Point to me where I stated that rail should replace road entirely.
Point me to where I said you stated that. I merely point out that you can't reduce road miles (including reduction in miles not yet built) and simply make up for it with more rail track. Apparently however you are just arguing for less truck traffic and saving maintenance costs from the reduced truck traffic. However I don't think such large reductions are possible. Maybe you can get less growth going forward, or even modest cuts, but I don't think big cuts are going to happen any time soon.
My point was that just using the long distance and regional railroads, you could cut intercity semi traffic which is mostly containers by now by 80 to 90%.
That was one of your points. One that I disagreed with pretty simply and directly. I don't think that its realistic. Now a cut of much less than 80 to 90% would still have an effect, and such a cut might be possible, but it won't be easy, and simply building more track won't be enough to get a massive reduction in long distance semi traffic.
Now you wouldn't call 1.4 million a few? Or how about 140K?
If your looking at the whole US population 1.4 million is only a few. You seem to be implying that its 1.4 million just for the Chicago area. That doesn't exactly square with the average commute time for Chicago being 32.7 minutes and for all of Illinois being 26.7 minutes. (Seems that was 2002 data, for 2003 its 33.2, and 27, no data is available for 2004 or later.
If its 1% of Chicago commuters. Well 140,000 people isn't an insignificant total, but you don't base major changes in policy off of 1%.
As to saying that 30 minutes is average for Chicago, IL. Counties that are suburbs of Chicago like McHenry take over 40 minutes to go to work. Here is some percentages I found:
metroplanning.org
Yes if 30 minutes is the average some people are going to take longer. That's hardly a surprise. My point was merely that very few people have a commute of 2 and a half hours.
From your link -
"For commuters who value time above all else, the survey underscores how counterproductive it might be to abandon their cars for mass transit.
Experts say one reason travel times were much higher in New York and Chicago is that a greater share of workers relies on public transportation. It may be cheaper, cleaner and less stressful, but it typically takes more time to get to work by bus or train than it does to drive, they explained."
Also
"The most common commuting pattern today is suburb to suburb"
Well currently intermodal is climbing even against subsidized trucks.
If your going to add "subsidized" to trucks, you should also add it to rail. Or it might be simpler to leave it off everything, or everything but that doesn't have an unusual level of subsidies.
Intermodal over rail might be growing faster than trucks, but truck use is still growing. So "intermodal climbing even against subsidized trucks" isn't really relevant. It hardly indicates that slashing of truck traffic is at all likely.
Think that with increased volume, the prices would go down? The mareginal cost of adding another passenger car to a train is far less than adding an additional bus to a route. That is why more volume would help make average transit costs cheaper.
True but
1 - Woefully inadequate as something that will supposedly lead to rail taking over 90% of long distance truck traffic or 50% of long distance car traffic.
2 - More freight cars will likely lead to longer delays. It shouldn't make the train move slower (at least not to a significant extent, esp. if your building more line), but loading and unloaded the containers from the train and getting them sent to the right destination will take longer. |
