DEJAVU or can we do better?

A lull in the aerospace industry back in the 60’s-70’s led to unemployed workers going into the rail field with the Metroliner and SPV2000 the results. Metroliner was good, SPV not so good, so the record is not one to brag about. But anyway…

…here we are with 1) high unemployment, 2) getting higher now that the Atlantis space program took off for the last time today, 3) monies earmarked for high speed rail and other passenger rail being turned back, 4) Republicans from deep in their hearts saying that said money should be used either for new highways or to help disaster relief in the flood prone mid west…

…so, why not try it again. Taking the aerospace unemployed, give them the unused HSR and other passenger rail money, and have them develop new industry jobs to help save us all? Hopefully we did learn a little from the last time aerospace people went to work on turbo trains and the like, so maybe we can make some new headway here. If the Republicans say yes, they can look like employment economic heroes; if the Democrats say yes, they can look like employment economic heroes; if both say yes, …nah, it can’t be America today if both agree on something that will help employment, infrastructure, transportation, taxable income, and the country in general.

I hope something good can come out of it. We need to get away from the constantly investing into interstates and look to more efficient modes (and yes, I am a truck driver [LTL] so I see the wasted fuel and man power shipping frieght long distance by truck). I don’t understand what the Republicans don’t like about rail (and yes I am a Republican), I don’t want to turn this into a political thread and ruine it for henry6 so please keep it mild :slight_smile:

One problem - both the Metroliner and SPV-2000’s were Budd products.

Trains made by aerospace companies were the BART and Washington Metro cars built by Rohr, not great but they had a reasonable lifetime along with the Boeing Vertol LRV’s which were definitely “not so good”.

  • Erik

I don’t agree with the premise that public spending is the way to create jobs and re-start economic growth. The way to help accomplish that goal is to look at NASA as a budget cut and let it go at that; not to cut NASA and then spend their budget somewhere else.

If you can convince yourself that public spending is a legitimate business investment that will return on capital, then your plan sounds great. But the majority of people believe that excess public spending is creating the problem, and not capable of fixing it.

NEvermind.

I’d heard that about the Boeing-Vertol LRV’s, too. For about 5 years - 1975-1980 - I did a fair amount of the trackwork for the plant where they were assembled, just north of Chester, PA.

There’s quite a difference of cultures - oversimplified grossly, aerospace engineers “build fine, delicately-balanced watches”, railroad people don’t want anything that can’t be maintained with just a hammer and a torch.

As a further example, a typical commercial aircraft costs around $1 million per seat (+/- 50 % or so), and I’d guess the weight at around 50 tons. An entire passenger railcar costs around $2 -3 million, and weighs about the same. The aircraft gets as much maintenance in a week as the railcar does in a year. The electrical and environmental systems in a railcar might be capable of handling the toilet room in an airplane (OK, exaggerating a little bit, but hopefully you get the point). The cultures regarding reliability, weight, cost, function, sophistication, maintenance, etc. are so different.

Maybe the 35 years of evolution of engineering management would help overcome that difference, but I’m skeptical.

  • Paul North.

The flip, and unfortunate, side of the Boeing Vertol LRV mess was that it pretty much put St Louis Car out of business. The folks in San Francisco and Boston were leaning towards St Louis as they had experience in building railcars, but UMTA demanded that contracts go to the lowest bidder no matter how little experience the lowest bidder had…

As you said, railcars and airplanes are two very different beasts…

  • Erik

Oh, “The Republicans” don’t dislike rail transportation any more than I do. It’s just that they’re like me (well, most of 'em) and don’t want to waste scarce resources on high speed passenger rail projects that will never return their “Investment” and, as a result, make us all poorer.

Some of that LTL you’re hauling would have diverted to truck under any circumstances, but a decent portion of it would have stayed on the rail without misguided (silly?) Federal economic regulation. That regulation blocked inovation (containers/intermodal), pricing changes (weight/distance based “Freight, All Kinds” rates), and marketing channel changes (Freight Forwarders) . The freight went to the highway. I hope they’re proud of that.

Same thing happened with longer haul temperature controlled transport. It was largely diverted to highway movement by Federal fiat. Now we’ve got to claw our way out of that transportation hole and get the freight back on the rail. Gonna’ take a while.

In the meantime, we don’t need to dig ourselves into another hole by wasting scarce resources on a passenger train network that is bound to loose money (which means it will destroy our wealth.).

So greyhounds, how do interstate highways pay the government back?

They don’t pay the government back because they don’t owe the government anything. The people paid for the highways, and the peoples’ use of the highways pays the people back.

Sounds like the same thing! By your reasoning above, the people’s money would pay to build HSR and the the people’s use would pay the people back. Might take a long time, and maybe there would need to be surcharges, etc. but eventually the people would pay the people back.

Yes HSR would pay the people back if the people used it, but if say 90% of the people pay for it but don’t use it, then they would not get paid back. Instead, they would be paying for a mighty expensive train ride for somebody else.

Two wrongs don’t make a right.

I have repeatedly said that limited access interstate/intercity highways should be toll roads paid for by their users. Some are. It works. I commute to/from work on I-94/I-294. The portions I drive are toll roads and I pay tolls every day I drive in to the office. (This work from home thing is really great. We can do it two days/week.)

But most of the Interstates weren’t set up that way. That was an error. But making another similar very costly error with passenger rail won’t fix the original mistake.

It’s not that they don’t like rail. They are not educated in transportation matters and so do not know anything about it. What they like is the campaign donations given to them by the Road Builder’s Associations. The RBAs want to keep those passenger-miles and ton-miles on the roads so that they will get more federal funds to buils and maintain them. Consequently, the republicans oppose HSR and sometimes other rail projects.

George

But isn’t that the entire point of taxes? To put the common wealth together to fund things that not everyone will use? For instance, single parents pay for schools, amongst many other things. Don’t say that HSR isn’t a necessity like schools, that was just one example, and there are many people who feel public high speed transport is necessary.

Anyway, greyhounds, I’m glad that you’re not holding a double standard against passenger rail. You might be right about interstate toll roads being a good idea, but at the same time I don’t like the idea. Then again, toll roads seem to be doing wonders for HSR in Japan, so who’s to say what’

Trainboy,

It is about limiting the role of government where possible. HSR could be privately financed and thus paid for by those who use it.

Taxes force all to pay for the benefit of the few. There is NO reason for the taxpayers to finance HSR except that the taxpayers are financing, to one degree or another, all of the competing modes. The government has distorted the market. Greyhounds is arguing for less market distortion, you are arguing for more.

The genius of the constitution was that it attempts to limit government to those roles where there is no practical alternative like defense, protecting the border, and police and the courts.

Mac

Those are highly partisan, political and ideological statements.

No. They are simple statements of economic fact.

I see your point - however, I’m not arguing for more market distortion (at least, not on purpose - but I’m sure you know how ideologies bleed through any argument) but I’ve noticed that many people who are anti-government (not talking about anyone in particular) suddenly stop short when a government service being cut affects them as opposed to someone else, and that’s the kind of double standard that I frequently see when it comes to passenger rail.

My 2 cents worth: The one thing that does not do railroads a lot of good is the lack of a secondary system. as an example think of all the side streets and roads connnecting to the interstate highway system. (say Indianapolis Blvd in Gary, In or El Camino Real and US 101 in the San Francisco Bay Area, or US 22 in Allentown, Pa)

Class I Raiilroads today only like to deal with huge shippers. It is one of the reasons intermodal got shorted. Not enough huge traffic sources. 20 ton cargos(truck load) are loose change to most class 1 railroads. Whereas these are the primary business of most trucking companies.

What is needed is the ability to handle more of this freight away from the public highway network. And by that I mean that it has to have the ability to move away from smaller automobiles.

Thx IGN