Bloomberg News, or at least a writer named Stephen Smith, has discovered that the transit industry is gouging taxpayers with its schemes for high-cost rail transit and high-speed rail. Smith says there are two causes for this gouging.
First, “agencies can’t keep their private contractors in check,” and instead hire “consultants who consultant with consultants and advisers who advise advisers.” This drives up the cost of planning and building rail lines. Second, antiquated labor practices drive up the cost of operating the trains.
Smith makes good points, but his implicit assumption, that fixing these problems would make passenger rail transportation economically feasible, is wrong. He cites several examples in Europe and Japan of “how it ought to be done,” but the fact is that European and Asian countries are wasting their money on rail transit as well.
He cites Spain as an example of a country that is building high-speed rail lines at a reasonable cost. But the fact is that all of Spain’s high-speed trains are carrying only a tiny fraction of the country’s passenger travel, and at great cost to taxpayers. In fact, the country’s heavy investments in high-speed trains has been cited as one of the reasons for its current economic woes. If high-speed trains really worked, they would generate new travel and new economic wealth. Instead, all they do is divert traffic from relatively profitable airlines and ground transport to unprofitable trains.
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Smith cites the high projected cost of the California high-speed train as an example of the bad practices found in America. Yet even at the original cost estimate of about $10 billion, University of California researchers calculated that “high-speed rail would be California’s most expensive mode of intercity transportation.” Taking $30 billion off of the current projected cost of at least $98 billion, which Smith says could be done if European methods were followed, wouldn’t solve anything.
While labor costs are a huge problem for the nation’s transit industry, reducing those costs won’t make trains look any better, relative to buses, than they appear today. In almost everywhere in the United States outside of Manhattan, buses can move as many people as trains faster, more frequently, and far less expensively. Bus transit suffers from its own labor difficulties, and solving them for rail would also solve them for bus, making buses just as cheap, relative to the high cost of trains, as they are today.
Of course, focusing on buses vs. trains makes it appear that these are the two main choices for urban transit. In fact, outside of New York City and a handful of other places, bus and train transit together are practically irrelevant to American cities. Transit carries 32 percent of commuters in the New York urbanized area, but only 11 to 17 percent in Boston, Chicago, Philadelphia, San Francisco, and Washington urban areas, and less than 10 percent in all other urban areas. When all travel is counted, transit carries a little more than 10 percent in the New York urban area, 6 percent in the San Francisco urban area, 5 percent in Washington, 4 percent in Chicago, and less than 3 percent in every other urban area.
Merely reforming labor rules and contracting will not revolutionize transit or transport. Taxpayer gouging will end only after bigger changes are made, such as privatizing transit agencies. The real transport revolution will come with new technologies improving automobiles, the mode of choice for 85 percent of all of our travel.
Stephen Smith is associated with the blog “Market Urbanism” so he’s not some naive “liberal” as you imply. Having read that website for a while, I’d say he’s what one might call a “sensible libertarian” if you will.
As for your contention about rail always being more expensive than rail, HA! Tell it to the Swiss, Germans and Japanese, Randal. They’d get a great deal of guffaws from your knee-jerk anti-railism, rather odd for a railfan, too…
Antiplanner wrote:
“In almost everywhere in the United States outside of Manhattan, buses can move as many people as trains faster, more frequently, and far less expensively.”
Is this true, or wishful thinking?
In the UK, this is certainly not true, and for very good reasons. I enclose two comparisons, one for DMU and one for HSR (@ 125mph).
http://transportpolicy.org.uk/PublicTransport/CoachesRail/CoachesRail.htm
You have not shown that this is not true in the United States, as The Antiplanner claimed.
You have not even shown that this is true in the UK because you have cherry picked two routes out of how many? Dozens? Hundreds? 276 miles on this route divided by 9,789 miles of total track in the UK = 2.8%. Hardly proof of anything. Except getting to Bristol sucks. Which I knew from Facebook status updates from a friend who lives there and wrote “Stuck in Victoria coach for 6 hours” to which her friend responded, “Just take the plane!”
“You have not shown that this is not true in the United States, as The Antiplanner claimed.”
Leaving aside the double negative, neither has Antiplanner. Hence my question mark. A query, not a statement.
“You have not even shown that this is true in the UK because you have cherry picked two routes out of how many? Dozens?”
You can rest assured that, as and when I get paid to analyse train and bus routes, I’ll look at them all. But I compared coaches against two different types of train, and that’ll have to do for now. I have shown that against intercity (125mph) trains, the coach (56mph) is out of contention. Against DMU trains (very slow stopping service), the coach can easily keep up, but if the destination isn’t very popular, by the time you’ve made the additional end journey, the coach is competitive, but no more than that.
You are then invited to compare these results against trains in you neighbourhood.
You can rest assured that, as and when I get paid to analyse train and bus routes, I’ll look at them all. But I compared coaches against two different types of train, and that’ll have to do for now. I have shown that against intercity (125mph) trains, the coach (56mph) is out of contention. Against DMU trains (very slow stopping service), the coach can easily keep up, but if the destination isn’t very popular, by the time you’ve made the additional end journey, the coach is competitive, but no more than that.
You are then invited to compare these results against trains in you neighbourhood.
You conveniently leave out the costs of construction. Otherwise known as “capital costs.”
They are not unimportant, you know.
Francis King could provide dozens of other examples from England, but I’m sure you wouldn’t be convinced.
The Antiplanner actually has NO proof that rail is always more costly than buses. Well, I DO have proof that rail is more economic than buses–strictly on economics–when daily traffic exceeds 5,000 daily passenger miles per route mile for low-cost surface lines. Of course, more expensive rail lines require higher traffic density.
See http://www.publictransit.us/ptlibrary/specialreports/sr2.trafficdensityretrospective.pdf. (I’d link the HTML version but there are some web-server problems with characters at the moment).
In retrospect, I’m not surprised the ideologues on this blog have never challenged the numbers Demery and I came up with. As they’re ideologues they wouldn’t know what even the starting point to an intellectually valid challenge to our findings would be; I wonder if any even understand the concept of rail “traffic density”…
Oh yes…if The Antiplanner wants to argue that archaic U.S. practices such as obsolete labor rules or the sort of cronyism and political payoffs that go on with CA HSR, San Francisco’s Central Subway or the Second Avenue Subway, I’ll concede the point.
However, just because the U.S. runs its passenger rail and transit systems like a banana republic is NOT an argument against rail, but rather arguments against obsolete labor rules or the sort of cronyism and political payoffs. These sorts of things are virtually nonexistent at the world’s most efficient and effective rail network, Switzerland’s SBB–which sets the gold standard for efficient and effective practices, as well as network planning.
Yes, I’m an ideologue. I believe in liberty. You and Dan keep on with ideologue mantra and keep believing you’re not espousing statist ideology. Oh, you don’t like the term statist because “economic ignoramuses” like me who “toss out the catch-all”? Then stop using terms like ideologue. Catch-all if I ever heard one.
And back to the point. Leaving aside that Francis King did not actually leave aside my double negative used intentionally for emphasis, Francis King has failed to provide evidence of the following:
1. Trains move as many people as buses in the UK.
2. Trains, on their approximately 10,000 miles of track, move people faster than buses in the UK.
3. Trains move people more frequently than buses in the UK.
4. Trains are less expensive than buses. (In fact, one graph shows going to Bristol is cheaper by bus than by train. On the other graph, it’s impossible to tell what’s being compared. Bus tickets against train tickets? Different types of train tickets? Who knows? The text can’t even clearly describe Figure 8. Not sure why there is not an obvious, direct comparison between bus and train tickets like in Figure 3).
Let’s compare London to Edinburgh. On Megabus for Tuesday, October 2, it’s 17 pounds and takes 9 to 9.5 hours. On the train, it’s 29 to 39 pounds (almost twice as much as bus) and takes 4.5 hours (half the time of bus). One thing Francis King didn’t compare is air. On EasyJet, a flight on the same date from London to Edinburgh costs 25 to 33 pounds and takes 1.5 hours.
Yes, the train is faster than the bus, but it is not cheaper. The plane is faster than both the bus and the train and is cheaper than the train, but not cheaper than the bus. In the UK. Which is not the same as the US.
Dan keep[s] on with ideologue mantra and keep believing you’re not espousing statist ideology.
Internet Performance Art, Comedy Category: winning entry for parody of Rand-toter, August 30, 2012.
Yesterday’s winning entry: That’s freedom, and I’ll take it any day over the supervision and sanctimony of the central planners. Paul (“oohhhhhh those blue eyes! How can he be a con man with those bluuuuuuuuuuues! *sigh*) Ryan, RNC speech.
Fortunately folks are catching on. These goofy projection phrases will fade soon enough.
DS
What a joke. But you’ll find out soon enough which phrases are going to fade, and it’s the ones you like throwing around, stupidboy.
This morning L’Enfant stunk again, smells like the fish market sewer overflowed down there! Dead fish.
I know Amtrak has in the past sold more tickets than they have seats on certain holiday trains. Is sitting in bench seats touching strangers or standing hanging on to straps or enjoying the dark foul-smelling underground part of the quality of life improvements trains add to cities?
Spain……..seriously. Spain has over 24% unemployment in June 2012. They’re broke, as part of the PIIGS nations whose spending and deficits are one of the major contributors to Europes sovereign debt crisis.
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-505123_162-57475931/spain-budget-minister-says-government-is-broke/
Under the Euro/US dollar/whatever, where the currency is shared across states, so is the debt. Under the US system, all states must balance their books, and the federal government oversees everything. In the EU, they *ought* to balance their books, but there is no over-arching control. Hence the Euro crisis.
Germany, the driving force in the EU, is not amused at being handed a pile of debt.
Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Greece and Spain or the PIIGS. These 5 nations should never have been allowed to join the European Union. They never had the financial stability or capacity to contribute to obligations on par with the larger economies like Germany and U.K. Germany is the largest economy in Europe even after being obliterated twice following both World Wars. They remained the largest, why? Because the Germans engage in financial behavior that for most of us would seem rather odd. It’s not to say they don’t have their own unique brands of socialism like dumping money in wind and solar provisions. Otherwise they’re frugal, financially disciplined to a degree, they don’t spend more than they earn, they keep more than they spend (of course even during both post war years vast inflation obliterated their accumulated savings so hoarding money is not a solely German habit. So the desire to provide for families intilled the Germans with a strong work ethic). Why is the rest of Europe not like Germany, well they never were to begin with. Germany of course does possess some deficits but not as much, say that of it’s European neighbors. They’ll be reducing theirs while France is asking for more time. Assume this thought experiment. Imagine you’re wealthy, with millions of dollars and you have relatives in every state with different financial outcomes from the highest earners to the lowest earners. And you decide to put all your income together. Your all gonna use the same bank, all contribute to pay the bills and all will have the same percentages of the money. If just oone of your relatives is always in debt, always you paying for their behavior, at some point they’re gonna become more of an burden than a asset. That system set for the family isn’t working (Socialism actually does work, on the family level; everyone in the family pitches in and they take care of each other. It’s when that communal model is expanded to include non-family or tens of thousands or millions of people) because those who achieve are bearing most of the costs while providing most of the contributions. Meanwhile those that don’t contribute exhaust more and more of the proceeds. At some point you have to reevaluate.
These 5 nations should never have been allowed to join the European Union.
Germany liked them well enough when they could sell them things on credit. Too bad the EU failed to create a strong central bank to limit shocks so things like this (albeit horribly narrow-minded and wrong austerity measures aren’t helping either).
DS
The austerity measures are more like throwing fire extinguishers in the garbage, than putting out fires.
Well looky here. Mr stupidboy aka Dan Krugman knows a bunch about economics too. Who woulda guessed!
Paul Krugman is not perfect. I probably agree with him more than I disagree with him (and remember that I self-identify as a Democrat).
I especially disagreed (and disagree) with him on the now-cancelled ARC commuter rail tunnel between North Jersey and a dead-end station in Midtown Manhattan (Krugman op-ed here).
But he called it right on the housing bubble, and how excessive regulation and government intervention made the bubble much worse in many of the coastal states (Atlantic and Pacific). Krugman’s description of places with high land use regulation and strict zoning laws and rules places as “the zoned zone” and the free market places as “flatland” was (and remains) brilliant (here).
Loved Krugman’s fake space alien suggestion. 18 months to prosperity! Right.
And his Mental Monetary Disorders is classic! Price fixing babysitting led to a bubble in a co-op babysitting market.
Though transit activists were glad when Christie pulled the plug on NJT’s dead end tunnel too.
There is still a need for an extra tunnel, though one that can be shared by NJT, LIRR and Amtrak.