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Comment Re:$30 (Score 1) 515

Well, I am not convinced by the auto ownership report that failed to include the purchase price (really!)

I think there's a lot about European behavior you're not taking into account - like the kind of car they actually buy (really small compared to ours) and what they use it for (often, just getting to the railroad station), and the clear indication that car ownership was because of their larger middle class which is itself an indication of better economic policies - like having good mass transit.

I think you have the tax picture wrong, and it's still the better-off people who are contributing the most to mass transit through their taxes.

Regarding the bus, I'm not convinced. The biggest problems are that it can't be connected to electricity efficiently (San Francisco's catenary busses can't exceed 40 MPH while on the wire, and rarely approach that speed because they share the route with cars), it is labor intensive compared to rail, and it has the traffic and safety issues of an automobile. And too often light rail is little better than a bus. It's only when there's an exclusive right-of-way that you get efficiency.

And ultimately there may still be people who vote against mass transit, but they are shooting themselves in the foot.

Comment Re:More than $100 (Score 1) 515

Europe isn't all apartment buildings. Many people have lawns, roads, and good trains.

If I am going to blame anyone, it's going to be whoever encouraged the general public to have more than two children per couple. Which in our case might be the Old Testament. Not those Native Americans you're talking about.

Comment Re:$30 (Score 3, Interesting) 515

Finance charges means interest on debt. Most people buy automobiles on credit. You either get artificially low interest from an auto company, which means you paid too much for the car and the interest is hidden, or you get it from a credit union, a bank, or one of those non-bank debtors. It's a significant amount.

The rate of depreciation is connected with the resale price of the automobile rather than its service life. That is the book value of the property - what you would get for it if you sold it. You might keep it for 24 years and drive it 250K miles, but most of its resale value is gone long before then, and thus the depreciation schedule should be relatively short.

This illustrates a problem. Most people don't fully apprehend what their real costs are concerning something like an automobile. Most people are bored by accounting, after all. They would not, without a long walk through numbers and principles, make a well informed decision about something like rail vs. car.

Comment Re:More than $100 (Score 1) 515

Western Europeans have quite high incomes and have built good fast trains. Eastern Europeans have lower incomes and correspondingly worse trains. Building those good trains was just one of the infrastructure costs of developing a good income for Western Europeans.

I think you're buying into a fiction of poor people paying for upper middle class people's trains. Upper middle class people and the businesses around them pay for their trains with their taxes. They also, to a great extent, pay for pulling Eastern Europe out of the muck.

Comment Re:More than $100 (Score 1) 515

The studies you cited really say one thing: The U.S. has a lot more poor people than those other places. The Atlantic is very clear on that, income inequality is much more severe here.

That doesn't particularly say anything meaningful about rail vs. automobiles. Just that they still have a middle-class, and we increasingly do not.

Comment Re:More than $100 (Score 2) 515

Well, our freight railroad is the best in a way. Japanese freight lines use electric traction cars. Each car has its own motor, not just brakes, no diesel locomotives. 100% containers onboard. And they have high-speed freight trains for their equivalent of FedEx, etc. OK, it's a small country, but our system looks very backward next to that. But it is bigger.

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