Re: RE: Re: RE: Re: Lost your home? Car? Everything? Thank a bicyclist and the California road diet.

On 1/17/2025 12:21 PM, cyclintom wrote:

On Sun Jan 12 10:22:54 2025 AMuzi  wrote:

>
There used to be lots of interesting things which no longer
work in our modern world and current economics.
>
I used to take the Milwaukee Road passenger service to
Chicago, 100 miles, five bucks (gasoline was 25c at the
time) straight into Union Station in the south Loop.
>
Inflation calculator says NPV is $50.08
>
But pressures on the rail industry became severe around 1970
and everything changed.  Modern (surviving) rail systems are
very different now and passenger rail is mostly dead except
for publicly subsidized systems as they are not, and cannot
be, profitable today.
>
This is not good, nor bad. It just is.

    Silicon Valley is in the south bay area and the populated regions in the center bay. There is a profitable train system that runs to Silicon Valley though I don't know how long that will lase since most of the businesses lefter under Gavin Loathsome.

This line?
https://sfstandard.com/2024/08/02/bart-silicon-valley-extension-funding/
Seems to be 'in progress' as of last summer.
For the whole system, fares cover a whopping 22% of operating expenses (that's negative ROI on capital), more than most passenger rail systems.
Or, another guy might say, 88% of operating costs are subsidies/transfers from other people.
See Page 7 here:
https://www.bart.gov/sites/default/files/2024-12/BART_FY24%20PAFR_final.pdf
--
Andrew Muzi
am@yellowjersey.org
Open every day since 1 April, 1971