“Let me give you a little political advice,” Transportation Secretary Ray Lahood told airline officials yesterday: “Do not be against high-speed rail.” Since airlines depend on the federal government to maintain and — they hope — fix the nation’s antiquated air traffic control system, they may feel like they have to follow this advice even though they are the most likely to be hurt by high-speed trains.
According to one aviation consultant who was present, LaHood’s statement was an “open threat to anyone who might question or oppose the administration’s as-is plan for high-speed rail.” Indeed, except for Southwest Airlines’ objection to high-speed rail between Houston and Dallas, no airline has spoken up publicly against the administration’s plans to heavily subsidize this new competitive threat to an already risky business.
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As American Airlines CEO Gerard Arpy told the same conference, air travel in the United States is incredibly affordable, costing (he said) as little as 4 cents a passenger mile. (More like 14 by the Antiplanner’s calculations — see previous post — but that’s still less than a quarter of the cost of Amtrak and less than a fifth of the cost of high-speed rail.) Yet this highly competitive industry returns little profit to shareholders, and subsidized trains in key markets are going to make the airlines even more marginal.
I asked a clarification on the last post. In regards to subsidies, are you looking at federal subsidies, or all subsidies? Municipalities /whatever publicly owned authority always pump a lot of money into airports in addition to federal money.
That would be nice to know.
The airlines do not have a concern about this minimal competition.
All people should be concerned about this wasteful, ineffective expense, which will have many negatives, including neglect of other, transportation.
How often does a person need to travel to 100-500 miles away?
Then want to pay for more transportation to get to final destination?
The airlines killed the railroads and now it’s time for revenge! Muahahahaha!
Scott, however, makes a good point. Why would airlines oppose high speed rail? So it gets built, no one rides it, it fails, and goes away. As far as the airlines are concerned, it’s a trivial issue.
A lot of those airlines need gov’t approval to get what they need to survive in terms of mergers and acquisitions. When you’re trying to get an exception to the 3hr rule for yourself at JFK or be win the “right” to get that new route to Bejing, why risk pissing of some bureaucrats over a couple routes that are barely profitable?
Southwest seems to have a culture of being more outspoken. They’re not looking for any special favors from the Feds. And despite having the highest hourly pay for 737 pilots (IIRC something like $190 / hr) they have some of the lowest operating costs in the industry. They can make money on these short, frequent routes and have little to loose by pissing off some suits in DC.
Airlines should be concerned about HSR because it bites into their subsidy pie and their bailout pie.
DS
What airline bailout & subsidy pie?
Why is the pie finite?
Why would HSR funding, be taken from any other funding?
So Dan only wants to travel by bus or rail, no car or air.
How about water?
If Mississippi shipping & river-from settlements were charged more, for protection infrastructure (levees), then the levees would not have failed, & the damage from Katrina would have been a lot less.
So Dan only wants to travel by bus or rail, no car or air.
Thank you , Scott, for yet again making sh– up.
At least the usual suspects are consistent in their lack of intellectual honesty!
DS
Dan asserted:
> Airlines should be concerned about HSR because it bites into
> their subsidy pie and their bailout pie.
Please elaborate on the above sentence.
Then compare subsidies paid to scheduled commercial airlines with the taxpayer dollars poured into Amtrak.
Dan, you commonly accuse people of making crap up, without any backing & without understanding the content. You also avoid the substance in the posts.
You are often so vague, that people have to guess on what you mean, or just apply to your ideology.
What was even “made up” about my my comment of you preferring public transit over & being “against” private mobility?
You continue to avoid questions about your assertions. CPZ just brought up the same question for to provide more info on gov expenses on airlines.
Most people disagree with Congressional pork such as that for the Jack Murtha airport, in Pennsylvania. Ted Stevens was awful too. It probably would be proper to tax airline tickets even more, but public transit has the largest subsidy, per passenger-mile & proportional, by far. Another big dif is that <4% use transit, about 90% of adults drive & a majority fly, annually.
CPZ:
Please elaborate on the above sentence. Then compare subsidies paid to scheduled commercial airlines with the taxpayer dollars poured into Amtrak.
HSR has the ability to cut into some airline routes, esp those under 500 miles on the NE corridor; there is precedent for this concern from Europe.
I made no claim as to the current level of comparative subsidy, I merely drew attention to stimulus money (subsidy) going to HSR rather than, say, ATC modernization.
——————-
you commonly accuse people of making crap up, without any backing & without understanding the content.
You just upthread made sh– up about my preferred travel modes. Without any backing & having zero knowledge of my travel habits. It is easy to understand your contentless content. It is bullsh–. You made it up to have play.
Not hard to understand your weak rhetoric at all.
DS
So much for evidence-based public policy, we now have threat-based public policy with a bunch of old-school, horse-trading politicians running the show.
I think it’s time to cut the USDOT off from the air traffic control business altogether. If the airlines really want an improved air traffic control system, they should be pushing for this alternative instead. LaHood has shown himself to be nothing more than a confused, angry old man who should be put out to political pasture. I’m sure there’s a lucrative consulting job out there for him at Parsons Brinckerhoff.
Dan good comeback: “contentless, bs, unintellectual, weak rhetoric” you say.
You sure destroyed the reason, logic, facts & examples that I have used.
Just add a few insults & you will be shown as a babbling man at the end of his rope.
Great job too , on all your examples of what development was spurred because of LRT.
You would make a great lawyer & can surely convince a jury of anything.
snicker
DS
——1.1 On March 23rd, 2010, ws said:
I asked a clarification on the last post. In regards to subsidies, are you looking at federal subsidies, or all subsidies? Municipalities /whatever publicly owned authority always pump a lot of money into airports in addition to federal money.
That would be nice to know.—-
WS….. Airports are required to be self funded by Federal Law. They charge rent and landing fees, they make money from concessions – any profit gets refunded to the carriers in the form of rent credits. This is a fuction of deregulation. If rail supporters were interested in having the system at least break even, they’d implement ticket taxes and facility fees to pay for it rather than empty my wallet.
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