As C.P. Zilliacus noted in one of his comments yesterday, Slate published an article subtitled, Why Do Conservatives Hate Trains So Much?. The writer, David Weigel, covered most of the bases, but a couple of clarifications are in order.
First but not foremost, Weigel seems to confuse passengers with passenger miles when he writes, “Amtrak got $2.2 billion in pure subsidies in 2010 and carried 28.7 million people, for around 13 cents per passenger, although some researchers estimate the annual cost at closer to 30 cents. Highways got $42 billion in funds in fiscal year 2010, but far more people use them; the estimate puts cost at between 1 cent and 4 cents per driver.”
I told him that Amtrak subsidies are nearly 30 cents per passenger mile (not per passenger), and road subsidies are about a penny a passenger mile (not per driver). Even his arithmetic is wrong: $2.2 billion in subsidies divided by 28.7 million passengers is $76 per passenger, not 13 cents. I’m not even sure where he got the $2.2 billion in subsidies; I think it was closer to $1.7 billion in 2009. Maybe this is one reason why reporters like trains so much: they can’t do the arithmetic.
More important, many reporters can’t distinguish between forms of transportation that are paid for out of user fees and forms that are paid for out of taxes. I tried to explain to Weigel–and if I failed it was probably my fault–that user fees are important because they provide feedback between users and transportation providers.
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Wiegel seemed to think that something has changed conservative opinion in the last decade. Back around 2001, he thought, lots of conservatives favored trains. Wiegel points out that, after the World Trade Center attack, George Will speculated that bullet trains might “thin air traffic in the Boston-New York-Washington corridor” and thus reduce the problems with airport security. I responded that people proposed a lot of nutsy ideas after 9/11, but–and I pointed to the Madrid train bombing–that doesn’t mean they make sense today.
Wiegel’s article brings up the American Conservative Center for Public Transportation, which is run not by fiscal conservatives but social conservatives, which means something very different. Some social conservatives may be fiscally conservative, but William Lind, who runs the Conservative Center for Public Transportation, apparently is not. What he is, essentially, is a rail nut. The Antiplanner also happens to be a rail nut, but unlike Lind, I don’t think other American taxpayers should subsidize my hobbies.
Meanwhile, conservative National Review Online published an article projecting the failure of California high-speed rail. The conservative Washington Times suggests driverless cars will be on the market in 10 years (I think they could be on the market a lot sooner–the barriers are institutional, not technological). While not high-speed rail, the very conservative American Spectator challenges Portland’s light-rail program, which is on its way to costing $5 billion yet still carries less than 1 percent of the region’s passenger travel.
Fiscal conservatives don’t hate trains; they only hate subsidies to trains. Maybe liberals, including many reporters, love trains because they can’t do the arithmetic and don’t understand the value of getting the incentives right, as user fees would do.
Lots of articles today (and story on NPR) about the updated ridership study for Florida high speed rail. The study and revenue projections are laughable. Unfortunately the stories all tout the positive net revenue that will be generated starting in 2015. The ridership numbers rely on half the traffic traveling from the Orlando airport to Disney World (15-20 miles) – no need for high speed rail for that run. Also, net revenues ($10 million in 2015) only cover operating expenses, there is no capital cost recovery. The Feds contribution alone ($2.4 billion) would take $80 million per year for 30 years with no interest – which turns the 2015 surplus into a $70 million loss (and that is maybe 1/3 the capital cost). (NPR has a link to the study).
I can understand why Disney World would love have to visitors take a government provided train to Disney properties so that they are stranded there and will spend all their money at Disney businesses.
But why in the world would cab drivers, car rental agencies, and every other tourism business in Orlando want to heavily subsidize Disney?
“I tried to explain to Weigel–and if I failed it was probably my fault–that user fees are important because they provide feedback between users and transportation providers.”
I guess Antiplanner failed with me, too.
Car drivers paying ‘user fees’ leads car drivers to believe that they own the roads. In the UK, the Road Tax, to pay for the roads, was replaced by Vehicle Excise Duty, which is just another tax. This was done by Winston Churchill in 1936.
Unfortunately the message has not reached everyone.
Today in the Daily Mail, the bastion of small-minded bigotry, one comment posted says this:
“the day cyclists PAY to use the road like car drivers do is the day I’ll give them some room !!!”
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1364839/Cyclist-road-rage-Neil-Chatterjee-throttled-BMW-driver-rush-hour-attack.html#ixzz1GEKfXhbe
Oh dear.
American Spectator –
“TriMet now plans to build another MAX line, its most expensive yet. Construction is slated to begin this summer on a segment connecting Portland and Milwaukie, a sleepy town of 20,000. The price tag: $1.5 billion. As the line would stretch only 7.3 miles, the cost per mile would be a little more than $200 million. The federal government has agreed to foot half the bill, and TriMet plans to fund most of the rest by floating $724 million in bonds.
Alaska’s Bridge to Nowhere has met its match: this is the Light Rail to Nowhere. Numerous buses already run between Milwaukie and Portland, and traffic on the extant corridor is relatively light. Fanciful utopian thinking is providing the intellectual impetus for the project. Environmentalists are thrilled that a bridge that would be constructed as part of the new line would allow rail, bicycles, and pedestrians, but not cars, and they’re championing the project as an example of “green” development. ”
Over a distance of only 7.3 miles, wouldn’t a bicycle be more appropriate?
I saw that story too, real conservatives don’t hate trains.
Automobile & big oil interests hate trains, if the reporter did any proper reseach he would have found out that Cox & O’Toole are both well paid liars.
“Highways–, including the Interstate Highway System and other state highways, are governed by such feedback relationships.”
Antiplanner, why do you always overreach just a little bit? Don’t you realize that this gives your opponents something easy to grasp onto and argue about, even when it’s totally beside the main point?
The rest of your post is really hard for a thinking person to argue with, but I don’t think we can really say that highways, including and especially the interstate system, were designed and built with any kind of feedback relationship. Highway routing and funding has been politically driven since the beginning of time, and there are plenty of roadways that could never be self funding and would have never been built if functioning feedback systems were in place.
Gas taxes are a user fee that provides practically no information about where specific demand exists. Tolls are better, but they provide no information prospectively, so roads also need to be planned based upon speculative projections of use. These are, of course, not unlike rail ridership projections, except that rail ridership is always spectacularly overestimated and road traffic is always underestimated.
Highwayman wrote:
“Automobile & big oil interests hate trains, if the reporter did any proper reseach he would have found out that Cox & O’Toole are both well paid liars.”
And the truth is?
Antiplanner:
Liberals can’t do math. That is why they are liberals and in liberal professions that don’t require mathematical skills, such as journalism and law.
Professions requiring math, and thus logical thinking, tend to attract conservatives.
Wiegel seemed to think that something has changed conservative opinion in the last decade.
He is right about this. There were numerous positive articles in the Wall Street Journal and Forbes about 10+ years ago about high speed rail. Perhaps this was the result of Vranich’s books?
“If a state built a highway to nowhere,†I pointed out, “no one would use it, and it wouldn’t generate any tolls or gasoline taxes to pay for it.†Highways–, including the Interstate Highway System and other state highways, are governed by such feedback relationships.
How? I’ve been driving around out west on vacation. How does the State of Arizona know that because I bought gas in Flagstaff that I also used I40?
As to highways to nowhwere – I395 in Connecticut, the Mon-Valley Expressway out from Pittsburgh and also the SR66 Tollway, I-88 in Illinois – all examples of tollroads or former tollroads to nowhere and sometimes from nowhere too. Kentucky and Oklahoma are also full of tollroads to nowhere. Those user fees don’t seem to be telling the builders anything.
More important, many reporters can’t distinguish between forms of transportation that are paid for out of user fees and forms that are paid for out of taxes.
You don’t seem to be able to either! Amtrak, for example, is mostly funded by directed user fees – fares. Highways are almost exclusively funded by taxes – tollroads being the sole exception. Taxes used to support highways provide no information at all as to where the taxpayers want or need the money spent.
it wouldn’t generate any tolls or gasoline taxes to pay for it
200,000 vehicles per day paying $0.50 per gallon and getting 20 mpg = 2.5 cents per vehicle mile = $1.825 million in gas tax revenue generated per mile. Annualized in perpetuity this works out to $20-25 million depending on the interest rate. Its impossible to build, finance, and maintain an Interstate on that sort of money, and most sections of the system generate far fewer vehicle miles per day. Clearly they don’t generate the taxes needed to pay for themselves by travel that actually occurs on them, and the actual revenue generated compared to costs is probably lower than the ratio for Amtrak.
Highway Man, O’Toole and Cox are not well-paid liars. Granted, I’m a mere Sock Puppet for even making such a foolish pronouncement — a hyper-suggestible “Faux News” recipient and anti-“guvment” enthusiast. Of course.
But given that Weigel is a former REASON contributor a.k.a. “Koch Head” himself, I’d love to hear your “take” on his body of work outside of this article.
For instance, Weigel’s Journolist affiliation, his subsequent apologia on one of the Breitbart sites, etc, etc.
Oh, what’s that? Oh yes, implicit in your snark upthread is the notion that you know nothing about Weigel at all.
So what substantive contribution have you made here? Any at all?
Iced, are you trying to say that O’Toole & Cox are then under paid liars?
Highwayman isn’t paid only because his particular condition precludes the necessity of payment.
Though Metrosucks takes pride in being an asshole.