Passenger Trains > Romance of the Rails, a new book

Romance of the Rails: Why the Passenger Trains We Love Are Not the Transportation We Need by Randal OToole.
http://www.newgeography.com/content/006092-reconciling-a-love-trains-with-opposition-subsidies

Excerpt from the announcement / summary post:

"As a life-long railfan, I love passenger trains. But as a transportation economist, I hate subsidies for the way they dilute productivity and transfer wealth from the many to the few. Thus, I am a reluctant opponent of subsidies to Amtrak and urban rail transit. Romance of the Rails, a new book that the Cato Institute will publish in October, is my attempt to reconcile these views by looking deep into the history of passenger rail transportation...

...Far from making money, as Haswell expected, Amtrak loses between $1 billion and $2 billion a year. In 2001, Haswell admitted that “I am personally embarrassed by what I helped create.”Today, taxpayers spend nearly $25 billion a year subsidizing rail transit and Amtrak. Counting all subsidies, urban rail transit costs about four times per passenger mile as much as driving and intercity passenger trains cost about four times as much as flying.

Cost is just one of rail’s disadvantages. Offering door-to-door service, cars are far more convenient, while planes are considerably faster than the fastest high-speed trains. No one would propose a multi-billion-dollar program to save slide rulers from the pocket calculator industry or to save manual typewriters from word processing computers. So, concludes Romance of the Rails, it is time to stop subsidizing the passenger rail industry."

 

Another idealist who’s not living in reality. I’d love to hear his view on healthcare and social security. Thank god for our younger generations who for the most part “get it”.

Oh boy. Here we go.

Flyer92122 Wrote:
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> Another idealist who’s not living in reality.

Randall O'Toole is not an idealist.  He selectively uses cost data to make his case.  O'Toole and others who think like him understate the huge levels of public spending above and beyond expenses covered by gasoline tax revenues and do not sufficiently acknowledge the major social and environmental costs of highways/automobile transportation.  His arguments have been rebutted many times, including in previous Trainorders threads.

RuleG Wrote:
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> Flyer92122 Wrote:
> --------------------------------------------------
> His arguments have been rebutted many times, including
> in previous Trainorders threads.

By railfans.

As a transportation professional, inc. Amtrak operations planning & finance, I agree with almost all of O'Tooles work. He backs up his material with citations, not emotion.

Buy the book and enjoy your nostalgia for pax rail, which is now about 0.2 percent of intercity passenger-miles. Rail & transit mode share are shrinking, and will continue to do so, there isn't enough money to reverse the long running down trend, which is approaching 100 years.

To be effective, public transit and fixed-guideway modes need to work as a system, which means relatively high service frequency and a dense network of routes which allows for many origin-destination pairs to be traversed in a reasonable amount of time safely and reliabily. Outside of NYC and a few other places in the US, this is not going to happen. It's too late- the network needed to be developed along with land use development. There's simply not enough money (let alone will) to change the way Americans travel. If Amtrak went away tomorrow, very few people would care. And most of those that would care would do so for nostalgic reasons, not for reasons of moving people.

I like trains, always have. But I'm a realist first, and a substantial increase (say to 0.4 percent) in US passenger rail mode ain't happening- ever.  There's a place for passenger rail (special circumstances, tourism, etc...) but it will never again be a major player.

Edit: I just started a thread on the European Board covering my recent trip to Russia. If you want to ride trains & trams today, take a look https://www.trainorders.com/discussion/read.php?17,4637147,4637147#msg-4637147

 



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 09/22/18 12:14 by Duna.

His reasoning is sound, but am not sure the facts really support him.  A problem is that there is really no data on how much Federal state and local govts spend to support highway and air transport.  If someone produced that data, it would be a good start. 

The private railroads should have been subsidized so much a passenger mile to run trains and then given the freedom stay in or leave the passenger business.

Charlie Rice

Charles Rice
Saint Louis, MO

So how exactly is flying faster than high speed trains as the original poster claims?  It has been proven that in this country, it's about a tie between Amtrak and flying between NY and DC when taking into account time to get to the airport and getting through the airport. And the beloved Northeast Corridor certainly can't be considered to be true HSR. Same is also true with many European city pairs. Take Germany for example. Frankfurt Main to Munich Hauptbahnhof is 3.45 via DB's ICE. If flying add the following:  About 30 minutes by train from Frankfurt city center to Frankfurt Flughaffen. Assume one hour to get through the airport unless you are priority everything. Then one hour flight to Munich. Train from Munich Flughaffen to city center is not express and slow. Add another hour. Add in wait times for baggage (if any) and for the next train to leave and you have a total transportation time of using the plane of about  3.5 hours. Only on longer distances does the plane come out ahead. But that assumes there is a developed HSR network, not the joke of what we have here where top speed is 150MPH in limited areas. Of course soon we will have much faster in a certain west coast state. Oh wait.  

andersonb109 Wrote:
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> So how exactly is flying faster than high speed
> trains as the original poster claims?  It has
> been proven that in this country, it's about a tie
> between Amtrak and flying between NY and DC when
> taking into account time to get to the airport and
> getting through the airport. And the beloved
> Northeast Corridor certainly can't be considered
> to be true HSR. Same is also true with many
> European city pairs. Take Germany for example.
> Frankfurt Main to Munich Hauptbahnhof is 3.45 via
> DB's ICE. If flying add the following:  About 30
> minutes by train from Frankfurt city center to
> Frankfurt Flughaffen. Assume one hour to get
> through the airport unless you are priority
> everything. Then one hour flight to Munich. Train
> from Munich Flughaffen to city center is not
> express and slow. Add another hour. Add in wait
> times for baggage (if any) and for the next train
> to leave and you have a total transportation time
> of using the plane of about  3.5 hours. Only on
> longer distances does the plane come out ahead.
> But that assumes there is a developed HSR network,
> not the joke of what we have here where top speed
> is 150MPH in limited areas. Of course soon we will
> have much faster in a certain west coast state. Oh
> wait.  

"But that assumes there is a developed HSR network". You answered your own question.

Not going to happen, no matter how much railfans want it.

andersonb109 Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> So how exactly is flying faster than high speed
> trains as the original poster claims?  It has
> been proven that in this country, it's about a tie
> between Amtrak and flying between NY and DC when
> taking into account time to get to the airport and
> getting through the airport. And the beloved
> Northeast Corridor certainly can't be considered
> to be true HSR. Same is also true with many
> European city pairs. Take Germany for example.
> Frankfurt Main to Munich Hauptbahnhof is 3.45 via
> DB's ICE. If flying add the following:  About 30
> minutes by train from Frankfurt city center to
> Frankfurt Flughaffen. Assume one hour to get
> through the airport unless you are priority
> everything. Then one hour flight to Munich. Train
> from Munich Flughaffen to city center is not
> express and slow. Add another hour. Add in wait
> times for baggage (if any) and for the next train
> to leave and you have a total transportation time
> of using the plane of about  3.5 hours. Only on
> longer distances does the plane come out ahead.
> But that assumes there is a developed HSR network,
> not the joke of what we have here where top speed
> is 150MPH in limited areas. Of course soon we will
> have much faster in a certain west coast state. Oh
> wait.  

As for your German example I totally agree.  But, as you say, there has to be a network.  And there is,  trains every hour or less between FRA and Munich, which is the same between  all city pairs in Germany   And walk to your hotel at both ends.  As for the new book,  look who's the publisher.  Nuff said

utwazoo Wrote:
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> As for the new book,  look who's the publisher.  Nuff said

Why pay for something that they have been giving away free for years?

There is no better way to understand the other side than to read their opinions.  Nothing is gained by innuendo or slander.  How can I get a copy of this book?

Norm

Norman Orfall
Helendale, CA
TIOGA PASS, a private railcar

aronco Wrote:
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> There is no better way to understand the other
> side than to read their opinions.  Nothing is
> gained by innuendo or slander.  How can I get a
> copy of this book?
>
> Norm

I've been reading their opinions for free for years and am somewhat in agreement. If you want to pay for what you can find in old opinion pieces, try Amazon (not in Cato's store yet):

https://www.amazon.com/Romance-Rails-Passenger-Trains-Transportation/dp/1944424946/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1537643683&sr=8-1&keywords=o-toole+romance+of+the+rails

Jack

These are the type of guys waiting in the wings to be confirmed to the Amtrak board. I see parallels with Rick “I like trains” Dearborn from the Heritage Foundation. It’s hard to see the other side with Cato/Heritage when there’s really no workable middle ground in their views. On the flip side it’s nice to see the bi partisan support for Amtrak in Congress during such tribalistic times.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/22/18 13:13 by Flyer92122.

Koch Bros founded org.  Getting rid of Amtrak just the tip of the Libertarian iceberg.   

sphogger

As has been repeated, ad nausea, transportation systems in the US have always been subsidized by Federal, county and city governments, starting with the National Road, which was first federally funded road built between 1811 and 1834. Railroads have been subsidized by some of the largest Federal land give-aways ever.  No one individual has ever directly paid for any transportation system (other than for a few toll roads and bridges less than a 1000 miles long) Free Interstates, other freely used US, State, county, city roads, and streets. Flew thousands of hours utilizing the Federal Air Traffic Control system for which I never had to pay directly for. What, I’m supposed to get a bill for getting IFR clearances from SEA, OAK & LA ARTC on my trips, direct KEUG- KLGB!!??!

So, now again, another book, pamphlet, screed venting against subsidizing AMTRAK, a subsidy miniscule compared to other transportation subsidies. This latest is supposed to be eminently reasonable with excellent data to support the author’s bias. Well, “three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics."
 

"...pax rail, which is now about 0.2 percent of intercity passenger-miles..."

0.002 of anything won't get 0.2% of a professional politician's attention. 

Duna Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> RuleG Wrote:
> --------------------------------------------------
> -----
> > Flyer92122 Wrote:
> >
> --------------------------------------------------
>
> > His arguments have been rebutted many times,
> including
> > in previous Trainorders threads.
>
By railfans.

Here's a response from the Tax Foundation on O'Toole's claims about highway finances:

https://taxfoundation.org/response-randal-otoole-road-funding

The Tax Foundation is generally not viewed as a railfan organization.


> As a transportation professional, inc. Amtrak
> operations planning & finance, I agree with almost
> all of O'Tooles work. He backs up his material
> with citations, not emotion.
>
Those responding to Randal O'Toole back up their views with facts.

See this paper with a huge number of citations which evaluates criticism of transit from O'Toole and others such as Wendell Cox and Joel Kotkin:

http://www.vtpi.org/railcrit.pdf

As far as O'Toole not using "emotion" in his arguments, check this out from Charles Mahron of Strong Towns:

https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2015/12/8/best-of-2015-chucks-debate-with-randal-otoole


 

RuleG Wrote:
>
>
>  

You are tilting at windmills. As much as railfans would like, the trains are not coming back.

Duna Wrote:
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> RuleG Wrote:
> >
> >
> >  
>
> You are tilting at windmills. As much as railfans
> would like, the trains are not coming back.

If you want to make the case that trains are not coming back, fine, that is a different discussion.  However, in an earlier post, you brushed aside those who have rebutted O'Toole's claims and I provided links to three sources with substantive responses to his views.

Over the years, I have read many editorials written by O'Toole's as well as similar pieces authored by Cox and Kotkin.  Maybe you should do likewise and read the pieces written by those critical of O'Toole.
 

RuleG Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Duna Wrote:
> --------------------------------------------------
> -----
> > RuleG Wrote:
> > >
> > >
> > >  
> >
> > You are tilting at windmills. As much as
> railfans
> > would like, the trains are not coming back.
>
> If you want to make the case that trains are not
> coming back, fine, that is a different
> discussion.  However, in an earlier post, you
> brushed aside those who have rebutted O'Toole's
> claims and I provided links to three sources with
> substantive responses to his views.
>
> Over the years, I have read many editorials
> written by O'Toole's as well as similar pieces
> authored by Cox and Kotkin.  Maybe you should do
> likewise and read the pieces written by those
> critical of O'Toole.


How do you know what I read? O'Toole, Cox, and Kotkin are right (by far) more than they are wrong.

The trains are not coming back, like O'Toole says. Enjoy the nostalgia.