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Comment by redorb | Hacker News Reader

I do live in a bad spot for trains (Oklahoma) however they keep trying to build more rails (which make no sense in our region).. to determine how much sense they made to me personally I studied a trip to chicago from oklahoma city.

Turns out I couldn't find any destination where trains beat driving or flying in the metrics of time or cost even.

I do get that trains work in some regions in the US ~ but we should define those regions or what makes a region good for rail and focus there. Amtrak to me is one of the largest scams the government does - it's a constant money losing operation. It takes in so much money - and loses money on every thing it sells from the tickets to the drinks and food.

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Building roads is also a money losing operation. Complain about something else. There's plenty here.

Reconstructing an existing road is even worse. Want to repair a failing street? OK, but only if you make every aspect of the supporting infrastructure ADA compliant with the most current laws. We are legislating ourselves out of modern infrastructure.

Or, just maybe, it’s good to make infrastructure accessible?

He's got an unpopular opinion (and calling out the ADA specifically is probably the worst of the examples that can be chosen) but its worth a thought. When the choice is forced to be "perfect, or none at all", a possible outcome is none at all.

On the balance, I find most of these rules to be acceptable most of the time, but it should always be considered that it can be taken too far.

Regulation is a commitment that we prefer "none at all" to the status quo. No more, no less. We talk about regulation creating desirable outcomes, but that's an oversimplification - the ADA does not hire or conscript anyone into the business of creating accessible infrastructure. It threatens that if they won't make their infrastructure accessible, they can't have any. The threat of "none at all" is the whole mechanism.

Which is just fine so long as we remember that none at all is inaccessible to everyone.

Is opposing accessibility the hill you want to die on?

Do you have a ballpark for the financial and human cost of making our basic infrastructure not-accessible?

A larger percentage of people who pay taxes use roads than the percentage that pay for trains and don't use them.

Only place trains win are very specific regions and for cargo

Umm, the purpose of government is not to make money, it is to serve the public. While you can make arguments whether or not trains are where we should put public money, but you can't use the argument that 'it loses money'.

Discontinuing Amtrak's long-distance services -- which are clearly not competitive in terms of ticket price or travel time with alternatives -- comes up time and time again, by members of Congress and commentators alike.

However, successive directors of Amtrak have always opposed the discontinuation of long-distance routes. Congress could likely force the issue, but it's interesting that Amtrak leadership always leans in favor of them.

There are some routes in the northeast that Amtrak turns a profit on [1][2][3], and some others are subsidized by states enough to still make them worthwhile to operate (CA, IL, NC). But if the long-distance routes were defunded, they'd likely never come back under the Amtrak banner, and significant layoffs would ensue.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15968720#15976146 [2] http://reasonrail.blogspot.com/2012/12/amtrak-routes-by-2012... [3] http://www.riarp.org/blog/2014/11/25/september-amtrak-report

A lot of the issue, I believe, is that those long-distance services cater to a lot of small towns that have no airport or good bus service. So Senators don't want to lose that service in their state. And they fight to keep the service, even if they are conservative.

I'm still surprised that Oklahoma City to Fort Worth route exists. It's 2-3 cars, and stops in such exciting places as Gainesville, TX. (sarcasm definitely intended.)

Yet every day, there it goes. Bypassing a city like Denton, TX where a lot of people live and commute to Dallas or Fort Worth. The opportunity for commuter rail is there... it's just not happening, and I wish that it would.

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