Amtrak’s CEO, William Flynn, agrees with the Antiplanner on at least one thing: the proposed Baltimore-Washington maglev is a bad idea. The maglev, he told a Congressional subcommittee last week, “would only serve a small number of affluent travelers.”
Of course, that’s the pot calling the kettle black. Flynn probably thinks 0.1 percent of passenger travel (which is what Amtrak carries) is a large number, but it’s not. Amtrak fares in the Northeast Corridor are much higher than bus fares, so Amtrak itself is only serving a small number of affluent travelers.
Flynn also pointed out that the maglev will use a lot more energy than the cars, trains, and buses it would replace. I made the same point in my comments on the maglev, which I submitted last week. Based on the amount of greenhouse gases generated by Maryland’s current electric power plants, the maglev would add more than 300,000 metric tons of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere each year. Wayne Rogers, CEO of the maglev project, told the subcommittee that the maglev would divert “up to 16 million car trips,” but the power required to do so would generate far more tons of carbon dioxide than it would save.
If Flynn were so concerned about greenhouse gases, however, he would stop running his trains and let buses replace them. Intercity buses emit around half the greenhouse gases per passenger mile of Amtrak.
Driving cars is not only a passion but also one’s moral duty to properly learn driving as any mistake on road http://www.donssite.com/steertech/index.htm buy levitra online can put the driver or others in trouble. It addresses the emotional, physical and sexual health start to become affected. discount viagra uk If the penis looks red, inflamed or feels sore after sex, then it could be a result of a non-treated childhood curvature; otherwise it could even develop in adults with no previous history cheapest viagra of scoliosis. cialis generic tabs The harder the penile erection the increased is the sexual satisfaction level. Far from worrying about climate change, Flynn is clearly more concerned that Congress will give money to the maglev project that it could otherwise give to Amtrak. “For less than half the cost of the maglev,” he urged, Amtrak could make improvements that would be almost as good.
Flynn’s testimony included charts claiming that Amtrak has 56 percent of the rail-air market in the Northeast Corridor. He neglected to mention that autos and buses carry around 89 percent of intercity travel in this corridor, so 56 percent of rail/air is really just 6 percent of the total market. Besides, the airlines are profitable, while Amtrak is not; being able to subsidize your way into market share is not much to be proud of.
Amtrak desperately needs more than $50 billion just to keep the Northeast Corridor running at current speeds and frequencies. That’s why Flynn is so desperate to support Biden’s plan to give Amtrak $80 billion. Although his testimony talks about all of the new services Amtrak hopes to provide outside of the Northeast Corridor, the reality is that those services will depend on Amtrak getting even more subsidies from the states.
The same is true for all of the supposedly new technologies discussed at the hearing: high-speed rail, maglev, hyperloop, light rail. These require subsidies piled on top of subsidies to provide obsolete services that are slower than flying, less convenient than driving, and more expensive than both.
What is the source for these figures? How is the air/rail/bus/auto market defined (for that matter, how is the corridor defined), and what data are used to estimate the size of the market and the respective mode shares?
Here’s major reasons why Maglev will fail.
1: Infrastructure: Unlike high speed rail, maglev requires dedicated infrastructure and technology that only serves ONE type of vehicle. ANy transportation technology that requires New infrastructure to be built. Once built serves Only ONE market.
2: Noise.If you’ve heard maglevs; they are absurdbly loud. Bordering on plane level noise at ground level. Japan’s answer to such annoyance is tunnel most of the project. A northeast corridor maglev will undoubtedly face opposition from noise complaints, their only three solutions; noise barriers which don’t work as well as presumed. Buyout properties which adds to cost or tunnel it. Even if half the maglev in NEC is tunnels, digging that’s 226 miles of tunnels. JUST for reference sake the longest railway tunnel is Gotthard Base Tunnel at 35 miles. Construction took 17 years and cost over 12 billion dollars. Building over 200 miles of tunnels would cost somewhere on the range of 75-125 billion dollars. Besides being absurdly expensive; cost of rides would have to be addressed to cover tunnel upkeep costs.
Unrelated to this post but it will be interesting to see with gas shortages along the east coast, did anyt metro area see uptick in mass transit use during this week ?
Will people use public transit when they literally have no other option? If so will progressives see it as proof people can be forced out of their autos to achieve their utopian future?
A good article by Setty and Demery points out that, for example, a severe limitation of maglev is the very high cost of introducing entirely new infrastructure into urban areas, versus the relatively low cost of upgrading existing rail lines. They also go on to write “In our view, it is a big waste of time advocating such ‘gee-whiz’ options, given the severe limits of monorails and similar technologies such as PRT, when U.S. transportation problems are almost always sociopolitical and economic ‘not technical’ in nature.” (see https://www.planetizen.com/node/70)
https://pedestrianobservations.com/2021/05/12/randal-otoole-gets-high-speed-rail-wrong/
“It’s not a good analysis, and in particular it gets the reality of European and Asian high-speed rail systems wrong. It displays lack of familiarity with rail practice and rail politics, to the point that most nontrivial assertions about rail in Europe and Asia are incorrect.”
O’Toole sums up Maglev’s inevitable failure, months ago.
Sum it up: Smart infrastructure is infrastructure that contains the technology to do… whatever the the fuk it is supposed to do within the infrastructure. It’s downside is it’s owners must pay for the upkeep of both infrastructure and vehicle. And trust it’s users will not abuse or destroy them. Technological sophistication invites planned obsolescence; once it’s available if it should require constant upgrade, it soaks up huge technology expenses and support costs. And should the technology provider go bust, or use proprietary technology that is difficult to replace or fix; is destined to fail. New York City subway has a machine shop; to fabricate parts for trains that haven’t been manufactured for a century.
Once this is done and a significant amount of infrastructure is built, however, it will be difficult if not impossible to upgrade technologies as new ideas are developed. Since the technology is in the infrastructure rather than the vehicles, any new technology would require that existing infrastructure be rebuilt at great expense. That means shutting it down as upgrades/overhauls take place. Highways can continue to operate, even if they’re being repaired, also they can operate even if their cracked or in poor shape, Not he most comfortable ride, but still usable. Roads can also be ‘Upgraded” the type of concrete and asphalt they use to make it last longer. This isn’t rocket science.
Dumb infrastructure is infrastructure that incorporates minimal technology and instead relies on infrastructure users to supply their own technology but pay for the capacity to use the infrastructure provided.The advantage of dumb infrastructure is that it is technology independent. The reason cars and planes work so well, Highways: the user provides their own technology, the vehicle; or with flying; pays the provider for using technology with exceptionally low amount of infrastructure (and thus LOW infrastructure costs). Flying doesn’t use much infrastructure except a few thousand feet of runway and honestly you don’t need an airport. For cars; the technology costs are bared by their individual owners, Drivers only have to pay for infrastructure when they chose to use it. and costs to keep cars up to par, vary with individual. I can drive a rusty piece of shit pickup truck with a hole in the floor and visble road moving by, As long as it meets bare minimum. As long as it’s road worthy and licensed I can drive it. Highways don’t discriminate on economic capacity whether I drive a 40 year old pickup truck covered in more rust than the titanic or a million dollar Bugatti. Computerized, digitized traffic tech like lights, street lamps etc. Another thing is you don’t really need traffic lights, they’re mostly meant to mitigate bad traffic on local roads and heavy used intersections. speed controlled local roads often use signs and right of way.
In any case, once high speed rail is built, there’s nothing the technology pushers can do to address or answer for improvements in automotive and airplane technology that slowly sap their passengers. Nor much they can do if rail technology improves; because it would require the system be shut down til it’s upgraded or overhauled to it’s new status.
Spell/grammar check: its, not ” it’s .”
New Jersey is planning a massive widening of the Turnpike. This will also make Amtrak less competitive.