The problem is that as a passenger/consumer, with a car, it's very easy to decide how much to pay for my own personal level of ride quality.
I can spend $2k on an old Camry, or I can spend $200k on a Bentley, but either way, I have almost total control (potholes notwithstanding).
It's really not possible to have that kind of personal control when you're looking at public transit.
I use them just fine on my bicycle.
I agree with everything you say but you're missing a key point - the active hostility that a significant number of drivers have for bikes.
I biked in Canada for ten years, and drivers there (at the time) were mostly indifferent to bikes.
(And yet I say this, and then I remember that one of Canada's rising bike stars at the time was permanently paralyzed by a driver who had repeated tried to force him off the road before (in his small community) and who had been reported to the police many times for it, and yet suffered no penalty other than a temporary license suspension. This was in the early 80s, and I haven't thought about it in 30 years, but I still feel a rush of rage.)
Now I live in the Netherlands, and cars are actively solicitous of bikes. Let me tell you that the center of Amsterdam has a lot of cobblestone streets with no separation between bikes and cars, not even a line on the street, but (nearly all) the cars treat cyclists as if they are delicate and breakable, which is actually the case.
Cyclists keep getting promised the world around the country. I’ll believe it when I see it.
Some long distance trains you can pay for a private cabin with decent meal service, or just a single seat and access to a vending machine.
Wikipedia confirms that distinction is sometimes made.
If you can't bring yourself to solve your parking situation after spending 200k on a Bentley, you spent too much on the Bentley.
To this day, I've never seen a Valet Full sign.
US highways do pay for themselves <https://web.archive.org/web/20170712175437/www.rita.dot.gov/...>, and help pay for other modes of transportation. Transit receives the biggest subsidy per passenger-mile, with rail and airlines in between.
(For those wishing more detail: From the executive summary <https://web.archive.org/web/20170628114204/http://www.rita.d...>:
>*Highways*
>* Users of the highway passenger transportation system paid significantly greater amounts of money to the federal government than their allocated costs in 1994-2000. <https://web.archive.org/web/20170628114204/http://www.rita.d...> This was a result of the increase in the deficit reduction motor fuel tax rates between October 1993 and September 1997, and the increase in Highway Trust Fund fuel tax rates starting in October 1997.
>* School and transit buses received positive net federal subsidies over the 1990-2002 period, but autos, motorcycles, pickups and vans, and intercity buses paid more than their allocated cost to the federal government.
>* On average, highway users paid $1.91 per thousand passenger-miles to the federal government over their highway allocated cost during 1990-2002.)
The real costs are tied up in surface roads and what lies underneath them. Repaving, sewer, cable, electricity, drainage... all that stuff has to be replaced regularly, and when it does, it's a massive subsidy from the people who don't drive cars on those roads, to the people who live or drive heavy trucks on them.
Public policy should try to make people's lives better, not worse.
It is much better for 80% of the people living today and 100% of the people living 50 years from now who will be dealing with the devastation caused by our CO2 emissions.
There is no incentive to minimize construction and maintenance costs at all. No pay-as-you-go model like busses and trains have.
As a result our roads have become chaotic to drive on.
Lightfoot = The Trump like mayor that we have (She's a democrat but still thinks she can just bully her way through making deals)
https://www.infranken.de/ueberregional/deutschland/kein-wc-k...
https://www.berliner-kurier.de/panorama/der-blanke-9-euro-ti...
https://www.faz.net/aktuell/wirtschaft/auto-verkehr/9-euro-t...
9€ for you, €2.5 billion+ for us. That's the most expensive "almost" free thing.
I'm not against trains, I'm not against bikes. I'm against the government doing populism and burning our money like that.
Well, my experience is also fact. I use trains every week now, I have visited half a dozen cities with this ticket and used local public transportation there. It's crowded but otherwise fine. Just because these experiences aren't reported on the news does not make them less real.
> 9€ for you, €2.5 billion+ for us.
"us" does a lot of lifting here because "us" is literally millions of people (including I). This statement also compares costs of a ticket for a single month with the total subsidization over three months.
> I'm against the government doing populism and burning our money like that.
I think we have to agree to disagree here. I think it is money spent well.
TL;DR:
"The Transport Ministry is providing €2.5 billion over three months to compensate for the loss of revenue caused by the artificially low ticket price — and yet no money was made available for extra personnel, buses or trains." With that in mind, he does not see how the scheme can feasibly continue after August. At least not at €9 per ticket."
References:
[1] https://berlinspectator.com/2022/07/02/germany-summer-vacati...
[2] https://www.dw.com/en/germanys-9-euro-travel-ticket-success-...
Point is, it reduced automobile use by a significant amount because people do prefer to use the train when the price is right.
Which means that with appropriate subsidies you can seriously improve the existing transport infrastructure. 10B a year is a pittance compared to the good it would do - Especially with the looming energy crunch.
The results until now: 3/4 of the people still driving their cars: https://www.focus.de/auto/news/ergebnis-ueberrascht-umfrage-....
So 2.5 billion euros (actually much more, see https://www.stern.de/panorama/-9-euro-ticket-macht-krank----...) is the most expensive "almost free" train ticket in the world...
There is an interesting, very American, solution, which is ubiquitous, active surveillance on every form of public transport. Not just for violent threats, but for enforcing (current) vandalism, littering, and even assault laws cheaply and at scale. For the low low cost of a dystopian panopticon you could have, theoretically, a cheaply maintained public transportation system. (The other option, which many other countries employ, is a rigorous culture of respect for public places and public facilities -- for example Japan and Northern Europe.)
Does not follow!
I have a beautiful bridge ten minutes bike ride from my house. This was a significant investment by the municipality. It would not be improved by being a toll route.
Right now the city is digging up the street in front of my apartment in order to completely redo electricity, plumbing, sewers and telecom. This task would not be improved by our block having to pay for it.
Public goods are not an "investment" because they bring in revenue.
If you're a hard-core capitalist, you believe that they are an investment because they dramatically facilitate profitable businesses with very low friction. Other people believe that public goods like bridges, roads, transportation, schools and parks are an intrinsic good in and of themselves because they make everyone's lives better.
The only economic case for user fees is to deliberately throttle a scarce resource. But given the climate emergency, all our societies should be building public transportation as quickly as humanly possible.
The reason to expect money to change hands is not economic - it's purely the moral idea that everything has to involve money.
Point two, I've now a daughter, and in a car I can stop whenever she needs, find comfortable places to fix whatever the issue is, and resume journey.
Also, for what it's worth: as someone who uses the NYC subway extensively, it does not feel unsafe.
They should charge fees and subsidize poor people instead.
Money to improve quality has to come from somewhere.
People rarely choose to use train because it is free.
Hello from Amsterdam! I've lived in five countries, including the Netherlands for the last five+ years.
Your statement is so false to the fact that I have no trouble calling it a deliberate lie.
First link I found:
https://analyticsindiamag.com/why-92-6-dutch-trains-arrive-t...
"When it comes to punctuality, Dutch railways are in the top three of the world, right behind only Japan and Switzerland. The Dutch railways, also known as NS, have seen an average of one million train commuters every day with 92.6 % of trains arriving on time, an incredible stat for the Dutch railways. If you are from the Netherlands, you probably can’t make the excuse of the train being late anymore. With this level of punctuality, Dutch railways are continually looking for innovative technological ideas to keep its spot in the top three."
All of this is well-known. I think the reddit term for "telling lies to push car ownership" is "carbrain".
You should be ashamed of yourself. Really. Do you have nothing better to do than go out and tell the most transparent lies on the Internet?
You're missing the point: even a "top three" railway kinda sucks compare to point-to-point car usage.
I don't know if you just don't have perspective, or if your comment is a joke and I just didn't get it.
You can get there faster because everyone else is taking the train. Hopefully one day the train will be the fastest way for you too.
"When it comes to punctuality, Dutch railways are in the top three of the world, right behind only Japan and Switzerland. The Dutch railways, also known as NS, have seen an average of one million train commuters every day with 92.6 % of trains arriving on time, an incredible stat for the Dutch railways. If you are from the Netherlands, you probably can’t make the excuse of the train being late anymore. With this level of punctuality, Dutch railways are continually looking for innovative technological ideas to keep its spot in the top three."
Secondly, I complain about NS a lot about delays and about not being able to sit. I am not going to argue that it isn't a problem that has to be improved. During rush hour (and plenty of times, outside) it is sometimes impossible to find a seat. But, horrible unreliable? that is not how I would call it.
Along with that, don't forget that our train system is extremely busy. For example, the trains that go from Amsterdam Zuid to Schiphol is the 7th busiest station in the country and it has only 4 lines, all of them which are almost constantly in use. The moment anything goes wrong, that has a domino effect on all other trains.
Personally, I own a car and I use it quite a lot. But I also use public transport quite a lot. For point to point travel outside of cities a car is a no brainer, if you stay within the cities, it is probably not worth it to have a car.
Finally I want to point out that our train system has problems, it has delays quite often, there aren't enough seats, and it is expensive. These are all things that we really have to improve. But It is nowhere near as bad as you make it out to be.
I think what gets missed is the market signal or imperative to respond to that signal. But then, I'll make the uninformed assertion that private rail companies aren't that good at that anyway, and/or the industry doesn't lend itself well to that.
And if rail was "free" I'd definitely use it more. It's not necessarily about the money, although that matters, it's the freedom to "just go" (ignoring there'd probably still need to be a booking system due to high demand)
You cannot have 10 companies competing on the same stretch of rail, which leads to weird attempts to bring the 'market' into play. I'm thinking of the UK in particular.
The light tram I use often (https://www.vltrio.com.br/) has a sensor above each door which counts how many passengers get in and out of the vehicle at each stop (the payment is done within the vehicle through NFC card readers near each door; the count from the door sensors allows estimating the amount of fare evasion). So these kinds of sensor do exist, and don't need facial recognition to do their job (this particular one wouldn't be able to do facial recognition even if it wanted to, due to its placement looking straight down).
(The presence of these sensors on that particular tram line isn't well known, so it's a bit hard to find more information; a quick web search found https://www.semanadetecnologia.com.br/25semana/wp-content/up... which has on its page 4 some sample images from these sensors, plus photos of the NFC readers).
This level of indiscriminate surveillance is absolutely abnormal from a historical perspective -- it's "weird" they have it in the first place! There's no reason to think that it's necessary. (And since most public transport systems are at least partially government run, and your travel card is associated either implicitly or explicitly with your real identity, travel cards have become an excellent way for the government to surveil every member of the public indiscriminately, allowing for retroactive surveillance -- though of course rubber-stamp courts would give them access to this information from private companies too.)
Most public transport systems have not had access to this information for the vast majority of their existence (and managed to botch expansions just as well as they can today with the benefit of all this data) and have only gained access (along with law enforcement) to it recently.
The issues with increasing public transport coverage is not a lack of data, it's a lack of funding and interest.
Only if they were entirely built in the last decade and a half. During the hundred years before that, nobody was tracking riders with anything approaching that type of precision, and public transportation was better.
Very few systems that I've ridden on in the US track this kind of information. Most of the time you buy a one way ticket and ride for however many stops you want. There's no tracking for when people get off.
> Travel Time Systems work through the analysis of collected traffic data. This data can be collected via cellular providers, GPS vendors, mobile app vendors and most popularly through Bluetooth and Wi-Fi Scanning. Bluetooth and Wi-Fi scanning technology makes use of non-intrusive roadside sensors to detect the unique addresses of the Bluetooth and Wi-Fi radios inside of driver's vehicle and smartphone. By picking up a unique radio ID at one sensor location and then another these systems are able to calculate the travel time experienced from sensor A to sensor B for that unique vehicle/driver. These systems collect and calculate thousands of data points like this in order to determine the average travel time between any two sensors on the road.
* https://stinson.ca/its-solutions/bluetooth-wifi-travel-time-...
My understanding is that in north America the big problem with passenger rail is less cost and more the fact that there's a bias towards freight in track right of ways. Even if you're willing and happy to pay a lot to travel by train, scheduling is still likely to be screwed up somewhere by a big ass freight train in the way and there's nothing you can do about it.
Edit to add after a double check: I guess in the US it's technically the law that passengers be given priority but it's poorly (or just not) enforced[1].
[1] https://www.amtrak.com/content/dam/projects/dotcom/english/p...
The main issue with train travel in the US is that many passengers are going to need a car when they reach their destination.
If I could pick one major rail investment for the US it would be to follow I-95 from Florida to New England. There is a lot of commute and vacation traffic along that interstate (I-95) that can be stressful and people would probably happily move over to Amtrak if the service guarantees are good.
It's not a big issue as you may think. This is the case with air travel too, but people would gladly fly and then rent a car. The biggest barrier is the cost and the time it takes.
Pay more for fewer departure/arrival options and turn a few hour hours into +1 day on each end seemed not worth the vibe.
Nope. It also offers not having to drive. I can read a book on a train, which I can't do in a small car even if I don't drive because I'll get car sick. I can even walk around and have luch in the train restaurant, go to the bathroom without having to stop.
With a high speed train you can have downtown to downtown service, not need any security checks or slow onboarding / off-boarding processes and more, which eats about 1.5 hours minimum on each side.
That's basically true for now, but if rail travel became much more popular I am sure that would change.
But that's what it took for air travel. Hijackings were even relatively common pre-9/11[1], and they didn't even bother to start locking the pilot cabin door (probably one of the only security measure implemented after 9/11 worth anything at all) until someone did something that extreme.
Not to say high-speed rail doesn't have its uses - by far not, the chief one being replacing flights < 2 hours - but anything above the 2 hour flight time is better kept served by plane.
[1] https://edition.cnn.com/travel/article/worlds-fastest-trains...
I've only ridden Amtrak once but I guess there are also security requirements that do take some time also (as opposed to most European countries).
I've also experienced lots of unexpected delays on flights whereas trains seem to be exceptionally on time (especially in a country like Germany). You're also assuming a direct flight also (though this is probably more related to cost which is another issue).
All in all, a coast to coast journey that takes 12 hours vs. 7 doesn't seem so bad if:
- I can spend maybe 8 of it sleeping in a bed - The difference is 5 hours - I can eat some real meals in a dining car - I can walk around reasonably
Not in my experience. You show up at the station and walk onto the train. Dread that changing one of these days based on some incident.
The problem is the terrain doesn't lend itself to trains at all without a super expensive investment, and the population of Peru is spread out so much once you leave Lima.
Flights in general are terrible in Latin America in terms of cost which is why the bus is popular. More so international but even domestic is pricey for the quality and distance. Plus stopping in Paracas/Nazca/Arequipa makes the bus a good way to cheaply hit those spots. Flying back to the start is a good move though
I think lack of competition is a big problem. There aren't a ton of major airlines here. The population is also pretty spread out compared to Asia/Europe.
Domestic is usually okay. I just recently flew to the edge of Peru to visit Bolivia by land because it saved enough money to justify the extra time.
Who cares if it takes 8 to 12 hours if you board the train, have dinner there, sleep a good night and have breakfast before arriving.
Even more since SNCF launched their low cost TGV (Ouigo).
There's also the Auto Train route from DC to Orlando which will transport passengers and their vehicles. [2]
1. https://www.amtrak.com/routes/silver-service-palmetto-train.... 2. https://www.amtrak.com/routes/auto-train.html
https://www.washingtonpost.com/transportation/2022/07/06/amt...
Possible and done in other countries, but less feasible in the US because many existing lines are privately owned.
Politically popular although? Probably not. Americans really really love their cars & suburbs and would also get angry at everything getting more expensive due to higher freight costs.
our railways prioritize freight because that's the customer that actually uses the system. as long as passengers are rare, there's no reason to prioritize them. if passenger trains were actually a critical part of the transportation network, i'm sure we'd stop letting freight pre-empt them.
Certainly compared to other modes in most circumstances. If, on a particular route, there's one train a week and 100 planes a day, the train can still be packed while "train passengers" are still rare.
IIRC, Amtrak was created because the railroads were losing money on passenger traffic and wanted to get rid of the service. I imagine that's because the service had a lot more competitors than it did in rail's heyday.
I don't know why people are bringing up hypotheticals that are so far from reality like one train per week. That's just not how trains are scheduled with Amtrak. I take the train on a regular basis and your example is entirely removed from the reality that I have personally observed.
How many planes are there per day on a single route in the Midwest? Because I doubt its hundreds
Edit: While I haven't ridden trains in every corner of the USA, the best I saw were in the northeast, and I did have a nice ride from Seattle to Portland once, but in middle America you almost never hear of someone riding a train (my grandmother rode them in Texas in the 1930s and a buddy of mine took the 24-hour trip from Texas to Illinois one time, but those are the only stories I have personally heard around here).
Practically, if you're looking for a trip at a particular time and day, you'll find that seat prices will vary as bundles are sold through. To find a cheaper seat I:
- Buy either a several weeks OR a few days before my trip.
- Tend to travel Tues-Thursday.
- Check repeatedly for a few days if I don't see the price I want.
I travel a lot on the Northeast corridor and found that I can usually get a ticket for $25-30 that can be as high as $60-$120.
Amtrak is 1000x better than driving for me because:
- Free wifi and power at every seat.
- Roomy seats and tons of legroom.
- Zero security.
- Quiet car.
- Huge free baggage allowances.
- No traffic.
I love Amtrak. Definitely better than flying for these trips.
The one tiny route you have is effectively the only place Amtrak works well in.
For the vast majority of other cases it’s awful.
>I wish the train was more economical then I could take the train more but it is not economical (on the west coast of the US). I live approx half way between Seattle WA and Portland OR and there is a train station within walking distance of my home. Every time I have checked the price of a Amtrak ticket to either city it was significantly cheaper to drive and pay for parking then to buy a single train ticket.
If you look at emissions, I guess this is a pretty close one, too. And since so much freight is already on the rail in the US, this is the much easier fruit to pick.
The question then becomes how much if at all do want to subsidize transportation.
If railways are expected to break even, then I expect the same from public funding in roads and airports.
Using the same metrics.
Whereas rail is unbelievably expensive. The MTA budget for the NYC metro area is $18.6 billion. Compare that to the $11.8 billion budget for the entire New York State Department of Transportation.
…and that’s for an existing rail system.
According to [0] no state derives more than 71% of its "State & Local Road Spending" from gas taxes. Unclear to me what proportion of the spending is maintenance though.
The best number I could find for maintenance cost was [1], which says in 2015, the average per-mile maintenance cause of US roads is $28,020.
Can anyone help find a comparable figure for rail maintenance?
[0] https://taxfoundation.org/states-road-funding-2019/ [1] https://azmag.gov/Portals/0/Documents-Ext/FLCP/Roadway-Maint...
Including maintenance, externalities and construction.
(though while I would apply the same standards - I would not expect such infrastructure to directly pay for itself. But expecting it only from rail while not expecting it from roads is extremely weird.)
200+ Billion each year & 5th largest category of state and local public spending behind education, general welfare, and healthcare
> It’s paid for with gasoline taxes.
Generated 52 billion so ~25%
Highway maintenance is anything but cheap, unless you only do the barest minimum as has been done in the US for decades.
Not to mention, the 2nd ave line seemed like a big waste.
The implication in this is that railroads don't already exist, which is simply false. In fact, nearly every town in the Midwest established before 1950 were built on a railroad line. A few notable examples are Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Sacramento, Birmingham, Chicago, St. Louis, and Portland Oregon. Moreover, many suburbs were formed around a streetcar line, which were later torn up to let cars drive there instead.
> maintenance is extremely cheap. It’s paid for with gasoline taxes
That is demonstrably false. Gas taxes as of 2011 do not cover road maintenance (at most it's RI with almost 80% and median of about 45% [1]). Furthermore, the federal gas tax (which is supposed to pay for the interstate system) hasn't been increased since 1993, and isn't indexed to inflation. The United States Highway Trust Fund has been relying on non-fuel tax revenue since 2008, and that doesn't look to be changing any time soon [2]. Of course, regardless of the actual costs of effective maintenance, you can make any public works project much cheaper by simply not maintaining it. If maintenance was actually "extremely cheap," then it stands to reason that the US would be getting more than a 'D' on roads [3]. Even after all of that, it still doesn't factor in the legal requirements for private expenditure on roads, such as minimum parking requirements and extensive R1 zoning. It also doesn't factor in the vast negative externalities of cars (yes, even electric cars).
> Whereas rail is unbelievably expensive
I'm going to ignore that you chose the MTA, a famously corrupt organization that is responsible for tunneling under the densest metro area in the country, as a baseline for the cost of rail. Instead I'm going to point out that car roads have nearly every bureaucratic advantage in the US, for a multitude of reasons. There is a lot of nuance to this, but for anything short of HSR, the expense in railroads is not engineering. If you're interested in a jumping off point for learning more here, check out [4].
[1]: https://taxfoundation.org/gasoline-taxes-and-user-fees-pay-o...
[2]: https://www.enotrans.org/article/ten-years-of-highway-trust-...
[3]: https://infrastructurereportcard.org/cat-item/roads-infrastr... (The Infrastructure Report Card is published by the ASCE, which does have an incentive to create more work for civil engineers, so it's worth taking it with a grain of salt)
[4]: https://palladiummag.com/2022/06/09/why-america-cant-build/
Sidenote, that's called apophasis - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apophasis
Note that rail is uniquely more expensive in USA than elsewhere for various reasons.
also, economists are capable of estimating the ratio of private good to public good for a transit system, and we can simply apportion the funding of the network accordingly. if 40% of the value of transit accrues to the public, then pay that part out of taxes and set fares so that they pay for the other 60%. i'd rather have a system that responds in some proportion to market signals than one that is entirely immune to them.
in LA, they're trying to make transit free, and while i'd benefit from this, i oppose the initiative on these grounds.
In fact, JR these days makes money by buying up real estate, building a station, and seeing land value skyrocket.
in capital intensive infrastructure businesses like rail travel and telecom, it actually makes sense for the government to provide the high upfront capital to build the common infrastructure and lease it to the competitors (but not sell or give it away) to create viable markets like this.
Leasing infrastructure sounds alright tho
Also, the MTA is private (mostly) and the subway costs a fare, yet there's homeless folks everywhere on the trains. Implementing a fare !== homeless people not setting up shop in subway cars or on the platforms.
* the homeless and housing situation is a deeper issue with many variables. Just pointing at the claim that was made
Every train and tram is on schedule. In what way is it a "real headache"?
My point was private companies/fares won't prevent homeless people from staying off the subways or other unexpected results that are assumed to come with "free". MTA is a perfect example of that.
i'd personally like to see metro raise base fares, and provide larger discounts to lower income riders via their LIFE program to offset that potentially regressive burden. in the best of times (before covid) fares only covered about 20-30% of operating costs, i believe.
use that money to implement better service (more and more punctual trains), more social/community officers to help the homeless, peace officers on the trains themselves (currently they mostly just walk around stations every once in a while), and more rigorous cleaning and general maintenance.
this all needs to be coordinated with getting housing and services to homeless folks, removing roadblocks to density along transit corridors, and emphasizing multi-mobility (like converting street parking to bus & bike lanes).
I do think it's worth putting _a_ price on it, since that money can go directly into funding more lines and the like. And hey, popular lines could totally be made profitable. But "it needs to be profitable/break-even" is what leads to public transportation removing unprofitable lines.
And then after you do that a lot, turns out you have terrible coverage and your whole system becomes way less useful!
Maybe I'll pay some visit to a city nearby, but I have to be quick since everything which is not HSR has a target in the back for the public operator.
also, like highways it's probably on some level subject to induced demand
Noone is going to ride two disconnected bus services that run four times a day and require walking 30 minutes in between.
Add a connection and make them all run every 30 minutes and suddenly it's viable.
Add a metro with right of way that runs every 5 minutes and has 5 minute walk or 2 minute walk + bus coverage to the entire city and why would you spend money on a car?
So you can leave the city. Even people I know who live in cities with decent transit systems that they use mostly still own cars to get away on weekends, do larger shopping trips, etc.
Yeah it's annoying, but it's private transportation! A massive luxury if you think about it long enough. And it means that most houses don't need parking lots.
And make living in cities sufficiently unpleasant or incinvenientand people who can will just leave as they did in the 70s and 80s.
But only the latter group is having that choice made for them and then having their tax money spent on infrastructure designed to burden them with car ownership.
For those who don't know it: german trains have an lowsy reputation at best, no cooling in the summer, no heating in the winter and every user has to plan for the case the train is 15 minutes or more late or broke on the way down.
All trains, even regional ones, also have heating and cooling. And while Acs tends to be underpowered and is broken more often than it should be, I don't remember heating, which is much simpler anyway, to have similar problems.
I had never heard this quote attributed to anyone other than Yogi Berra before, and from looking it up, it doesn't seem like I'm misremembering that.
On the contrary, it is way too warm in the trains in winter and badly vented. And you cannot change anything about it, because for safety reasons it is no longer possible to open a window even a tiny little bit.
(And sometimes the AC is too cold in summer.)
I’ve travelled all across Europe, and German trains aren’t what I would call “lousy”.
I've always thought that German transport was generally excellent when I'm over there, but then I'm from Dublin :)
Light rail in Dublin is quite good, but coverage isn’t great. I used DART a few times, and it wasn’t a nice experience - long waits and less than ideal trains. I traveled by rail between Dublin and Cork, however, and it was quite good - modern and comfortable, and relatively fast (Ireland is small and fast rail feels like overkill)
Not sure I'd say that; a modern TVG/ICE-type service could do Dublin to Cork in less than an hour, vs 2.5 hours for the current service. That would be a game changer.
There are vague plans for such a service, and more solid plans for upgrading to 200km/h (the trains already support this but the line would need upgrading).
What germany does horribly is ISP infra. It just sucks ass.
Also, some gas and electricity pipes running south wouldn't hurt, but it's too late...
1. The investment can come from the private sector, it takes the risk instead of burdening the tax payer.
2. Free rail for all burdens all with the cost of rail, it removes freedom of not paying for it.
3. No ticket pricing means no market signals that would show if the operator is running it's business poorly.
4. No adjustable pricing mean that the user has no reason to adjust their usage in terms of avoiding peak times or utilising quieter times.
5. No competition means no alternative, if the monopoly provides a terrible service that fleeces the tax payer, well tough luck for the user.
Paying for rail infrastructure is not fundamentally different, except insofar as it is generally cheaper, more efficient, and long-term much healthier for the society.
It had to be said that I am not at all opposed to the idea of accepting one's responsibility. It's just that how would we implement something like that in a non-dystopian way?
Especially if you consider, car-centric development is bankrupting many smaller US cities. There’s a strong economic case for promoting dense, mid-rise, mixed-use development: it brings in much more in property taxes relative to the cost of city services required.
Simply put, every foot of road or pipe or power cable serves far more people (and economic activity) with dense development.
2. Good, it's a progressive tax, instead of being a regressive one. Transport costs disproportionately affect the lives of the working/labor class.
3. Market signals are only ONE factor to consider. And you don't need ticket sales to measure demand. Building infrastructure often creates demand where none existed before. Any long-term planning must also take into consideration unprofitable longer-term projects that provide immeasurable benefits.
4. Yes, the user has an incentive to avoid overcrowded trains. You don't need to fleece them for it.
5. There is no realistic alternative for large-scale infrastructure projects - these are natural monopolies. This is a rail network, not a software company. What is a user going to do if they don't like the service? Start a new rail company? An average citizen has more recourse with their local government than with privately-owned monopolies. They can vote at the ballot box every few years.
I dispute your assertion that those things are the broader long term interests of the whole society. Their unprofitability is factual undeniable evidence that they are in fact unwanted "services" who are having resources poured in to them not due to their own merits but due to political decisions unrelated to their merits.
I want to be very clear here, because there are many people who seem to be under the misconception that profitability is something bad.
It is not.
Profitability is literally a measure of how much value a given thing is providing to society. There is a 1 to 1 relationship between profitability and societal and individual benefit.
When you say "Public services don't need to be profitable" or express similar ideas, what you are actually saying is "Public services don't need to provide societal benefit".
For example, while I doubt many would dispute that having an active police force provides a significant societal benefit, actually capturing that value via a market-based system would be exceedingly difficult. (E.g. You just caught and jailed a murderer. Now, who do you bill for that?)
Thankfully, trains don't suffer from that problem; their value is extremely easy to capture (and thus quantify) via a ticketing system. But I felt I should point out that it isn't always so easy in the general case.
It used to be done properly, for things like long bridges and such, where there would be a toll until the invested money was recovered.
Also, there is still the extensive network of nationales, départementales, and other streets and avenue that are still free.
For rail, usually railway building is already covered by government. People only pay for the train. Upkeep is usually covered by all sorts of subsidies.
Public-private "partnerships" are right-wing propaganda and disastrous to the public purse. Why? Because how they work in practice is the government absorbs all the risks while the private entity consumes all the profits. It's textbook rent-seeking behaviour.
> Free rail for all burdens all with the cost of rail, it removes freedom of not paying for it.
You mean like roads?
> No ticket pricing means no market signals that would show if the operator is running it's business poorly.
We don't need ticket sales to track total passenger movements.
> No adjustable pricing mean that the user has no reason to adjust their usage in terms of avoiding peak times or utilising quieter times.
Another way to put that is that people have more opportunity and mobility. I'm completely fine with that.
> No competition means no alternative, if the monopoly provides a terrible service that fleeces the tax payer, well tough luck for the user.
When is there ever competition in public transportation? Why is competition viewed as a good thing for what is an essential service? Do we need competition for the post office now to satisfy free-market cultists?
Yeah, unfortunately that's exactly what they are trying to do today in Brazil.
The UK recently privatised it's post office, there's lots of competition in its postal market (thank goodness).
The UK railways where private before 1948, then nationalised, it didn't work out well. Then privatised 40 or so years later because the government couldn't afford the investment required.
Are you in favour of nationalised air travel? UK tried that too and it was terrible. Exactly the same for telecoms. I'm just glad we don't have a nationalised food supply.
The UK would have a nationwide fibre network if the government didn't step in to tear down public telecoms in favour of privatisation. Now it's 2022 and other major European cities have 25 Gbit fibre, yet there are parts of London still limited to ADSL2 and copper wires.
All of this because the CAF gives them fares for almost-nothing, which is affordable when you have drug money.
No to free fares.
Here’s a video of drug dealers taking the high-speed train in France, singing, not having a fare, not being arrested: https://youtu.be/VMJenDMIbqg
A fair amount of places have tried free transit. Usually the result found is that most trips were diverted from walking and cycling.
On the Northeast Corridor it could change the driving equation for couples and families. BUT Amtrak on the Northeast Corridor already runs at pretty high utilization. In fact, I believe there are expansion projects underway.
They tend to avoid shelters because of rules against drug and alcohol abuse, favoring instead tents or public transport such as Palo Alto's "Hotel 22" bus route:
https://www.cbsnews.com/sanfrancisco/news/documentary-hotel-...
Most cities rule out the stick unless the carrot is provided, which is correct. But a significant number of those on the side of handing out carrots don't want to tie it to the stick.
So homelessness is rampant and everyone is unhappy. Perfect.
Policies around behavior in public spaces are actual live debates.
While it shows a deep misunderstanding of the concept of a public service, there are lots of other parts of government we do expect to be self-sustaining on user fees. Like the Postal Service.
I can't transport myself in bulk, at most I'll just go to a lot of places, which is probably good for the economy anyways.
A similar pattern would emerge for any infrastructure investment, really. Some regulating force is needed, or it will emerge naturally via congestion and queuing.
Edit: though once the tracks etc are built, public transport scales much better than roads so maybe it never becomes an issue.
Living in NYC I've seen hobos lying down across 6 seats on the subway smelling so bad that 10+ seats or an entire half of a car is vacated because of them.
Whilst road-widening can improve other things, like throughput (a congested three-lane road can shift more people than a congested two-lane road), once we start comparing such measures we find that public transit, etc. does even better.
The same argument doesn't apply to induced demand for transit (we can't do even better by switching to public transit, since that's what we're already doing!). At that point, maybe there aren't any easier options; and maybe we have to build more (bus) lanes or rails, or run more vehicles, etc.
And yeah, all these issues exist with 'free' roads and car infrastructure too. Again, toll roads are unpopular, and free car infrastructure is a vote winner. Doesn't mean it's actually a good idea at a systems level.
That service costs money to run. We could increase public spending to run the service, but you won't get more people on the train because it's already full.
Now how are you going to increase that spending? Raise taxes? Cut other public services? Borrow more? Miraculous "efficiencies" no doubt.
We could make it more cost effective, by building a new line instead, which would carry more people per operational cost. HS2 is this (1000 seats doing the journey in 1 hour for 2 members of staff is 500 seats per person hour, vs 500 seats doing it in 2 hours for 3 members of staff which is 83 seats per personhour, thus staffing costs drop 84%). And that's what we're doing.
Isn't increasing capacity the point of increasing spending?
If you increase spending to offset a reduction in fares you don't increase capacity
Because it’s competing with private industry. It should be revenue neutral at least if you don’t just want to use tax money to destroy public businesses and operate something economically inefficient.
Why not have the government make an electric car that is free? Why not a government airline that offers free flights?
This is not even Spanish tax payers money, but I'm sure they'll have no problem finding ways to spend it, like all the other hand outs.
This is going to be a disaster, the only way they'll sustain this is with (even) higher taxes.
That sounds like a straw man. This probably varies, but where I'm from public transport is about half funded by ticket sales and half subsidized by tax payers (some of whom don't use public transport).
The reasons I'm aware of againt free public transport are (1) the economist view that a free service (that in reality costs money to operate) leads to inefficient and wasteful use and (2) the city-planner view that over long term free public transport leads to thinly spread out residential land use development which in turn leads to high infrastructure costs for roads, pipes, electricity, schools, etc. and also emissions as not everyone will use public transport for all their trips.
I think free public transport is an interesting thought especially give various modern challenges, but seems prone to shallow argumentation that doesn't quite match the complex dynamics of the matter itself.
Seems like the problem though is Mr Buffet's rail monopoly? Maybe if the Govt got a right of way...
In addition because it is so cheap there is a lot less competition from people taking the car instead, which means that there is even less pressure to make the train ride nicer. This hurts everybody, including those who do not have a car as an alternative.
Basically: by paying the fee you get a vote. If it is free you don't.
Most public transit isn't profitable, but they take fares to partially fund their operating costs. This aligns incentives
During the Trump administration the head of education was a big fan of charter schools, which is a way of turning public schools into subsidized private schools.
The concept of government providing services that are taxpayer funded and do not turn a profit is something that the Republican party became opposed to around, I guess, the Regan administration.
I don't immediately see how one would be more or less expensive than the other.
Because it's on demand, and a significant part of it is recreational, if every means of transportation was free, even just in a state or country, people would move a lot more and the cost would be astronomical
Where's the difference?
Even today gas is taxed at almost 10%, every car on the road pays hundreds in fees for registration every year.
If Amtrak went that direction and made its transportation close to free, I wonder if we'd see more people try it out. Maybe it'd gain some popularity and we could finally see a shift away from cars. Public transportation is a difficult process because until the money is spent and the line is there, people are not sold. Whereas with cars, even if a highway is not built, people still have a car by default. Therefore the government needs to float money, either in infrastructure or in subsidized fares. At least subsidized fares is a little less binary than infrastructure.