RE: (erielack) Re: commuter railroads

["Schuyler Larrabee" <schuyler.larrabee_@_verizon.net>]

 "T" writes:
> Could it be done?  Yes.  Will it be done?  Not likely, unless 
> they treat it like a private enterprise - hey, wow, what a 
> novel idea!!!!!  Mass transit companies that are private 
> sector corporations that actually make money without taxpayer 
> subsidies.  In our lifetime?

Nope.  Nowhere in the world (AFAIK) is there a passenger service that makes a profit.  Only here in
this country with its obsession about how things should be making money, and its utter fear that
people might have to pay taxes to support something, even if it is something that improves their
life on a day-to-day basis, or provides services to individuals whose lives would be absolutely
impossible without that support, do people persist in the fantasy that passenger transportation can
make money.

And before somebody says "Airlines make money," no, they don't.  They feed off the subsidies that
taxpayers provide to build airports, and to provide the unbelievable supporting network of radio
beacons, directional radio, air traffic controllers, and so on.  Ride in a private plane sometime,
and get an understanding of the absolutely enormous tax-supported infrastructure that makes air
travel safe . . . .at least in that aircraft aren't running into each other all the time, and can
navigate to their destinations, even in pea-soup fog.  And the efforts, so far since 9/11 more or
less successful, to make the rest of air travel safe are also tax-supported.  Possibly not in total,
but the TSA employees are all federal employees.

Nor do trucks, in the same sense.  Nor do towboats on the Mississippi or the other major canals
built and maintained by the Army Corp of Engineers.  Your taxes support them all.  If they were not
there, then the cost of that chair you're sitting on would be astronomical.  So would the cost of
the computer you're looking at.  And the steak you had for dinner.  And the gas you bought for the
car this afternoon.  You probably couldn't afford it.

But to come back to what T was talking about, commuter traffic has not made money, if ever, since
before the turn of the last century.  Based on some research done by a friend of mine reading the
New York papers at the NYPL, the ERIE, the DL&W, the Reading, the LIRR, the NH, the NYC, were all
complaining about how the commuter trains they were running were a drain on their profitability.  If
they could have, they'd have dropped them in an instant.  But the government agencies, the PUCs, and
other similar agencies, wouldn't permit them to do the train-offs, because of the public good.

Understand me, I am not against taxes, in fact, I am for paying taxes to support worthwhile services
and the provision of services of which I hope that I never have to avail myself: fire, police,
chronic medical care, and so on.  I do believe that some services are less than perfectly well run,
but in many cases, it's not the individuals who are "on the ground" doing the services who are to
blame, but administrative nonsense, as often as not imposed by politicians.

We're way off topic, and this is the last I'll participate in this thread.

SGL


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