High-speed rail is dead in America. Should we mourn it?

[Ishmael]

Acela doesn't lose $. So much for facts.

Acela is near breaking even, it still loses money. The only reason that it appears to show a profit is that it shares rail expenses with the NE commuter route that it shares with the rest of the system. It's an accounting trick, nothing more.

Ishmael

 

[SgtSpiderMan]

Acela is near breaking even, it still loses money. The only reason that it appears to show a profit is that it shares rail expenses with the NE commuter route that it shares with the rest of the system. It's an accounting trick, nothing more.

Ishmael

The NE corridor takes business away from Acela and it still makes money.

 

[HAL_9000]

Dirigibles need to make a comeback.

Sure, they are slow, but they are unimpeded by obstacles.

 

[Ishmael]

The NE corridor takes business away from Acela and it still makes money.

If that is true, why do they need $450 million of tax payers money specifically targeted for Acela service? If they were making money ANY bank would make the loan.

Ishmael

 

[SgtSpiderMan]

If that is true, why do they need $450 million of tax payers money specifically targeted for Acela service? If they were making money ANY bank would make the loan.

Ishmael

One has nothing to do with the other.

You're the only one who seems to think they NEED money. You'd be hard pressed to find one instance of a time congress gave money to someone who actually NEEDED it. Who turns down free money?

 

[Ishmael]

One has nothing to do with the other.

You're the only one who seems to think they NEED money. You'd be hard pressed to find one instance of a time congress gave money to someone who actually NEEDED it. Who turns down free money?

It has everything to do with it.

I notice that you avoided the fact the every high-speed rail, world wide, losses money.

Ishmael

 

[SgtSpiderMan]

It has everything to do with it.

I notice that you avoided the fact the every high-speed rail, world wide, losses money.

Ishmael

No, it doesn't.

I didn't. Acela makes $.

 

[Ishmael]

No, it doesn't.

I didn't. Acela makes $.

No it didn't. I've already outlined the reason they were able to show a profit, for one year only. They offloaded the maintenance charges to the NE commuters that share the same track. The NE commuters ARE profitable, profitable to the point that they can subsidize Acela operations, just can't cover track improvement.

If you believe otherwise then you'd most certainly be in favor of removing ALL government subsidies for the service, right?

Ishmael

 

[SgtSpiderMan]

No it didn't. I've already outlined the reason they were able to show a profit, for one year only. They offloaded the maintenance charges to the NE commuters that share the same track. The NE commuters ARE profitable, profitable to the point that they can subsidize Acela operations, just can't cover track improvement.

If you believe otherwise then you'd most certainly be in favor of removing ALL government subsidies for the service, right?

Ishmael

Ish, what fantasyland are you living in? You didn't outline anything. You made an assertion. You provided zero proof to back you up. If you have access to the books and can provide a link I'd gladly look at it.

Stop with the propaganda. None of your transference questions have anything to do with backing up your claim.

 

[Bad_Doggie]

Ish, what fantasyland are you living in? You didn't outline anything. You made an assertion. You provided zero proof to back you up. If you have access to the books and can provide a link I'd gladly look at it.

Stop with the propaganda. None of your transference questions have anything to do with backing up your claim.

You’ve been here long enough to know that in Ish’s world his assertions don’t need any backing up.

But, if you’re interested….

SNCF (France) 2010, page 18.
Revenue: 7.2 billion euros
Gross profit: 915 million euros
Operating income 535 million euros

DB Bahn Long Distance Unit (Germany) 2009
Revenue: 3.565 billion euros
EBITDA: 504 million euros
EBIT: 141 million Euros

DB Fernverkehr (Germany) 2010,

(Berlin, March 31, 2011) Deutsche Bahn AG recorded a strong recovery from the financial and economic crisis and was back on track for growth in 2010. Revenues and profits posted double-digit gains while the volume of net capital expenditures rose substantially, and the number of persons traveling via rail surged by 42 million

I could go on, but, I think that's enough to show Ish is full of shit.

Woof!

Woof!

 

[Bad_Doggie]

I travel regularly between Stuttgart (Germany) and Le Mans (France) and take the train as it’s quicker, cheaper and more comfortable than travelling by air. I pay the extra for 1st class and it’s still cheaper than air. I have access to the internet, telephone, text and if travelling on an ICE train TV, all of which makes the journey feel even quicker.

The train is quicker, more comfortable, safer and at about the same price as driving. The only advantage of driving is having the car at your destination. Even so I still prefer to take the train and spend the extra money and hire a car if I need one.

I don’t see why HSR wouldn’t work well in the US, even better than in Europe, most modern first world countries have one.

Woof!

 

[trysail]

FYI (highlights are mine)



____________________


http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-...-new-york-station-that-may-be-too-costly.html



Amtrak Says It Needs NY Station That May Be Too Costly
By Lisa Caruso
December 15, 2011

For Amtrak to move more passengers on trains between Washington and Boston, its only profitable route, it must move out of New York’s Penn Station, said Drew Galloway, assistant vice president for the eastern region.

The new space it covets is across the street, where New York state and two developers plan to transform the 97-year-old James A. Farley Post Office into a $1 billion train hall and retail complex.

The rub: Officials at U.S. taxpayer-subsidized Amtrak, which lost $1.3 billion last fiscal year, say they can’t afford to leave Penn Station, which the railroad owns, unless their new home is effectively rent-free. With the development’s finances unresolved, New York officials haven’t made guarantees.

“Either we are able to expand the station capacity to accommodate more passengers, or we can’t expand the service on the corridor,” Galloway said. “It’s that simple.”

Other potential sources of project funding have dried up or face constraints. Congress last month killed the fiscal 2012 budget for President Barack Obama’s high-speed rail program and cut Amtrak’s annual subsidy by $65 million.

The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which is managing construction for the state, raised tolls in August by 56 percent over five years to shore up its budget. The real estate developers will spend money on the project after negotiating final terms with the state, Timothy Gilchrist, president of Moynihan Station Development Corp., a unit of New York state’s business-investment agency, said in an interview.

The project is named for the late Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, a New York Democrat, who first championed it almost 20 years ago.

‘Modest Increase’
Amtrak won’t have to help pay to build its new home, Gilchrist said. How much it will contribute to operations is under discussion, though Washington-based Amtrak won’t occupy it if it faces more than a “modest increase” from costs at Penn Station, Galloway said in an interview.

Penn Station is North America’s busiest passenger- transportation center, handling more travelers than the New York region’s three airports combined, according to the June 2010 state plan outlining the project.

It’s in the middle of Amtrak’s Northeast Corridor, where ridership on regional and Acela trains grew 30 percent to 10.9 million in fiscal year 2011 from 8.4 million in fiscal 2000, according to the railroad.

‘Running of Bulls’
The Acela, which can reach 150 miles per hour, captured 74 percent of the airline-rail market between New York and Washington in fiscal 2011, Stephen Gardner, Amtrak’s vice president of Northeast Corridor infrastructure and investment development, said at a conference last month. In 2000 it was 37 percent.

Amtrak passengers represent a small fraction of people who use Penn Station, which is also served by New Jersey Transit, Long Island Rail Road and New York subways. More than 600,000 people enter the station daily; 25,000 to 30,000 ride Amtrak, Galloway said.

Separating Amtrak from local trains would stop some of the ripple effect in operations that a problem with one train can cause, Galloway said.

It also would remove Amtrak riders from the crush of commuters that descend on Penn Station during rush hours like a “running of the bulls,” Fred Bartoli, transportation project manager for Moynihan Station Development, said.

Two former Amtrak presidents questioned whether the railroad must relocate to carry more passengers on Northeast trains.

“The tracks under the Farley Building and Penn Station are the same tracks,” Tom Downs, president from 1993 to 1998, said by phone. “Without a way to increase the number of platforms, it doesn’t increase capacity.”

Longer Trains
David Gunn withdrew Amtrak from the project in 2004 when he was president, saying it was too expensive as the railroad faced possible bankruptcy. Current President Joseph Boardman in 2009 renewed the commitment.

The post-office redevelopment is “an example of how the whole transportation planning system has broken down,” Gunn said in a phone interview. “It was controlled by a bunch of rich developers.”

Galloway agreed the project won’t add tracks to the 21 that run under Penn Station; 13 of those continue beneath the Farley building. It will create “much-needed passenger waiting space” and escalators, elevators and stairs to platforms, he said.

“Even though the number of trains may not increase they can grow in length” as the new station could accommodate more riders, Galloway said.

The Farley complex is distinctive for its inscription “Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds.”

Development Rights
The first phase of the renovation, to expand the underground concourse on Penn Station’s west end, began last October and is scheduled to be completed in 2016. The second phase is to include the train hall and developing the complex’s west side for residential and commercial use.

Building Amtrak’s new site will take 3 1/2 to 4 years and make available 2.5 million square feet of development rights the private-sector partners can transfer to other sites or sell, Gilchrist said. Phase two will be financed by a public-private partnership with New York-based developers Vornado Realty Trust (VNO) and Related Cos LLP.

‘Funding Gap’
The development rights may yield several hundred million dollars “but there will still be a funding gap and it’s not clear how that will be filled,” Juliette Michaelson, director of strategic initiatives for the New York-based Regional Plan Association, said in a phone interview.

The U.S. Transportation Department rejected the state’s request for $50 million for Moynihan Station design plans earlier this year. U.S. Representative John Mica, the Florida Republican who’s chairman of the House transportation committee, said the department shouldn’t put more resources into the project until the developers contribute.

“There’s plenty of federal money in it,” Mica said in an interview. “I want to see the green dollar bills from the private sector.”

Vornado, Related
Vornado and Related in 2006 committed $313.8 million to the project. Though a final deal wasn’t struck, they made a $10 million refundable deposit, according to a 2005 document prepared for the Moynihan Station Development board.

Joanna Rose, a spokeswoman for Related, and Wendi Kopsick, a Vornado spokeswoman, declined to comment on negotiations.

Governor Andrew Cuomo, a Democrat, last week offered a job- creation plan that includes $300 million for the Port Authority to spend on capital projects. That may provide enough money to start the second phase, Michaelson said in an e-mail.

To offset any costs of space at Moynihan Station, Amtrak may renovate and rent its space in Penn Station to retailers, New Jersey Transit and the Long Island Rail Road, Galloway said.

Moynihan Station may end up saving Amtrak money, Galloway said.

“If we didn’t have this opportunity, then we would be looking at probably several hundred million in capital investment, in life-safety improvements for the area of Penn Station that Moynihan is taking care of for us,” he said.



http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-...-new-york-station-that-may-be-too-costly.html

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

No more than when we killed the original rail for the Interstate.



The light rail is just an attempt to address the unintended consequences to the original economic fallacies that led to the Federal Government expanding its domain in an unhealthy way.

 

[Beco]

There was a brief burst of enthusiasm around the future of high-speed rail in January 2010, when President Obama announced $8 billion in federal stimulus spending to start building “America’s first nationwide program of high-speed intercity passenger rail service.” Since then, however, the project’s chances of success have been heading in one direction: downhill. First, Tea Party conservatives in Florida and wealthy liberal suburbanites in the Bay Area began questioning their states’ plans. Then, just as Joe Biden was calling for $53 billion in high-speed-rail spending over the next six years, a crop of freshly elected Republican governors turned down billions in federal money for lines in Wisconsin, Ohio, and Florida. Finally, Republicans in Congress zeroed out the federal high-speed rail budget last month.

http://www.slate.com/articles/techn...l_is_dead_in_america_should_we_mourn_it_.html

Darn, I was looking foward to that So Cal to Vegas line.....

 

[Beco]

To each their own. I take the train from DC to NYC about once a month and if I had to drive or fly, I just wouldn't go.

And what would traffic be like if all those people got off the trains and drove?

Driving from DC to NYC isnt that bad, until you get to the city. But I prefer flying or train to NY. Personally, I was for high speed trains, after riding Europe's train all over, I mean, we should have that type system.

 

[busybody..]

NIGGER OM ICKS


WH: You bet we’re gung-ho on that boondoggle that’s tripled in cost before it’s begun!


posted at 11:10 am on December 17, 2011 by Ed Morrissey






The projected cost of the California high-speed rail project has tripled from the $33 billion estimate the state used to get voter approval for the necessary bonds — borrowing, in other words — in 2008, just three short years ago. The state hasn’t even broken ground on the project, and even its former supporters are questioning the wisdom of putting a state that’s already sinking in red ink on the hook for a boondoggle that will require them to borrow almost all of the $99 billion cost and not have any service to show for it for more than a decade.

Don’t expect the Obama administration to show that kind of critical thinking, however:


The Obama administration vowed Thursday at a House committee meeting in Washington that it would not back down from its support of California’s bullet train project despite attacks from critics who alleged it is tainted by political corruption.

“We are not going to flinch on that support,” said Joseph Szabo, chief of the Federal Railroad Administration.

Szabo said that his agency had committed itself to provide $3.3 billion for a construction start next year in the Central Valley and that federal law prohibits any change of mind about where to begin building the first segment of the state’s high-speed rail system.

“The worst thing we could do is make obligations to folks and start to renege on our word,” Szabo told the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee.

Er, no. The worst thing they could do is to waste taxpayer money on a boondoggle that, at least at this point, actually has no realistic final price. The new estimate includes a risk of a 20% increase from the new $99 billion estimate based on “route options,” and that’s before any work has even been started. Once ground breaks, the project will undoubtedly face unexpected setbacks and need for new cash infusions, a pattern seen on every public works project in memory.

What will this project deliver in the end? A fixed-rail transport system that takes longer to deliver people between two points than air travel — with multiple service providers — takes now. As with all public-transport systems, taxpayers will have to heavily subsidize the service to make it price competitive with the other options of driving or flying, and unlike the tradeoff cities make in that calculus to relieve congestion, there is no public detriment that the rail system will relieve in exchange for those billions in subsidies that will have to flow into the California Choo-Choo. No one has proposed how California even plans to power the train system, since California is a net importer of electricity now. The only realistic options for generating as much power as will be needed on a reliable basis are fossil fuels and nuclear power, neither of which improves on cars or planes, at least in the eyes of Californians and Democrats supporting this project.

And don’t forget that this fixed-track system, which for passenger service is a relic of the 19th century, will necessarily sit astride and parallel one of the largest fault lines in the US — the San Andreas fault, where most people believe California’s next big earthquake will originate.

The worst thing that the federal government can do is to be a poor steward of public capital, and that’s exactly the choice that the Obama administration and Jerry Brown are making by continuing this embarrassment of a boondoggle.

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

Driving from DC to NYC isnt that bad, until you get to the city. But I prefer flying or train to NY. Personally, I was for high speed trains, after riding Europe's train all over, I mean, we should have that type system.

We used to be on our way to that.

I remember when we had rails in KCK...

But with the Interstate and expanding highways.

Now, what do we complain about?

No mass public transit.

The pollution of cars.

The death of Downtown, Main Street and the Mom and Pops.

Land is too expensive for the little guy at the Interstate Exit, so only National Franchises can build.

We took people off the rails and forced their decline and we cheered when we did it. That was REAL freedom, real liberty, real mobility, the proof of American greatness and the need for some central planning to better our lives...

 

[Saint Peter]

Good union jobs on those rails of steel!

 

[busybody..]

Good union jobs on those rails of steel!

STFU, clown!

 

[Saint Peter]

Old Today, 07:33 AM
busybody
This message is hidden because busybody is on your ignore list.

Good morning, douchebag!

 

[busybody..]

Good morning, douchebag!

STFU, clown

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

Good union jobs on those rails of steel!

Only at the cost of other jobs, even other unions.




Only so much Capital can be stolen and passed around for votes.

 

[oggbashan]

I remember when you could load your car on a sleeper train in the evening and travel between London and Edinburgh, or London and Cornwall, or London and the South of France, to arrive after breakfast.

You had the advantage of having your own car at the destination and being able to sleep on the way.

The problems? It was far more expensive than driving, it never made any money for the train company, and loading and unloading the cars took a long time. The restricted loading gauge in the UK made the method impossible for higher vehicles such as motorcaravans although small 1960s caravans were feasible.

The Euroshuttle through the Channel Tunnel is much faster at loading and unloading vehicles but the travelling experience sucks. You have to walk through the cars to get to an inadequate toilet and the only food and drink available is from vending machines. It works for the short journey time between Folkestone and Calais but would be very unpleasant for London to Paris.

When I started commuting between my town and London I could travel in the Restaurant Car and be served breakfast at my seat, with proper plates and cutlery. On the return journey I could have a silver service three course dinner. It was civilised if too expensive for most people to use every working day. The service was withdrawn a couple of years later because the train company could pack more people onto a train if there was no restaurant car.

Some of the older commuters remembered the pre-WW2 service. It was faster, even faster than the present day service. The restaurant car staff knew all the regulars by name and your normal breakfast would be served within five minutes of the train deparating; your preferred daily newspaper would be at your seat. Any strangers would be escorted to the 'spare' seats. If you had any luggage it was loaded on to the train, unloaded in London and taken to the Taxi rank.

If that sort of experience was available on High-Speed rail, it would be far better than even the upper-class seats on aircraft.

 

[Saint Peter]

Only at the cost of other jobs, even other unions.




Only so much Capital can be stolen and passed around for votes.

Highly trained and well paid workers who got the job done and done right.

What's not to love?

 

[Saint Peter]

Highly trained and well paid workers who got the job done and done right.

What's not to love?

http://forum.literotica.com/showthread.php?t=790324
And a man did not have to do this.