Bureauacy has managed to take a transport system at least a dozen times more efficient than freeway travel and turn it into a national drain as well as pain. A clearer picture of what a business, run by congressman, looks like, should not be asked for.
However, the inevitable Amtrak implosion suggests the possibility of a loosening stranglehold on 'roads that belong to us all as much as the highways. And with it the hope/ambition that passenger rail availabilty can be restored to former levels and then surpassed through technology already on the shelves. It would be a practical and non-litigious replevin to see all those lovely old stations still dotted around the country reanimated with people and new kinds of railcraft. Just for starters.
Please advise if you have e-links to folks who are working on this or if you would like to be, yourself. There’s little room for duplication of effort or shyness in this move if any of us is to get a decent ride any time soon. And at a cost that does not include foreign fuel purveyors.
Anything but shortsighted. Your succinct picture of robotized regression says volumes.
In order (more or less):
- There still is some track where I want to go.
- The right of ways are ours by citizenship, but rather than make an issue of it, I end-run the thing with ridership. How do think the flat-earth railrippers got their way? Or, on a more positive note, certain cyclists in California?
- Who is served? As in the above. Any group of youse who want to go someplace together and agree on how much of it you can stand.
4.Washington has made “subsidy” into a truly ugly word. Can we skip it? Think user fee. - Personally, the routes I’m looking at don’t head for the big cities.
- Who says I’m “hopping” on anything?
- I admire the elan of a wind-inspired concept that could help wrongfoot OPEC, but it’s a bit beyond my grasp. Standard powerplants, many sizes, fueled with a variety of compressed surplus gases are more in my scope.
John Bradley
I want one. It would be so cool! pull tourists by day and power the twin cities at night for extra cash. Maybe once a year I’d go down to Rochester with it just as a good will trip and pay a visit to the mayo clinic to share RAD stories maybe than they would let the DM&E in.
I can’t believe anyone is considering putting a nuclear reactor on wheels and having it pull thousands of tons. What rock do you live under?
Ever hear of the Hindenburg? I wonder how much Helium you would need to have in the tender(s) to make this trip?
Why don’t y’all leave the locomotive design to the professionals. If there were (are?) practical alternatives they would be under development already. The railroads are supremely interested in efficiency. Nobody has to urge them to look for a better way to do business.
Ed
Who is in the private sector? Is that me and you? If so, Im with you. Jump in.
John Bradley
Mike,
I like a lot of your posts but this whole thread rubs me the wrong way. I just want our transportation modes to be determined primarily by free market economic forces. I think most of what is proposed concerning Amtrak interferes (sp?) with that.
I am an engineer. A structural engineer, but I was taught a little about energy, and work and power and so on. One thing that you have to understand is that you don’t get something for nothing and that is never more evident than with energy.
Regarding nuclear powered steam engines, I like nuclear power, but I don’t live where they are likely to dispose of the spent reactor fuel. It is the public perception that will never permit operation of nuclear powered engines. If you think I am wrong thats fine. Go ahead and spend your money trying.
Regarding hydrogen powered locomotives, this doesn’t sound practical. I haven’t done the calculations but I could to determine the amount of energy it takes to liberate the hydrogen atoms from the oxygen in water. I would expect to find that the amount of energy would exceed the energy produced when ‘burning’ the hydrogen to produce the power in the locomotive. In both the release process and the ‘burning’ process you have to expect some losses. But, the primary reason I don’t look highly at this is because they have other types of ‘gas powered’ locomotives and they don’t use hydrogen in those. Engineers are pretty ingenious and if hydrogen offered real promise, I believe they would have looked at it. I can’t take seriously an argument which includes a fundamental theorum that a big oil conspiracy controls all transportation policy in the country. I don’t think they could be that powerful. I believe, bottom line, that we use oil because it is the cheapest method of getting the job done. I’m not saying that the oil companies and automobile companies don’t exert influence. I’m just saying that if there were promising technologies out there I wouldn’t be hearing abo
Jonathon:
“May you live in interesting times.” A venerable curse come to pass. Who wants dull anyway?
Up front: ix-nay on the ockets-ray. The Netherlands are a fine and private place, I hear. Otherwise, your knowledge of what’s on the shelves puts you closer to a decent ride than you might believe.
Don’t know from vision. Don’t know from ideology, but will acknowledge the possibility that we’re seeing the same thing from practical/vs. theoretical viewpoints. Jung anyone? Where are are all the chopshop guys when you need 'em?
John Bradley
Jonothan,
Are you still sure nobody is seriously considering a nuclear powered loco?
Ed
Yeah,I’m thinking of a 4-8-8-6 super Alleghany. Fission plant might be a bit bulky so I think I’d go with either a small Antimatter/Matter reactor or a magnetically confined,microscopic black hole as a heat source.Of course a perpetual motion machine drive would reduce fuel costs(tapping Vacuum fluctuations).Install a Negative Energy Faster than light Warp Drive system and even Amtrak could provide consistent on time service(arrive before you’ve left).
With Nanotechnology I could grow the locomotive out in the back yard like a gigantic Zucchini. Any investors out there???
Man,I’m beginning to sound like the “Indian Atomic engine” guy on the 2-8-8-2 thread…
Ah! now we’re closing in on a solution to rails problems. What should the Government do to make a level playing field with other forms of transportation?
Untill there is a level playing field rail can’t compete. Amtrak proves that government does a bad job of running a rail road. However Government could level the playing field and make it equal with other forms of transportation.
I propose that government (we) buy the rails, improve the rails, provide more rails when possible, just like we did with the road program.
charge user fees to help offset cost of up keep just like the road program.
Will it frighten the freight roads? sure, but even they would like to get out from under the cost of maintaining the track if they could. The shippers want competition, but UP isn’t going to give their track over to their competition to use against them. In the long run though competition always makes buisness better. Service gets better, the quality of products get better and we see an increase in free trade.
If the Government owned the tracks, than not only could Replevin make the trainset to transport people he could run it. It would be his buisness, not unlike Grayhound ( only better I hope )
I know this is only my opinion, my vision, but I know it would work.
I think the two best examples of level playing fields are Switzerland and Japan. The Japanese have privatized many of their freeways, people and trucks that use them pay to do so. Highways basically have to cover their cost and hopefully make money) The Japanese felt that private sector could maintain and build major highways and bridges cheaper, which is true. The Japanese also have privatised most of their rail passenger services and freight railroads, many of the passenger services are actually profitable as are the highways instead of being a drain on the taxpayers.
The Swiss system has the government responsible for owning the tracks and maintaining them like the U.S does for highways. Seperate operating companies public and private use them. The Swiss government places railroads as a very high priority, they want the majority of freight and people to move by this means, they feel its more efficient, better for the environment, and more reliable consideing their terrain and weather.
The United States has fallen behind in Highway privatization, many countries are doing this. I feel it is due to the strength of the highway lobby and the fact that many politicians use pork barrel highway projects to stay in office. Also in California where there are some private expressways) some politicians have made an issue that private expressways are unfair to the poor.(give me a break).
What’s funny to me is the anti-rail lobbyists around the country always talk about rail as not being profitable, but can any of them name an Interstate highway or airport that is.
I’m surprised the Libertarian and conservative types(which includes me) in this country haven’t pushed more for road privatization, but I think most of them have fallen under the catergory of thinking that government run highways are a God given right, even though the costs keep escalating and every year highway spending grabs a larger and larger per centage of local , state, and federal budgets. I know the state I live in (Penns
John and Jonathon:
I spent so many hours dealing with so many problems at work that I came home wishing to be put out of my misery.
You two have restored me. You’ve given me back my laugh. You’ve made my day.
Jonathon,
If anyplace needs passenger service, the Northeast does, just to help thin out the “drivers” who abandon their cars when there is a 1/4 inch of snow on the ground.
I have witnessed this in Maryland.
John,
there used to be a breed of people called “shade tree mechanics” they could keep it running with a rubber band if they had to. All the tools that they needed to do their wonders could fit in a plastic bucket. Than the COMPUTER
was invented. Now if you can afford the tools that are needed to keep it running why not just buy a new car.
can the ripped up track and bridges, the written off right of ways, and the rezoned and redeveloped yards be restored?
how many lines and towns have been abandoned?
the dm&e has tried for years to get it’s little extention of it’s line into the powder river. There’s no way your going to see rail travel like it was, even in the 60s unless of course the majority of the people in this country push for it and are willing to back it with their greenbacks. Did you know that everything in this country is Subsidized? the corner market is subsidized by a small group, the US Army by a big group. Convince the big group that something is worth subsisizing and violia.
Yes,yes and isn’t it a shame about the Birkenstock crowd?
I don’t know how many lines have been abandonded; I was just about to find out, but while I’m a little preoccupied with fabrication, maybe you could get back to me on it. It would certainly save me some time.
Whyever would I want to see rail travel as it was in the sixties? It wasn’t acceptable then either.
Yes, I know about susidies. That’s how we got here. What I am telling you is that it doesn’t have to be this way. People-movers don’t have to weigh a million pounds and they don’t have to be driven by petroleum.
Corollary? All that infrastructure, rusting in the sun, built for hulking, latterday machinery can easily support railcraft designed from this millenium without massive restoration.
One other thing: ridership (which you could arrange on the device right before you) isn’t just about the greenbacks necessary to run things; it’s about a non-contentious, yet implacable advocacy.
I make things. If you want some excruciating detail, just ask.
JB
There are actually more lines under construction now since the early 1900’s, the DME project will be the largest railproject since the Alaska Railroad was built and the Milwaukee Road Pacific extension. There are many state and private sector proposals coming together right now.
Highways may be convienent, but they have gotten way to expensive to build and maintain, one solution would be to privatize these as is being done in many nations, Austrailia, Japan, for example. If highways have to pay more of their own costs than this leads to a more balanced transportation system and helps rail. I’d like to see more puplic/private joint ventures for rail and transit, there is no reason in the United States for transit authorities and Amtrak to monopolize passenger and commuter services. Their should be more private sector involvement in developing lightrail, highspeed rail, and highspeed freight. One only has to drive on the capitol beltway for ten minutes to realize the folly of our overdependence on highways and the Eisenhower Interstate system. Highways are the actually the biggest form of welfare in the U.S. our governments spend 300 million plus everyday to feed this increasingly inefficient behemoth.
Just my 2 cents,
James
I must say, I haven’t looked at a 2002 rail map of the U.S.A. but I have witnessed first hand the equipment that travels down the right of way and lifts the rail, breaks it into three foot sections, to be sold for scrap, and loads the ties up, to be sold to landscapers.
If you want to “surpass” EVEN what we had in the Sixties you need track, and You need the right of ways. Put a carbon composite photo cell operated transit consist on the track we have today and WHO do you serve? 50% of the people that were served befor Amtrak? more? less?
How long has Walt Disney World had the WEM People mover in opperation? Why haven’t we seen it or something like it in use in a metropolitan setting? It would work perfect in Mpls. or ST Paul.
How about the monorail at WDW?
Perfect for running down the middle of a divided highway into say, MPLS.
N.I.M.B.Y.
I may be short sighted here, I see first hand what is happening in Mn. not the rest of the country but people are people, not all of them are rail fans. Maybe most arn’t. N.I.M.B.Y.
If you are serious about revitalizing rail travel than you have to go back to what I said originally.
convince the majority that the plan you have is worth subsidizing. If the majority likes the plan than N.I.M.B.Y. loses it’s power.
If you just want to serve the largest population areas than you probably have all the track you need, but the days when you could live in a smaller town and hop on a train to the big cities are gone.
Maybe you could “fabricate” a light, wind powered multi-car thing that uses the exsisting roads sort of like the bagage haulers at the airports only with a sail.
It sounds like you are advocating another form of a government run passenger rail system. Is that what you think would work or would a private system work better?
Ed
Have you read Joe Vranich’s story? It’s graphic detail of what a business looks like when run by congressman.
I’m not sure what “private” means to you. All these 'roads were paid for by the likes of you and me and absconded with by speculators. More of that? No.
I’m pointing out to you that ridership = advocacy and that you can make that happen a number of ways, including with the machine before you, sans spurious help from D.C.
And I’m telling you that rail travel and road travel are mixable in a fairly seamless way.
John Bradley
Who knows what the level of support is for taxes on highway use? IM sure of one thing, as long as it is possible to choose, the majority of the population will choose the private auto for transit, preferably with one lone passenger. There just isnt the support out there for a rail transit system that is comprehensive in scope, other than in a few isolated metropolitan ares. Invent what you will: maglev; trackless trains; computerized light rail systems, most people will still opt for the private auto rather than the train because of the flexability. Americans are still married to their cars, like it or not.
James, I’ve driven in Pennsylvania many times and you are right, your roads really leave a lot to be desired, but it’s not just your state that has bad roads. As I travel East from Mn. the roads get worse a lot worse. I think it’s because the East is much older than the midwest and western part of the country. The money that the tax payer shells out isn’t always used properly, but I think I like the system we have overall. If we privatize the roads in this country than I fear we would see eclusiveness not unlike the RRs. Japan is a small heavely populated country that at times does things out of the ordinary because they have to, not that their wrong, but they are unique. A tax levie for our roads spreds the burden and alows freedom of travel. If I owned a popular road I would sockit to anyone who needed to use it. I’d make it pay for itself all right, in spades and than I would keep it at just a passable level. Kind of like the Ohio Turnpike.
You And I along with all the other people in this country have the ability to make our government ACCOUNTABLE to us if we use that ability and contact our Representitives and than, get out and vote! So I have no problem with placing 2/5ths of my income into a common pot and than drawing off it to pay for our services that we now take for granted. I would like to be part owner of the tracks in this country and open them up to real compatition and give someone in the privite sector a chance to provide cheap dependable passenger service too.
Oh, you know, I don’t mind traveling on a toll road like I do once or twice a year. But if I had to take one twice a day a long with 100,000 other people, as some people have to, and I watched that road get nastier and nastier over the years I would just lose it. I would camp out at the State Capital until that road got fixed.