Now that Joe Biden has said that he won't run for president, it's time to reconsider one of the issues that Biden has always pushed: rail travel in the USA. The federal government still subsidizes Amtrak with about a billion dollars per year. In its forty plus years of existence, Amtrak has never come close to breaking even. Train service in the Northeast corridor (Washington to Boston) is profitable, but none of the other lines make money. Some of the cross country passenger lines have so little ridership that the number of passengers could be multiplied by twenty and the line would still lose money.
On top of the operating subsidy, there is also federal money that has been earmarked for support of high speed rail service in various markets across the country. High speed rail lines were one of president Obama's "big" economic ideas. There were to be high speed lines in Ohio, Illinois, Texas, California and elsewhere. One by one, most of the states where the lines were to be built rejected the idea as way too costly and most likely to fail. Only in California did the high speed train get full support, but even there, the portion of the line that is being built (from Bakersfield to Fresno) does not include stops in Los Angeles, San Diego, or San Francisco metropolitan areas. They are building a high speed rail line in places where most Californians do not live. Because the cost is so great, it is unclear that the new train line will ever tie into the main California population centers.
The real question regarding rail is whether a 19th century technology can compete in the 21st century. Rail works well in certain types of areas. It needs dense populations the have to move relatively short distances. It also helps if there are poor roads or relatively few cars available. The rail lines in Europe are not a model for the USA; there are many more people and the distances are shorter. Consider the trip from London to Paris by train. It is just a few hundred miles and takes less than three hours. That makes it like the New York to Washington route. Japan is also not a good model for the USA. There too, the lines are much shorter and the population must denser. Even the Chinese system (which covers longer distances) is not a good model as there are hundreds of millions of people without access to cars in that country. There is no reason to expect that in the USA people will give up their cars for shorter trips or refrain from flying for the longer ones. Ask yourself if you would take a train from New York to California (a three day non-stop journey) instead of a six hour flight.
So we come back to the question why the federal government pours money into Amtrak while requiring that the system keep trains going to all sorts of place where essentially no one takes the train. Can't we get to the point where reason prevails over politics?
On top of the operating subsidy, there is also federal money that has been earmarked for support of high speed rail service in various markets across the country. High speed rail lines were one of president Obama's "big" economic ideas. There were to be high speed lines in Ohio, Illinois, Texas, California and elsewhere. One by one, most of the states where the lines were to be built rejected the idea as way too costly and most likely to fail. Only in California did the high speed train get full support, but even there, the portion of the line that is being built (from Bakersfield to Fresno) does not include stops in Los Angeles, San Diego, or San Francisco metropolitan areas. They are building a high speed rail line in places where most Californians do not live. Because the cost is so great, it is unclear that the new train line will ever tie into the main California population centers.
The real question regarding rail is whether a 19th century technology can compete in the 21st century. Rail works well in certain types of areas. It needs dense populations the have to move relatively short distances. It also helps if there are poor roads or relatively few cars available. The rail lines in Europe are not a model for the USA; there are many more people and the distances are shorter. Consider the trip from London to Paris by train. It is just a few hundred miles and takes less than three hours. That makes it like the New York to Washington route. Japan is also not a good model for the USA. There too, the lines are much shorter and the population must denser. Even the Chinese system (which covers longer distances) is not a good model as there are hundreds of millions of people without access to cars in that country. There is no reason to expect that in the USA people will give up their cars for shorter trips or refrain from flying for the longer ones. Ask yourself if you would take a train from New York to California (a three day non-stop journey) instead of a six hour flight.
So we come back to the question why the federal government pours money into Amtrak while requiring that the system keep trains going to all sorts of place where essentially no one takes the train. Can't we get to the point where reason prevails over politics?
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