High Speed Rail: A Genuinely Horrible Idea - Richard Nadler - The Corner on National Review Online
I sat on the transportation board of a sizeable county for a year, and had the displeasure of hearing/reading numerous presentations on various forms of passenger rail. Here are four reasons why Obama’s idea to make a major investment in passenger rail is horrendous:
Well, I don’t give a damn about whether it is sufficiently green or not, and while the other objections may or may not have merit, I do know this: I’d rather take a high-speed train between San Francisco and Los Angeles that put up with the federal Homeland Air Gestapo and the cattle pens involved in flying between them. I suspect a lot of other folks would agree with me, too.
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There are a number of ways to deal with virtually all of Mr. Nadler’s objections anyway -
The only unfortunate aspect is that, based upon past events, I would suspect that the airlines (if faced with serious competition for passengers) would put a lot of pressure on to require “security precautions” for rail customers that would be at least as onerous (and substantially more pointless and ineffective as any sort of actual security measures) as those presently visited upon the public at airports by TSA and the airlines themselves.
Don’t get me wrong, JB. I think that, on balance, these trains are probably just another lefty green feel-good money pit. But I’d still take them, if only for being able to avoid the Air Gestapo that George Bush and the GOP saddled us with.
That’s all well and good until Big Sister Napolitano starts profiling rail passengers based on her “Rightwing Extremism” guidelines.
You won’t have to worry about the airlines blocking this. It’s the cities and various groups that will try to block it. Some towns have laws limiting the speed of trains to 25 mph(for “safety”), they’ll fight any attempt to change that. Enviroweenies will fight any major new rail construction(some bug somewhere will be threatened).
And of course thousands(maybe “hundreds of”) of condemnation cases slowly winding their way through the courts. You can’t built a mile of road in this country without someone holding out.
I don’t think we’d avoid the air gestapo - any Obama administration is going to have lots and lots of government jobs to hand out, and those ACORN people are custom-made for that job.
…and you would be correct. Mass transit, in toto, is a Lefty wet dream, because it’s easier to control than a bunch of folks going about their business in Brownian motion.
As with most Lefty ideas, this one will cost a ton of money, and will never deliver on its promises.
I like rail travel, but always thought that the numbers couldn’t work for it in the U.S. (My argument: If passenger rail paid, the railroad companies would be doing it.)
But the more that I read about the tax and regulatory burdens that federal and state governments placed on railroads in general (and passenger service in particular), the more it looks like an industry that got taxed into unprofitability (because it couldn’t pick up and move) and regulated into the ground.
I woud love to see a study based on today’s operating figures, but backing out all the regulatory costs, then treating it like any other startup. Who knows– might work, if starting from a clean slate.
Of course that would never happen under the Democrats (too many fingers in the pie), and is damn unlikely under the Republicans (not enough imagination, too much “get along-go along”), so there you are.
I, too, enjoy rail travel (particularly in comparison to the present-day ordeal that is airline travel; anymore, in fact, you don’t even save much time going by air, though you can go a lot of places that are not reached by rail) - I’ve experienced it in several foreign countries, as well as (occasionally) in the U.S. However, your argument, O.G., is one side of a chicken-versus-egg statement; it can just about as easily be stated that, if railroad companies were doing a goodly amount of passenger rail, they’d have plenty of customers - in a very few small remaining places, that’s still true.
Not to get too deeply into it (there’ve been a lot of examinations of the history of rail travel in the U.S. written, in many volumes, as you can imagine, with extensive sections on how railroads got where they are now): After W.W. II, the railroads got into a three-way squeeze in the U.S., between government (at all levels) regulation and taxation, labor unions and airline competition (for passenger service, primarily, but also for freight). In the majority of cases, their response was: Allow passenger service to gradually wither, just about everywhere, in favor of largely concentrating on, and adapting to, freight-hauling (which was already a very large piece of their business). Simple reason why: Freight-haulage was already cheaper, easier on railway personnel and less-regulated and taxed in many ways than carrying passengers - and converting largely to freight-carrying made them competitive with long-haul trucking (particularly for heavy, large bulk goods, like coal, machinery, sand/gravel/cement, large-quantity liquids, etc.) and far superior to what the airlines could do domestically.
We could have good passenger rail travel services in the U.S. again - but it’s unlikely to happen for a wide variety of reasons - no matter what The Won or either of the primary political parties might say or might like to do. Studying the atrocious boondoggle that is called Amtrak for a bit will probably give you some insight as to those reasons.
Too bad - If they put the same effort and resolve into a mixed-rail passenger-carrying initiative (and did a similar cut-the-Gordian-knot of over-regulation) that went into the space program back in the 60’s and 70’s, it could happen…
What makes you think train stations would escape the same attention, once The Won was through with them?
Because it’s a lot harder to come up with any logical reasons that the general public would accept for imposing that sort of security regimen on rail travel.
The only way they get away with it vis air travel is the excuse that airplanes can be caused to crash, either with the intent of killing passengers, or with the intent of killing passengers and turning the planes into guided missile-bombs.
I don’t believe most people will accept similar logic in terms of rail travel.
Not to the same extent, at least.
Here is an idea for passenger train travel: individual, self powered and navigating cars that act like packets. Once “addressed” to their destination and loaded with passengers, they make their way to the end of a freight train headed the right way. On the long part of the trip, they could recharge their batteries either by the electical connection from the engine or maybe from their wheels. Once near their destination, they decouple and proceed to the passenger terminal, again under their own power. Maybe these could be nicely enough appointed to make cross country travel by train worth it again.
The more I think of it, the more challenges I see, but there is something sort of alluring about the data as railway analogy going full circle.
WTQ: “I don’t believe most people will accept similar logic in terms of rail travel.”
I don’t believe most people will apply similar logic comparing air travel to rail travel. They’re used to being handled like cattle in any transportation mode other than their own automobiles.
While I will readily admit that, initially, the logic behind the perceived need for additional air travel security - in the wake, particularly, of the 9/11 attacks - was pretty much a slam-dunk, I would submit that, to date, most of the visible security measures that grew out of that logic, as they impinge upon the travelers en masse, have been a) perceived as largely misdirected where the stated objectives are concerned, b) utilized as just one more opportunity by government to invade personal lives and exert unwanted and unnecessary levels of control over those lives and c) viewed objectively and logically, resulted in a system that has very little to do with security and a whole lot to do with maintaining aforesaid levels of control.
Sorry, but I cannot see that, if sufficient political pressure were brought into play, our Department of Homeland Security would not be able to muster sufficient “logic” to override any serious objections to imposition of similar (or even more onerous) “security measures” for rail travelers. Consider:
And you don’t think that it could be argued that “trains can be caused to crash” or that “trains could be turned into bombs, and detonated at critical points in the rail system, or even in the center of communities”, thereby killing passengers and bystanders? To say nothing of the damage to the railway infrastructure that might occur…
We already have periodic rail accidents, many of which are attributable to “human errors” - only the dual factors of very few passenger trains, and the relatively low speeds that virtually all trains travel, it could easily be argued, makes the vast majority of these accidents non-fatal.
I don’t see it as difficult to believe - nor paranoid - that, if elected officials were sufficiently prodded in that direction, they would not come up with sufficient “logic” in favor of extending current TSA passenger-inspection protocols to rail travel. I also don’t think that most people’s receptivity - or lack thereof - to the “logic” involved would matter very much. Public perceptions of logic - sadly - don’t seem to have too much bearing on government behavior these days.
There’s a lot that could be said in favor of a mixed-rail solution to the mass-transit problems experience by most of this country. For instance, a middle-weight, high-speed rail system, dedicated primarily to passenger travel, could be pretty readily co-located with large portions of the existing freeways we now have, with light- to medium-rail extensions into city centers. However, it’s (again) pretty unlikely to ever happen - too much resistance, from a variety of sources (the airlines, unions, private transit companies, etc…), make it that way. Any serious attempt at a thorough rail-transit solution would, I think, be met with major opposition - “security requirements” would quite likely be one of the tactics used against it.
I would really like to see such a system happen - if it was done right. I like trains, always have. But I’m next-to-certain I won’t live long enough to see anything like it; I doubt if my children’s children will ever see such a thing.
Precisely. As to prodding, all it would take would be the TSA slavering after more jobs.
Don’t count on it, Bill. After all, I can remember when the very idea of legally-mandated seat belt use was scoffed at as something the “free” American people would never, ever sit still for. Wasn’t all that long ago, either, and the nanny state has had lots of practice perfecting their methods since then.
All it will take is one bomb, on one train, and the American Sheople will demand that they be saved by Big Brother TSA.
…which is yet another reason to protect individual transport against mass transport.