Americans want more rail

Turns out I was wrong. Americans do like trains and want them to have a larger share of passenger and freight traffic:

As personal travel and freight transportation grows in the future, the American public would like to see an increasing proportion of that traffic going by rail. Commuter and long- distance trains top the list of nine modes of transportation that adults would like to see “have an increasing share of passenger transportation.”

[Americans Would Like to See a Larger Share of Passengers and Freight Going By Rail in Future, According to Latest Harris Poll via Yahoo Finance/PRNewswire]

Well, let’s hope this is for real and not just some fudged up poll …

Posted in: Uncategorized | February 14, 2006 11:56 pm

3 Comments »

Aaron B. Hockley, on February 15, 2006 @ 8:09 am

Duh… of course Americans want more rail. And I want a pony! Nobody has ever questioned whether we want rail. The issues is that Americans want rail, but don’t want to pay for it. If they re-did this survey and instead of asking “Would you like more passenger rail service in your city” they asked “Would you like more passenger rail service in your city, and are you willing to pay another 3% sales tax in order to have it” I bet the results would be strikingly different…

Marcel Marchon, on February 15, 2006 @ 8:27 am

Well, the question about financing might be asked differently though. It might also be “would you rather have those additional two lanes on that freeway on your way to work or a light rail/commuter rail line that gets you there?”

Or also “do you want to make the airlines pay their fair share of the cost of the air traffic network and use the money to help pay for that high speed rail line or keep the cheap tickets on Southwest?”

I wonder what the answer would be then …

adron_bh, on February 16, 2006 @ 10:36 am

Yeah… I have the noticed the same thing. I also read some other polls that same company did, and it showed most American’s wanted more roads, rails, and air travel choices. Problem is nobody wanted to pay for it. As it stands the top 10% of tax payers already pay for 93+% of taxes - thus 10% of the population is paying for 90% of the population to have subsidized transportation costs. I’m still working on my report on this but it’s forthcoming… I’ve done so many calculations my head is about to explode.

But all in all, yeah people want more of everything, but as it is nobody wants to even pay for what they currently use.

Kind of leaves us in a quagmire if you ask me. I’m one of the rare ones, I’m willing to pay for 100% of all the transportation I use - even if they quit the subsidies - I’d rather have the choices of the 1940-1960 era of transportation than this joke of an interstate & suburban sprawl we have to replace it with.