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From: Rolf Mantel <news@hartig-mantel.de>
Newsgroups: rec.bicycles.tech
Subject: Re: Lost your home? Car? Everything? Thank a bicyclist and the
 California road diet.
Date: Mon, 20 Jan 2025 13:20:01 +0100
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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.