Point to ponder

I agree with your premise of unfairness.  However I have doubts the federal government can run a RR more effectively than a private entity.

No, I would not want the govt. to plan, manage, or run the US railroads.  But, 'fairness' would seem to dictate, especially in this age where the future of individual transportation is in a state of flux, the booty should be divided between highways, air, and rail.  Something like a simple line item that said any track where Amtrak goes, will be upgraded to heavy rail and concrete ties, 100% funded by the DOT.  The mandated PTC installation was somewhat funded by federal grants and loans, the loans have to be paid back, but the railroads did put out their own money from their profits too.

We are on  the same page.  My concern is the "strings that might be attached" if the Federal Government gets involved.  During the Recession when the Federal Government helped out GM, Ford said no thanks for that very reason.

The only issue I see with improving rail travel is the distances involved.  Without a massive investment in truly high speed rail lines, I'm talking 200-300 MPH, the distances involved in a majority of travel in the US would not be practical for a majority of travelers.

All developed nations except the USA have well developed and functional rail systems. All are government financed.  It's like the interstate highway system.  All built with federal dollars.  I agree that investing in this infrastructure makes a lot of sense, since rail transport can function when air transport is compromised by weather or other problems, and is much more efficient than automobiles and trucks for many uses.

One of the big issues with debates about things like rail travel versus flying or trucks vs trains, is that there are a lot of hidden subsidies at work with almost any industry (for example, allowing businesses to depreciate equipment, often using rapid depreciation, is a form of subsidy). There is a de facto subsidy with trucking in that the amount of wear and tear they produce on the roads is much more than trucks pay in road use taxes and diesel fuel taxes, the difference is a form of subsidy.

With air travel, airports are generally run by quasi government agencies, like the port authority in the NY area.  Leaving out the portion covered by the FAA, the facilities are theirs, maintaining the runways, the terminal infrastructure,it is all theirs. The airlines of course pay to operate there , they pay for gate access. But the cost of running the airports for the owners is not paid for by use fees, the difference is a form of subsidy.

Obviously Amtrak is government run and in a sense that is a subsidy to the rail companies, in the sense that the government could, at least in theory, mandated that the railroads had to run the passenger service in some sort of private-government partnership rather than have created Amtrak and that even with government money would have been a lot more expensive (and folks, this is just hypothetical as a discussion point, I am not advocating that they had done this or whether it would stand up in court. In a sense Amtrak having operating rights over freight railroads is a sort of such a hybrid, albeit relatively disconnected, I wonder if whatever Amtrak pays the operator of the railroad they go over pays for the cost of the extra maintenance, I don't have a clue).

In the real world, if all kinds of politics and the like weren't involved, in assessing the usefulness of rail travel it would require analyzing the whole transportation infrastructure for moving people (freight would be a totally different analysis) and looking at the entire picture, including subsidies, both hidden and visible. That would allow cost effectiveness to be fairly calculated.

For example, to use a common example, flying on the northeast corridor versus train travel. You would need to literally do a full analysis of the total cost, a lot of which is hidden. You would also need to look at travel by car, and figure out the costs of car travel and the benefit (if there is one), of having people use the train. It isn't that people travelling by car don't help pay for the roads and such, of course we do, but it is about what is the final net cost. How much does auto exhaust cause other problems (if any?). How much does it cost to expand roadways with increasing traffic, vs if we could get people to use the train? With airline travel, how much money is lost with delayed flights, how much is lost because of the dense air travel in the corridor and the cost of the control system that needs to be maintained and operated? If in that corridor we shifted let's say 10% of the traffic to high speed rail, what is the net impact on air travel in terms of better performance (and cost)?

The problem is of course that this kind of analysis really isn't done. As with the cost of long distance train travel vs the regional with Amtrak, other forces get involved, local politics, national politics, and yes, an industry like the airline industry or the car industry having their own dog in the race.

@Landsteiner posted:

All developed nations except the USA have well developed and functional rail systems. All are government financed.  It's like the interstate highway system.  All built with federal dollars.  I agree that investing in this infrastructure makes a lot of sense, since rail transport can function when air transport is compromised by weather or other problems, and is much more efficient than automobiles and trucks for many uses.

Look at the size of those nations in square miles. The entire of Europe is less size than the state of Texas and most of those countries are semi socialist with the exception of Germany autobahn they are very old cities with very narrow roads and very expensive fuel costs leaving rail pretty much the only option. This is just my HO. The American people are spoiled and want to get there now and not enjoy the journey thus the term Fly Over Country and this is from someone that has spent close to 50 years in aviation.

One word: China. Bigger than Texas. Better rail system than USA. Another word: Britain. Mostly Tory governments. Still have better rail service but deteriorating. Better rails are a national security need even for capitalist governments.

@Landsteiner posted:

One word: China. Bigger than Texas. Better rail system than USA. Another word: Britain. Mostly Tory governments. Still have better rail service but deteriorating. Better rails are a national security need even for capitalist governments.

So,,,,,,,,are you prepared to have your taxes raised astronomically just to provide "public transportation " by rail? The entire U.S. economy was, and still is, base around the automobile, which means that the citizens of the U.S. will ALWAYS prefer to use their automobiles, or fly to their destination, and rent an automobile.

FYI Amtrak is heavily subsidized by the government (taxpayers) along with regional railroads like NICTD in NW Indiana. This has been a hot issue for years.

My point is not about passenger travel but about national security and an integrated rail system as part of the national transportation system. September 11 taught us that relying on air travel and highways presents problems for everyone.

What people "...prefer..." is perhaps not the most important factor in planning future projects.

From Investopedia:

The Bottom Line

Amtrak makes the bulk of its money from ticket sales, primarily from short-distance trips, and mainly from one, the Northeast Corridor line. Amtrak also receives significant subsidies from the government to keep it running. The company faces many challenges, some of which should be remedied through the recently passed Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act.

https://www.investopedia.com/a...orks-makes-money.asp

January 7, 2022

John

Save the Threads.  Please stay away from the politics.

Here we go again.  We've been warned by the OGR moderators umpteen thousand times to avoid politics, and yet every time someone starts an Amtrak thread that's exactly what we get into, and quickly.  The worst part is it always gets us into trouble, with the result being another thread shut down.  Always.

Keep in mind that it doesn't have to be this way.   We always have two choices:

• Science vs. The Politics of Science
• Climate Change vs. The Politics of Climate Change
• City Planning vs. The Politics of City Planning
• Historic Preservation vs. The Politics of Historic Preservation
• Railroads vs. The Politics of Railroads
• Amtrak vs. The Politics of Amtrak

When it comes to Amtrak which side do you think would they'd like our conversation to be on?

Now you may argue that, unlike the others, there is no "Amtrak" in the last bullet above.  Because of how it was created and has been run for 51 years there is only "The Politics of Amtrak".  I disagree.

Many of us are tired of cancelled threads.  We're constantly losing the interesting and important thoughts and comments of many forumites because of the incessant emotionalism of a few.

You do have a right to free speech on politics.  However, it doesn't have to be voiced here.  Please take your political discussion to a political forum.  That's why they exist.  There are many, many, many of them, even some specializing in Amtrak politics.  They would surely welcome your comments.

This forum is about trains, not politics.

Thanks for listening to the rant.

Mike

Mike,

Not sure forum members arguing "fund it" or "don't fund it" is necessarily "political".  Since Amtrak is partially taxpayer funded it would seem on topic.  None of the threads trash any particular party or politician so it seems harmless.

John

As Rick stated, it is hard to compare other countries mass rail transit to ours, when all of Britain is as big as NC, and Germany is half the size of Texas.  But, the only way rail travel would ever resurge, is with a paradigm shift in peoples thinking of having to get where they are going the fastest way possible.  In the 1930's, the 3 day rail trip from NYC to LA  was how you did it, and everyone did.  Then the plane came along and peoples mindset on travel times changed.  Now they pack them like sardines in a pressurized  aluminum tube, all clamoring to get to their destination, the only scenery on the TV on the back of the seat in front of them.

@CALNNC posted:

Now they pack them like sardines in a pressurized  aluminum tube, all clamoring to get to their destination, the only scenery on the TV on the back of the seat in front of them.

And that TV on the seat back is only in a fraction of the planes, most do not have such amenities.

Ok guys I am going to try to put a positive spin on all this.

We all love trains or we wouldn't be on this Forum.  The vast majority of the population loves their personal transportation.

So what is positive you ask?  Well the federal government could have chosen to pave the National Mall, Funded Parking Decks in NYC Over the Hudson and East Rivers, Likewise the Charles River in Boston and Built I-95 (32) lanes wide in each direction.  Then we wouldn't even have the NE Corridor.

Please don't take this too seriously!

"...they pack them like sardines in a pressurized  aluminum tube..."

Colloquially known as the "torture tube".  Give me Amtrak (almost) any time.

"The entire of Europe is less size than the state of Texas..."

Quite wrong.  France itself is about the size of Texas.  Geography, anyone?

Europe only slightly bigger than the US (10.2 million sq km vs 9.8 million sq km) but this includes large parts of Russia. The EU, which many people think of as Europe, has a population of 510 million people, in an area half the size of the US (4.3 million sq km)

Mellow Hudson Mike:  Again, please chill out and leave the moderating to the forum moderators.

Gunrunnerjohn makes a good point about the geographic size of Europe. Over there, many countries operate an efficient train system that covers only a small fraction of what the size of the United States is. Their high-speed passenger trains run on dedicated trackage.

In the other direction, Japan has a very efficient railroad system too, including the bullet trains. But all of Japan’s islands could fit inside of the state of California. I don’t really know much about massive China’s overland passenger rail system.

In the US, the most efficient Amtrak trains are the ones that run in specific regions, such as the San Diegans/Surfliners in Southern California, the Cascades in the northwest, and of course the Acelas in the Northeast Corridor, etc. The states these trains run in, partially subsidize them and in the Acelas’ case, even to the point of dedicated tracks.

But the overland routes (east-west) are a different story, with these tracks owned by the freight railroads coast-to-coast. So Amtrak trains are not given priority, resulting in delays. The only answer to an efficient Amtrak system would be for it to have its own dedicated trackage. And for a nation the size of the United States, this would obviously be too costly.

Hence, the passenger train system the US has today and it probably isn’t going to get much better. 😳

Europe made a decision to support train travel. In the UK the government took it over as an essential service after WWII. Had its ups and downs,they had their own version of Huntington who nearly destroyed British rail with massive cuts.

Europe also is different. They aren't as scattered as the US, where ppl live on place and drive to another. As a result rail travel can work. The other thing Europe did was fuel was made relatively expensive by taxes, so you didn't have the car based economy we have here which included cheap fuel.

They also over the years expanded their rail network and created new infrastructure, including high speed train service which the US did not do. China is a big country yet they are investing heavily in ultra high speed rail that connects major cities. To give an example, Wuhan to Shanghai is roughly the same distance between NY and Chicago. On high speed train it is 4 hours,which is manageable, given that is city to city ( add up flying time,w getting to airport, security, etc, than on other end). ( In us, NY to Boston on Amtrak is 4 hours).

It would again require a fair w economic analysis to figure out what makes sense, and w costs and subsidies how much each mode really costs and benefits. Air corridors are congested, airports struggle w demand,could strategic rail help with this? If I could take a high speed train from NY to Chicago in 4 hours, I would ( or even 5), compared to the hassle of flying.

Amtrak has been a football since it was founded, subject to all kinds of forces,and has been kept alive, often on life support. I doubt that any such analysis will be done, US is just too decentralized and averse to planning to do a true evaluation. The market doesnt necessarily work here bc of uneven basis of operation, subsidies,direct and hidden,  can skew how things work ( like towards trains in Europe,away from cats).

@gunrunnerjohn posted:

The only issue I see with improving rail travel is the distances involved.  Without a massive investment in truly high speed rail lines, I'm talking 200-300 MPH, the distances involved in a majority of travel in the US would not be practical for a majority of travelers.

I agree, I can drive from Tomball, near Houston, to Dallas in a few hours or spend almost the same amount of time driving to a major airport and fly to Dallas.

A rail trip if available, would probably take longer. I fly to vacation in Sausalito Ca. , Montana , Wyoming or Canada. I would ride a 300 mph train to such destinations, but I bet it would be very expensive. Even if the govt. subsidized such investments , our taxes would increase for years to pay for it.

IMHO

We drive from the Phila area to Boston to see my daughter.  If I fly, I can do it in almost the same time, but it costs more, and I end up in Boston with no car!  If I have to rent a car, the price goes up even more for flying.  The Amtrack Acela from Phila to Boston is 5hr 15 min, and that's on the rare occasion they are on time.  That means I have to drive into Phila and find parking, that's an hour and a half.  The Acela ride to Boston is $200 one-way, so about $350 for a round trip ticket.  I drive to Boston in six hours on one tank of gas, so my round trip is more like $100, and it's faster.  Flying can be cheaper, but the car rental and shagging all the way to Phila airport and renting the car in Boston eats up the savings and more.  It's also slower than driving when the smoke settles.

This is just a destination that's 300 miles away, when you go 1500 miles, the train or driving gets a bit absurd!

@gunrunnerjohn posted:

We drive from the Phila area to Boston to see my daughter.  If I fly, I can do it in almost the same time, but it costs more, and I end up in Boston with no car!  If I have to rent a car, the price goes up even more for flying.  The Amtrack Acela from Phila to Boston is 5hr 15 min, and that's on the rare occasion they are on time.  That means I have to drive into Phila and find parking, that's an hour and a half.  The Acela ride to Boston is $200 one-way, so about $350 for a round trip ticket.  I drive to Boston in six hours on one tank of gas, so my round trip is more like $100, and it's faster.  Flying can be cheaper, but the car rental and shagging all the way to Phila airport and renting the car in Boston eats up the savings and more.  It's also slower than driving when the smoke settles.

This is just a destination that's 300 miles away, when you go 1500 miles, the train or driving gets a bit absurd!

And this is an example of what I am talking about, it is what is the most practical way to go. If you lived in Philadelphia, then parking wouldn't be an problem, and if you are staying in Boston you really don't need to drive, so taking a train might be a lot better than a plane . Obviously, using GRJ's example, if you are visiting someone in a suburb, getting there might mean renting a car, and that is a pain.

If Acela was a real high speed rail, you could get there in less than 2 hours based on a 200mph+ train, so it might make sense.

For city to city travel trains can make sense. If we had true high speed rail like in China, traveling to Chicago from NYC could make sense, or from other large cities in the midwest to Chicago, but would it make sense NY to LA? Not likely, not unless something can go like 500mph, which is doubtful. I thing regional high speed rail could make sense in that it could take load off the air travel system. Regional high speed rail would be roughly analagous to high speed rail between 2 neighboring European countries that exist today.

Will it happen? Doubtful, not unless there is a big shift. Put it this way, history hasn't shown rationalized transport. Cities spend billions building new roads that end up just as congested as the old roads were, rather than building/expanding commuter rail (thinking the sprawl cities like Atlanta and Houston and Phoenix). We had a freight transportation system that for many years gave trucking a huge advantage over the rails even though with long distance shipping rail has huge advantages (or can; Huntington pretty much destroyed that). Places have built mass transit that made absolutely zero sense, where it didn't help with existing load ; they built it assuming people would move to where it was built, didn't work.  I suspect if high speed rail is ever built (the regional model I talked about, like NYC to Chicago with real high speed rail) it will be because air travel gets so messed up that it becomes a critical necessity.

@gunrunnerjohn posted:

If I fly, I can do it in almost the same time, but it costs more, and I end up in Boston with no car!

This suggests that only one person is flying or taking the train.  The cost for travel by those modes dramatically increases with every passenger.  A car trip, on the other hand, costs the same for one passenger or four or five passengers in this situation.  This is another reason that public transportation can't compete with cars for many trips.  NH Joe

@New Haven Joe posted:

This suggests that only one person is flying or taking the train.  The cost for travel by those modes dramatically increases with every passenger.  A car trip, on the other hand, costs the same for one passenger or four or five passengers in this situation.

Good point on multiple passengers, we always have at least two on the trip, and sometimes all five!

@New Haven Joe posted:

This suggests that only one person is flying or taking the train.  The cost for travel by those modes dramatically increases with every passenger.  A car trip, on the other hand, costs the same for one passenger or four or five passengers in this situation.  This is another reason that public transportation can't compete with cars for many trips.  NH Joe

It all depends on what you are trying to compare. If you are talking 3 or 4 people traveling a couple of hundred miles, then yes, the cost for one person or 4 is the same. However, what you also need to count in the cost of traveling by car that most people don't look at. How much does it cost to insure the car? How much does it cost to maintain the car? How much does it cost to maintain the roads that the car drives on? If you are driving to a city area, how much does it cost to park the car? How much is the cost of being caught in traffic and burning extra gas?

Again it depends on where you are traveling and the parameters of the trip. Lot of people these days can spend an hour or more in a  car commuting to work each way when the distance is like 20 miles. Sprawl cities that lack mass transit have nightmares commuting, talk to anyone who works in Atlanta or Phoenix or Houston about that. And what happens with car travel in that case is that governments spend a ton of money expanding highways, which usually ends up just creating more traffic jams.

In the end it is subject to the usual "It depends". My son lives in Boston, if I am going to go visit him I would drive, because the 4.5 hours it takes to get there is fine, and the cost of flying and yeah, the time to drive to an airport, park, get through security, then when I get there get out of the airport, get into Boston would be almost as long. Taking Amtrak would mean taking a local commuter train, then pick up Amtrak in NYC.

@bigkid posted:

It all depends on what you are trying to compare. If you are talking 3 or 4 people traveling a couple of hundred miles, then yes, the cost for one person or 4 is the same. However, what you also need to count in the cost of traveling by car that most people don't look at. How much does it cost to insure the car? How much does it cost to maintain the car? How much does it cost to maintain the roads that the car drives on? If you are driving to a city area, how much does it cost to park the car? How much is the cost of being caught in traffic and burning extra gas?

Well, the car is insured whether I park it at the airport or drive it to Boston.  The roads are there anyway, and it's not costing me anything extra, other than tolls, to drive on them.  Since I almost always want a car at the destination, I'd have to rent one and pay to park it in a city if I take mass transit of any form.

If the disparity was small, I'd say you could make a case for mass transit, but it's not even close.  Truthfully, it's no contest if the destination is within a day's drive.

There is a difference between between cost to society and the cost to the individual.  Car insurance, maintenance, depreciation, etc., is a sunk cost that happens whether or not the car is on the road or in the garage.  Only fuel is a flexible cost.  

The extra cost of taking public transportation can be significant for most people although public transportation is probably better for society as a whole.  Before I retired, I took BART (SF Bay Area Rapid Transit) to work nearly every work day.  It cost me more than $2,000 per year.  Fares have gone up significantly since I retired.  People probably pay nearly $4,000 per year to take the same trip now.  

Individuals usually make decisions based on what is best for them rather than what is best for society.  This is the reason people will often select car travel over other modes.  NH Joe  

@CALNNC posted:

One of the things most folks don't consider about the state of passenger rail service in the US, is the bias in favor of airlines.  All of us who pay income taxes, are supporting a large portion of airline operation.  There is a fee on every ticket supposedly to help pay the governments end of expenses, but it does not even come close.   The 2023 FAA budget request is 11.9 Billion dollars, in the form of a 665 page document.  The airlines entire operating infrastructure is bought and paid for, and run by government employees, the FAA, including contractors who man low activity control towers - paid for by the FAA.  At one time, if a community wanted to build an airport or improve one, all they needed was to come up with 10% of the total cost and the FAA would pay the rest.  The infrastructure used by the airlines, the navigation systems, communications, radar for air traffic control are all government run and maintained.  Their actual in the air schedules are set by 'Flow control' an entity that only allows an aircraft to depart when there is a hole in the sky they can fill such that they will be able to land at their destination.  Compare this to the railroads.  Their infrastructure is built and maintained by them.  Their 'air traffic', CTC, is built, maintained, and run by them.  If the govt. gave the rail lines the same support that is given to air travel, exclusive of the NE corridor, I wonder what kind of nationwide passenger system we would have?

It you go just about anywhere else in the developed world you would see what the result is. Fast efficient rail service that makes air travel unnecessary in most cases and is much cheaper too. American railroads never made money on their passenger service so the free market is not the answer either.

@CALNNC posted:

One of the things most folks don't consider about the state of passenger rail service in the US, is the bias in favor of airlines.  All of us who pay income taxes, are supporting a large portion of airline operation.

Railroads got their government “bias” and support a hundred and fifty years ago in the form of LAND.

I’m not saying that the way things work with airlines are perfect, far from it actually. In fact I think there are a bunch of things the government should crack down on with airlines. However, the railroads got lots of support from the government in the early days … especially in the form of near zero safety regulations for probably the first 50 to 75 years from their inception.

When the railroads started they served freight and passengers.  As the country grew and especially after the 1950s and interstate highways. and later still, air planes, the passenger hauling lost out.  Now passenger service has to have short routes and a high density of travelers to make passenger service viable.

Rail roads big advantage is long haul freight that is not time constrained.  Trucks take a most of the short hauls and time constrained freight.  High speed trains will have to have a high density of travelers and only be viable between certain large cities.

I would have opened this topic sooner if I knew that the non-script title  "Point to Ponder" referred to passenger trains.

Charlie

As usual, I get the late word on another topic.

Charlie

@New Haven Joe posted:

There is a difference between between cost to society and the cost to the individual.  Car insurance, maintenance, depreciation, etc., is a sunk cost that happens whether or not the car is on the road or in the garage.  Only fuel is a flexible cost.  

The extra cost of taking public transportation can be significant for most people although public transportation is probably better for society as a whole.  Before I retired, I took BART (SF Bay Area Rapid Transit) to work nearly every work day.  It cost me more than $2,000 per year.  Fares have gone up significantly since I retired.  People probably pay nearly $4,000 per year to take the same trip now.  

Individuals usually make decisions based on what is best for them rather than what is best for society.  This is the reason people will often select car travel over other modes.  NH Joe  

Mileage does play a role in all the costs you mention. Car depreciation is based both on age and mileage, if you drive a lot of miles (let's say 20000 year) then your maintenance is a lot more...and insurance companies with coverage ask how many miles you drive.  For expense reasons mileage is calculated on a per mile basis, last I recall was getting close to 60c/mile per IRS that factors in all costs, including fuel. So if you drive lets say 60 miles a day back 5 days a week, then add in the cost of parking, it may not be cheaper. Then, too, are things like the time lost in driving in traffic.

It also depends on other factors. Public transit if you are going into a city area generally will be cheaper because parking is prohibitively expensive, unless your employer pays for it.

Roads have a cost as well, though in large part it is paid for through buying gas vis a vis road use taxes in there.

GRJ was correct, if you are going to a destination and then have to rent a car, then you aren't doing well (on the other hand, if you fly someplace, then you have the same problem).

There is another side to mass transit, and again it depends on contexts, Cities like Atlanta, Phoenix, Houston , so called sprawl cities, have horrible problems with traffic, as does LA (and I am talking pre pandemic here, IDK what it is like today with all the changes that have occurred). The lack of mass transit means everyone drives and roads are severely overtaxed. Cities and states spend a ton of money expanding the roads, then find out it doesn't end up helping much. NYC traffic is nothing to write home about, but if there wasn't mass transit, it would be even worse.

It is why I agree it all depends on context. The US is a huge country, this guy I watch on You Tube (UK ex pat living in the US) talked about the differences with trains and of course made the point that the sheer size of the US makes train travel very different than it is in the UK. The UK is like 30% the size of the US, more densely populated, and there trains make sense (he also pointed out that train travel is a lot more expensive in the UK). You can see the problem, he mentioned taking a train between chicago and Seattle takes like 46 hours, which is crazy if you compare it to flying. 

There are def places where mass transit makes sense, and where it doesn't. Certain corridors if done right (a big if), high speed trains could take the load off densely packed flight corridors and places where roads are packed. The Northeast corridor with true high speed trains (talking 200mph +), corridors like LA to SF to SD, could alleviate load on the highways and air travel. If you had a true high speed train like they have in China, NY to Chicago might be practical vs flying if it goes city center to city center.

On the other hand, when I go to Boston or other places I drive from my house, to go mass transit would be an hour on a commuter train or more, then 4 hours on Amtrak, just lot easier to drive. If I was on a business trip to Boston from NYC, I would take Amtrak if my meeting was in Boston since I likely would leave from work directly. If I was working from home, would probably drive.

@Choo Choo Charlie posted:

When the railroads started they served freight and passengers.  As the country grew and especially after the 1950s and interstate highways. and later still, air planes, the passenger hauling lost out.  Now passenger service has to have short routes and a high density of travelers to make passenger service viable.

Rail roads big advantage is long haul freight that is not time constrained.  Trucks take a most of the short hauls and time constrained freight.  High speed trains will have to have a high density of travelers and only be viable between certain large cities.

I would have opened this topic sooner if I knew that the non-script title  "Point to Ponder" referred to passenger trains.

Charlie

You make a good point. There is an argument to be made about high speed freight service but that is another discussion. Railroads big thing with freight is they can carry a heck of a lot with mile long trains going 30mph or whatever, it isn't time sensitive stuff (raises an interesting question, maybe someone knows, how much work do railroads get with perishable items, like produce or meat or the like? I would assume trucks have taken over most if not all that).