05-14-2009, 01:43 PM
nkp_174 Wrote:I've always found it fascinating that simply hauling people does not pay...and very few have argued that it does.
I think what a lot of people don't realize is that hauling people doesn't pay no matter how you haul them. As far as I know the only transportation system anywhere in the United States that doesn't get a government subsidy is the freight railroads. Some of them were subsidized by the government when they were built (the transcontinental railroads), but now they pay for property to put tracks on and pay for all maintenance of the right of way. The amount of subsidy that the government pays to build and maintain airports and provide security since 911 makes the cost of Amtrak look like "chump change." I read an article probably 15 to 20 years ago stating that if the government either did not build air ports, or charged the airlines to recoup their costs for construction and maintenance, the cost of a coach ticket to New York City from Los Angeles would be $3000.00 one way, and that was years before 911 added security costs to themix! What would the trucking industry, to say nothing of the typical American traveler do if we did not have public (read government) roads? Gas prices go up and down, but they never seem to go down as much as they go up. 2 or 3 years ago, the gas prices here in the US were approaching $3.00/gallon. They dropped back to $1.50-$1.75, but they never got back to the $.25 a gallon that my dad paid for gas in the 1950's and early 1960's. Last summer the gas prices went to $4.00/gallon, then the economy crashed in October and gas prices dropped all the way to $2.00-$2.50/gallon. When gas prices reached $4.00 per gallon, ridership on the local commuter trains skyrocketed. I don't know if it is still up (yesterday's news and all that), when (not if) the gas prices go up again, the demand for passenger train service will again go up. The problem is that if we wait for gas prices to create a demand for passenger service in this country, the infrastructure will then take years to build at a much greater cost than it will today. Say what you want about socialism, the Europeans and the Japanese are way ahead of America in passenger train service. Additionally high speed trains are so efficient and convenient in Europe that it makes more sense to ride a train between cities less than 400 miles apart than it does to fly between those same cities.