What Could High Speed Rail Do for New York?

If it is market-based and self supporting, with NYS (0.00 / 0)

just getting itself out of the way, this MIGHT work.  

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by: John Minehan @ Sun Jun 20, 2010 at 00:25:21 AM UTC

How to pay for it (4.00 / 1)

Although I believe I have disagreed with just about everything John Minehan has posted on TAP (and don't fully agree with him here), he does have a point.  High-speed rail should not depend on government subsidy any more than any other form of transportation.

So, let's stop subsidizing road travel.  Let's triple the gasoline tax to pay for road and bridge maintenance, and hike up the cost of getting a driver's license to pay for the full cost of the testing and the testers.  Also, let's stop billing the Department of Defense for whatever they're still contributing to the interstate highway system.

Let's also stop subsidizing air travel by making airlines pay the full cost of the FAA, air traffic controllers, the TSA and the airports.  Let's also make sure that drivers, boaters and air travelers pay the cost of the NTSB.

Then we can talk about not subsidizing rail travel, which gets a not very large subsidy for Amtrak a modest amount for intercity commuter rail, and even less for intracity rail.

Yes, rail travel is currently subsidized, but not nearly to the degree that other forms of transportation get help.  The question of whether any form of transportation should get any subsidy is a fully debatable point (and I suspect Mr. Minehan and I would disagree again), but I believe that the question of whether rail travel should get the same level of subsidy as other forms of transportation is not nearly as debatable.

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by: Dan Jacoby @ Sun Jun 20, 2010 at 01:56:03 AM UTC

The only reason we have an Interstate Highway System (0.00 / 0)

is that it supports National Defense.  Otherwise, there is no enumerated power that supports this, a Constitutional issue for more than 150 years, going back to Clay, whose desire to do Federally subsidized "internal improvements" kept getting push back from Framers.  During the Eisenhower years the Interstate Highway system was sold as a Defense Project.

If we want to "stop subsidizing road travel," instead of increasing the gasoline tax, put the roads and bridges in private hands and stop subidizing them.  Reduce the FAA into a pure regulatory body and make Air Traffic Controllers private employees of fully private airports.

Markets make these decisions: millions of transactions between millions of individuals, dealing at arms' length with incomplete information and the element of risk.

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by: John Minehan @ Sun Jun 20, 2010 at 19:10:58 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

Whose hands? (0.00 / 0)

Seriously, to which "private hands" would you turn over the roads, bridges, highways, etc.?

What if two or three different companies have control over different city streets?  What happens at intersections?  Who decides if there is a conflict between two or more companies?

While we're privatizing highways, what about entrance ramps, and where they connect to roads?

Who is in charge of traffic signals, and the cable leading from the switchboard?

Who pays for the use of the roads?  Do you need an E-Z pass just to leave your driveway?  What if your E-Z pass is empty; how do you drive to the bank (or wherever) to refill it if you can't get out of your driveway?

What happens if a road isn't maintained?  To whom does someone complain, and how does it get resolved?

These aren't facetious questions; they're perfectly serious.  What is ridiculous is your idea of privatizing the road system.

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by: Dan Jacoby @ Sun Jun 20, 2010 at 20:55:20 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

They all have clear answers. (0.00 / 0)

Seriously, to which "private hands" would you turn over the roads, bridges, highways, etc.?  [The highest bidder in an FMV, arms length transaction.  The trick is to avoid what happened with this in Thatcher's England or the former-USSR.]

What if two or three different companies have control over different city streets?  What happens at intersections?  Who decides if there is a conflict between two or more companies?  [What if two or more Docs are treating you?  There are professional protocols and the government, as with the Federal HIPAA data set standards or a city building code, sets a standard.]

While we're privatizing highways, what about entrance ramps, and where they connect to roads?  [Why not?  In fact, you would have to for transition purposes.]

Who is in charge of traffic signals, and the cable leading from the switchboard?  [Could leave that with the government, better solution would be to bid that out also.]

Who pays for the use of the roads?  Do you need an E-Z pass just to leave your driveway?  What if your E-Z pass is empty; how do you drive to the bank (or wherever) to refill it if you can't get out of your driveway? [Same thing you do with EZ Pass now: fill it.  Why do you "go to your bank" this is the kind of thing that you can do with an IPhone.]  

What happens if a road isn't maintained?  To whom does someone complain, and how does it get resolved?  [As with any private company: without ANY issue of soverign immunity.  Due to high volume, I think you would need a solid customer realtion section and solid CQI/TQM.  Some issues would be litigated.  I would expect more response than you get from the Government now on these issues.]  

These aren't facetious questions; they're perfectly serious.  What is ridiculous is your idea of privatizing the road system.  [What is profundly sad is the thought that any intelliegent person could believe that a private company could not do this with greater efficiency and lower expense.  Additionally, while these questions are "perfectly serious" they are also somewhat obvious, easily answered and jejune.]

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by: John Minehan @ Mon Jun 21, 2010 at 00:59:51 AM UTC

[ Parent ]

"[T]he government ... sets a standard." (4.00 / 1)

Never mind what happened in the former USSR; they didn't know how capitalism worked (because they had never had anything like it), so their failures cannot legitimately be pounced on as proof that privatization won't work.  The Thatcher government, however, is a horse of a different color.

I am so completely not looking forward to the day when one company controls Fifth Avenue in NYC, another company controls Broadway, and a third company controls 23rd St.  Those three streets all come together, and the fight over who is responsible when the intersection has road work done, and in the process a large water main is broken -- holy crap!

Here in NYC we have lots of private contractors for constructing buildings.  They are all licensed and subject to all sorts of regulations designed to keep people safe when a building is erected.  The problem is, those private contractors don't give a damn for anything but doing things as cheaply as possible.  The result is often horrifying.

One example:  A five-story building in my neighborhood was constructed a few years ago to replace eight businesses that had been burned out in a massive 2003 fire.  Before even beginning construction, the excavators managed to crack the foundation of the neighboring building so badly that all the families living there had to be evacuated for weeks.  Once construction began, you'd think the building companies would have learned from their very recent experience -- but no, they decided to put cinder blocks up on the third floor of the building without putting up a scaffold around the site so that pedestrians (and cars) going by would be protected when a cinder block fell.

That's just one example; other examples are legion.  One quick one -- Anthony Como, who is challenging Joseph Addabbo for the state Senate, was promised a Commissioner's position with the NYC Housing Authority.  The problem was that he couldn't even get his own McMansion built, because there were over a dozen complaints and several stop-work orders.  You might think someone who ran for City Council (and won the first time, although he lost five months later), served on the NYC Board of Elections, and was clearly hoping to move up in the political world would make sure that the contractors he hired followed the law ... and if so, you would be wrong.

I'm not suggesting we have the government go into the construction business.  Buildings are discrete items, built on (usually) privately owned lots, and (theoretically, at least) built to standards of safety and strength.  There is no need for government to do the work.

Roads, on the other hand, are "common" items, shared not only by the people who live there, but also by delivery trucks, tourists, etc.  The idea that such roads, with all the complex ways in which they are interconnected, can be run by private owners is insane.

At this point, I'll add a question to my previous list.  Right now, different toll roads use different payment systems, of which E-Z Pass is just one.  It's bad enough that people who are traveling somewhere where their quick payment system doesn't work, because they often have to pay more (kind of like your health insurance coverage not paying for emergency surgery because you had an accident while on vacation and was "out of the area" of your coverage).

Here's the question:  How are tourists supposed to navigate the myriad systems under which different roads operate?

I'm visualizing toll booths, each with a different payment system, every few miles of all the back roads that many tourists currently love to drive on.  Right now, it makes sense for the local government to pay for the added cost of the wear and tear caused by those tourists, because they tend to spend money in the area and therefore add to the local economy.  Privatizing those roads will just result in the tourists going somewhere else.

Moving on to your idea of paying for the E-Z Pass with an iPhone:  I have an iPhone, and I am pretty cyber-friendly, so it would be no problem.  But my father, who often drives long distances, has no such device, and wouldn't be able to use it if he had it.  Under your system, he could be totally screwed, and consequently denied the same opportunity to travel that other Americans are afforded -- potentially a violation of the 14th Amendment's equal protection clause, assuming the "right to travel" is an inherent part of the Constitution.  (Since individual states are prohibited from collecting "any Imposts or Duties on Imports or Exports," except to pay for inspections of goods, and are similarly prohibited from passing any "Law impairing the Obligation of Contracts," I suspect that a good case could be made.)

The problem with conservatives, at least over the past 30 years or so, is that you have no clue how your ideas will work -- or not work -- in the real world.  Nor, apparently, do you care.  The ironic thing is, conservatives gained power by accusing liberals of having the same problem.

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by: Dan Jacoby @ Mon Jun 21, 2010 at 01:35:30 AM UTC

[ Parent ]

14th Amendment is only assertable against the State. There is no (0.00 / 0)

limitation in your right to travel if you can't pay for a ticket.

People are not "imports or exports" nor would the states be collecting the tolls, so that is specious as well.

If things are more efficient and better maintained, WHY would tourists go somewhere else?

Weak arguments at best.  You can do better.

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by: John Minehan @ Mon Jun 21, 2010 at 02:08:03 AM UTC

[ Parent ]

Dude (4.00 / 1)

it's called the tragedy of the commons.  Look it up.  

You are so ideological you have lost any connection to what your ideology would look like if it was applied to reality.  

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by: Roatti @ Mon Jun 21, 2010 at 03:16:04 AM UTC

[ Parent ]

"Dude," It is called free men, free markets and free pulpits, and (0.00 / 0)

when that was applied here, in reality, it built America.

"I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just; that his justice cannot sleep forever." Thomas Jefferson  

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by: John Minehan @ Mon Jun 21, 2010 at 16:29:38 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

And we have none of them (4.00 / 1)

That was an incendiary title, but not too far from the truth.

"Free men":  I'm going to give you a partial pass on this one, because I'm assuming you're just quoting someone else.  But the quote obviously either came from a time and/or place where women were not considered fully human ... and neither, I would bet, were several groups of men -- or it came from the twisted, atavistic mind of someone who belives that women (at least) don't deserve the same rights as men.

We do not have "free markets."  We have corporations, which are fictional creations of government.  If you truly want free markets, you must therefore support the abolition of corporations.  If you want to keep corporations, you have to accept some level of government control as a result.  That's just the adult way of looking at it.

America was initially built on slavery, either institutional slavery or the de facto slavery of the world of the robber barons.  America got wealthy and powerful, however, on the backs of labor unions and what parts of the New Deal the uber-conservative Supreme Court didn't strike down from 1935-37.

As far as "free pulpits" are concerned, we didn't even come close to getting anything resembling them until very recently in our history.  Prior to the Civil War, many states prohibited Jews and Catholics from running for office, and their churches are still subject to attack today.  The intolerance people have for religions that aren't their own still reeks across this land.  One early example is the state of Rhode Island, created as a colony separate from Massachusetts because Roger Williams wasn't afforded a "free pulpit" from those whom our high school history books claim traveled to this land in search of religious freedom.  Another example:  Whatever became of the various religions practiced by the original settlers of this land?  They are, at best, mocked by our society, and have been ever since Europeans landed in the New World.

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by: Dan Jacoby @ Mon Jun 21, 2010 at 17:37:05 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

Again with the jingo (0.00 / 0)

We already have freedom- it's enshrined in many places in that incredible document called our constitution.  Talking with you is like reading the Fox News crawler.

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by: Roatti @ Mon Jun 21, 2010 at 18:48:06 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

people love cheap and convienient (0.00 / 0)

the increase in the amount of trains can make the time waiting for one drop.  

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by: albanypark @ Sun Jun 20, 2010 at 03:45:43 AM UTC