New Rail Study

[nkp_174]

"try to mitigate this and prevent government from picking the winners and losers."
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This is exactly what happen with Ike's and the trucking industries' interstates..The losers was the railroads and of course as a back draft the railroads had to get Federal help.In the mean time the airlines was killing the passenger train and the USPS shifted from rail to trucks and the end result was more Government "bailouts" for the railroads and the death of the remaining passenger trains..Enter the "Big lie" on how Amtrak was going to save the passenger train and be self sufficient in 15 years.

Today under Amtrak and their tight operating budget you simply can't take a train from Columbus,Oh to (say) Chicago or New York..Greyhound Bus is the only public mode of ground transportation to Chicago or New York from Columbus.

I think we generally agree on this one...but I'm not entirely certain if you agree or disagree with what you quoted.

Many railroads were losing big time to the trucks long before the interstate system...as a narrow gauge enthusiast, I can confidently state that normal roads caused the abandonment of nearly all of the narrow gauges which survived into the 20th century (the 19th century failures were typically due to sub-par construction practices, poor planning, and interchange).

After WW2, imo, many of the major railroads were doomed whether Ike led his convoy or not. The Great Depression and WW2 slowed the development of the trucking industry much as they prolonged the lives of steam locomotives by limiting first the $$$ and then the materials to produce diesels. Railroads such as the Pennsy and NYC which built their systems around the premise that freight couldn't move more than 10 miles or so without rail were obsolete. Of course, the political pressures and the ICC wouldn't allow (if the management had sufficient foresight to ask) the roads to abandon their many obsolete redundancies and branch lines. It sure seems like there are more abandoned PRR lines in western Ohio than there are that still exist. I don't think that government fully picked the winner here...but I would agree that the Interstate System certainly exasperated the underlying problems for the railroads and increased the speed of the process (probably too far towards the highways).

What I was getting at earlier was that I would prefer for the complete costs of flying be passed on to the airlines which in turn, pass it on to the consumer...rather than having government hide the costs and pass it on to the taxpayer. Same thing with the highways...I'd like to see the complete cost reflected in some combination of the license plate fees, toll booths, and/or gas taxes. For Amtrak and the freight roads, the same applies...the cost to move people/cars is reflected in the ticket prices/shipping rates. If the airlines are given a 10% subsidy, I'd l prefer to see the same given to the railroads...allowing ridership to be determined by the free market...but I'd prefer there to be no subsidies at all. How much money have a taken from my fellow citizens of Cincinnati, Ohio, and the USA in my flights to England, France, Germany, Hawaii, etc? It is one think for Delta to offer me a fine rate on what is practically a deadhead flight, but it is something else for me to travel on Mountain Man, Brakie, and every other enlightened (enlightened because you're railfans!!! ) person's nickel.

Mountain Man, on the flip side to what you've said....how many passengers are served by every employee at both the rail station and airport? Here in Cincinnati, I wouldn't be surprised if the airport personal serve 10x or even 100x the number of customers than the people at the Amtrak Station. Sure, the Airport has a much larger payroll...but it has far more customers...so the employees are less efficient. If the traffic was equal, I'd expect the Amtrak employees to serve more people...as a passenger train requires far less staff per passenger than an airplane...but the friendly skis require far less maintenance than the high iron. I believe that the fixed costs of railroads are much higher than airlines, but the variable costs of planes are much higher.