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

On Mon, 20 Jan 2025 09:45:17 -0600, AMuzi <am@yellowjersey.org> wrote:

On 1/20/2025 7:56 AM, Rolf Mantel wrote:

Am 20.01.2025 um 13:56 schrieb Catrike Ryder:

On Mon, 20 Jan 2025 13:20:01 +0100, Rolf Mantel
<news@hartig-mantel.de> wrote:
>

Am 20.01.2025 um 12:57 schrieb Catrike Ryder:

On Mon, 20 Jan 2025 11:56:01 +0100, Rolf Mantel
<news@hartig-mantel.de> wrote:
>

Am 18.01.2025 um 10:19 schrieb Catrike Ryder:

On Fri, 17 Jan 2025 21:27:16 -0500, Frank Krygowski
<frkrygow@sbcglobal.net> wrote:
>

On 1/17/2025 5:44 PM, AMuzi wrote:

On 1/17/2025 4:13 PM, Frank Krygowski wrote:

On 1/17/2025 2:17 PM, AMuzi wrote:

>
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.

>
Hmm. I wonder what percentage of, say, I-880 or
I-680 operating
expenses are paid for by fares. Anybody got a figure?
>

>
Impossible to know.  Too convoluted, just like most
government
accounting (which practices would land me in prison
post haste).
>
Regarding tolls, I remember when Illinois paid off
its original
Interstate bonds, at which point the toll booths
were supposed to go
away. Never happened because it's a slush fund for
politicians and the
civil service.

>
Same thing happened with the Ohio Turnpike just a few
years ago. People
blamed the Republican-controlled legislature.
>

>
But if you meant the road tax, that's different
everywhere you go and
depending on where you are 2% to 20% of road tax
doesn't go to roads:
>
https://reason.org/policy-brief/how-much-gas-tax-
money-states-divert-
away-from-roads/
>
And, in the other view, road taxes don't cover road
maintenance expense,
as far as we know:
>
https://taxfoundation.org/data/all/state/gasoline-
taxes-and-user-fees-
pay-only-half-state-local-road-spending/
>
So every argument can be both right and wrong,
depending.
>
Short answer: it's a mess and a muddle. Which suits
the insider
beneficiaries just fine.

>
My overall point is, we've obviously decided to
subsidize road
transportation. It's not immediately obvious why we
should not subsidize
rail transportation. Asking fares to cover all
expenses skips over that
point.

>
We do subsidize passenger rail, and it seems pretty
obvious that
people in the USA have not choosen to use long
distance passenger rail
even when it is subsidized. There does seem to be
interest in
intercity rail for trips that take less than half a
day, but two or
three days vs 4 or 5 hours on plane for a lessor
charge is easy to
choose even if the train ride has more legroom.

>
Sure. Given that air traffic exists and tickets are
"affordable", 4
hours of journey time are the maximum where rail
traffic is capable of
gaining a significant market share of journeys between
"cities with an
airport"; 3 hours of journey time between 2 city
centers pretty much
kills the airline market (except feeder services)
between those cities:
>
The high-speed rail line Berlin - Nuremberg - Munich
completely killed
the air market Nuremberg - Berlin and halved the
airline market Munich -
Berlin when it opened in 2017.
>
Germany is just about small enough to have reached 4
hours journey time
between most major cities (except Hamburg - Munich and
Ruhr - Munich) by
investing in 180 mph lines.

>
I never thought of it that way, but yes, four hours is
about how long
I'd care to be locked up. I have taken air flights for
longer, but
only because auto travel wasn't an option.
>
So lets see, 180MPH for four hours will get me about 720
miles if it
was a direct route. That wouldn't get my wife and me to
any of our out
of state relatives. I suspect that there'd be stops
along the way that
would make it take longer, too.

>
Correct. Hamburg - Munich is 500 miles and not
technically but
financially out of reach of those magic 4 hours
(currently it's 5:30
with two major investments planned to bring it to 4:30 by
2070).
>
In Germany (like the east-coast corridor), we aim for one
major stop per
hour to serve intermediate locations - which is why
speeds above 160 mph
are rarely value-for-money; in France (larger and less
dense) they go 3
or 4 hours non-stop at 200 mph to compete point-to-point
with the plane.

>
Seem to me that they should have a little drone car
running out in
front of the train looking for a cow on the track or a
hickup in the
steel.

 
Generally, high-speed tracks are fenced in to prevent damage
with cattle and have measuring equipment check the track
quality regularly.
 
The collision in Germany with a sheep at 210 km/h (130 mph)
inside a tunnel
<https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/
Eisenbahnunfall_im_Landr%C3%BCckentunnel>
was a lot less severe than the collision with a cow at 140
km/h (85 mph) in Scotland in a cutting
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polmont_rail_accident>
 
 
 

>
Plus earthquakes caused by Global Warming:
https://english.kyodonews.net/news/2022/03/afe25e1ac03b-tragedy-avoided-on-quake-hit-derailed-shinkansen-from-lessons-learned.html

Well, given that Japan has, on the average, some 1,500 earth quakes
annually ...

Does it get hot with all that worming?
--
Cheers,

John B.