A train ride across Michigan

January 8, 2006 at 11:38 am | In the Commons, train |

A train ride across Michigan MouseMusings, who comments: “Late or not, a departure on Amtrak feels to me as if we are beginning to arrive.”

I love this line: “Trains are wonderful for moving large quantities of people or goods. But they are most perfect as metaphors.”

and “I said something about how we’re not taking advantage of the economy of scale that predominates the operation of a rail system, i.e. the more full trains you have, the better the return on your tax dollars.”

and in one of the comments: The sooner we recognize that passanger (sic) rail is a public service, not a business and that it will never turn a profit, the better off we’ll be.

My thoughts: Streetlights don’t turn a profit. Nor do public parks. Or police or fire service. Public schools don’t turn a profit either. Public transit, like passenger rail service, needs to be funded by the public to make our communities strong. All of these are part of The Commons, owned by us all to benefit us all. Today we also subsidize highways and the aviation system, I suppose figuring both are good for the economy. That may be, but it’s time for equal treatment to be given to the public rails and buses. In Chicago we’ve got it pretty good with buses and trains, at least compared to many other American cities.

And my dream is still that we’d subsidize local transit even further, to the point where it’s free. Imagine how many people would ride the el and the bus if it were free? So many that we’d be able to provide much better bus service on less-congested roads, I’d bet. So many that full lanes on street could be given over to bicycles. More people would bike, knowing that if they get tired or aren’t prepared for the weather, they could always get on a fast, frequent bus for free. Boarding buses and trains would be quicker without have to wait in line to pay, also cheaper for the transit agencies not to have to provide that payment infrastructure.

Amtrak will never be free, but the more people are used to getting around collectively, efficiently, convienently and predictibaly, the more will be willing to travel by intercity trains, and the more trains can be added.

Bonus for this post from the Albany New York Times Union via Rick Harnish: New York state is working on incremental improvements for Amtrak that include more tracks and sidings, and collaboration among the 3 companies that currently each own part of the trackage and operate trains on the Albany/New York City route. This won’t decrease travel times much on the schedule, but it will vastly improve on-time performance, a critcal step for Amtrak’s credibility. After that, funding for high-speed rail will be quite a bit easier.

5 Comments

  1. I think I got the following link right…

    http://quixote.blogs.com/telecompolicy/2006/01/the_federal_com.html

    The reason I am posting it in connection here is that certain things are hard to express when the market frame is abused… in other words it seems to me that abuses of the market frame undermine general discourse.

    The value of public libraries is something that goes beyond straightforward return on investment. We (most of us) easily see the logic of such public goods.

    What we may not think about is that they are part of a system. A library is s system. I am not using it in the sense of the library system as a network of libraries … but it applies there too.

    Now, streetlights and roads are parts of a system too. And if we can think of aspects of our commonly lived in environment as part of a system I think we can make steps to break free from market notions.

    The central theme in these market notions is that ‘private sector’ does it better, and this leads to the conclusion: gov’t should stay out of it as provider of service and as regulator of the field, but then further serves as a screen to what will actually occur… gov’t wont ever fully get out of regulation… there will always be a rewrite of the rules, and there will always be rules. The rules privilege certain parties and certain holders of the levers of power. I’m not arguing against rules, only that we would all be better served to get past the notions of deregulation. There is no deregulation… only re-regulation.

    So tying this in to the link to Snider’s article… I really appreciate the effort to promote multi-purpose networks where the benefot to all is an incrmental cost to a project that will go forward anyway. This belies the abuse of logic that offers that any service is better undertaken exclusively by the market.

    Comment by Tropology — January 8, 2006 #

  2. When my daughter moved to Chicago she considered taking her car with her. She was very happy not having her car once she got there. Now she’s moving back to Ann Arbor and having to deal with a cumbersome car again is going to be a huge drawback for her.
    There are so many reasons to have a system like the el and yet so few willing to acknowledge it.

    Comment by Cyndy — January 18, 2006 #

  3. Yes, the el is wonderful. And fairly insufficient as far as that goes. We need more. And we need better policies all around so sprawl isn’t subsidized. And Ann Arbor’s not such a big place. Why can’t we have good transit there as well? More density, more working together, more cooperation, more retail and employement near housing, better biking facilities, more cooperative housing …

    I almost said “Don’t get me started!” but of course you already did! :-)

    peace,
    ted

    Comment by ted — January 19, 2006 #

  4. An Overlooked Transit Improvement?

    Night buses will not end up “making” Transit any money at all, but are essential public services even supposed to make money for the governments that provide them? It obviously can not be a hole to sink public monies into, but the issue of providing …

    Trackback by winnipeg: an undetermined urbanity — March 16, 2007 #

  5. […] while back, I posted about how our basic infrastructure should be provided collectively. I was speaking about trains, but could’ve just as easily been talking about overnight bus […]

    Pingback by Humanize the Earth! » A Public Service — March 25, 2007 #

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