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Southwest Chief "In The X-Hair"
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[QUOTE]Originally posted by MargaretSPfan: [QB] Mr. Norman -- Please, sir,what is wrong with giving people who have no passenger trains at all to ride restored service? We have had more than 60 years of highway "proliferation," and have been paying a huge price for that, both economically and in human lives (tens of thousands of injuries and deaths on our highways every year). You seem not to care at all about the needs of the many people who cannot or should not drive. Are they not worth the cost of providing excellent transportation? and before you remind us all of the high costs of doing so,please note that there IS plenty of money to pay for new rail infrastructure and operations. It is just both being hoarded -- trillions of dollars worth (see "Pananama Papers") and being wasted on wars and useless unneeded public works project like CA HSR, the Boston Big Dig, the Seattle Tunnel, etc. And because tens of millions of formerly good-paying jobs have been shipped overseas, there are far fewer well-paid people who can afford to pay the taxes needed ti support the new passenger rail transportation projects that are needed. The burden on the ordinary taxpayer nowadays is far, far higher than it should be, because many mega-wealthy people and most large corporations have been allowed to get away with paying far, far less than their fair share of taxes. And any claim that Amtrak makes about not being able to afford [fill in the blank] needs to be carefully evaluated, using the knowledge insiders have shared that Amtrak's financials are, at best, very murky, and are more akin to smoke and mirrors than any sensible and clear statements. And Amtrak -- like other RRs -- often assigns expenses that rightfully belong in one area to another area, i.e., their common practice of dumping some of the costs of the NEC onto the LD trains. And it is essential to also evaluate the worth of any new or restored passenger-train services in the context of the total resources that would be available for public services like passenger trains if so much of our country's resources were not both being spent o the wrong things (endless wars and unneeded public works projects (that only serve to fatten the bank accounts of already mega-wealthy people) and being hoarded (see "Panama Papers). So -- there IS, after all, plenty of money for public services of all sorts. And it would be wonderful if passenger trains did proliferate. We desperately need that! Instead of the proliferation of passenger trains, we have endured the proliferation of highways, to everyone's detriment. We have all paid a huge prices for our country's lack of a sensible transportation plan. The economic price of this highway proliferation is gigantic, because of the huge inefficiency of using trucks instead of trains to move goods long distances. Even now, an 18-wheeler can carry a maximum total load of only 40 tons, even hauling 3 trailers. And every truck needs at least one driver, and to keep going and get the goods there faster, they need 2 drivers per tractor. But one freight car now is allowed to carry a maximum of 123 tons, and, as all of us know, freight trains are often 100 cars or more long, and need only 2 crewpeople to operate them. Do the math: an 18-wheeler truck can carry a maximum of 40 tons per operator if there is only one driver, and only 20 tons per operator if there are 2 drivers (to drive almost continually). But a 100-car freight train can carry 6,150 tons per operator! That means a 100-car freight train with cars carrying 123 tons each is 153 times as efficient as a truck carrying 40 tons! So -- passenger trains do need to proliferate. [/QB][/QUOTE]
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