Der Feuervogel aufersteht.

This isn't news. I've discussed this before.

But now someone with GIS mapping tools created a visualization of population density, Amtrak routes, and Amtrak ridership. Unsurprisingly, ridership is highest where service is most extensive, ie the Northeast Corridor.

Did you know you can't take a train directly between Houston and Dallas? Don't you think that's pretty ridiculous? Did you know that there's only one train a day between San Francisco and LA? And that it usually takes longer than driving between the two cities?

While there are reasonable discussions to be had over the merits of train service to the sparsely inhabited middle regions of the country, there are few good arguments against having increased train service between population centers. The NE Corridor has multiple trains per day--once an hour or so from DC to Boston--and the ridership to match. The Carolinian/Piedmont routes, from NC to DC, are used far less--because there's only one in either direction every day, and it's invariably several hours delayed. Amtrak expanded Raleigh to Charlotte service to three times a day and increased ridership on that route.

Expanding service on the I-85/95 corridor, Atlanta to Charlotte to Raleigh to Richmond to DC would reduce traffic on I-95, save fuel, decrease CO2 emissions, and make travel much easier. Think of how much you could get done in 5-6 hours of riding a train rather than driving! (I get motion sick, so I can't do anything in a bus beyond stare out the window. And anyway, busses get stuck in traffic.) Riding a train is much less stressful than driving, unless you're stuck waiting 45 minutes outside a station because there's a freight train stopped there, and since you're outside the NorthEast Corridor, the freight companies own the tracks, so you get to yield. Then it gets stressful because you're meeting someone when you get in.

But no, we can't do that because communism and central planning and we can't make taxpayers fund trains (but we can subsidize the shit out of oil companies and roads!).

This country has its collective head up its ass on the issue of transportation. There's not much we can do to fix it, either, because the fetish for Rugged Individualism is disgustingly deep seated.

Comments on a friend's annual tax day rant led to her explaining her definition of central planning to include anything the government does to incentivize one technology/industry over another (for example, tax incentives for citizens buying more energy efficient appliances, or for companies to invest in alternative energy research).

Are the massive tax breaks to oil companies and the seriously messed-up formulas that govern road money (from fuel taxes) distribution also central planning, or does that not count?

From the Economist article linked in my previous post:

The federal government is responsible for only a quarter of total transport spending, but the way it allocates funding shapes the way things are done at the state and local levels. Unfortunately, it tends not to reward the prudent, thanks to formulas that govern over 70% of federal investment. Petrol-tax revenues, for instance, are returned to the states according to the miles of highway they contain, the distances their residents drive, and the fuel they burn. The system is awash with perverse incentives. A state using road-pricing to limit travel and congestion would be punished for its efforts with reduced funding, whereas one that built highways it could not afford to maintain would receive a larger allocation.

Also, In 2006 German road fees brought in 2.6 times the money spent building and maintaining roads. American road taxes collected at the federal, state and local level covered just 72% of the money spent on highways that year, according to the Brookings Institution, a think-tank. So, yes, kids, roads and driving are heavily subsidized, moreso than Amtrak, even. Other things that are subsidized: airlines.

I'm aware of various reasons, like automakers in the early 20th century actively eliminating railways in the name of profit (thank you, capitalism), and preferential funding for highways over trains, as well as anti-state arguments that trains are too heavily subsidized by the government and Amtrak should be forced to compete on the open market (while conveniently ignoring the fact that gas taxes aren't the entire source of highway funds, or the massive subsidies on gas and cars (by tax breaks to carmakers)).

Notable conservative pundit George Will is against trains because they take away our individualism and are the first step to socialism. (I wish I were making that up.) Factor in a bit of projection (ie, liberals say they want trains because X, but really COMMUNISM) and a bit of hypocrisy, and you have the face of modern movement conservatism. (Note: if you don't know the difference between being conservative and movement conservatism, spend a few minutes with google before yelling at me.)

A nice piece on CNN fact checks a lot of these myths, and an operations engineer asks why so riled about rail?

Seriously, why do Americans flip their collective shit at the thought of TRAINS? Trains are awesome. Amtrak kind of sucks, but that's not completely Amtrak's fault. It's in large part due to the inevitable shit-flipping from Americans at the thought of building train tracks and having the government fund something that will let people get from point A to point B without putting 500,000 one-person-SUVs on I-95.

I'm going to Boston this July, and because I object to security theater, the war on liquids, and the option of submitting myself to probably-unsafe radiation levels/naked scanner or a pat-down that borders on sexual assault, I'm taking the train. It's a good 800 miles by train between here and there, and I can go direct, leaving here at 10 am and arriving in Boston at 8 am, or I can take the train to DC and stay with my sister overnight, then catch one of the regular morning trains to Boston, and repeat the process in reverse. Not a big deal, sort of inconvenient, but I'm the person who took an overnight train from Berlin to Vienna because that only cost 49 Euro and about 12 hours. (There were fancier trains with actual sleeping compartments (EuroCityNight), but they were a lot more expensive.)

Ben's going to Atlanta in a couple weeks for a concert, and he wondered if it would be possible to take the train down. Short answer: no. The train to Atlanta leaves from Greensboro at 12:30 am (midnight) and gets to ATL at 8:30 am. Annoying, sure, and I don't know many people who'd want to be in GSO at midnight because it's kind of dangerous. If he went to GSO by train, he'd have to leave Durham around 5:30 and wait in GSO for 6 hours. WONDERFUL, yes. Coming back, he'd leave ATL at 8:30 pm and get to GSO at 4 am. Which is also extremely convenient.

Now, if you were going from NYC to New Orleans, you'd have great departure and arrival times, and that 1400 miles only takes about 30 hours, assuming you don't have to wait for CTX trains to pass, since CTX owns the tracks and Amtrak only leases them, so CTX has the right of way.

Here are two people who would rather take the train, rather than be yet another one-occupant vehicle on the road, but American individual-über-alles culture and its worship of cars with the policy decisions that go along with this car-idolatry has made it inconvenient to impossible.

It's not possible to take the train from Raleigh, NC, to Memphis, TN. It's marginally possible to take the train from Raleigh to Detroit (which I looked into because there's a Gold Cup match between the US men and...Canada maybe? this summer).