581–590 of 910 posts
I just returned from a trip in Germany back to the UK and I find it frustrating that we don't have such a ticket in this country.
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Almost every road project is paid by public money.
$4B/year spent on Amtrak for passenger miles in the billions.
Roads are an order of magnitude cheaper
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Most beeching stations were of no use- the service wasn’t there. The village my son’s school is at had a station, a mile out the middle, with 5 trains a day. You would have to change to another train to get to a station with a regular service to London, and increasing services wouldn’t be possible without significantly increasing terminal capacity. Menawhile the far larger village I live in has never had a station. S…
That's really not my point. Okay, now the village has no train service, so they are required to use cars or buses to get around. Then the UK introduces a "UK ticket", £50/month for local train service anywhere in the UK. If those villagers protest against the ticket, because it's funded by their taxes while they can't use it, how should we understand that complaint? One way is to use their anger to justify shutting d…
Subsidising buses like the £2 fare makes far more sense for most people than subsidising trains. Not that we get a bus which goes anywhere useful like a train station there’s 6 a day but you then need to change to another bus to get to the station.
Offering free parking at stations would help with a “living close to station” lot. I went to Birmingham a few weeks ago, choice is drive 30 minutes to station, pay £12 to park, then pay £17 for the train fare. Instead I just drove the extra 40 minutes and paid £10 to park in Birmingham.
Providing these €49 tickets requires an annual subsidy of around €3bn, on top of already substantial subsidies for the rail industry. If we accept that it reduces carbon emissions by 6.7 million tonnes per year, then that works out to €447 per tonne. That really isn't good value - most carbon abatement methods cost well under $100 per tonne. I do recognise that modal shift towards rail may have other positive externa…
Germany spends some 70 billion euros maintaining the road system, only about a third of which is offset by taxes on drivers [1]. If we accept that investments in roads reduce carbon emissions by 0 million tonnes per year, then that works out to NaN € per tonne -- much worse than other carbon abatement methods! Naturally there might be other positive externalities to owning a car, but I don't own a car and therefore w…
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Funding road repairs, construction, and expansion from general tax revenues is similarly subsidizing a different mode of transit, and it's likely a much higher value than the 3b€ you mention (and likely more than overall railway sector subsidizing, tho I'm not familiar with Germany's budget). Also recognizing that other positive externalities exist, but pricing them at $0, seems silly.
Aren’t roads necessary from a “last mile” perspective for like, all sorts of things a functioning country needs? Last time I checked trains don’t run directly from farms to grocery stores and so we need trucks and therefore roads in order to get food to consumers, among other things.
a few trucks are still needed but trucks used to haul are a minoricy of traffic
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Road wear scales with the fourth power of weight over the axle so, even with personal cars getting heavier, I’m not sure that moving people from cars to trains makes much of a difference – I think most wear typically comes from heavy vehicles or weathering – so it mightn’t make much difference to repair costs. That doesn’t mean there aren’t other advantages. Eg reducing parking spaces (as a sibling points out) to inc…
> time on a train can be better spent than time in a car because one doesn’t need to pay as much attention, which could be a small improvement to many people’s lives. This is not really true on busy trains. I've commuted both on trains and in cars, and when comparing transportation methods near the saturation point, cars win when it comes to personal comfort. A traffic jam is no fun, but you can still sit, aren't jos…
Note that if you're at the saturation point of both modes, you're moving a lot more people with (light/heavy) rail:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Passenger_Capacity_of_dif...
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Route_capacity
Also worth considering that while it may be personally comfortable for you in on saturated rail, you're still moving towards your destination, whereas at car saturation you may be physically comfortable, but you are not making progress towards your goal of actually achieving your goal of getting to your destination while your speed is zero.
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Focusing on the cost-per-tonne for carbon reduction misses the broader value of railways. They're not just about reducing emission! They facilitate daily commutes, expand job opportunities, and help drive the economy. It’s a subsidy for businesses too.
How much of the increased rail use is helping increase GDP, though, rather than being purely leisurely trips with little long term value for the economy? More people going to hike in the forest on the weekend technically increases GDP but doesn't add much value to the economy overall.
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Not to mention subsidised parking spaces. Free and even paid street parking is highly subsidised by the city and by other tax payers. There's also the environmental cost of not having that land be a park or nature and instead have it contribute to being an urban heat island with all its asphalt.
Healthcare cost also decline, and people become less sick because you have to walk some amount to get to the train.
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> time on a train can be better spent than time in a car because one doesn’t need to pay as much attention, which could be a small improvement to many people’s lives. This is not really true on busy trains. I've commuted both on trains and in cars, and when comparing transportation methods near the saturation point, cars win when it comes to personal comfort. A traffic jam is no fun, but you can still sit, aren't jos…
> I've commuted both on trains and in cars, and when comparing transportation methods near the saturation point, cars win when it comes to personal comfort. Note that if you're at the saturation point of both modes, you're moving a lot more people with (light/heavy) rail: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Passenger_Capacity_of_dif... * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Route_capacity Also worth considering that while…
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Not to mention subsidised parking spaces. Free and even paid street parking is highly subsidised by the city and by other tax payers. There's also the environmental cost of not having that land be a park or nature and instead have it contribute to being an urban heat island with all its asphalt.
Healthcare cost also decline, and people become less sick because you have to walk some amount to get to the train.
