goods and putting it towards lesser valued goods.
- mdemare 18y ago
  Transportation may be a good, but infrastructure isn't, and there are good reasons why depending on the free market to invest in infrastructure is a bad idea. It is very hard (and wasteful) to charge for roads. Infrastructure forms a natural monopoly (worse even than the telecom industry). There are huge sunk costs. The existence of roads benefits everybody, even those who don't use them, but nobody wants to pay for them. I like free markets too, but whenever there's something like the Tragedy of the Commons or Moral Hazard involved, free markets lose much of their advantages.
  - Prrometheus 18y ago

michaelneale 18y ago

I am pretty sure the London Underground is run at a profit, as are the private railsways that service the country side around London. Of course, the cost of using those services is pretty much the highest in the world, and they have pretty high population density, but still, pretty sure its run at a profit.