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(erielack) Re: EL Mail List Digest V3 #3146

People always complain about spending money on Amtrak, even Glenn Beck the other day was going on about Amtrak spending money to rehab cars and engines and obviously had no clue what he was talking about.

The last figures I had, the government provides about 11 times as much money to the airlines as to Amtrak.  Truth be told, if the airlines got less and had less service, more people would use trains in the markets they're available and make sense.  If the airlines need so much money to support them, do we really need them that badly?

Does it make sense to fly from Scranton to the New York metro area?  I doubt it.  Could you do it for less than the cost of a train ride? Again unlikely.  Which one is less pollutive?  Again it's unlikely it's the airline.  

I don't understand the Sierra Club being against this; a handful of trains a day is somehow worse for the environment than thousands of cars and trucks a day?

And bottom line, the current government is going to spend our money no matter what.  If they have to they'll just print it.  I guess I'd rather have the train there and running when our money collapses and I can't afford to drive a car anymore because gas is suddenly $22.50 a gallon instead of $2.50.  

I don't know how much sense it makes to go on arguing with one another about this subject.  Some like it, some don't, but it seems to me an alternative to the interstates down there would be a good thing.  I've only driven in northern New Jersey once, some of those roads are so busy you can't turn left across them, and the gas stations and Dunkin' Donuts and so on will have shops close together on both sides of the road because of it.  I've never seen anything else like that anywhere.  I can't imagine what trying to commute through all that must be like.  I have to think I'd be riding the train if it came fairly close to my destination, even if I had to keep one car at home and one car in the station lot to get the rest of the way to the actual workplace.

And apparently it's coming eventually either way, at least part of it.  


(more follows)

> 
> From Archives_@_Railfan.net
> Date: Fri, 19 Jun 2009 22:40:09 -0400
> From: "Jim Guthrie" <jguthrie_@_pipeline.com>
> Subject: Re: (erielack) NJ/PA - Environmental Assessment for Lackawanna Cutoff   now ava...
> 
> 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
> 
> ------------------------------

Yes and no, Walt. We had a service in Syracuse that more often than not ran empty.  It was poorly run and could have used a weekend and evening service, for those attending downtown events or going to the bars from the university - plus it didn't run in the winter, when it would make sense that people might use it to go to the shopping mall at one end of the line because it's too cold to walk or wait at an outside bus platform.   But it was mostly an excuse to get the county to step in and take the last few miles of DL&W from Conrail and give it to the NYS&W so Walter could take his stack trains away from CP after losing his bid to take over the D&H.  The kicker is the county built a new intermodal station and a platform by the ballpark the commuter could never get to for lack of a bridge.  

It was there, and it had some convenience, but once the big hoopla died down, people didn't use it.  Today, people are just too used to using their cars or other means of transportation.

(more follows)

> From Archives_@_Railfan.net
> Date: Fri, 19 Jun 2009 18:59:12 -0700 (PDT)
> From: walter smith <wsmith5957_@_yahoo.com>
> Subject: Re: (erielack) Scranton Light Rail

> Point is- if there's convenient service, folks will utilize it. How can all u train-haters talk about govt. money being wasted on AMTRAK??? Ur brains have been well & truly washed by the hiway-trucking lobby that takes a helluva lot more tax money than the RRs do. Only problem I have with RR subsidies is - making the RRs be responsible for proper use of the money. Forinstance....not taking the money & then sticking Psgr trains behind coal trains/ freighttrains, etc.  It makes me sick to hear them rattle on about the 'wickedness' of taxpayer subsidies. Airlines are subsidized, hiways are subsidized, ports are subsidized. DEAL WITH IT!!!!!
> 
> Regards to all
> 
> Walt Smith
> 
> 

And last but not least... was this really called for?

> 
> From Archives_@_Railfan.net
> Date: Thu, 18 Jun 2009 14:57:07 -0400
> From: "vze3fhdr" <vze3fhdr_@_verizon.net>
> Subject: Re: (erielack) Death By Train (not for the squeamish)
> 
> 
>> Death By Train
> 
> 
> 
>    To Gary Kazin, and all you others who are facinated by "Death by Train":
> 
>    Please do some of us on this list a favor and go experience it first 
> hand.
> 
>    Bill 
> 
> 


Bill K.

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