Re: (erielack) NJ/PA - Environmental Assessment for Lackawanna Cutoff now ava...

["Jim Guthrie" <jguthrie_@_pipeline.com>]

Henry writes:
>
> The percentage of people who drive.

No doubt everyone likes a free lunch. A large percentage of people would 
like to win the Mega-millions tonight as well. But responsible economists 
will tell you there's no such thing as a free lunch.

Rail and transit restoration and construction is hobbled by all manner of
hoops that have been imposed by the highway and oil lobbies through the
years. If you're not sure, check who pays for those "think tanks" that
inform public discussion of rail.

The Sierra Club has no greater friend than the highway builders and oil
companies when they denouce projects like the Lackawanna Cut-off in favor of
adding lanes to I-80. Of course those added lanes east of Blairstown would
cost sums that make restoration of service to Scranton look like chump
change -- and lead to demands to destroy the Delaware Water Gap in favor of
an 8-10 lane highway. But that's the "Free Lunch" while the rail option
"costs money."

I know some who were around at the time and carefully followed the
discontinuance process know, but the younger folk here don't: If you are
using farebox recovery in the modern sense of the word,  to evaluate the
value of passenger trains, few -- if any of the EL's long distance trains
ever "lost money."  But the public enterprise way of accounting is different
than private enterprise, so highways are evaluated differently than some
would choose to evaluate passenger trains.

Cheers,
Jim Guthrie
ELHS #1296


	The Erie Lackawanna Mailing List
	http://EL-List.railfan.net/
	To Unsubscribe: http://Lists.Railfan.net/erielackunsub.html

------------------------------