The Coming Competitive Milieu

george matthews wrote:

If that's true, then the price of housing in Florida should be falling. Is it?

Yes.

My guess, to go back to an idea that wigwagfan most often pursues, is that, while the decline in Florida may be related to the general difficulty of public transportation and overall car dependence making the cost of living there increase, that Amtrak is a rather small part of the puzzle.

I think the question of Amtrak will ultimately be more about the cost of doing business than the cost of living. In other words, if you can get most places you need to Philadelphia by train, the cost of doing business there will be cheaper than the cost in Florida, where the recent $50/flight fuel-related price increases will impact every business trip.

For many people, Amtrak is an amenity. For some business people, Amtrak or some form of intercity rail must become a normal method of travel, if oil remains at the historic high it has reached.

Although we should remember that oil is only at a historic high when measured in dollars. Priced in Euros or Yuan, oil remains securely within its price range from the last 15 years. This is about the repositioning of the US in the world economy. (On a side note, stock shares that held their price this week held it in a currency that has fallen by 30% since 2000. Seen that way, the various indexes have declined dramatically, reflecting the secular shift of the US from superpower to mere economic power. There is simply no prospect of our economy attaining the weight in the world that it had a decade ago - at least in the short or middle term.)

Okay, "ne plus ultra", that last crack does it. I work with a bunch of Ph.D. economists. These are not guys with blinders on, they are not all Republicans, but they would all have a hearty laugh at your expense with that crap about the US descending from a "superpower" to a "mere economic power".

A rational discussion is fine, but spare us the doom, gloom, and posturing. As I said in an earlier post, I've heard this stuff before, way back in the 1970s, when the US was in a terminal decline, and Japan was going to rule the world. Remember those days? Now you're nominating the European Union as the next world power. Well, we may have to wait a while for that.

Reports of the death of the US are likely to be greatly exaggerated for a while yet. Remember, like, four years ago, when no one could understand why the euro was worth only $0.82 US?

Markets fluctuate, and currency values change. We can all agree on that. It's not necessary to predict the end of civilization as we know it.

Moderator's Note:

Per email with Otto, our Creative Director, this is being moved to Mr David Benton's Worldwide Railfan forum.

Wether America is in decline or not may be interesting , but lets focus on transportation , and the effect of carbon taxes and oil prices will have on railroads in particular .
This subject is now worldwide , so is more open , but lets try and stick to TRAINS . thanks .

On the subject of real estate , i wonder if the provision of , or acess to ,public transport may become a requirement of new subdivisions . in the same way provision of roads , parks etc is now .
I know in Auckland city , our biggest sprawl , it is now the policy to encourage development near railway lines .

george matthews wrote:

ryanov wrote:Are they taxing rail too I wonder? Since one can't take Amtrak to Europe, I suppose we might not find out, at least as pertains to our trains.

Almost all trains in Europe (except Britain and Ireland) are electric. Eurostar includes in its advertising a strong anti-carbon stance.
In Britain several of the main lines are electric, though some others are still diesel. One of the rail magazines suggests that government resistence to more electrification (none since privatisation) is weakening.

But I use Eurostar because I dont like to spend minimum 2 hours at Heathrow and not because the environment...

I am in about 6 1/2 hours from London at my door by using Eurostar and TGV/ICE with more confort and cheaper prices compared to going by plane from Heathrow to Frankfurt and than by car oder train and taxi at home.

I need about 1 hour by car to Frankfurt Airport parking lot, 30min from the parking lot to the Airport and I have to be there 2 hours before the flight departs.
In the same time, I go by taxi to Mannheim Central Station, taking a ICE and arriving at Paris East Station...

The flight to London takes about 1:40 hours.
In the same time I walk the 400m from Paris East Station to Paris North Station, made the check-in with Eurostar and traveling by Eurostar as far as the tunnel...

45 minutes after arriving in Heathrow I will get my luggage if I am lucky...

In the same time the Eurostar has arrived in London St.Pancras, I've taken a Taxi and arrived at my Hotel ...

And now the money:

Booking 2 month in advanced for 2 persons for a 5-day-trip:

Train: 239 EUR + taxi 80 EUR = 319 EUR

Plane: 386 EUR + car to/from airport: 48 EUR + car parking and transfer to the airport: 55 EUR + taxi in London from/to Heathrow: 60 EUR =549 EUR

NellieBly wrote:Okay, "ne plus ultra", that last crack does it. I work with a bunch of Ph.D. economists. These are not guys with blinders on, they are not all Republicans, but they would all have a hearty laugh at your expense with that crap about the US descending from a "superpower" to a "mere economic power".

...

Reports of the death of the US are likely to be greatly exaggerated for a while yet. Remember, like, four years ago, when no one could understand why the euro was worth only $0.82 US?

Lest anyone believe NellieBly's bluff about knowing economics, here is a chart of the actual value of the Euro for the last 5 years:

http://finance.yahoo.com/currency/conve ... amt=1&t=5y

You can see that the dollar hasn't even reached par with the Euro since before the horizon of the graph. NellieBly just made this up. The dollar has been falling against the Euro since early 2002, with a short interlude in '05 that brought it nowhere near parity, let alone near the figure NB made up.

I have a fun experiment for you, NellieBly. Tell your supposed economist friends what you said about the dollar-Euro exchange rate, and how I rebutted it. Then describe the interchange this way - that you took a position that was highly leveraged in relation to the facts, and I made a margin call.

That WILL give them a 'hearty laugh'.

For that matter, tell them you thought the dollar had fallen nearly 100% in value since 2004. And that you thought that wouldn't be a big deal, because "we all know currencies fluctuate." If you use this line right after the margin call line, you could have them rolling on the floor.

Excellent stuff. Really quite funny. The only thing funnier is when Republicans try to pretend they understand climate science because they saw a petroleum company geologist on teevee one time. Really hilarious.

Gentlemen, we have been afforded the opportunity to continue this discussion in another forum where the view is a bit different from that to which some of is are accustomed. The party has been encouraged to contiunue, but we're now in someone else's frat house.

My personal libertatian and individualistic beliefs aside for the moment, one of the things I remember from my back copies of Trains in its best years was a regrettable tendency on the part of some American railfans to dismiss all things European without as much as a short review.

But that being said, much of the world has displayed a degree of smugness in the light of the United States' recent troubles which has done little to encourage rational dialogue. (Remember that we tried to internationalize the difficulties in the Middle East after 9-11-01, and were, for the most part, refuffed. One nation brave enough to buck the trend (Spain) paid a heavy price.)

But please, let's tone down the flames and try to get some rational dialogue; thois is very much a topic worthy of further exploration.

Some food for thought: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_World_is_Flat

2nd trick op wrote:But that being said, much of the world has displayed a degree of smugness in the light of the United States' recent troubles which has done little to encourage rational dialogue. (Remember that we tried to internationalize the difficulties in the Middle East after 9-11-01, and were, for the most part, refuffed. One nation brave enough to buck the trend (Spain) paid a heavy price.)

Some food for thought: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_World_is_Flat

Actually, after 9/11, the whole world rallied to our response. We led a truly international coalition against Al Qaeda.

That was called the Afghan war.

The Iraq war comes "after 9/11" in the way that New Years comes after Christmas. In time, but not causally. Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11. We know that. And we know the administration knew that at the time.

I don't think we need to argue about the reasons for the Iraq war here.

But the overwhelming international response to the Afghan campaign and the continuing international effort in Afghanistan utterly discredits your "smugness" theory. The world was very willing to help us defeat the enemy from 9/11. You can't deny that. It's simply fact.

They gave up on the administration because of Iraq, which had nothing to do with 9/11. Notice that 70% of Americans have also given up on the administration. Is it because 70% of Americans are "smug" towards Americans? That makes no sense.

RAILROAD FORUM , Gentlemen .please at least tie your posts to the subject of railroads .

The reality is that government is not in a position to fix much of what is going on. The fact that the economy is rationalizing itself gives an opportunity for smart businessmen to provide creative alternatives to the car and to the plane. It is estimated that American air carriers are going to shift up to 10% of their domestic capacity to the international market. This is designed to drive up domestic rates. In the short haul corridors, this means opportunity for reliable rail services. It does not even have to be high speed rail. A consistent 79MPH to 90MPH service in some of the more popular markets will get it done. Think of an extended length Downeaster.

Fuel is also going to start killing off smaller regional jet markets. Already, jets under 50 seats are being parked and sold for corporate use. The move is now to 70, 90, and 100 seat jets in highly complex multiple hub and spoke operations. Airlines are no longer going to do this "add flights" thing for peak time business. They are going to fix the capacity and vary the price.

Conventional rail, Thruway connections, super long haul bus, and long haul vans are the new reality. I believe that there is even a market for value price long haul service in cars, as door to door service city to city would serve rural areas very well.

I have said many a time on the amtrak forum , that i think more thruway services are the way for amtrak to expand in the short term . it certainly worked in califionia , and it will work elsewhere .
Here , in New zealand , my town is about 90 km form the nearest railway station . there is a early morning bus , that will connect to the southbound train (after a meduim lenght walk or taxi ) , Monday to Friday . Then a 400 km train trip , to my parents city , where the station is a short walk to their house .to drive direct is 400 km which can be done in 5 hours . Still i would choose the train , providing i m not leaving on a weekend .
The problem is the return trip , there is no bus leaving after the northbound train arrives . i would have to stay the night and wait for the first bus around 3pm the next day .

JA wrote:The reality is that government is not in a position to fix much of what is going on. The fact that the economy is rationalizing itself gives an opportunity for smart businessmen to provide creative alternatives to the car and to the plane. It is estimated that American air carriers are going to shift up to 10% of their domestic capacity to the international market. This is designed to drive up domestic rates. In the short haul corridors, this means opportunity for reliable rail services. It does not even have to be high speed rail. A consistent 79MPH to 90MPH service in some of the more popular markets will get it done. Think of an extended length Downeaster.

Fuel is also going to start killing off smaller regional jet markets. Already, jets under 50 seats are being parked and sold for corporate use. The move is now to 70, 90, and 100 seat jets in highly complex multiple hub and spoke operations. Airlines are no longer going to do this "add flights" thing for peak time business. They are going to fix the capacity and vary the price.

Conventional rail, Thruway connections, super long haul bus, and long haul vans are the new reality. I believe that there is even a market for value price long haul service in cars, as door to door service city to city would serve rural areas very well.

Your initial comment has somewhat ironic implications given the fact contained in my opening post. You're right that American airlines have been hoping to shift some capacity to international. Which will make that much more of the business subject to European carbon taxes. I agree with you that they'll the percentage of domestic flights will fall. But I'm skeptical that they'll move much into international. I think you'll see more mothballing first, unless gas prices improve significantly.

One of the issues was that the American companies were trying to argue that planes stopping in Europe on their way to other destinations shouldn't be counted as European flights, but the EU is laughing at this idea. Most American flights are, and will continue to be, bound for Europe. And it's likely that Australia and Japan would participate in an EU carbon tax plan. If all flights touching those points had to pay, that's a huge chunk of the international market. Look for the carbon tax to add $100/ticket or more by 2015.

David Benton wrote:I have said many a time on the amtrak forum , that i think more thruway services are the way for amtrak to expand in the short term . it certainly worked in califionia , and it will work elsewhere.

While I understand that for some large subset of customers, direct baggage handling and discounted ticketing are the important parts of the package of Thruway, I'm nonetheless surprised at how few on-line connections exist between Amtrak and the various Greyhounds, subsidiaries and other bus services.

You'd think someone would maintain a site showing possible connections. Here's a Greyhound route map:

http://www.greyhound.com/locations/routemap.pdf

Trailways keeps its maps in regional form, like this Midwest lines map. And they seem pretty schematic:
http://www.trailways.com/Uploaded_Image ... adf941.pdf

I mean, do they really go from Peoria to Indianapolis non-stop, without touching down in Bloomington, Champaign or anywhere in Indiana? I doubt it.

It wouldn't be for everyone. But for those who might use such connections, it would be helpful to know whether they exist. That's tough to figure out today. In particular, I'm surprised state transportation departments don't collate this sort of information.