Buses cost less, are equally as cramped, and take less time to arrive at their destination.
99% of people don't care about pollution when deciding to ride a train or bus. They're asking "how long will it take and how much will it cost?"
Paris to Marseille by road: at least 7 hours
Paris to Marseille by TGV: about 3 hours, can arrive in center of city
Paris to Marseille by plane: 1:15 to 1:30 hours + 1 to 2 hours spent at airports and travel time to and from each airport
High speed rail is more comparable to flying but without the hassle, and it's definitely far faster than a bus.
Additionally, trains are nowhere near as cramped as buses, at least the ones I've ridden. They're considerably roomier in terms of the seats and the areas to walk around in, and often have food and beverage areas as well.
Go on to Amtrak.com and configure a trip for yourself. You'll notice that riding on Amtrak costs MORE than a plane ticket. For a round-trip from Philadelphia to Austin, TX it's $500. I can go on Southwest.com right now and book the exact same trip for the exact same price. The difference? With Amtrak you're riding in a train for 56 hours.
Now tell me exactly how a high-speed train (one with advanced infrastructure) is going to be cheaper than Amtrak?
Trains are a lose-lose compromise between buses and planes. They cost way more than buses and for the price range you might as well use air travel which saves 2 days of seat time.
First, there is no point looking at current prices, because it is a service running on relatively unsubsidised ifrastructure. The point here is to subsidise infrastructure.
Secondly and even more importantly, yeah dude, if I want to go Paris to Shanghai I am better off flying than taking a train. Does that mean there is no point in building a high speed rail network in France? It's not Philadelphia to Austin that is the aim here, it is journeys at the 300 mile sweetspot where a high speed train is a more optimal solution than either car or plane.
I am really sorry but I am starting to think that anybody who doesn't see the benefits of a high-speed rail network has simply not been on one. And that's even before you throw in the environmental cost.
Yet again, Southwest.com is $200 from Philly to Pittsburgh, and Amtrak is $110. Except then I'm spending 14 hours on a train round-trip. If I'm going to spend 14 hours on my trip, then I might as well drive to Pittsburgh which takes me 10 hours round trip and about $30 less, not to mention I have a car to get me around.
Of course we could build the high speed network and subsidize the benefits to cut that down to ~5 hours, but then we get to pay the additional cost anyway come every April 15th. Trains are still a lose-lose. The highway system is already subsidized and we lose money on that, there's no reason to subsidize more transportation.
Pardon me for trying to cut the fat when I'm going to be paying my country's debt for the next 20 years.
It won't work for all routes, but considering how well Amtrak already does in NE, there's demand out there.
HIGH. SPEED. RAIL.
TGV does that distance in 2 hours.
Remember, our population isn't going down in this country anytime soon. Highway expansion, without an alternative, is a given.
Umm, if it's actually cheaper, it doesn't need subsidized infrastructure.
People don't seem to understand that subsidized does not mean cheaper, nor do I get how exactly they think faster and better technology (aka extremely high-speed rail lines) are somehow cheaper to operate than their predecessor - standard Amtrak service.
The purpose of subsidising an infrastructure is to make operating a service on it profitable.
I don't understand why people are objecting to high speed train networks as if they are a totally novel idea. They are a true and tested transportation solution - I have yet to encounter a country that built one only to regret it, or have it unused. We are not talking about putting a man on Mars here.
Roads aren't subsidized and neither are traffic police. They're paid for by car- and truck-specific taxes and fees.
We've played this game before. You'll bring up a study that supposedly shows that cars have expenses that are not covered by taxes. I'll point out that said study ignores one or more large taxes paid for because of cars that pretty much covers the gap and then some. (The dumb version is that you'll point to the cost of building some road and assert that it couldn't possibly have been paid for without subsidies.)
> The purpose of subsidising an infrastructure is to make operating a service on it profitable.
In the case of train passenger trains, that almost never happens. The cost of running the train exceeds the revenues. Even the CA proposals don't claim that they'll run without subsidies. Instead, they argue "other job creation". (They also claim that folks will pay to build highrises in Fresno over the train station, generating enormous profits.)
Here's an easy test that almost every proposal fails. Take the projected revenue (which they never hit) and divide it by the projected number of jobs (which they usually exceed). Ask yourself if the average salary plus benefits is going to be that low. (The proposal will often tout "high paying jobs".) Notice that this figure doesn't account for non-salary operating costs.
Obviously depends on where in the US you are, but typically is estimated that there would have to be a 50c tax per gallon to make highways self-paying. For places where road construction is particularly expensive (mountains, Alaska and Hawaii, etc) that doesn't even come close.
EG. see
http://pubs.its.ucdavis.edu/download_pdf.php?id=1139
Not that I think there's anything wrong with that - subsidising efficient transport is a perfectly legitimate role of government as it is vital for commerce.
Let's go with that number. But first....
> For places where road construction is particularly expensive (mountains, Alaska and Hawaii, etc) that doesn't even come close.
And in other places, 50c a gallon is way more than it takes to make highways self-paying. That's how averages of different numbers work - some are higher than the average while others are lower.
The cited document says that the average fuel tax in the US is 38c/gallon as of a couple of years ago. That does not include sales taxes, which in CA are currently around 20c/gallon, for a total of 58c/gallon, or 8c/gallon over the average required. In the past, CA got less per gallon because the prices were lower, and other states have lower tax rates, but we're not done counting the car revenues and we're pretty close to 50c/gallon.
Taxes on fuel purchases don't include car taxes, taxes on car goods, fines levied on car misuse (which exceed enforcement costs), income taxes on folks providing car services, and so on. (Rail advocates count taxes on folks whose jobs are enabled by transportation and property taxes next to train stations. I'm not counting that for cars, but will note that they would considerably increase the car revenue numbers.)
That document concedes that counting such revenues would mean that govts make money on roads. That's why said document goes to considerable lengths to argue that certain taxes and fees paid by car/truck folk to drive shouldn't be counted. The reasons range from that money is deposited in the general fund, which is curious since the supposed subsidies come from the general fund, to car drivers have to pay something if they did something else, in which case we'd consider those fees/taxes as being associated with some other cause.
With trains, you reduce/eliminate almost all of that overhead. If you have a train that goes only 120mph between Houston and Austin, you have reduced the travel time from 3.5-4 hours to 1.5 hours each way. That is a huge savings in time that makes a lot of currently-infeasible trips practical.
Will it be cheap? Based on my experience riding the trains in Japan, I would say it is going to be much cheaper than flying and more expensive than taking buses and/or slower passenger trains. If the high-speed train people were smart, they'd price it at exactly the price of driving (gas-wise) in the beginning in order to build demand, and then ramp up the price as trains start getting sold out.
High speed rail corridors designated by the Federal Railroad Administration: http://www.fra.dot.gov/us/content/203
(One important caveat to that map is that there's no way high speed rail will come to Texas without connecting Houston and Dallas, probably like this: http://www.thsrtc.com/)
I'd love to see them re-draw that map color-coded to predicted profitability as a way of prioritizing the work. Also, we need to look at how much money we can get from private investors. For example, I bet L.A.-Las Vegas can be built a lot more profitably (for the U.S. government) than Little Rock to New Orleans.
Buses cost less at first, but then you need many more of them to accomodate more passengers. Their speed is also limited and varies quite a lot.
Haven't you ever played that game Transport Tycoon Deluxe? You buy one train and it makes waaaaaay more money than 4-10 passenger buses!
Since I don't drive I've been on plenty of coach/bus and train journeys, both long and short, and I can assure you given the choice I'd always choose train. This is particularly true for long-distance journeys: I wouldn't want to take the journey from London-Paris by coach again, but I've only had positive experiences taking the Eurostar and the TGV.
Edit: I'm not arguing bus over train; just trying to help folks out by presenting an interesting alternative
The only issue I ever ran into was finding a group of seats together; in that case you might want to reserve seats(otherwise you get to hotbox with a cigarette smoking Japanese businessman!)
Yes, within large suburban sprawls the trains are often inferior in some ways to buses, but for longer distances, trains win in most countries. Japan, Australia, France, Gernmany, Denmark, Sweden, the UK, etc.
Mostly they can also use power supplies that are getting cleaner and more efficient as time goes by.