As someone who routinely travels every year between two fairly rural stops on the Empire Builder, this doesn't seem to hold true at all. In fact, I can generally travel by train for less than it would cost me to drive myself, and plane tickets would be far more pricey.
I clicked on the article and it’s about European rail prices.
FWIW, in the USA I thought the rural Amtrak routes are money losers subsidized by the northeast regional passengers. They only continue to run because politicians want them to, so the prices don’t necessarily make business sense or translate to other countries’ systems.
That is at least partially because Amtrak has no revenue management to speak of. When I have tried to plan trips, rooms of all types are booked solid usually 6 months out, and nearly 12 months for holiday weekends.
I’m not arguing to privatize Amtrak, but I think any private company would try to adjust prices such that the last room sells out the day before departure. And I think that would go a long way towards making Amtrak less unprofitable.
But, fundamentally, it’s hard to see how these routes can compete with air travel when operating a train requires 4-5x more labor hours than a flight crew.
I think the limited places Amtrak can go are one of the reasons for this. The low prices are CREATING demand, so they can't respond to it. I would love to have Amtrak here, I love riding on trains, I love traveling, and I like long trips (I took a bus across the country...twice back in the day just to enjoy the changing scenery), so I'd definitely use them if they were available. They are looking at ways to extend into my city, but no concrete plans yet.
The railroad system in the US should have been bought out by the government a long time ago. We could have spent decades upgrading and expanding routes and things would have been great today. Instead, we are car/plane focused. This leads to huge amounts of pollution compared to what a modern electric train system would produce.
> The low prices are CREATING demand, so they can't respond to it.
Well, go back to Econ 101. There’s an equilibrium point in every market where supply meets demand. My point is that prices are far, far below the equilibrium point. Amtrak should be raising prices until the quantity demanded just matches the quantity that can be supplied.
I just find it insane that Amtrak is simultaneously losing money on long distance routes and also unable to satisfy demand. Like, the solution to both these problems is trivial.
> We could have spent decades upgrading and expanding routes and things would have been great today.
Not if it was run like Amtrak is today, and there’s little reason to think that it wouldn’t be. Conrail lost money until it was privatized, too.
> This leads to huge amounts of pollution compared to what a modern electric train system would produce.
I’m very skeptical of this argument, except for routes like the Northeast corridor which are both short and heavily trafficked.
Here’s some homework (because you probably won’t believe me until you do it yourself): calculate the embedded CO2 in the steel and concrete needed to build a railroad between your favorite city pair. If you’re going with electric trains, you also need to add in the copper for the overhead lines. Then look up the CO2 emitted by a flight between the same.
Now calculate how many flights per day you need to pay back the embedded CO2, and remember that rails and OHV lines have finite lifetimes.
To get you started, each meter of rail has about 50kg of steel (and you need two rails per track).
Before you wave your hands and say “green steel”, remember that liquid bio fuels other than ethanol (and jets don’t run on ethanol) are generally carbon neutral too.
This is also true for non-rural stops. I take Amtrack a few times a year between NYC and Virginia (Acela corridor) and it is much cheaper than flying or driving if I choose off-peak travel times.
Funny, I just saw a headline how railway execs in the UK expense tens of thousands in flight tickets because they're cheaper than the rails they operate.
Yep. Because in the EU air did manage to lobby tax breaks and offloading externalities much more than rail. If all costs were internalized air travel would not exist.
why is it surprising ? You have to maintain thousands of miles railroad infrastructure, that includes r.r bridges, train stations, r.r. tracks and trains themselves.
I suppose Airports take up quite a large amount of dead space and require air traffic control, staff working in the Airports etc. Planes are much more complicated machines and carry significant risks and therefore the manufacturing and ongoing maintenance requirements are significantly higher.
In the US, it's because of federal subsidies. Air travel is federally subsidized, to get airlines to maintain air travel to less populated areas. Otherwise the flyover states would literally just be flown over.
Air travel is subsidized, airlines pay to use but do not pay for airports. Highways and gas are subsidized, drivers pay tolls, but drivers and car manufacturers don't have to directly pay for all road maintenance. Railways are subsidized, but nowhere near to the same extent.
The Federal government has subsidized Amtrak 30 Billion over the last 30 years. It's subsidized freight rail some, and Amtrak and other services can use those rails, but freight trains have priority. It's subsidized air and highway travel by 1.89 trillion, including around 1 trillion to build most of the airports you see today.
You can build an airport and accept flights from any nearby cities. If you build a train station you now need to build tracks to connect it to places and get land from someone to do so. Depending on where you are the size of this hurdle varies.
