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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 14:56:45 +0100
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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>