High Speed Trains a Waste of Money

Amtrak Unlimited Discussion Forum

Help Support Amtrak Unlimited Discussion Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.
Prop. 23 failed by a wide margin.
Indeed. One of a handful of bright spots in an otherwise very dark night.

Today the GOP's ranking Transportation Committee member John Mica appears to be signaling his desire to funnel all remaining and returned passenger rail funding exclusively into the NEC. The only other passenger rail project he has any support for would be some sort of Disney World train from the Orlando airport. Every other current or future passenger rail project is apparently a waste of time and money in Mica's view.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
[snip]

Much like an HP executive once told a man named Steve: "What would ordinary people want with computers?"
That quote comes from a movie "The Pirates of Silicon Valley", not from real life. As far as anybody knows, that did not happen. There was a quote by Ken Olsen the founder of Digital Equipment Corp. that is very similar. Snopes has Olsen's quote and the very important context.
It is in that movie, slightly modified. It is also located in a biography written about Wozniak ten or fifteen years before that movie. It is further located in a contemporary biography of Steve Jobs. It is possible that the phrasing itself is made up, but I am also fairly positive the context is true and happened. HP needed to have a reason for dismissing Wozniak's project. It might have been more along the lines, "HP sees no profit or market in a computer designed for personal use at this time." But I am certain that it was said.

By the way, I find it irritating that the only comments people make on my posts nowadays involve picking nits irrelevant to my point. I really don't have time to be posting on here, but I find it anyway. People like you make me wonder why I bother.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Just for the heck of it see what Wozniack is upto these days, working with HP again!

I have no idea whether Wozniak had that exact exchange with some HP executive or not. But it is certain that he had to get IPR release from HP to go and work on the personal computer stuff with Jobs. It is possible that the boring process of getting the IPR release has been given a more romantic color and has become an urban legend in that form. In any event Wozniack's departure from HP was very cordial, and at the end of the day the details of the conversation seem quite irrelevant to me, for people to be throwing hissy-fits about it :)

Incidentally Wozniack's primary focus at HP back then was on handheld calculators. HP then was primarily an instrumentation company. So it is not hard to understand why HP even allowed Wozniack to moonlight with Atari and collaborate with Jobs on the side. If HP considered computers of any sort to be part of their core business back then, such would typically not have been permitted. So in a way it was fortunate for all that HP was not into personal computers back then and was enlightened enough to not stifle its employees creativity to work on the side on what interested them and let them go out and develop it on their own.

This has been a long tradition at HP, and even today (in spite of the Carly and Mark circus), occasionally individuals or groups spin off from HP with ideas and things that are not considered to be of immediate interest, and develop them into businesses, and there are then many cases where later such companies are bought back by HP. It is just the way it has been and to some extent still is.

As a matter of full disclosure I should point out that I work for HP in the Software and Solutions group.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Just for the heck of it see what Wozniack is upto these days, working with HP again!

Incidentally Wozniack's primary focus at HP back then was on handheld calculators. HP then was primarily an instrumentation company. So it is not hard to understand why HP even allowed Wozniack to moonlight with Atari and collaborate with Jobs on the side. If HP considered computers of any sort to be part of their core business back then, such would typically not have been permitted. So in a way it was fortunate for all that HP was not into personal computers back then and was enlightened enough to not stifle its employees creativity to work on the side on what interested them and let them go out and develop it on their own.

This has been a long tradition at HP, and even now occasionally individuals or groups spin off from HP with ideas and things that are not considered to be of immediate interest, and develop them into businesses, and there are then many cases where later such companies are bought back by HP. It is just the way it has been and to some extent still is.

As a matter of full disclosure I should point out that I work for HP in the Software and Solutions group.
Having worked at JPL for 30 years and having a lot of contact with HP, I agree with your comments. The Olsen quote was from the 70's, a good 10-15 years before the PC concept was kicked around. Before I that I worked for CDC, and NCR designing building and testing mainframes, and minicomputers. Part of that entailed reverse engineering Data General, DEC, SDC, XDS, CA, and other machines. Oh, and I also helped build and program the first IMSAI 8080 and Altair 8800 at JPL with Eugene Miya, remember CP/M?
 
Last edited by a moderator:
According to this article building a network of HSR is a waste of effort and money. Not the kind of article I want to see but perhaps it has some validity especially relative to the cost. Any thoughts?
From the Samuelson article:

High-speed intercity trains (not commuter lines) travel at up to 250 miles per hour and are most competitive with planes and cars over distances of less than 500 miles. In a report on high-speed rail, the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service examined the 12 corridors of 500 miles or less with the most daily air traffic in 2007. Los Angeles to San Francisco led the list with 13,838 passengers; altogether, daily air passengers in these 12 corridors totaled 52,934. If all of them switched to trains, the number of airline passengers, about 2 million a day, would drop only 2.5 percent. Any fuel savings would be less than that; even trains need fuel. 

Indeed, intercity trains—at whatever speed—target such a small part of total travel that the effects on reduced oil use, traffic congestion, and greenhouse gases must be microscopic. Every day, about 140 million Americans go to work, with 85 percent driving an average of 25 minutes (three quarters drive alone, 10 percent carpool). Even with 250,000 high-speed rail passengers, there would be no visible effect on routine commuting, let alone personal driving. In the Northeast Corridor, with about 45 million people, Amtrak’s daily ridership is 28,500. If its trains shut down tomorrow, no one except the affected passengers would notice.
 
As some others have said, most of these anti-rail people are wind-up dolls. Once you hear the name of the person or institute, you can be 90% sure of what they are going to say. They use the same reaasoning regardless of the nature of the project, wthere it is light rail, heavy rail, minor improvements, upgrades such as Illinois, or full blown high speed rail systems suchas in California. They have almost always been proven wrong once the system is up and running.

Whoever it is pays their fees and pulls their sting and the words they want said come out. Many of these groups give themselves wonderful sounding names, and masquerade as being political conservatives. Emphasis here on masquerade. When it comes to government assistance to those funding their anti rail spiels, the silence against government spending is thundering.

One that used to appear regularly to play this part was Wendell Cox. Come to think of it, maybe the guy has finally destroyed his credibility as I have not noticed anything out of him lately. If you want to see someone wrap himself in the Flag, Motherhood and Apple Pie, this was your guy:

He used to appear regularly as part of one of several organizations. The most honest name used was Wendell Cox Consultancy, but he is either the main man of or part of (and I don't care which) of the following named organizations: Public Purpose, Heartland Institute, Demographia, and maybe some others. He appeared to have been always ready to make speeches or prepare reports in opposition to any people carrying rail proposal.
 
As some others have said, most of these anti-rail people are wind-up dolls. Once you hear the name of the person or institute, you can be 90% sure of what they are going to say. They use the same reaasoning regardless of the nature of the project, wthere it is light rail, heavy rail, minor improvements, upgrades such as Illinois, or full blown high speed rail systems suchas in California. They have almost always been proven wrong once the system is up and running.

Whoever it is pays their fees and pulls their sting and the words they want said come out. Many of these groups give themselves wonderful sounding names, and masquerade as being political conservatives. Emphasis here on masquerade. When it comes to government assistance to those funding their anti rail spiels, the silence against government spending is thundering.

One that used to appear regularly to play this part was Wendell Cox. Come to think of it, maybe the guy has finally destroyed his credibility as I have not noticed anything out of him lately. If you want to see someone wrap himself in the Flag, Motherhood and Apple Pie, this was your guy:

He used to appear regularly as part of one of several organizations. The most honest name used was Wendell Cox Consultancy, but he is either the main man of or part of (and I don't care which) of the following named organizations: Public Purpose, Heartland Institute, Demographia, and maybe some others. He appeared to have been always ready to make speeches or prepare reports in opposition to any people carrying rail proposal.
Robert Samuelson is a columnist for Newsweek and the Washington Post who specializes in economic issues. He is not an "anti-rail" activist by any measure. You can not put him into the same category as a Wendell Cox and then simply dismiss his arguments as rants.

Newsweek Samuelson
 
Having worked at JPL for 30 years and having a lot of contact with HP, I agree with your comments. The Olsen quote was from the 70's, a good 10-15 years before the PC concept was kicked around. Before I that I worked for CDC, and NCR designing building and testing mainframes, and minicomputers. Part of that entailed reverse engineering Data General, DEC, SDC, XDS, CA, and other machines. Oh, and I also helped build and program the first IMSAI 8080 and Altair 8800 at JPL with Eugene Miya, remember CP/M?
Thank you.

Yes I remember CP/M though I never used it myself extensively.

Of the quaint systems that I used the one that stands out in my mind is using a simulation language called GASP IV based on FORTRAN IV on an IBM 1130 to simulate traffic flow through a railroad yard. That was kind of fun. The entire simulation of a medium size yard fit in 15 standard boxes of IBM punch cards :) , including seeding data for the simulation from real measured traffic flow. It was amazing how quickly a 2501 card reader could chew through those cards. We had to have two people in tandem feeding the hopper to keep it going full speed. Visions of a firemen feeding coal to a steamer come to mind :)

But then again I did other bizarre things like write a Pascal compiler in FORTRAN with a little help from 1130 Assembler (to do stack management for the recursive descent parser :) ) to implement the first ever Pascal system for 1130! There was so little primary memory that it used 12 passes to fit the thing within the constraints of technology available. All this was in about the mid-70s.
 
Robert Samuelson is a columnist for Newsweek and the Washington Post who specializes in economic issues. He is not an "anti-rail" activist by any measure. You can not put him into the same category as a Wendell Cox and then simply dismiss his arguments as rants.
Not saying that Samuelson was equivalent to Cox and those of similar mindset, however this sort of stuff:

High-speed intercity trains (not commuter lines) travel at up to 250 miles per hour and are most competitive with planes and cars over distances of less than 500 miles. In a report on high-speed rail, the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service examined the 12 corridors of 500 miles or less with the most daily air traffic in 2007. Los Angeles to San Francisco led the list with 13,838 passengers; altogether, daily air passengers in these 12 corridors totaled 52,934. If all of them switched to trains, the number of airline passengers, about 2 million a day, would drop only 2.5 percent. Any fuel savings would be less than that; even trains need fuel.
Indeed, intercity trains—at whatever speed—target such a small part of total travel that the effects on reduced oil use, traffic congestion, and greenhouse gases must be microscopic. Every day, about 140 million Americans go to work, with 85 percent driving an average of 25 minutes (three quarters drive alone, 10 percent carpool). Even with 250,000 high-speed rail passengers, there would be no visible effect on routine commuting, let alone personal driving. In the Northeast Corridor, with about 45 million people, Amtrak’s daily ridership is 28,500. If its trains shut down tomorrow, no one except the affected passengers would notice.
sounds really similar.
13,800 is still something on the order of 100 flights, and I am not sure that he is counting flights between all the airports involved, as I think there are three or four on each end, not to mention to/from or between the several airports at intermediate points.

There are of course a lot of air corridors that due to either length or light density of traffic do not lend themselves to rail alternatives, but that should not be used to discredit the concept in the corridors where it will work, and work well.

I have been in this rail transit stuff too long to believe any of this sort of stuff, anyway. I have heard too many times this mantra, "it costs too much, it takes too long to build, nobody is going to ride it, etc." and seen it disproven. The anti-transit characters then quietly fade away into the woodwork without ever admitting they missed it completely and were conclusively proven to be wrong only to resurface the next time a rail system is proposed somewhere else.

Can anyone picture the DC Metro area functioning without WAMATA? Yet there was a lot of opposition, and, at one point after construction was under way, a scaling back of the system size. Yet now the system is beyond the extent of the "full system" plan of the early 1970's, with more currently under construction.
 
Robert Samuelson is a columnist for Newsweek and the Washington Post who specializes in economic issues. He is not an "anti-rail" activist by any measure. You can not put him into the same category as a Wendell Cox and then simply dismiss his arguments as rants.
Not saying that Samuelson was equivalent to Cox and those of similar mindset, however this sort of stuff:

High-speed intercity trains (not commuter lines) travel at up to 250 miles per hour and are most competitive with planes and cars over distances of less than 500 miles. In a report on high-speed rail, the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service examined the 12 corridors of 500 miles or less with the most daily air traffic in 2007. Los Angeles to San Francisco led the list with 13,838 passengers; altogether, daily air passengers in these 12 corridors totaled 52,934. If all of them switched to trains, the number of airline passengers, about 2 million a day, would drop only 2.5 percent. Any fuel savings would be less than that; even trains need fuel.
Indeed, intercity trains—at whatever speed—target such a small part of total travel that the effects on reduced oil use, traffic congestion, and greenhouse gases must be microscopic. Every day, about 140 million Americans go to work, with 85 percent driving an average of 25 minutes (three quarters drive alone, 10 percent carpool). Even with 250,000 high-speed rail passengers, there would be no visible effect on routine commuting, let alone personal driving. In the Northeast Corridor, with about 45 million people, Amtrak's daily ridership is 28,500. If its trains shut down tomorrow, no one except the affected passengers would notice.
sounds really similar.
13,800 is still something on the order of 100 flights, and I am not sure that he is counting flights between all the airports involved, as I think there are three or four on each end, not to mention to/from or between the several airports at intermediate points.

There are of course a lot of air corridors that due to either length or light density of traffic do not lend themselves to rail alternatives, but that should not be used to discredit the concept in the corridors where it will work, and work well.

I have been in this rail transit stuff too long to believe any of this sort of stuff, anyway. I have heard too many times this mantra, "it costs too much, it takes too long to build, nobody is going to ride it, etc." and seen it disproven. The anti-transit characters then quietly fade away into the woodwork without ever admitting they missed it completely and were conclusively proven to be wrong only to resurface the next time a rail system is proposed somewhere else.

Can anyone picture the DC Metro area functioning without WAMATA? Yet there was a lot of opposition, and, at one point after construction was under way, a scaling back of the system size. Yet now the system is beyond the extent of the "full system" plan of the early 1970's, with more currently under construction.
On another site, someone pointed out that the LA-SF flight totals only counted LAX & SFO, ignoring all of the other airports that serve those metro areas.
 
Can anyone picture the DC Metro area functioning without WAMATA? Yet there was a lot of opposition, and, at one point after construction was under way, a scaling back of the system size. Yet now the system is beyond the extent of the "full system" plan of the early 1970's, with more currently under construction.
It doesn't/can't - after the double blizzards of last winter, the Federal Government closed until WMATA was able to get some semblance of rail service running again.
 
Samuelson's argument can equally be used to shut down all under 300 mile commercial flights and let people just drive thus reducing air space congestion and huge amounts of money that is required to build infrastructure to support these flights. Afterall a minuscule proportion of travelers of the total on each such corridor use those flights. I was surprised to find that of the 35 people from New York area that attended the meeting, 30 of them drove!

This logic of this was starkly illustrated to me when for various reasons I had to drive from NJ to Niagara Falls and back for a single day meeting. Doing one night in hotel it was easy to do, it overall actually cost me less by a significant factor compared to any available flights, and Amtrak just does not have the schedule that can be meaningfully used to start after work one day and get to Niagara Falls that night get some sleep and be ready for a meeting the following day.

Now if there were HSR like In Japan or Europe in that route for reasonable fares that compared well with the $0.50/mile nominal cost of driving, I'd have taken the train, heck or even the plane if they had such fares on short notice.
 
He used to appear regularly as part of one of several organizations. The most honest name used was Wendell Cox Consultancy, but he is either the main man of or part of (and I don't care which) of the following named organizations: Public Purpose, Heartland Institute, Demographia, and maybe some others. He appeared to have been always ready to make speeches or prepare reports in opposition to any people carrying rail proposal.
I have heard reliable (but unsubstantiated, as always with second hand information) reports the Cox's organizations are funded by several companies, notably ExxonMobile and Royal Dutch Shell.
 
This logic of this was starkly illustrated to me when for various reasons I had to drive from NJ to Niagara Falls and back for a single day meeting. Doing one night in hotel it was easy to do, it overall actually cost me less by a significant factor compared to any available flights, and Amtrak just does not have the schedule that can be meaningfully used to start after work one day and get to Niagara Falls that night get some sleep and be ready for a meeting the following day.
Now if there were HSR like In Japan or Europe in that route for reasonable fares that compared well with the $0.50/mile nominal cost of driving, I'd have taken the train, heck or even the plane if they had such fares on short notice.
What would also work would be a properly scheduled overnight train. The New York - Chicago corridor has always seemed to me to beg for three train each way: From New York overnight with an early morning arrival in Buffalo, continuing on to Chicago in the day. A train leaving New York sometime in the morning that leaves Cleveland in late evening for an early morning arrival in Chicago. Something that more or less splits the difference, similar to the Lake Shore Limited's schedule. Mirror these schedules in the other diraction. An early morning arrival Buffalo westbound and Cleveland eastbound would still get to the other of these two cities about mid-morning, with the reverse direction leaving after the close of the normal business day. Once the speed potential of the line gets to the point that it is practical, a "daylight" traim similar to the pre-Amtrak City of New Orleans should be added. Can not understand why the New York Central never tried such a schedule. It was a true money maker for the Illinois Central for many years in a territory that was both lighter in population and poorer economically.
 
He used to appear regularly as part of one of several organizations. The most honest name used was Wendell Cox Consultancy, but he is either the main man of or part of (and I don't care which) of the following named organizations: Public Purpose, Heartland Institute, Demographia, and maybe some others. He appeared to have been always ready to make speeches or prepare reports in opposition to any people carrying rail proposal.
I have heard reliable (but unsubstantiated, as always with second hand information) reports the Cox's organizations are funded by several companies, notably ExxonMobile and Royal Dutch Shell.
One enterprising reporter uncovered some links to oil a few years ago.

But otherwise much of his funding remains a mystery. He continues to hide it telling people that it's not important for them to know that, which of course just further adds to the idea that all of his funding comes from people who pay him to be anti-rail.
 
He used to appear regularly as part of one of several organizations. The most honest name used was Wendell Cox Consultancy, but he is either the main man of or part of (and I don't care which) of the following named organizations: Public Purpose, Heartland Institute, Demographia, and maybe some others. He appeared to have been always ready to make speeches or prepare reports in opposition to any people carrying rail proposal.
I have heard reliable (but unsubstantiated, as always with second hand information) reports the Cox's organizations are funded by several companies, notably ExxonMobile and Royal Dutch Shell.
One enterprising reporter uncovered some links to oil a few years ago.

But otherwise much of his funding remains a mystery. He continues to hide it telling people that it's not important for them to know that, which of course just further adds to the idea that all of his funding comes from people who pay him to be anti-rail.
At one time a few years back one of the rail profession oriented on-line publicatons put up a an article titled "Who funds Wendell Cox?" It dissapeared in a couple of days. I had intended to copy it the first time I saw it. When I went back to do so, it was gone. Best I remember, it was mostly major oil companies and some others whose bread and butter depended upon lots of driving.
 
Here is a post quoting an edited version of the article "Who funds Wendell Cox" that appeared at Free Republic in 2004:

WHO FUNDS WENDELL COXby Phil Craig

New New Electric Railray Journal, 2/28/2004 (edited)

It's been apparent to me for some time that there has been a determined "Stop Light Rail" campaign going on that had to be funded by more than Wendell Cox's personal generosity. "Yes, those who gave us National City Lines and won (other than receiving a $3,000 slap on the pinkie from the Federal Courts) are worried that what they thought was dead once and for all has risen from the grave, namely the trolley in its modern form: LRT."

Want to know who is funding Wendell Cox? Go to Yahoo, query "The Heartland Institute", under Press Room, click on FAQ "What is the Heartland Institute", click on "How is The Heartland Institute Funded?", click on "Q. Who funds The Heartland Institute?" and the click on "accompanying list." There you will find the attached pdf listing of recent donors. Amongst the names you will find those convicted in the NCL anti-trust case or their descendants.

(Editor’s note: Wendell Cox receives funding from more than just the Heartland Institute. His Wendell Cox Consultancy has received funds from many highway, asphalt, concrete, automobile manufacturing and other “highway” interests. Cox is a “Senior Fellow” of the Heartland Institute and if you wish to schedule him to speak at one of your events, you contact him through that foundation. Interestingly, on the list you can access from the information above, a few names stand out: General Motors, BP Amoco Foundation, Inc., Exxon Mobile Foundation, among others.)

The most mind boggling contributor of all: "The Railroad Crosstie Association of America." They must really have a marketing genius on their staff, someone who knows that helping Wendell Cox kill LRT projects really helps their business.

(Editor’s note: If you read Wendell Cox’s biographical information on the Heartland Institute web-site, you will notice that it seems to be written in Orwellian 1984 language: Wendell Cox is portrayed as “pro light rail,” despite his many campaigns against such transit in such places as Houston. When researching Cox and his supporters, it is very important to be aware that their “spin” on information is not always as others would describe it.)

The Heartland Institute, as the sponsor of Wendell Cox, is an organization that I hope our dear conservative friends at The Free Congress Foundation and its web site, "The New New Electric Railway Journal", will expose (or in today's vernacular "Out." They deserve recognition of just whose interests they are advancing - namely those of the motor, highway and petroleum industries.

Ed Tennyson adds:

The Heartland Institute is not the only one. We are now being attacked by Breakthough Technologies, Inc. a non- profit corporation sponsored by the fuel cell lobby backed by some of the same people as The Heartland Institute. Their lobbyist is Bill Vincent, an ex FTA lawyer, who calls on state officials and local chambers of commerce with Bus Rapid Transit propaganda put out by FTA. He adds that rail transit is dirty and polluting because it uses coal to make electricity. Buses are clean as they run on fuel cells. Yeah, for a pretty stiff price. Where do we get the hydrogen for the fuel cells? Coal.
 
Back
Top