Another way to look at it… The railroad is a centralizing technology. The automobile/truck is a decentralizing technology.
I do find it rather interesting that when the massive transport spending was directed at the railroad industry, the populace largely abandoned competing modes of transport and flocked to them. When the situation was reversed the reverse happened. Seems to me there is a cause and effect there.
“Stale” because they are so obvious and true, people have been repeating them for years.
No passener rail system in the world is profitable. Yet great, productive modern countries deem passenger trains a vital part of the transportation mix. Countries like Germany, Great Britain, France, Japan, etc. These nations give passenger rail a fair shake.
In my opinion, you’d need to do a far more intensive, and differently-directed, discussion of precisely why toll roads failed at the time, and why the reasons then might not have reflected the same reasons at different points in time.
For example, at least one careful discussion has been made about ‘what if the “consume its own smoke” requirement in the Rainhill Trials had become a standard requirement in England’? For powerplants that has been extended into several detailed discussions where CO2 emission was treated as a pollutant (and this developed into a substantial part of the actual clean-coal initiative). It now appears there is a growing swell of initiative not for a renewable-carbon future, but for a full zero-carbon approach wherever ‘practicable’. Had that been historically implemented, some very different development pressure over the years would have been observed…
Likewise many of the original railroads were built on the ‘turnpike principle’, notably the early Pennsylvania approach with ‘run what ya brung’ wagons (just bring an extra set of flanged wheels for compatibility if you like!) – the one with the post at the center of sections between turnouts that caused so many teamsters to ‘lay on the leather’ as one account of the affair said. One might consider the contemporary developments in Britain regarding light steam road power (cf. Goldsworthy Gurney) and decide whether economic incentives practiced by non-Jacksonian types might have enabled enough development to make indi
Sweeping generalization which happens to also be untrue.
CMstPnP - OK, when you make claims like that, ya gotta back it up. Segments of certain foreign passenger operations may make money, but the entire system? There’s a reason that railroads in most of the world are part of the government or heavily subsidized. Certainly, the recieved wisdom in North America is that freight underwrote passenger service, which lost money. The fact that governments need to underwrite AMTRAK, VIA and the various commuter agencies would seem to bear that out. Railroads ran passenger service even though they lost money because 1) they felt they had a public duty to offer it (“the public utility concept”) as long as they made large profits on freight 2) Their charters required them to offer it 3) Regulatory agencies wouldn’t let them get rid of it 4) Because pride in the executive suite in passenger service overcame fiduciary duty to the shareholders (Notably SOU and ATSF after AMTRAK was formed) 5) Inertia (“We’ve always offered passenger service and it’s unthinkable for us not to” - or as B&O’s president put it “We sold the first train ticket in America and, if it comes to that, we’ll sell the last”)
DB the German rail system turned a profit in 2019 and earns more than twice as much as BNSF in revenue in 2019 (2019 Revenues: $48.12 Billion). Germany only covers a geographic area slightly smaller than Montana but DB carries roughly 151 million passengers a year. I believe DB passenger trains are able to travel beyond German borders now to an extent. Not 100% sure on that but I thought I read an article they can travel cross border now.
BTW, Mixing Freight with Passenger trains wasn’t done necessarily to make the passenger train viable in this country…which is a common misconception in these forums held by some people. It was done from the very beginning to make the new railroad line viable by maximizing the profitability of each train run over the road. Go back in history and look at some of the head end freight carried by some of those very early 1800’s passenger trains. I know in 1870-1880’s the Houston and Texas Central used to run a Passenger Train called “The Dallas Morning News”. It’s primary head end cargo was newspapers to distribute up the line as far as Sherman, TX from Dallas, TX. Money from the DMN paid a chunk of it’s operating costs I am sure. Mixed in with the papers were packages from department and hardware/implement stores in Dallas via catalog ordering. Empty milk cans, etc. This was before the REA was started. All new lines had were maybe 1-2 passenger trains running over them initially, I believe freight slowly grew after line opening for a lot of the granger lines.
I am sure there was a point where passenger trains started to lose money during their mid-life crisis in which the
It should be noted that DB has a very profitable freight subsidiary operating trains, and not just within Germany. Additionally. the various Länder subsidize passenger operations. Some of the many ICE routes do turn a profit, same as our NEC.
DB is a passenger/freight/logistics company. How can you compare that to Amtrak? Post a link to something that shows the passenger division, as a whole (not just certain routes), making a profit.
DB states it’s revenues and profits by each division. I don’t know why you cannot find that information yourself. It’s really not hard.
This began when you stated that something I wrote was untrue.
Now you want me to do the legwork to attempt to prove you were correct in your rude refutation of me?
Uh, no thanks. I’ll pass.
And it was untrue. You should have used Google prior to publishing a statement ecompassing the whole globe in a discussion forum.
What I wrote is: “No passenger rail system in the world is profitable.”
You have yet to show us a profitable passenger rail system. You have used as an example only Deutsche Bahn, which also does freight railroading and logistics. If you can provide a link to a credible article which shows that the passenger division on its own makes a profit, then you will have made your case. It’s up to you to make your case that my statement is untrue (if it indeed is). So far you have not done so.
You should have used Google to find such an article, and linked it, prior to publishing a statement ecompassing the whole globe in a discussion forum.
I did find this about British trains:
“The train operators might be able to report a profit only because the infrastructure companies are heavily subsidized. British trains, for example, have been privatized and operate at a profit — but they run on infrastructure that receives an average of $4.6 billion in state subsidies per year.”
The all time World Class Game -
Figures lying and Lying Figurers
Proveing both sides of a argument with the same figures.
.
ignore. What I started to post stopped being amusing.
True. What I and L.O. commented is true. CMStPnP makes good posts but he went a bridge too far on this one.
Your just going to keep narrowing your definition until the stats you ask for are far more granular that what is reported and impossible to obtain publicly. DB reports along business lines, you want passenger train by passenger train accounting then request it from the company.
Some of the arguments are not consistent though because airlines fly routes that lose money or in which the air cargo under the seats makes the flights profitable. Additionally airlines fly government subsidized routes. Good luck finding passenger train by passenger train accounting stripped out from everything else.
DB reports rail passenger services (2019 - profit), Logistics services (2019 - profit), Freight (2019 - profit), etc. Within the rail passenger services division it even splits out Long Distance, Commutter, Regional, and ICE reporting.
British Rail Services are not international and to my knowledge only cross borders via the Chunnel. Brit Rail is not really integrated with Europe to the extent DB is. So pretty much stuck on an Island. You cannot compare British rail to DB. DB has run through trains to bordering country cities. How ma
All of them are competing against the DIY automobile driver who can drive a multiuse, multi person vehicle that is woven into his or her life’s activities and finances. Hard to compete against free labor and low marginal cost of use on any given day.
[quote user=“CMStPnP”]
Lithonia Operator
What I wrote is: “No passenger rail system in the world is profitable.” You have yet to show us a profitable passenger rail system. You have used as an example only Deutsche Bahn, which also does freight railroading and logistics. If you can provide a link to a credible article which shows that the passenger division on its own makes a profit, then you will have made your case. It’s up to you to make your case that my statement is untrue (if it indeed is). So far you have not done so. You should have used Google to find such an article, and linked it, prior to publishing a statement ecompassing the whole globe in a discussion forum.
Your just going to keep narrowing your definition until the stats you ask for are far more granular that what is reported and impossible to obtain publicly. DB reports along business lines, you want passenger train by passenger train accounting then request it from the company.
Some of the arguments are not consistent though because airlines fly routes that lose money or in which the air cargo under the seats makes the flights profitable. Additionally airlines fly government subsidized routes. Good luck finding passenger train by passenger train accounting stripped out from everything else.
DB reports rail passenger services (2019 - profit), Logistics services (2019 - profit), Freight (2019 - profit), etc. Within the rail passenger services division it even splits out Long Distance, Commutter, Regional, and ICE reporting.
British Rail Services are not international and to my knowledge only cross borders via the Chunnel. Brit Rail is not really integrated