Gas Prices on the Rise Again
The core belief that animates most HSR deniers is that oil prices will always be cheap. As we saw in the 2000s, this is just not true – and when gas prices spiked in the summer of 2008, Californians realized they needed to invest in mass transit alternatives. They not only voted to approve $10 billion in high speed rail bonds, voters in some of the state’s most populous counties (Los Angeles, Santa Clara, Sonoma-Marin) decided to tax themselves to support passenger rail projects.
Since the summer of 2008, gas prices have retreated from those highs – but even in the depths of the worst recession in 60 years, Californians are paying the same price for gas, just over $3 a gallon, that they paid at the height of the bubble in 2006, as the chart below shows:
And now those prices are rising again:
The average price of gasoline statewide ballooned 12 cents a gallon over the past month, according to the monthly gas price survey released today by AAA Northern California.
The survey put the average price for a gallon of regular unleaded gasoline statewide at $3.26, up from $3.14 in the Nov. 9 survey. The latest figure is 35 cents above $2.91 a gallon a year ago.
To some degree, this is being driven by speculation. But the chart above shows a pretty clear trend that actually began in 1999, but really took off after 2004 or so, of rising prices. This is the new normal; the age of cheap oil is absolutely at an end. Peak oil means supplies are unable to keep up with rising global demand, and if we ever see economic recovery, increased domestic demand will merely drive the price higher, cutting off our recovery in the cradle.
Most economic observers understand perfectly well that this is happening. Last year, Deutsche Bank projected oil will hit $175/bbl later this decade, before leveling off as a result of demand destruction. Here’s a chart based on the Deutsche Bank projections:
Let’s take a look at the right side of that chart, where demand destruction takes hold. That can take several forms. Ideally it would be through increased use of mass transit alternatives that we spend the next several years building – that’s the option Californians chose in 2008. It could also include use of hybrids and electrics, although that has its limits – the cost of car ownership is too high for most people to afford these days, especially buying a costly new hybrid or electric vehicle, and even if people could afford them, then you’ll still have a traffic problem on the roads, since we can’t afford to do much if any freeway capacity expansion.
But if we follow the Congressional Republican argument and refuse to build those alternatives, then there’s another way demand is destroyed – through a severe economic recession. If the price of gas becomes unaffordable, and if there are no alternatives available, then people just won’t buy it and the economy will suffer. We saw this in 2006 – when gas hit $3/gal, the housing bubble burst when homeowners in the exurbs could no longer service both their mortgages and their gas bills. We saw it again in 2008 when the gas price spike helped worsen the recession. And we will see it again sometime this decade, if alternatives are not developed.
High speed rail matters because without it, California will be unable to provide affordable transportation between our urban areas, which is essential to prosperity and business (not everyone can or will work from home, I might add). It needs to be paired with increased investments in bus and rail service within the urban areas, of course, and Californians have shown their support for this as well.
But as we watch the prices at the pump climb once again, we are reminded of the importance of seeing these efforts through to completion. Our prosperity depends upon their success.
Don’t forget that this will not only make driving costs unaffordable, but also flight costs, especially for short distances like Norcal-Socal.
BruceMcF Reply:
December 14th, 2010 at 4:46 pm
Yes, shorter flights are more energy-expensive per mile than longer, since take-off, climbing to cruising altitude, flying through denser air in the descent, and landing consumes more fuel per mile than cruising at altitude.
James Fujita Reply:
December 14th, 2010 at 5:13 pm
Right. Better to save that fuel for flights which can’t be reasonably covered any other way; such as overseas flights and international flights to Tokyo, Paris, London, Hawaii, etc.
Japanese and Chinese tourists coming to visit Sequoia will probably start their trips on an electric commuter train to Narita, I want them to finish it with LAX Express train to downtown Los Angeles, Cal HSR to Hanford, alt-fuel Sequoia Shuttle from there.
James Fujita Reply:
December 14th, 2010 at 5:16 pm
EDIT: Or at least the Japanese tourists will.
Alon Levy Reply:
December 14th, 2010 at 5:54 pm
Better yet, those tourists could take HSR from LAX to the Central Valley. The Harbor Line could accommodate mainline trains, and could run under a total FRA waiver due to the lack of any existing traffic.
Joseph E Reply:
December 14th, 2010 at 7:09 pm
The Harbor Subdivision has some freight traffic still, unfortunately, and many grade crossings. I don’t think we could run HSR trains there without some community opposition, or a number of expensive grade separations.
However, I think it would be fine to run light EMU trains along that route, with more frequent stops to serve the community as well as the airport passengers. This would be more likely to be supported by the areas thru which the train would pass at grade.
Alon Levy Reply:
December 15th, 2010 at 10:58 am
Are you sure there’s freight traffic on the LAUS-LAX line? I’ve been led to understand it’s all gone and BNSF is selling the ROW for light rail.
Anyway, yes, grade separations would be required. What I support for that line in general is lightweight EMUs making local stops, with some express service with a timed mid-line overtake. HSR could potentially use the line, too, if there’s more demand north of LA than south of LA.
thatbruce Reply:
December 15th, 2010 at 11:09 am
Metro owns the Harbor Subdivision, and has at least two projects in the works to utilize parts of the ROW for light-rail; Crenshaw and LAXLAUS.
What freight traffic there is on the line is to service industries south of LAX (coming up from the Long Beach end), and to retrieve wagons currently in storage along the line.
Jon Reply:
December 15th, 2010 at 10:17 am
I don’t know why LA isn’t planning a heavy rail/DMU link from LAX to Union Station, given that the track is already there. All you need is a connector here and a 1.5 mile spur down W Century Blvd to get to the terminals. Double tracking should be possible as well.
jimsf Reply:
December 15th, 2010 at 10:26 am
all they have to do is bring the green line all the way into the terminal loop. why they didn’t do that to begin with is a mystery.
thatbruce Reply:
December 15th, 2010 at 11:15 am
Currently, there are plans for a transit terminal closer to the existing Green Line station and a people mover down W Century Blvd to the airside terminals, according to the <a href="http://www.ourlax.org/diagram.cfm"LAX Master Plan. At the time however, the lack of a direct connection was due to other interests arguing against it (taxis etc) and perceived safety issues crossing under the south runway approach.
Donk Reply:
December 15th, 2010 at 10:55 am
Unfortunately, the Harbor Subdivision is basically dead now because of the Crenshaw project. The Crenshaw rail line will be light rail, and the argument will be made that there already is a line going from LAX to downtown on the Expo-Crenshaw route.
The idea of extending it along the Harbor Subdivision east of Crenshaw could possibly be revived though once the LAX people mover is built to the terminals from Century/Aviation, once people realize how slow it it is taking LRT from downtown via Expo/Crenshaw or Blue Line/Green Line. Here is the map:
http://www.metro.net/projects_studies/crenshaw/images/LPA-with-Options.pdf
Either way, I think a more important connection would be to fill the gap from the Green Line Norwalk to the Norwalk Metrolink/HSR station. I would focus on this before bothering with the Harbor Subdivsion, or many of the other lines in LA for that matter.
Jon Reply:
December 15th, 2010 at 11:35 am
While a one-seat ride to LAUS would be ideal, at least the Crenshaw plan beats taking a green & blue line combo to get downtown.
Donk Reply:
December 15th, 2010 at 12:29 pm
I’m not so sure about that. At least the Green Line is fast. The Expo and Crenshaw lines are both going to be pretty slow. I guess it all depends on whether they end up integrating the Expo and Crenshaw lines or making them separate.
Caelestor Reply:
December 15th, 2010 at 3:45 pm
How about the tourists take it from SFO? I don’t think two airport HSR stations are necessary.
And express light rail routes could suffice, considering the horrible congestion there.
jimsf Reply:
December 15th, 2010 at 8:03 pm
With SFO having an HSR station it will make SFO the place where inbound california tourists will make their connections. I find that so many tourists to ca are visiting more than one place. They do sf, but also throw in yosemite, vegas, la, etc ( the california rail pass is the best thing going hands down) So if you were to add code sharing or at least some ez way of booking your paris-sfo-yosemite or your sydney- sfo-sac etc tickets then its a win for everyone.
And of course oil is priced world wide in US dollars which are currently being devalued through quantitative easing. This will necessitate that the price of oil will rise in our own currency. Peter rightly point out this will make both traveling by car and plane more expensive relative to HSR.
While we’re on macro economics and, lets also not forget that the Fed will have to, at some point, sell its $2 trillion in treasuries it will have accumulated through QEI & QEII. This amount of treasuries coming back into the market will increase interest rates rapidly, pushing up borrowing costs.
Together, this means we face rising inflation (and fuel costs) combined with higher borrowing costs. We’re now essentially in a race against time to build HSR before the costs skyrocket and reap the economic benefits of more cost effective transit. It also means HSR has a great future as it means people will have a stronger economic incentive to move towards TOD along the HSR line.
BruceMcF Reply:
December 14th, 2010 at 4:47 pm
If it increases interest rates above the interest rate target, the Fed will buy them back as regular Open Market Operations.
Missiondweller Reply:
December 15th, 2010 at 9:24 am
Actually the Fed sells bonds to “mop up liquidity”. Remember, bond prices and interest rates move in the opposite direction.
The Fed has been buying longer bonds to LOWER interest rates through QEII, yet the 10y is about 70 basis points HIGHER over a month ago. That’s called a BIG FAIL.
The Fed DOES NOT have control of interest rates. Reality differs from textbook theory.
Missiondweller Reply:
December 15th, 2010 at 12:32 pm
More evidence the Fed has lost control as the 10 yr yield blows out even more:
http://www.zerohedge.com/article/theres-your-capitulation-10-year-bond-yield-surges-354-highest-may-2010
BruceMcF Reply:
December 15th, 2010 at 7:34 pm
Depends on which textbook you have. When I used Bernanke’s textbook, it had some terrible nonsense in it. Hence the playing reckless games with the Fed buying commercial financial assets subject to default rather than sovereign Treasury bonds which are not subject to default.
But the reality based textbook theory is that a Reserve bank in a conventional reserve banking system controls the cash rate. That is based on the observation that when they target a cash rate, they achieve the target within less than +/- 0.1% in under a day.
Compare that to the completely empirically contradicted monetarist assumption that the Fed can control the quantity of money in the economy, where when it was tried failed year after year after year.
I was addressing the nonsense that the Fed would “have to” sell Treasury securities that it has accumulated and as a result of the liquidity drained from the system this would drive up interest rates. The interest rates that it would direct drive up is the cash rate, and if they have a target cash rate, they’d by the bonds right back.
The original assumption in the argument, that the Fed will “some day have to” sell Treasury securities is unanchored in reality: there is nothing that would force the Fed to sell those if doing so will run counter to its current interest rate policy. As a policy matter it may decide that low interest rates are no longer in the interest of macroeconomic stability, but that is not the Fed being forced to sell the Treasury securities, but the Fed electing to do so.
Victor Reply:
December 14th, 2010 at 4:58 pm
I noticed recently when trying to see what shipping on a couple of hard to find ebay items was like from of all places like: Australia I found that the US dollar is worth almost as much as the Australian dollar, At least for the moment.
YESONHSR Reply:
December 14th, 2010 at 6:33 pm
The US does not plan it reacts ..gas goes to 5 dollars and it will be nightly news and WHY O WHY is this happening to us!!
An extra incentive to electrify current commuter rail lines as well, so that they’re spared the price shocks and can keep fares low when people need them the most. Perhaps we should look at trying to get a legislative or proposition based increase in the CA gas tax with the funds (about 150 million per year per penny tax) devoted to that?
BruceMcF Reply:
December 14th, 2010 at 4:55 pm
You get the most bang for the buck from that by refunding the electrification in whole or part out of reduced operating costs, so that much or all of the tax revenue could go to interest subsidy with a electrification infrastructure bank opening up new projects as existing projects refund their capital cost. Even at 10% interest rate, an annuity of $150m supports a rolling capital base of $1.5b.
Dan S. Reply:
December 15th, 2010 at 7:40 pm
I barely understand what you said, but what I do sounds good here. Really, I would support any possible way you could sell a gas tax to Californians (or God forbid the nation as a whole). Let’s admit it. Gas has negative externalities that are not reflected in the market price. That alone is proper economic justification for a tax. Hah. Gas tax, the “third-rail” of American politics. What a particularly cruel metaphor.
Are you implying that raising gas prices compel people to seek alternative means of transportation?
There are some here in the SF Bay Area, such as Richard Mlynarik, and one major transit agency, that insist that raising gas prices have little to do with ridership increases on mass transit rail systems.
The beauty of raising gas prices is that it acts as a trigger mechanism which induces people to give mass transit a try. Once they try it, they find that mass transit is not so bad and that they can save money. Then when gas prices decline many tend to stay on transit and do not go back to their cars.
RubberToe Reply:
December 14th, 2010 at 5:36 pm
I have a plot of Los Angeles light/heavy rail ridership over time versus gas prices. The summer 2008 spike also spiked rail ridership, the correlation was so close it was actually scary. The added riders did indeed stay after prices went down too, though not all of them. Check this thread out for details:
http://transittalk.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=eastside&action=display&thread=750
There are ridership graphs for all the rail lines individually in other threads on that same site.
Jeff Carter Reply:
December 14th, 2010 at 8:16 pm
I found the same results in plotting Caltrain ridership vs. gas prices, which I charted back to the gas crisis of the late 1970’s. In fact, you could almost predict the rise in ridership based on the price of gasoline. As gas prices went down ridership did not drop to prior levels, demonstrating that many former drivers stayed with Caltrain. They obviously felt that there are benefits to riding Caltrain and that it is not so bad for people to use public transportation.
Caltrain ridership began to grow significantly beginning in 2004 as Caltrain launched their Baby Bullet service and restored weekend service after a 2 year weekend shutdown. Coincidently, gas prices began to rise at the same time as these Caltrain service improvements. The ridership increases were quite impressive (BTW ridership also increased on BART but to a lesser extent during this same period: 2004-2008). Caltrain touted virtually all the increases in ridership due to the new Baby Bullet service. I made arguments that ridership increases were due to a number of factors, primarily the increase in gas prices, in addition to Baby Bullet and several other factors. I presented charts showing the strong correlation between rising gas prices and ridership. I maintained that more stations should have service more frequently than once per hour and that Broadway station should remain open on weekdays. Caltrain was clearly unhappy with my findings/arguments and I felt much disdain from some staffers at Caltrain, including receiving a rather patronizing response to my questions/concerns. It even got to the point that if I were to keep on tenaciously making my case, that I would face censure and be prohibited from communicating with Caltrain except at the monthly Board meetings.
Clem Reply:
December 14th, 2010 at 9:48 pm
You can’t increase service frequency at smaller stops, let alone add service at Broadway, without killing the Baby Bullet. Speed OR frequency. Not both, as long as we have diesels on two tracks. Now, with electric trains and additional tracks, you can start making some real improvements.
Jeff Carter Reply:
December 15th, 2010 at 12:16 pm
I have advocated for electrification, additional tracks, and the downtown extension since the 1980’s. The politicians of San Mateo County and MTC were fixated on BART extensions (Colma, SFO), Now there is still a fixation to extend BART to San Jose. Just think, if they would have listened to us visionaries way back then, we would already have an electrified Caltrain system.
I am not convinced that Caltrain can not provide service to Broadway that has to sacrifice Baby Bullet and express service, or at least provide off-peak service there. Caltrain says that the equipment/crews are maxed out and that they can not provide more service or handle more people. However on November 3, 2010, Caltrain ran many extra trains and carried an additional 30,000+, nearly twice the regular number of weekday customers for the San Francisco Giants World Series victory parade. Granted they had to throw out the schedule and just run all local trains as they filled up. This proves that with some innovation there are possibilities to improve the current schedule.
Caelestor Reply:
December 15th, 2010 at 3:44 pm
What’s shocking is why are there no two-platform express stations along the whole line like in Asia?
Once you do that, a good schedule can fall into place.
Alon Levy Reply:
December 15th, 2010 at 7:58 pm
I don’t think it’s that common for all express stations to be four-tracked. Usually they just four-track a few segments in the middle for an overtake. The Chuo Line is four-tracked (or more) at every express station, but that’s because it needs to be able to run nearly 30 tph on two tracks, and even then it’s critically overcrowded. For Caltrain’s traffic, the Chuo Line’s engineering would be excessive, and a single mid-line overtake should suffice.
California will start pay-as-you-drive car insurance, beginning Feb. 28th next year. State Farm plans to introduce annual tiered rates for every 500 miles. Cross-state drivers will take notice.
Now we just need to raise the gas tax, parking rates, car emission standards, carbon pollution tax, import oil tax, etc. to reflect the “true” cost of driving in our economy.
I seem to recall reading that M. King Hubbert (who originated peak oil theory in the 1950s; it’s also called Hubbert’s Peak or Hubbert’s Curve), based his original predictions on an observed 40-year lag between the match of averaged oil discoveries and oil flow. Essentially, what this means the oil you discover in 1900 becomes your actual flow out of the ground in 1940. Hubbert’s original predictions were based on the peak of oil discovery in the United States in 1930, after which oil discoveries declined even as oil extraction went up. Based on this 40-year lag and the logic you could not extract what you could not find, Hubbert predicted in 1956 that the US would hit peak oil production somewhere between 1968 and 1973.
The US hit peak oil production in 1970, 40 years on the dot.
Reportedly, Hubbert noted that oil discoveries for the world peaked in 1964. Forty years later would be 2005, and the price spiral seems to vindicate that.
For those who are not familiar with this, or who note that we are discovering new oil all the time, it is important to note that in this scenario we really don’t “run out” of oil in the sense that there is nothing left in the ground. What does happen is that the oil you can get winds up being in horrible places physically, like miles under the sea, or in equally horrible political places, where terrorists get elected to their nation’s presidency. Both places are either expensive to get oil from in their own right, or made more expensive by the difficulty and danger of the location, both physically and politically.
To put it another way, you won’t completely run out of oil, but at the same time, there will not be enough to go around to use it the way we currently do, at the prices we currently pay.
And of course, even if you still hate rail and are big on cars, this also means you still need that alternate highway finance mechanism that is independent of fuel consumption.
I hope we have the time.
D. P. Lubic Reply:
December 14th, 2010 at 5:59 pm
What amazes me about my own writing above is that it summarizes Hubbert’s Peak very concisely–yet many people, most commonly but not entirely the Repubican-conservative crowd, seem to not believe it, or argue against it, or just call you dirty names, or blame environmentalists or liberals or whatever. Damn it, this is the physical world; it has no politics, and doesn’t care about yours.
My explanation, as written above, is almost a sound bite; it’s not that hard to understand. It is a known and documented part of the natural world, like noting that water is wet. Why, why can’t they get it, and loosen up the purse strings for rail? Or do they think all that money they get from those campaign contributions will insulate them from gasoline at some insane price, like $10 a gallon? Do they think groceries can still get to their local supermarket when that happens?
thatbruce Reply:
December 15th, 2010 at 11:24 am
There’s a fascinating documentary about oil production in general with some conversations about Hubbert’s Peak (or Pimple). CRUDE (source) or on Youtube.
ajmstilt Reply:
December 14th, 2010 at 6:03 pm
and for even more info on “peak oil” and other oil related news there is the excellent (although sometimes doomish and wonkey) http://www.theoildrum.com/
Alon Levy Reply:
December 14th, 2010 at 6:17 pm
Two reasons for the Hubbert hatred:
1. Enough libertarians and conservatives are boosters, who do not believe in the existence of social problems until after they’ve been solved, that the tendency infects the entire party. (It’s unavoidable even in liberal boosters like Thomas Friedman, only he boosts green tech). This compounds with a general hatred of environmentalism.
2. Hubbert predicted a global oil production peak in 1995; this didn’t happen. Hubbert’s own supporters revised the projection to about 2005 ahead of time, saying that the reduced demand triggered by the 1973 OPEC crisis delayed the peak, but the failed prediction moniker stuck. This is reinforced by other predictions of doom that failed or appear to have failed, e.g. anything by Paul Ehrlich.
Victor Reply:
December 15th, 2010 at 8:45 am
And to add insult to injury, Brazil has a HUGE New offshore oilfield that’s supposed to be good sized, Whatever that is of course, It’s in about 7,000′ of water.
wu ming Reply:
December 15th, 2010 at 10:31 am
the big stuff these days is not as big as the old fields currently peaking. and the less big fields they find, the more hype attends each of the finds. it’s actually a signal that we’re on the downslope of oil discovery, when you think about it. if they were finding lots of big fields, it wouldn’t make the news.
Victor Reply:
December 15th, 2010 at 10:58 am
Yeah I know, But still It is interesting the lengths they’ll goto to keep the lights on.
Sorry to point out a little inconvenient truth: the for-profit operator is going to charge what the market will bear. So as energy prices go higher, the ticket prices go higher too (i.e. 85% airline model).
Even better: higher energy costs means higher constructions costs. So under the CHSRA lemon-capitalism model, the public assumes all the risks, and the for-profit operator assumes all the windfall profit.
BruceMcF Reply:
December 14th, 2010 at 8:39 pm
What “the market will bear” will not be in lockstop with 85% of airline prices as airline prices in real prices spike.
You are assuming a business model that has not been decided and then going beyond that to assume contract terms under a specific business model on a franchise that has not gone out to bid under a franchise business model that has not yet been adopted.
Which is awfully close to just assuming the conclusion you wish to reach.
Clem Reply:
December 14th, 2010 at 9:51 pm
I’ll hedge my ticket with some PB shares.
BruceMcF Reply:
December 15th, 2010 at 12:32 am
Is that a pure hedge? Is there any way to buy concrete futures?
Quite off-topic, but this discussion that arrived on my e-mail list may be of interest. Names of course are changed or hidden to protect the guilty; sequence is as it appears on the e-mail, with the newwest comments at the top.
Excellent idea. There is no reason why the Cardinal needs to go to New York. If it ran only as far as Washington it could be equipped with double-deck Superliners (if Amtrak Had any extra Superliner equipment, of course, or if they were planning to order any, which they’re not, because they do not believe long-distance overnight trains have a future even though they turn people away from them every night).
F P.
——————————————————————————–
Friends,
My back of the envelope calculation goes as follows.
Run 3 trains each day – 8:30, 11:10 and 15:00 from Washington DC to Chicago and 9:00, 13:00 and 17:45 back.
Assume that they all take the present 23 hours for the journey, and have a minimum turn-round time of 150 minutes.
You then need 3 train-sets for the service.
Forget New York – there are plenty of Acelas.
It works nicely – I hope the attached spreadsheet is comprehensible.
Andre
13/12/2010 14:20
To
David P (from France, so he’s not me)
Subject
Re: Daily CARDINAL–What do they need that for?
It is not generally known that many residents of WV towns along the Cardinal route use the train to get around between towns to visit friends and relatives. More frequent service would see more of such uses.
Jack
At 01:44 PM 12/10/2010, you wrote:
I don’t know. This is pretty radical stuff you’re proposing here. Clean cars? Why? Won’t they just get dirty again?
Probably not. Nobody rides trains any more. They can probably run for weeks without getting more than a dozen passengers. I know this is true because the Tea Party told me. They know everything I need to know.
Clean cars, indeed. A bunch of silliness, if you asked me.
—– Original Message —–
From: FP
Sent: Friday, December 10, 2010 11:49 AM
Wow, what a huge marketing breakthrough: These geniuses at Amtrak only took—what?—20 years to figure out that tri-weekly trains are losers and the market is ready to support a daily train that will lose less money than the current 3-day train. And now they seem to have figured that even more people will ride if you keep the coaches clean! I just can’t wait for the next set of results to come out of the Amtrak Passenger Preference Research Laboratories. One of their white-coated technicians might even produce a paper showing that passengers on trains with a 23-hour schedule between Chicago and Washington might appreciate having one of those—whaddayacallem?—oh, yeah—dining cars.
Of course, if they really want to make this train a success they’ll need to take a look at the 97 miles it spends on the Buckingham Branch RR—with undermaintained jointed rail that limits speed to about 50 bouncing, swaying mph.
Train
“Amtrak projects that the change will cause ridership to nearly double, from 140,000 passengers yearly to 275,000. Implementing the change would cost an estimated $2.1 million, an outlay that would be more than offset by the anticipated increase in revenue.”
Amtrak’s Cardinal Could See Daily Service Restored
Posted Thursday, December 9, 2010 ; 06:00 AM | View Comments | Post Comment
Updated Thursday, December 9, 2010; 01:37 PM
http://www.statejournal.com/story.cfm?func=viewstory&storyid=90789
The switch to daily service would see both the eastbound and westbound trains operate on their current time schedules.
By James E. Casto
Amtrak’s Cardinal could be on track for a big change in 2011.
Currently, the long-distance train runs three times a week, linking Chicago and New York by way of Huntington, Charleston and a half-dozen other West Virginia communities. Now, a new Amtrak report recommends the train should run every day.
Directed by Congress to improve its long-distance service, Amtrak formed a Performance Improvement Team to examine its operations with an eye to reducing costs and improving efficiency. When it evaluated the Cardinal, the team concluded the train’s current three-times-a-week schedule “is a major driver of inefficiency” and passenger confusion.
The current schedule, the report noted, means that at the end of most trips “the Cardinal’s employees and/or equipment have a one to two-day turnaround delay during which employees receive held-away pay, and equipment sits idle without generating any ticket revenues.”
et>, , , , At the same time, the team found the current tri-weekly schedule generates confusion and discourages many potential riders.
Other changes envisioned by the team in its report include a new regionalized food service menu, improvements in the signage and cleaning of stations, improved maintenance for the train’s coaches and a new marketing relationship with The Greenbrier, the resort in White Sulphur Springs.
The switch to daily service would see both the eastbound and westbound trains operate on their current time schedules.
The report envisions the switch to a seven-day schedule taking place in late 2011.
Amtrak projects that the change will cause ridership to nearly double, from 140,000 passengers yearly to 275,000. Implementing the change would cost an estimated $2.1 million, an outlay that would be more than offset by the anticipated increase in revenue.
Rep. Nick Rahall, D-W.Va., noted the proposed change “comes on top of record Amtrak ridership this year.”
“Southern West Virginians, from White Sulphur Springs to Huntington, have the highest hopes for the potential change that should improve efficiency and customer satisfaction,” Rahall said in a prepared statement.
“Amtrak is using its national network and partnering with some of our best minds in West Virginia to bring transportation and tourism together. We are looking forward to working with The Greenbrier, the Boy Scouts and all of our towns and development organizations to make this a big win for the region and for Amtrak.”
The Cardinal is a direct descendent of the George Washington, the premier passenger train operated by the former Chesapeake & Ohio Railway for nearly 40 years — from its maiden run in 1932 to the advent of Amtrak in 1971. Amtrak continued the train but renamed it.
Rechristened the Cardinal, the train was briefly discontinued in 1981. Three months later, after an intense lobbying effort by U.S. Sen. Robert C. Byrd, D-W.Va., and others, it was restored to the Amtrak schedule but on its current three-days-a-week basis rather than its previous daily service.
In addition to Huntington and Charleston, the West Virginia stations the Cardinal serves are Montgomery, Thurmond, Prince, Hinton, Alderson and White Sulphur Springs.
Copyright 2010 West Virginia Media. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
BruceMcF Reply:
December 14th, 2010 at 8:42 pm
Hurray, now Cincinnati will have a train each way between midnight and 6am every night of the week, instead of three times a week one way and three times a week the other.
D. P. Lubic Reply:
December 14th, 2010 at 8:57 pm
Your comment strongly echoes the sentiment a number of people have suggested–namely, proper service on a route like this should be, at minimum, a double-daily operation, with trains running about 12 hours apart. That way, reasonable arrival and departure times are available at all points on the schedule.
Of course, this concept would not apply to HSR, with its distance-shrinking speed and the potential for clock-scheduling that is closer in concept to the interval scheduling of a rapid-transit line.
Alon Levy Reply:
December 14th, 2010 at 9:30 pm
Clockface scheduling is far more common on low-speed lines. The Shinkansen and TGV both have clockface patterns, but it’s nothing as rigid as the ICs and ICEs in the German sphere. (None of those systems would ever think to schedule two trains a day on a major city pair.)
BruceMcF Reply:
December 15th, 2010 at 12:40 am
I’m not even so demanding. Alternate MWF and TRS schedules that allows sleeper service Cinci/Chicago and corridor service Cinci / Northern KY and WV ~ say, by starting the earlier service in DC rather than in NYC ~ would be nice.
Long routes can’t ever hit the “right” time for every substantial origin/destination pair, and if there is no demand to support 8 hour or 12 hour frequency, something has to be done to increase the diversity of transport markets that are tapped.
jim Reply:
December 15th, 2010 at 10:24 am
The Cardinal Report showed how difficult it is to make any changes to long distance trains. They considered half a dozen ways to change the train and discarded all of them. Terminate at Washington vice NY, terminate at Cincinnati vice Chicago, change the schedule to run through Cinci at better times, terminate at St. Louis vice Chicago (both directly from Cinci or via Indianapolis), split the train so that half goes to St. Louis and half to Chicago (split either at Cinci or Indy). All of them lose riders and/or money compared to the present route and schedule (though serving St. Louis and Chicago with the split at Cinci loses least and may get reconsidered).
The change from tri-weekly to daily will cost Amtrak significant bucks. They’ll lose another $6M/yr because of it. The Report tries to soften the loss by considering the Hoosier State combined with with the Cardinal: since the Cardinal will run daily, the Hoosier State won’t be needed, so its $4M/yr loss is avoided. But the Hoosier State’s losses would have gone away in 2013 anyway thanks to PRIIA (either Indiana would have paid or the train been canceled). And the Report spins: it may lose more money, but it’ll lose less per passenger-mile!
The fundamental problem with the train is it doesn’t generate revenue. Revenue from all sources, fares, accommodation, food and drink, was 15 cents a passenger-mile. Amtrak isn’t yet paying people to ride this train, but it’s coming awful close. And passengers can’t pay more. The Report says they’re going to change the food service menu to add “selections for those traveling on limited budgets.” That’s one of the reasons not to terminate in Washington. These passengers can’t afford Acela.
Alan F Reply:
December 15th, 2010 at 7:43 pm
I think one of the reasons Amtrak wants to go daily with the Cardinal is because then the Hoosier State Chicago-Indianapolis service won’t be dependent on Indiana coming up with the state subsidy in 2013. Indianapolis to Chicago is at a prime distance for a high frequency corridor service, but Indiana is not a strong supporter of passenger rail at the moment. If Illinois is successful with the Chicago to St. Louis corridor improvements and the other current Chicago hub corridor services also see marked increases in ridership, in part due to higher gas prices, then Indiana may eventually shift towards getting serious about working towards a multiple daily train Chicago – Indianapolis corridor service with the track upgrades needed to get it to decent run times. By keeping the current daily Chi-Ind service going, slow as it currently is, Amtrak leaves the options open for future improvements.
As for the projected extra $2 million operating loss, the report is probably over conservative on the increase in ridership for daily service so the loss may not be that much. The Cardinal will benefit in increased sleeper capacity when the Viewliner 2 baggage dorm cars and maybe even adding a sleeper car become available, which will boost revenue, but those are at least 3 years away. The Cardinal really needs more reliable on-time performance and at least some improvements in the overall trip times, but beyond the proposed changes in the report, those are ways off too. The Cardinal doesn’t need HSR, but decent speed rail will do.
BruceMcF Reply:
December 15th, 2010 at 10:43 pm
Yeah, you’d have to ticket through to NYC on the Regional, since the incremental price is $30 less than the regional DC/NYC fare.
Three Hoosier State schedules leave Indianapolis and return the same day. One leaves Chicago the evening and returns the next morning, which is when the Cardinal has a one day layover plus regular schedule gap at Chicago, so assuming that is the train that came in as the Cardinal doing that …
A 28 hour schedule is always awkward, the three day schedule just makes it worse if the extra day to line up the service :
Arrive Chi 10:05A Mon1, Depart Chi 5:45P Mon1 / 7:20
Arrive Ind 11:50P Mon1, Depart Ind 6:00A Tue1 / 6:10
Arrive Chi 10:05A Tue1, Depart Chi 5:45P Tue1 / 7:20
Arrive NYC 9:45P Wed1, Depart NYC 6:45A Fri1 / 9:00
Arrive Chi 10:05A Sat1, Depart Chi 5:45P Sat1 / 7:20
Arrive NYC 9:45P Sun1, Depart NYC 6:45A Wed2 / 9:00 +2day
Arrive Chi 10:05A Thu2, Depart Chi 5:45P Thu2 / 7:20
Arrive NYC 9:45P Fri2, Depart NYC 6:45A Sun2 / 9:00 +1day
The idea of the DC split is that a train with a long layover at NYC, you split the train at DC, part of the train continues on to NYC hauled by the electric locomotive, the other part turns around and runs as an evening departure out of DC. A 10pm departure DC is 7am at Charleston WV, 11am at Cinci, 4pm Indianapolis, 8pm Chicago. 6am departure from Chicago is 8am in DC, to rejoin the NYC set at 11am in DC.
Now just one service along a schedule like that a week sucks, but with that kind of schedule, one set can do two Chi/NYC on the current schedule and one Chi/DC on the alternate schedule. So the idea would be to pair that with a second set that is running two Chi/NYC on the altenate schedule, and one Chi/DC on the current schedule, to get three of the current schedule Chi/DC, two extending to NYC, and three of the alternate schedule Chi/DC, two extending to NYC.
The problem is reliability. Leave Chicago too early in the morning hurts ridership. But if the rejoin in DC is too tight, it risks a delay in KY or WV cascading into the DC / Western VA service. Slide the NYC departure later in the morning to open up slack on the rejoin, then the risk of missing connections in Chicago increases. OTP is under 40%, so it doesn’t look like a high reliability path.
jimsf Reply:
December 15th, 2010 at 7:13 am
FYI yes thy are ordering more sleepers, viewliner derivatives I believe, as wel as more baggage cars.
jimsf Reply:
December 15th, 2010 at 7:15 am
and dining cars.
wu ming Reply:
December 15th, 2010 at 10:32 am
o don’t start that again! ;-)
James Fujita Reply:
December 15th, 2010 at 12:55 pm
He’s worried Japanese snack cart girls will take over ;-)
jimsf Reply:
December 15th, 2010 at 4:46 pm
no!!!
D. P. Lubic Reply:
December 15th, 2010 at 4:59 pm
Hey, she’s cute!! (Don’t tell my wife I said that!) :-)
jimsf Reply:
December 15th, 2010 at 7:23 am
amtrak has just recetnly been able to move from 30 years of starvation/survival mode, into growth and brighter future mode due to a major shift in attitude from the top and recent public demand and support from washington and states for increased rail service ( despite what republicans and tea partiers might have you believe)
ITs only recently that amtrak has been able to even consider growth and improvement over basic survival. Internally this is the focus now and many of the ideas are things that employees and passengers have known and advocated for years. Nice to see washington and management finally catching up.
jimsf Reply:
December 15th, 2010 at 7:28 am
in addition to new orders here’s some info on the current fleet
and
<iAmtrak seeks bids for 130 new Viewliner 2 cars
For those who believe Amtrak is neglecting long distance trains.
Amtrak intends to issue a competitive Request for Proposal for a vendor to design, manufacture and deliver 130 “Viewliner 2” Long Distance Single-Level Passenger Cars, with an option for Amtrak to purchase up to an additional 70 cars. The “Viewliner 2” rolling stock which is fully described in the Technical Specifications, will be used as Amtrak passenger trains, primarily in long-distance service, but capable of operating anywhere within Amtrak’s system. There are four (4) “Viewliner 2” car types: Diners, Sleepers, Baggage-Dorms and Baggage cars. The “Viewliner 2” cars will be modeled on the concept of the Amtrak “Viewliner 1” cars
jimsf Reply:
December 15th, 2010 at 7:38 am
How might this relate to the initial segment being used in the interim while waiting for full built out…
AASHTO Press Release
Tony Dorsey
(202) 624-3690
Tuesday, August 31, 2010
First Rail Car Specs Approved for High-Speed Rail Initiative
The first specifications for bi-level coach, dining, baggage, and business class rail cars to be constructed under the government’s High-Speed and Intercity Passenger Rail program have been approved. At its Executive Board meeting today in Washington, DC, the Next Generation Equipment Committee gave the green light to specifications for a bi-level passenger rail car that can be used up to speeds of 125 mph. Bi-level cars have room for passengers on two levels.
“This decision,” said the Committee’s Chairman Bill Bronte, rail director for the California DOT, “is an important first step towards creating a pipeline of passenger rail equipment that will be needed over the coming decades. By providing a generic specification for rail equipment, the Committee is creating a level playing field for U.S. manufacturers and creating a strong incentive for the expansion of the U.S. rail equipment manufacturing industry.” California currently operates earlier models of the bi-level car on three intercity rail corridors in the state.
U.S. Department of Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood said of today’s milestone, “As part of the Obama Administration’s focus on maximizing manufacturing opportunities, these first-ever uniform standards will provide an unprecedented opportunity for manufacturers in the U.S. – from rails to wheel bearings, to final assembly – to build a strong, stable manufacturing base.”
“This clears the tracks and provides strong direction so Amtrak and states can move forward with modern bi-level equipment designed with updated passenger comfort, conveniences, and safety features to meet the ever-increasing demand for more rail service,” said Amtrak President and CEO Joseph Boardman.
The Committee was established by Congress in January to “design, develop specifications for, and procure standardized next-generation corridor rail equipment.” Any state using federal funds for its high-speed and intercity passenger rail program must use equipment that meets these specifications.
The specifications approved today were recommended by the Technical Subcommittee of the full Committee, which included many representatives of rail equipment manufacturers. Members of the Executive Board include 11 state departments of transportation, the Federal Railroad Administration, and Amtrak. AASHTO is acting as the secretariat for the Committee on behalf of the state DOTs. By law, the Committee is a collaboration of states, the Federal Railroad Administration, Amtrak, rail equipment manufacturers, and others in the rail industry.
The Committee began its work in January and set as its first-year objectives completing specifications for a bi-level car, a single-level car, and a diesel-electric locomotive, all qualified for speeds up to 125 mph. The Committee will next address specifications for higher-speed equipment, and the development of a procurement strategy to be used by the states and Amtrak that will link the demand and supply. This would guarantee that equipment is available at the best possible price and that the equipment manufacturing industry will have the dependable market to justify investment for long-term production.
The American Reinvestment and Recovery Act (ARRA) provided $8 billion in funding for high-speed and intercity passenger rail. The Passenger Rail Investment and Improvement Act of 2008 (PRIIA) authorized $1.9 billion over five years for grants to states and required that states develop a comprehensive rail plan for both passengers and freight. It also required the FRA administrator to develop a long-range national rail plan. Additionally, federal funding in both FY 2009 ($2.9 billion) and FY2010 ($2.5 billion) was allocated for high-speed and intercity passenger rail programs.
The final specifications and additional information on the Next Generation Equipment Committee (also referred to as the Section 305 Committee from the PRIIA legislation) can be found at http://www.highspeed-rail.org/Pages/Section305Committee.aspx.
For more information on the High-Speed Rail program, go to http://www.highspeed-rail.org.
jimsf Reply:
December 15th, 2010 at 7:58 am
For more information and details than you could ever want to know about the the upcoming thrid generation of california cars designed for 125mph corridor operation, right down to carpets and curtains, look here
Joey Reply:
December 15th, 2010 at 8:54 am
Looks like they aren’t planning any weight reduction from the current fleet…
BruceMcF Reply:
December 15th, 2010 at 10:25 am
They couldn’t done, its designed to comply with all applicable Federal regulations, and weight hog regulations still apply.
The Express HSR carbody will be the first one that to tackle the issue of steel frame construction with four tons extra crush impact zones, car end reinforcemet and etc.
Doors at lower level, roll-on, roll-off at 1’6″ (~457mm).
German news reports today that gasoline prices are at an all time high. As oil grows more and more difficult to recover from the ground the price will go higher and higher.
http://www.kmph-kfre.com/Global/story.asp?S=13673635
Fresno’s first chance to get slapped in the fact by CHSRA. Get in line Fresno, lots of cities councils passing resolutions giving CHSRA their friendly advice. Lots of out of work high speed rail engineers in Fresno I guess…
Walter Reply:
December 15th, 2010 at 1:59 am
Fresno’s on board with the project. Unlike the goons in the PCC towns, Fresno will not declare war and pass a resolution to express their lack of confidence in the project if engineers from Chowchilla, Truckee or Los Angeles are hired. If you mean to compare this to any of the Peninsula cities’ “friendly advice,” the comparison doesn’t hold a drop of water. That’s the difference between supporters with real input and obstructionists whose attempts to undermine the project go under the guise of “input.”
Donk Reply:
December 15th, 2010 at 5:36 am
Maybe the Atherton and Menlo Park city councils should pass a resolution demanding that the local NIMBYs build the rail line thru their cities.
Jeff Carter Reply:
December 15th, 2010 at 9:37 am
They are not interested in facts or accurate information. They want to present HSR as ugly and intrusive as possible, ‘A 60 to 80 foot high; 80 to100 foot wide freeway through the middle of the peninsula.’
The fact is that the Caltrain ROW is off limits to the public, fenced off in many places and more fencing will go up as funding becomes available. So how does this *not* divide the community?
They also cite the high cost of HSR, yet they are advocating the most costly (tunnel) alternative.
Is this ‘tunnel or nothing’ stance being driven by land speculation?
The issue of freeing up/developing the land occupied by the Caltrain tracks has been discussed at Burlingame City Council Meetings. This is rather ironic being that developing this land above their proposed train tunnel would most likely require removal of the trees that an elevated HSR will “cut down.”
The system can be designed to be grade separated without the ugly freeway structure that people so much despise. The system could be at grade or elevated and be aesthetically pleasing, if they choose to work with the HSRA instead of against (suing) it.
Here is an example of a grade separation at Hillcrest in Millbrae that was built to accommodate 4 tracks, that did not destroy thousands of homes or trees, that has not blocked driveway access to homes and businesses for 400 feet on each side of the tracks, that did not raise the tracks, that did not require shoo-fly tracks.
Prior to the Grade separation this was a fire lane/pedestrian walkway to access the Bayside Manor neighborhood in Millbrae.
Click here: 600 hemlock Millbrae CA – Google Maps
Here are some measurements that I took at this location:
——–Aviador——–
204.5 feet (center of street)
=====Caltrain tracks==== 4 track bridge 72 feet wide
190.5 feet (center of street)
——–Hemlock——-
Total width: center of Aviador to center of Hemlock = 466 Feet
This is the example that should be used to examine grade separations for the HSR/Caltrain line.
They should also ask if the communities of Belmont and San Carlos have been “destroyed” since the grade separation berm was put up.
A resident of Belmont spoke at the December 2, 2010, JPB meeting that since the berm was put up Caltrain is quieter (no horns), traffic congestion on the cross streets has been freed up significantly, there have been no accident/fatalities, and the earth has not opened up and swallowed Belmont.
Jeff Carter Reply:
December 15th, 2010 at 9:41 am
http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&geocode=&q=600+hemlock+Millbrae+CA&sll=37.0625,-95.677068&sspn=45.553578,57.744141&ie=UTF8&hq=&hnear=600+Hemlock+Ave,+Millbrae,+San+Mateo,+California+94030&ll=37.602767,-122.391057&spn=0,0.000881&t=h&z=20&layer=c&cbll=37.602901,-122.390885&panoid=CNOYwaEU6MjF-daz3IBw_Q&cbp=12,29.56,,0,5
As I was perusing the 1 year continuing resolution being proposed, I couldn’t help but notice the disparity between the war funding level of $160 billion and the HSR funding level of $1 billion. That pretty much shows where our priorities are. I wonder what the figures are for China?
RT
Peter Reply:
December 15th, 2010 at 7:45 am
How many wars is China fighting?
Matthew Reply:
December 15th, 2010 at 9:34 am
Well, China spends around $78 billion per year on the military: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_budget_of_China
the second largest in the world after the US, and similar as a proportion of its total economy.
China is estimated to spend a total of $300 billion by 2030 on high speed rail: http://www.solarfeeds.com/the-green-leap-forward-/12404-a-look-at-chinas-high-speed-rail-investments
which works out to about $15 billion per year. That is a much higher proportion of GDP per year, and their construction costs are generally much lower. There is a real human cost to their labor policies, but the net result is that they will build much more than the US over the same time period.
RubberToe Reply:
December 15th, 2010 at 10:57 am
So 15/78 is roughly 20%. If the US put 20% of just the war budget ($160 B), let alone the entire military budget toward HSR, you are looking at $32 Billion. In one single year that would be enough money to complete Phase 1 of California HSR. If each $1B invested generated 10,000 jobs, then you are looking at 320,000 jobs. The taxes they pay on their $100,000 yearly wages would offset the spending by 25%, which the Feds would get back in taxes.
Oh Well.
BruceMcF Reply:
December 15th, 2010 at 10:28 am
1 world war on all fronts, but its a trade war, and they are fighting it with discounted exchange rates, razor thin profit margins, and slack regulation on the books, widely unenforced. Thousands of workers killed and injured each year and millions of consumers in China consuming unsafe products are among the front line soldiers in the fight {strains of a patriotic Chinese song rise in the background}
jimsf Reply:
December 15th, 2010 at 4:54 pm
razor thin profit margins, and slack regulation on the books, widely unenforced. Thousands of workers killed and injured each year and millions of consumers in China consuming unsafe products are among the front line soldiers in the fight much like the US when it was first becoming an industrial superpower to be fair. Not that I condone it But it is pretty much the way things are always done thoughout history. A nation is young, and gung ho and willing to sacrifice everything for success and national pride, then later on they become civilized and get a conscience, then after that they get fat and lazy, then after that, hey get their asses kicked by the new kids on the block. (Or to quote Mike Brady, “when we tattle on others, we’re really just tattling on ourselves” lol)
BruceMcF Reply:
December 15th, 2010 at 10:49 pm
Oh, yeah, China is right smack in the middle of Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle.
Gas prices are the thing that could actually be the “savior” of the California HSR system…
A couple recent events/trends don’t bode too well for HSR: 1) The recent budget compromise cutting yearly HSR funding to $1 billion, which could very well be zeroed by the next congress, 2) The Republican tilt at the federal level, many of whom completely dismiss all rail transit as a boondoggle, 3) State budget problems in California, which could even prevent pro-HSR governor Jerry Brown from following up on his support for HSR.
The one thing that is pretty much out of anyone’s ability to control is oil prices. Should oil prices start climbing like Robert postulates, the HSR case becomes more compelling. Any train travel actually, even regular Amtrak service. One can only hope that the effect of rising oil prices on the HSR debate can more than counteract the opposing forces, and that the project can actually get underway with substantial construction starting in 2012. I believe I saw a September 2012 date mentioned in the Bakersfield paper.
If we are laying tracks in September 2012, and gas is $5 per gallon, eventual build out of the system would be unstoppable IMHO.
RT
Anyone here have any sense for how the funding affects the project timeline in the short term? Currently we have around $4B to start building in the CV in 2012, and will probably get $500M more + CA match, so like $1B more next year. Construction isn’t starting until (end of?) 2012, and there are still a lot of engineering issues to figure out and lawsuits to resolve on many of the other segments, so I would guess that it wouldn’t be possible to start construction on much of the line until 2013 or later anyway.
So would it really make a difference if $30B were to fall out of the sky tomorrow, vs if we get a trickle of funds for the next couple years. It would be nice to see some sort of project staging chart from CAHSRA where they chart how many dollars they need in each year to keep the project moving along.
synonymouse Reply:
December 15th, 2010 at 9:44 am
Hand-wringing over “peak oil” is laughable and flippant by comparison to the foremost crisis of the day, which is sovereign debt. In fact the possibility of real hostilities breaking out in either the Far East or the Middle East is more dangerous and likely than oil prices escalating off the chart. Remember the arab oil embargo was a failure.
You should focus your attention on Sacramento not Riyadh. Jerry Brown is blowing off about how the deficit is much worse than he ever thought. He always did have a reality contact problem. What do you think mega-Meg was saying for 2 years. Jerry is wasting his time telling the school administrators to prepare for a rough ride when he should be telling that to his base in the teachers’ union.
No doubt now that in the spring there will be a major tax increase on the ballot and it will be a watershed as momentous as the passage of Prop 13. And clearly a symbolic referendum on Prop 1A. This will be a memorable plebiscite and the party machine will try to enroll the business elite but you have to know that Silicon Valley(Meg too)will be undercutting its own future if it jumps on the piig bandwagon.
A tax levy defeat will pressure PB to carry the dumb-down way beyond the detour and bring this whole scheme down to an incremental fully Amtrak-compatible quasi-TEE.
BruceMcF Reply:
December 15th, 2010 at 10:33 am
Sovereign debt: no sovereign nation has ever been forced to default on debt denominated in its own currency.
Peak oil: The US has experienced three oil price shocks since 1970, each accompanied by a recession, with the largest oil price shock accompanied by the Bush Recession, the deepest and longest lasting recession since the Great Depression breaking the records established by the Reagan recession that accompanied the second largest oil price shock.
And commodity markets confronted with growing demand and stagnant or declining supply tend to have more volatile prices ~ unlike the first two oil prices shocks, the most recent one and the ones to come in the decade ahead require no cartel behavior on the part of oil producers.
So, yeah, something which has never bitten anybody is far more to be feared than something that has already bitten us three times, with increasing severity.
wu ming Reply:
December 15th, 2010 at 10:40 am
it’s hilarious how off in a dream-world you are, syn. sadly, you’re not even much use as a foil anymore. please up the quality of your trolling. right now you sound like the anti-flouride people.
synonymouse Reply:
December 15th, 2010 at 2:29 pm
Sovereign debt: the big piig, Spain, is in trouble. Will the Euro hold together is way more important than what the sheiks in OPEC decree.
Recessions: Ronnie Reagan’s was on purpose – to break back the unions and drive down interest rates. Are you going to claim that 1929 was caused by high oil prices? Think overproduction and bubbles.
In all likelihood a Republican President will land in office in 2012. Now what attitude do you think a Perry-Christie ticket would have toward federal financing of an hsr welfare project for the San Joaquin Valley that will go promptly go broke and plead for Amtrak takeover,
BruceMcF Reply:
December 15th, 2010 at 10:51 pm
Spain doesn’t have sovereign debt, since they do not have a sovereign currency: they are in the Eurozone. They are in the position of a US state, but a US state in the radical right winger wet dream of a Federal Government with no fiscal policy. And the reality of being in a confederation with no sovereign fiscal policy is nasty.
BruceMcF Reply:
December 15th, 2010 at 10:36 am
Its 2013-2014 that is more critical. If an infrastructure bank is established under terms that allows California to gain the federal funding it requires, it should be fine. With an infrastructure bank, $1b going ahead is not sufficient, $2.5b going ahead would require California to land the lion’s share of funding, $4b seems comfortable.
Higher gasoline prices doesn’t necessarily mean more need for trains.
Buses (even better if methane fueled) can relieve traffic and gasoline consumption at a much cheaper price than trains. Passenger trains are too expensive when you compare all the costs per passenger/mile. Unless you have enough demand to jampack a train every 4 minutes in each direction, the huge investment doesn’t provide enough benefits. Buses and airplanes (for faster trips) can do the job of decreasing private car use and gasoline consumption much more efficiently than passenger trains. Just leave trains for freight use, where they’re more efficient, as a recently article in the Economist has pointed out.
Alon Levy Reply:
December 15th, 2010 at 10:59 am
Methane fueled?
RG Reply:
December 15th, 2010 at 11:36 am
Yep! Methane!
http://www.impactlab.net/2009/02/05/oslos-methane-powered-buses/
Alon Levy Reply:
December 15th, 2010 at 7:45 pm
CNG pollutes less than gasoline, but contributes about the same amount to climate change. It’s not a huge game changer, especially not for intercity service.
RG Reply:
December 15th, 2010 at 11:00 am
Just some comparisons to prove my point above:
1 train car cost (capacity about 50 passengers) = $3 to 4 million
1 luxury bus (capacity about 50 passengers) = $300K
Cost of construction of high speed rail = over $50 million/mile (est.)
Cost of creating 2 diamond bus lanes (where necessary) on existing freeway lanes = Just few thousands of $$ to pay for cost of drawing diamonds on a mile of existing freeway lanes.
Cost of construction of 2 add’l diamond lanes (above median) = probably comparable to the cost of HSR/mile however such new construction would be needed only in limited segments inside congested metro areas.
Better and faster express bus service would relieve traffic and gas consumption at a much lower cost than your high speed trains. The capital (line construction and rolling stock) and operating costs of trains simply can’t compete with buses.
jimsf Reply:
December 15th, 2010 at 11:13 am
except that it wouldn’t because it would never generate the amount of ridership that rail would.
RG Reply:
December 15th, 2010 at 11:49 am
It doesn’t now because buses have to share the congested roads with cars, but if you had dedicated lanes where buses could zip through, the ridership would increase. Of course from LA to SF (and back) most people will still choose to fly, but if the purpose is to relieve road congestion buses are a much cheaper alternative to trains. High speed trains have had minimal impact on road congestion relief where they’ve been built. The main gains of HSR have been at the expense of air travel. But I don’t see big benefits of moving people from airplanes to trains. If you need to travel fast between LA to SF, air travel is a perfectly efficient way to do it. I don’t see the reason to spend billions of $$ to save people just one hour for distances under 250 miles. Buses could do the job for those distances very efficiently and at a much lower cost than both trains and private cars even in the event of increasing gasoline cost.
jimsf Reply:
December 15th, 2010 at 11:56 am
places like LA already have dedicated busways. and your statement about air travel between sf and la being “efficient” makes me realize that you’ve never had to actually do it. Its anything but efficient, and its unpleasant on a good day.
Further, you have to be able to think beyond terms of sf-la point a to poiint b. What hsr in cali does is something altogther new and different. It offers a hybrid of travel options. The point being to connect the state together. Some people don’t grasp what it means. But its total game changer for how we live and work in cali. You either get it or you don’t. I don’t have time to explain it.
RG Reply:
December 15th, 2010 at 1:15 pm
I do travel between LA and SF via air on a monthly if not weekly basis.
It may not be as pleasant as before 9/11, but I doubt I’d switch from planes to HSR even when it’s built (if it’s built), unless they can guarantee a lower price than flying (since the time of travel can’t be less). I doubt they can do that. The experience I had with high speed rail is that it’s significantly more expensive than US airfares. They can certainly steal passengers from European flights, which are often outrageously expensive on short hauls, but I’m not sure they can do so here, where you can find $50 flights (o/w) from LA area to SF area any day, provided you purchase at least 7 day in advance (check Kayak.com or SWA if you don’t believe me).
jimsf Reply:
December 15th, 2010 at 2:46 pm
well I don’t know where you live but it takes me about 45 minutes to get to the airport on bart from my house, and another hour at the airport, ( termial time tsa time check in time boarding, and that being generaous) and then another hour in the air, ( and assuming the flight is on time and SFO is not fog delayed- and the numbers are the same if I use oakland which is equal distance)
So thats 2hours 45 minutes at best, meanwhile the 2:40 travel time on hsr matches that and hsr will be 7 blocks from my house.
thatbruce Reply:
December 15th, 2010 at 2:51 pm
You left off HSR arriving in downtown LA, instead of in the midst of excessive traffic congestion (LAX), which results in more time savings if you’re doing city-center to city-center.
jimsf Reply:
December 15th, 2010 at 2:57 pm
oh yeah LAX (aiport) no one want to pick me up there. and there is no way to get from LAX on my own to say, LBC/LBG (long beach… and I don’t remember which one is the airport and which one is ours)
So I have to fly into long beach john wayne. ( the airport not the actor) if I’m going to the OC.
I think we all know what the OC means.
Paulus Magnus Reply:
December 15th, 2010 at 6:30 pm
Why not fly into Burbank/Bob Hope? Don’t they have a Metrolink connection at the airport?
jimsf Reply:
December 15th, 2010 at 6:38 pm
But Im usually headed for long beach or newport. ( beach not connecticut) Not to mention flying then plus metrolink would make the trip so long I might as well just take amtrak direct for free at that point.
I did use amtrak from riverside to san francisco recently and it was a very nice trip actually.
jimsf Reply:
December 15th, 2010 at 2:48 pm
and on the east coast, acela has stolen a big share from the airlines and the fares are comparable. I did a price comparison already in another thread.
Paulus Magnus Reply:
December 15th, 2010 at 12:01 pm
Even zipping through, busses will only manage about sixty miles per hour top speed and they will frequently need to leave those lanes and exit the freeway to embark/disembark passengers, which will kill your average speed. Quite frankly, Metrolink has both higher peak and average speeds than any express bus system ever could, the same goes for extant intercity rail.
As for not seeing the big benefits of moving people from airplanes to trains: An eighth of total passenger fuel consumption in the United States is consumed by air travel. LAX-SFO in particular is one of the busiest air corridors in the United States. It is a tremendous reduction in fuel consumption and pollution creation to transfer those flights to electric rail.
BruceMcF Reply:
December 15th, 2010 at 12:36 pm
HSR trains are intercity travel, so of course the only congestion relief they bring is when existing intercity transport corridors are congested. But, of course, California will be on the hook for a bigger roadwork cost to cope with projected population growth and the intercity transport that will follow than the cost of the HSR corridor.
And bus financial operating costs understate their cost to the state, since the depreciation imposed by heavy vehicles on the asphalt is cross-subsidized by cars ~ though since as a country we have $100b annual highway depreciation and $40b on highway maintenance and rehabilitation, most of that cost is directly imposed in terms of degraded roadways rather than paid for.
As far as Express HSR not taking any intercity car transport off the road, the sources of patronage for the first year of the Madrid – Seville were:
- Induced Demand 34%
- Plane 26%
- Car 24%
- Train 13%
- Bus 3%
… which would be with driving costs below what they will be when the CHSR opens in 2020, so there is every reason to expect the air mode shift to be met with a similar number of passengers from a car mode shift.
Ben Reply:
December 15th, 2010 at 1:47 pm
“But I don’t see big benefits of moving people from airplanes to trains. If you need to travel fast between LA to SF, air travel is a perfectly efficient way to do it.”
Sorry, try again. SFO is the most delayed airport for the year-to-date (http://www.bts.gov/programs/airline_information/airline_ontime_tables/2010_10/html/table_04.html). Additionally, a Delta Connection flight from SFO – LAX had the worst on-time arrival rate in the country in October.
“There was one route in September that was considered chronically delayed — more than 30 minutes late more than 50 percent of the time — for three consecutive months. That Delta Connection flight from San Francisco to Los Angeles was late more than 71 percent of the time in October.”
http://www.businessweek.com/ap/financialnews/D9JV8CHG0.htm
D. P. Lubic Reply:
December 15th, 2010 at 4:57 pm
“Buses could do the job for those distances very efficiently and at a much lower cost than both trains and private cars even in the event of increasing gasoline cost.”–RG
In theory, but not in the real world. The two-word reason is “ride quality.” Even the best buses I have been on are incredibly noisy, and on top of that the noise is of a particularly grating quality, usually sounding like they are at full power all the time. In addition to that, I have yet–yet!–to ride on a bus with a transmission that didn’t kick you in the back every time it shifted. You also feel every bump, and the whole bus rattles when you hit one as well. One writer who tries to “put lipstick on the pig” (I believe it was Randall O’Toole) has made comments that buses have had things like air suspension since 1953. I’ve got news for you; I rode some of those 1950s vintage buses, as well as their then-new replacements (both of vintage to have those air springs), in the 1970s, and some newer buses since then, and I can personally tell you, and the seat of my pants will tell you, a railway coach built in the 1880s (yes, that’s right, I’ve ridden 19th century equipment, and behind steam), trolleys from the 1920s, heavyweight coaches also from the 1920s, and modern trolleys and subway cars all ride better and sound better. Rail travel is simply so much more pleasant; there is just no topping it on the highway.
My experience suggests (but of course does not guarentee) that people who make such remarks have never been on a train, and think it rides like a bus.
thatbruce Reply:
December 15th, 2010 at 11:58 am
Caltrains tried the ‘just paint diamonds on existing freeway lanes’ back in 1976 on the Santa Monica Freeway (I-10). After the ensuring public relations disaster, they have since pursued a policy of constructing new lanes for the diamond lanes on freeways. This policy significantly increases the cost per mile of adding in new diamond lanes.
The costs for purchasing trains vs buses are, per passenger, roughly equivalent over the full lifetime of the vehicle. Trains do tend to last longer after all.
Now if you’re going to compare the costs of operating buses to the costs of operating trains, please also consider the reduced staffing costs for trains per passenger compared to buses (trains carry more people), the reduced usage in fuel per passenger per mile (trains may consume more fuel per mile, but again, carry more people than buses), and the benefits of having a dedicated corridor in which to operate, vs a shared corridor which can be congested outside the control of the bus operator.
thatbruce Reply:
December 15th, 2010 at 11:59 am
Heh. Caltrans.
Alan F Reply:
December 15th, 2010 at 8:40 pm
“1 train car cost (capacity about 50 passengers) = $3 to 4 million”
You either have not ridden in a train or only in first class cars with 2+1 seating. For the record, the capacity of the Amfleet I single level coach cars is 74 passengers, the Amfleet I business class cars is 60, the Acela business class cars is 64, and the California Amtrak bi-level cars is 90. All of the cars also have spare room for people in wheelchairs. The capacity of a 85 ft long train car, either single level or bi-level is a lot more than a bus.
For comfortable travel, passenger trains win handily over buses or airplanes. Try train travel sometime.
Paulus Magnus Reply:
December 15th, 2010 at 9:04 pm
Additionally, Amtrak’s latest Viewliner order puts the cost at 2.29 million per car. Metrolink’s new Rotem cars cost 2.35 million each and the additional ones purchased on option were 1.8 million, with I believe a capacity somewhere around 120-130 passengers.
Spokker Reply:
December 15th, 2010 at 9:09 pm
And with the Rotem cars, you can crash them into each other and kill way less people.
I’ve got an ad campaign idea for the FRA.
The Federal Railroad Administration: Try To Go Limp
James M. Reply:
December 16th, 2010 at 7:33 am
You can’t just take away lanes for carpools anymore. That was tried in the 1970′s, i believe, and there was a huge outcry at the loss of a travel lane. So, now any new carpool or “diamond” lanes will cost plenty, because there just isn’t room in the metro areas for extra lanes.
JimBo
Victor Reply:
December 15th, 2010 at 11:12 am
Buses aren’t seen as reliable transportation, Yet trains are, People do ride on Trains still and not just a dozen or so, As the Myth of the nearly empty train goes.
RG Reply:
December 15th, 2010 at 12:05 pm
Maybe not nearly empty but certainly underutilized in most instances. I’ve never had a problem finding a seat in a European high speed train, even when purchased at the last minute, and often the train was indeed half empty. High Speed train projects have cost billions in many countries and have a capacity of 1 train every 4 or 5 minutes per direction, yet they can hardly fill 2 trains per hour. The Barcelona-Madrid AVE features only a train every 30 minutes at peak time. That’s a lot of spare capacity for a line that cost billions of euros. And yet there was very little effect on road traffic, only air travel has been impacted negatively and has lost market share. So basically HSR primarily subsidizes people who would otherwise fly, i.e. primarily business travelers. Not a great use of taxpayers’ resources, if you ask me.
BruceMcF Reply:
December 15th, 2010 at 12:44 pm
Given the low operating to capital cost ratio of HSR, and the share of operating costs that are per train in service rather than per route mile, it makes commercial sense to have the trains sized for premium peak demand and keep the trains in motion.
They are not airplanes, after all, and do not have to burn fuel to keep from falling to the ground.
And since the cost/benefit of the Barcelona / Madrid line was evaluated based on ridership projections that the service has in fact exceeded, that means the spare capacity is pure economic wealth ~ economic wealth that you are arguing that California should deny to itself ~ allowing Spain to bring additional intercity transport capacity on line in response to a severe oil price shock on a time horizon of an order for new rolling stock, rather than requiring all new technology to respond to a surge in car to HSR mode shift.
Alon Levy Reply:
December 15th, 2010 at 7:42 pm
Which European trains have you been on? Some, like the ICE, are literally half empty, but the TGV fills up to 70%, not much lower than airlines; SNCF deliberately keeps load factors below 100%, in order to be able to guarantee seats for premium-fare walk-in customers. And far from requiring subsidies, the TGV is profitable enough to subsidize the money-losing low-speed intercity lines, and the first lines paid off their construction costs with operating profits ahead of schedule.
Joey Reply:
December 15th, 2010 at 7:49 pm
Most road traffic is intra-regional trips. Most air traffic is inter-regional. Guess which one HSR is designed to serve?
Paulus Magnus Reply:
December 15th, 2010 at 11:53 am
The big source of travelers for high speed rail is going to be those for whom speed is important, such as business travelers. Over long distances busses simply offer no competition at all with air and over short distances they are no faster than a private automobile. When it comes to commuting, trains are taken preferentially over cars while busses are taken out of necessity. There is simply no reason to think that “express busses” will make a meaningful impact upon driving or flying, while high speed rail has far better reason to think so.
RG Reply:
December 15th, 2010 at 1:23 pm
At the cost high speed rail is going to cost taxpayers (or commuter rail, which is heavily subsidized), they could subsidize luxury express buses to the point of being free for life. You think people wouldn’t use free bus transportation over commuting by car? Many would.
Paulus Magnus Reply:
December 15th, 2010 at 1:38 pm
Please post the numbers to back up your assertions, including the construction costs for bus depots and dedicated highway lanes, bus capital costs over a twenty year period, and O&M spending.
Ben Reply:
December 15th, 2010 at 1:53 pm
Don’t forget wages, saleries, and pensions for the drivers. Intercity bus travel between DC – NY actually has grown tremendously this past decade but I think most of the growth is induced demand created by very low fares rather than taking riders from Amtrak.
A luxury bus can hold about 75 passengers, whereas one high speed train can accomodate 300 passengers. You need five drivers for these buses to accomodate the number of passengers one train can carry. This same argument is applicable for the bus vs. streetcar debate in various cities.
Paulus Magnus Reply:
December 15th, 2010 at 2:19 pm
The relative expense of train tickets out East also helps the busses. A ticket for tomorrow on a Regional is about 33 cents per mile; on the Surfliner between LA-SD it is 24 cents. Switching from locomotive driven Amfleets to EMUs would allow a greater number of seats and thus prices to drop out in the Northeast however (as would bilevels, but I don’t know if they would necessarily fit; three feet doesn’t seem like it should be an issue however).
RG Reply:
December 15th, 2010 at 3:08 pm
What if you don’t have 300 passengers to fill a train every 5-10 minutes? One full high speed train every hour doesn’t certainly justify the capital investment required by high speed rail. A 10 car train set carries over 400 passengers. The capacity of high speed rail nowadays is a train every 4 minutes. If you have 400 passengers every 4 or 5 minutes in each direction, then I can justify the expense. But 400 passengers every 4-5 minutes means 70,000-90,000 passengers traveling in each direction on a 15 hour period. The current air traffic between LA and SF area airports is much less than 10,000 passengers per direction. Even if you took 50% of the entire air market and added an equivalentl number of people who switched from car use, plus another equivalent number of people due to induced demand, you’d have no more than 15,000 passengers per direction, i.e. just enough for 2 trains/hour per direction on a typical day, which is what AVE has between BCN and MAD.
jimsf Reply:
December 15th, 2010 at 3:22 pm
we arent building it for today hello. we are building it/a foundation to cover the next 20-100 years of growth
jimsf Reply:
December 15th, 2010 at 4:58 pm
and note that RG did not follow up on any of the rebuttals. Not the one about total travel time. Not the one about acela. Not the one about the fact that we are building for the future not for today. and not the one about whether his spending concerns apply across the board or just to something he doesn’t like in particular.
jimsf Reply:
December 15th, 2010 at 3:01 pm
can assume that your concern over costs and taxes applies equally to things such as the defense budget, medicare, social security, the highway trust fund and so forth? Or perhaps you’re one of those, never mind civilized society, it every man for himself folks.
Spokker Reply:
December 15th, 2010 at 9:01 pm
It sounds to me as if you are comparing an idealized bus scenario with a less than ideal rail scenario. Hey, I’m not trying to bust your balls because train nuts do it all the time, but that’s what I think you’re doing.
Bus scenario = least cost, most idealized situation you can imagine.
Train scenario = highest cost, least idealized situation you can imagine.
I ride buses all the time, from intercity to local lines, and it it’s fine with me. But the corridor between Los Angeles and San Francisco is prime rail territory
StevieB Reply:
December 15th, 2010 at 11:59 am
How often do you ride a bus? The average speed of a city bus is under 15mph. Intercity buses are uncomfortable cramped rides that leave you fatigued. You do not see suits on the bus. People will pay to travel faster and more comfortably if they are able to.
BruceMcF Reply:
December 15th, 2010 at 12:48 pm
And that is with linear routes on a circulator. The local bus route in this small town in NE Ohio is about 3/4 of a circle, and I can walk up Main Street when it leaves from the eastern end of its route and get to the western end of its route before the bus does. But its a well design circulator, and halfway through its route at the regional hospital, it connects to the interurban bus route which can make the trip to Kent slightly faster than I can ride on the bike trail during trail season (its a Xcountry ski trail at the moment, of course).
RG Reply:
December 15th, 2010 at 1:05 pm
You do not see suits on a bus
Obviously not on America’s Greyhound buses, which are a disgrace.
But have you ever traveled on the luxury intercity bus lines that are commonplace in Europe and also many parts of Latin America? I’ve traveled on those, and lots of well dressed people use them overthere. They are also very comfortable, way more than airplanes, and cheaper than any other mode of transportation.
Yes it’s true that people will pay extra to travel faster, but do you have enough demand to generate the volume necessary to justify the enormous capital costs associated with HSR? Probably not.
Paulus Magnus Reply:
December 15th, 2010 at 1:53 pm
Acela averages only 65 miles per hour between Boston and New York City. Nevertheless, it runs an operational profit and has a majority of the air/rail/bus market between the two cities. The same with NYC-DC, although it averages about 80 miles per hour there. Meanwhile, CAHSR will be averaging 164 miles per hour between LA and SF. It will most assuredly generate the necessary volume.
Oh, and just an idea (probably wasted since you are assuredly just trolling): If luxury busses were such a grand idea, why is it that there are hardly any between Los Angeles and San Diego, when they can ride through HOV lanes the whole way down, while the Pacific Surfliner has substantial ridership, averaging 650 passengers per train per day? Of course, that might have something to do with the Surfliner being half an hour faster and half the cost than a luxury bus ticket. And before you cry subsidy, the subsidy amounts to only eleven dollars per Surfliner passenger (a greater subsidy than Metrolink at $7 actually).
thatbruce Reply:
December 15th, 2010 at 2:44 pm
The HOV lanes are somewhat sparse between San Clemente and Del Mar (?) btw.
RG Reply:
December 15th, 2010 at 2:46 pm
The Surfliner is obviously heavily subsidized to be able to be half the price of a bus. The cost differential is obviously what causes the difference in ridership. As far as the travel time is concerned that has to do with the fact that buses currently have to share the same congested roads as cars. The HOV lane btwn SD and LA is only for a partial segment.
I don’t dispute that the train is nearly always faster than the bus, and I probably wouldn’t dispute the value of train service between LA and SD. The area is so heavily populated and congested that there is probably sufficient demand to sustain the existing train service. However the addition of HSR will cost billions and one has to consider cost/benefit analysis of such investment. Upgrading the existing rail line would probably do the trick at a much lower cost. But do we really need to spend billions to connect Palmdale or Bakersfield to LA so that people can save a few minutes? I doubt it. The demand for intercity train service between the central valley and the LA/SF areas is not sufficient to justify the investment and the existing air service between LA/SF is perfectly fine if you don’t mind a little enhanced pat down once in a while.
jimsf Reply:
December 15th, 2010 at 3:04 pm
how many more times are you going to mention that it will costs billlions? everyone already knows that. They know that when they voted for 10 billion in bonds towards the 40 billion project. So yes, it will cost billions and so ??? Expanding freeways will cost billions too and so will adding ariport capacity. I mean freakin SFO has been under perpetual construction since I first saw it in the late 60s.
Jon Reply:
December 15th, 2010 at 3:30 pm
“But do we really need to spend billions to connect Palmdale or Bakersfield to LA so that people can save a few minutes? I doubt it.”
“The demand for intercity train service between the central valley and the LA/SF areas is not sufficient to justify the investment and the existing air service between LA/SF is perfectly fine if you don’t mind a little enhanced pat down once in a while.”
These are all just opinions, without any attempt to back them up with facts. You are of course entitled to your opinions, and we are entitled not to care.
Bret Reply:
December 15th, 2010 at 3:41 pm
what do you consider “a few minutes”? There is currently no train service between Bakersfield and LA. The only way to connect the two currently is either Amtrak bus or to drive yourself. During the winter, the Grapevine pass can be closed due to snow. Given the traffic in LA, the average commute from Bakersfield to LA (Union Station) is nearly 2 hours vs. 54 minutes on HSR…seems to me that the cost of the connection from Bakersfield to Palmdale is worth the “few extra minutes”
Caelestor Reply:
December 15th, 2010 at 3:48 pm
2:40-3:00 of relaxing on the train beats 7 to 8 hours of driving personally.
synonymouse Reply:
December 15th, 2010 at 4:23 pm
The reason there is no train service over the Loop is not just due to lack of passenger traffic but also because it is not the proper north-south route. It is the wrong side of the mountain like BART to SFO via Daly City.
We would be better off with Rafael’s at grade crosssing of Tejon.
The CHSRA is a meandering BART writ large and it will require a walloping BART-sized subsidy. Do you think Jerry knows that?.
political_incorrectness Reply:
December 15th, 2010 at 7:53 pm
*yawn*
Paulus Magnus Reply:
December 15th, 2010 at 3:30 pm
Total costs of the Surfliner route are $107.2 million in FY 2010. With 2,613,604 riders, that means the true ticket cost is $41 to break even (for an average trip, not necessarily LA-SD) while the average ticket price actually paid is $18.9. Sorry, but that $68 bus ticket isn’t going to be magically cheaper once subsidies are removed. Keep in mind of course that the bus itself is being subsidized with those lanes and gas taxes being artificially low.
A better consideration is that the per passenger mile loss to Amtrak with state subsidy is 14.3 cents per passenger mile. Figuring backwards from the total amount of money (30.9 million) is that there is 216 million passenger miles. At a total cost to run the trains of 107.2 million and current ridership, the unsubsidized passenger mile cost is 50 cents per passenger mile which makes it 64 dollars between Los Angeles and San Diego, still cheaper than your luxury bus, although only by a few dollars.
thatbruce Reply:
December 15th, 2010 at 3:39 pm
For all of your posts in the last few hours, you haven’t actually understood the information that people are supplying you with. However, you haven’t yet embarked into pseudo conspiracy theories like our favorite rodent troll, so we’re quite happy to pay out a little rope.
I don’t dispute that the train is nearly always faster than the bus, and I probably wouldn’t dispute the value of train service between LA and SD. The area is so heavily populated and congested that there is probably sufficient demand to sustain the existing train service.
Excellent. Now just make that shift from one heavily populated area south of LA to another heavily populated area north of LA, and you’ve got three heavily populated areas with sufficient travel demand between them to justify the investment, to say nothing of the moderately populated areas that the HSR will also service between LA and SF (some currently served by existing rail service), and LA and SD (passing through some areas not currently served by rail).
However the addition of HSR will cost billions and one has to consider cost/benefit analysis of such investment.
Yes. A cost/benefit analysis was presented to the voters of California in November 2008, and approved. It is cheaper than building the equivalent number of freeway miles and runways that will be required to meet travel requirements between the cities served at the point in time when the system will come fully online.
Upgrading the existing rail line would probably do the trick at a much lower cost.
In the case of the LOSSAN corridor between LA and SD, that is already being undertaken in an incremental fashion by the commuter agencies who own the bulk of the line.
In the case of LA to SF, the rails are owned by freight companies who do not have passenger transport as their primary business, have 19th century routings that are not conducive to higher speeds (curves etc), and operate trains and equipment that do not play nicely with the lighter weight equipment required for higher speeds. This also doesn’t go into how much capacity on a low-speed corridor is consumed by higher speed operations (Clem or Richard can expand on that with varying degrees of politeness ;) ), which would be to the detriment of the normal operations of said freight operators.
Certainly we’d like to see more frequent passenger rail service along those corridors, even at their current slow speeds, but the political reality is that the host railroads are extremely resistive to increased service, and the state government is also resistive to increasing the funding for these services.
But do we really need to spend billions to connect Palmdale or Bakersfield to LA so that people can save a few minutes?
Palmdale to LA can be a 2 hour drive. Bakersfield to LA is frequently longer. The ‘few’ minutes saved in those two cases would be more than 60.
the existing air service between LA/SF is perfectly fine if you don’t mind a little enhanced pat down once in a while.
The frog also doesn’t mind if you slowly turn up the heat under its pot of water, but if a ‘little enhanced pat down’ is your cup of tea, there are a number of clubs catering to that.
James Fujita Reply:
December 15th, 2010 at 3:39 pm
In my experience, Europeans are good dressers in general (the same goes for Japanese). I don’t know if Americans are casual dressers or if our first-world friends dress up; but the effect is essentially the same. I see it on airplanes, on trains and on airport commuter buses.
They may also be more accepting of these long-distance buses because they link up well with the subway trains they ride to get to the bus terminal.
Jon Reply:
December 15th, 2010 at 12:27 pm
The great advantage of rail over buses is that trains can go faster than cars, and buses can’t. Even if there were express lanes for the whole route, and no stops other than your boarding and off-boarding point, you’d save at most 1 hour over driving on SF-LA. Probably not even that, as a bus would have to stick to 65mph where as most cars will drive 80mph on I-5. Add the time it takes to get to and from the bus station and you’ve got no advantage over driving.
Sure it would reduce emissions to take the bus instead of driving, but in the real world people don’t chose their transportation based on how environmentally friendly it is. The main factors are speed, price and comfort, and HSR will score high on all these factors.
jimsf Reply:
December 15th, 2010 at 5:08 pm
The even better thing about a rail line verses a bus is that you get a lot more capacity and expandability. Buses are going to eventually get bogged down in increasing traffic, and then waiting for new lanes to be constructed. I dedicated passenger rail line can expand capacity much more easily. You can add cars to the train, you can buy trainsets that hold more people per car, you can run trains very close together at high speeds, Even if you have issues at the end points, you mitigate that moving forward as branch lines are added. The main trunk line though has huge amounts of capacity for the amount of space used. And adding track within an established row has got to be cheaper, easier and less intrusive than adding freeway lanes and rebuidling intersections.
With a two track trunk line down the valley, you could at some future point very easily add third and forth tracks with little effort. Then you are talking about enough capacity for at least 100 years, or until we finally get that transporter thing invented.
Bret Reply:
December 15th, 2010 at 3:36 pm
Even IF you could get a bus to do 80 mph and sustain it, you’re still talking a 6-7 hour drive between SF and LA. And don’t forget, this isn’t a HSR strictly between SF and LA, places like Bakersfield have very limited air service. If I wanted to fly to Sacramento or San Jose, I have to check into the airport 60-75 min. prior to the flight, fly to San Francisco, transfer planes, and continue my flight on to Sac or SJ. It’s going to be much faster to catch HSR and travel between cities than to rely on planes or High-Speed Buses.
BruceMcF Reply:
December 15th, 2010 at 10:53 pm
You do understand that its not the gasoline in particular, but all fuels that require a petroleum feedstock, including aviation kerosene? Shifting people from cars to short-hop planes does not eliminate the consumption of the petroleum, it just shifts the mix of the petroleum being burned.
off topic but to refresh my memory.. the ca hsr will basically run at 125 on the peninsula, 220 from san jose to bakersfield, how fast from BFD-PMD? and PMD-BUR? and then 124 from BUR-ANA?
and second, on local trains, will they hit top speed between city pairs such as MCD-FNO, actually, I guess the valley stops, even if they include hanford, are still spaced far enough that the trains will hit 220 yes?
nobody important Reply:
December 15th, 2010 at 11:55 am
We don’t really even know if its going to be 220. Those speeds were calculated using the Siemens Velaro specifications.Obviously it’s only a possibility that the Velaro will be used. I have a feeling its going to be greater than 220, with new trains that are even faster being developed. It just depends who wins the bid.
James Fujita Reply:
December 15th, 2010 at 12:07 pm
Pardon me for asking, but can we avoid using abbreviations like FNO, BFD, etc.? It’s not that hard to write out Fresno, Bakersfield and it’s easier to understand.
LAX, in my mind, is specifically the airport and not Union Station or any other location.
BruceMcF Reply:
December 15th, 2010 at 12:14 pm
(1) No, people type out the same thing repeatedly, then AFAICT they will start abbreviating. lolz. Given the topic, telegraph three letter codes are just going to stray in.
(2) However, I use LA-US, precisely because the LAX abbreviation is so widely used for the airport (see 1).
Jon Reply:
December 15th, 2010 at 2:42 pm
Jim does that because he works for Amtrak and those are Amtrak station codes. Yes, it’s confusing that Amtrak use LAX for Los Angeles Union Station.
jimsf Reply:
December 15th, 2010 at 2:54 pm
I use those codes all day long like a bazillion times so its just habit as all of us at work communicate that way… sorry ( just like we, and now the passengers also use “Slow” for SLO ( san luis obispo) and “Emmy” for EMY (emeryville) “Sack” for SAC or (sac) and San Juan for SNC ( san juan capitstrano not puerto rico lol) among others. I assumed being rail road supporters that every knew the codes. That’s MYB (mybad)
James Fujita Reply:
December 15th, 2010 at 3:25 pm
Excessive abbreviating is a bad habit, passed down from text messaging. There’s no reason to do it here. It’s not like you’re in a giant hurry to get your messages out (“must…. post… quickly… or brain… will explode”).
And no, we don’t all know the codes. I’m a rail supporter and I avoid codes; and not all of us are rail supporters.
Caelestor Reply:
December 15th, 2010 at 3:40 pm
I believe that you shouldn’t abbreviate if the abbreviation is not clear. Most of JimSF’s abbreviations are fine. Perhaps an update to the glossary would be good here?
jimsf Reply:
December 15th, 2010 at 5:16 pm
and some of those abbreviations are used by californians in general. ( this started in LA, way back when people first stated calling it that it didn’t catch on here until the 80s with the pretty awful “SF” which even I use now and hate myself for. though herb caen did often use “esseff” but in a serious way – mor to mock the use LA. but I digress. SAC is pretty common now. most of the codes are pretty obvious though. The LAX thing is confusing for obvious reasons. Ufnny how you can learn a whole nationwide system full of them in fairly short time though. Hey check this out- test your skill and have loads of fun.
wu ming Reply:
December 16th, 2010 at 12:34 am
hang around here long enough, and you’ll learn ‘em, if just b/c of jimsf’s use of them.
Somewhat off topic, but these figures help to explain how rail can be wonderfully efficient, even in a public-transit project. The link below is to an approved 2009 Washington, DC Metro budget (the latest year in which I could find both operating costs and passenger counts). The closest comparison in California might be the BART system.
http://www.wmata.com/about_metro/docs/FY2009_Approved_Budget.pdf
The most interesting pattern is that the Metrorail system (i.e., subway) carries 221 million riders per year, and cost an estimated $761 million per year to run, while the bus system carried 134 million riders and cost an estimated $500 million per year to run. That works out to $3.44 per passenger for rail and $3.73 for bus–and that is with the rail system having to work with the disadvantage of paying for its own right of way, with all its special signal equipment and automation, while the bus system runs on roads for which it does not pay.
Things get really interesting when you calculate net cost. The subway has a passenger revenue of $504 million per year, and the bus system has passenger revenue of almost $111 million. This reduces the rail and bus costs to $157 million and $389 million respectively; this translates to a subsidy cost per passenger of $0.71 for rail and $2.90 for bus! (WMATA figures for these ratios are somewhat different, $0.74 and $2.60 respectively, apparently including/excluding other costs and/or revenues.) And this is with the rail system still at that disadvantage of paying for its tracks, signals, special computers, and so on!
I’ll leave it to Bruce McF and Alon Levy, both of whom are much better at calculating and explaining such things than I am, to make further comments, criticisms, and corrections as warrented.
Have fun.
Spokker Reply:
December 15th, 2010 at 9:06 pm
Just playing devil’s advocate, but wouldn’t the counter-argument be that rail has a monopoly on the highest performing corridors and bus service carries the burden of carrying those in less-dense but transit-needy areas? Paratransit, for example, is wildly expensive to operate from a transit point of view, but it serves needy individuals.
I still think the train would be cheaper, but I think you have to compare Metrorail to a theoretical situation in which buses operate in place of Metrorail in order to make a fair comparison.
D. P. Lubic Reply:
December 16th, 2010 at 4:42 am
I would have to check a route map (which I haven’t done in the longest time), but I’m not entirely certain that is true in the Washington case. I seem to recall that the bus system still reflects the old trolley system, and in many places bus lines run parallel to the subway; having said that, I believe that with bus and rail under common management, the buses are often used as feeders to the rail system.
Speaking of parallel operations, one of the interesting things about the DC Metro is that there is a fair amount of mileage in which the subway is actually on the surface, and running next to CSX, NS, and Amtrak rights-of-ways, in some cases even sharing the right-of-way and even with joint connecting stations, all high-level by the way on both Metro and conventional rail (Union Pacific, take note). If you could open up the windows, passengers could shake hands between MARC trains and Metro trains on the CSX line to Rockville. Ride the line out to New Carrolton, Md. (joint Metro-Amtrak station, also all high level), and there is a chance you’ll see an Amtrak train whiz past your Metro train at 100 mph (speed limit signs on the Amtrak catenary). You also notice this line has a roller-coaster profile in places as it jumps over freight spurs from both the NEC and a connecting CSX line near the power plant at Benning (at least that’s where I think the power plant is, can anyone correct or confirm the location?)