gildone

Nobody ever said that the 3-C start-up service was going to make money and no one has even said the Ohio Hub will be profitable prior to its full build out. The studies indicate that the full build-out at the estimated ridership will have a positive operating ratio. That only means it will be profitable if you don't include infrastructure, rolling stock, and stations. It is my understanding that ORDC has run the numbers six ways from Sunday trying to get them to come out with something other than a positive operating ratio, but the numbers keep coming out positive. Furthermore, the numbers assume higher track usage fees paid to the host railroads than Amtrak pays. Amtrak only pays the host railroads the "avoidable costs" they incur if they didn't have to run the trains. The Ohio Hub assumes fees at fully allocated costs. All this aside, whether or not the trains are going to be profitable is the wrong discussion to have, as clvlndr indicates

I've mentioned this before in other threads.... Akron and Canton can be part of the Ohio Hub by either providing connecting commuter trains to Cleveland for the Cleve-Detroit, Cleveland-Chicago, and Cleveland-Buffalo routes, and/or by extending 2-3 of the Ohio Hub round trips on these routes to Akron and Canton.

I understand where Joe is coming from but, I think his concern that the 3-C/Ohio Hub project will take money away from public transit is unfounded. By taking this stance, I think Joe is missing the bigger picture and unintentionally creating division. The best way to increase awareness of the need to increase transit funding is to increase the constituency for public transit. The Ohio Hub will feed thousands of people into the public transit systems of every major city in Ohio. Many of those will be people who have never thought about using transit. This is an effective way to drive home the point that we need better transit funding because it puts the issue in front of people through direct, personal experience. It's much easier to convince the public that something is needed if they are able to put it in a personal context. Without personal experience, the issue is far less concrete in people's minds and therefore less convincing. This in turn only makes the task of building public support that much more difficult. I'm going to write Calabrese a letter that includes the above points. Oh, regarding the ridership numbers... they were validated by Wright State/GEM Public Services which is comprised of conservative economists, including Sam Staley who is (or at least was at one time) with the libertarian-minded Buckeye Policy Institute.

I know that we're going to get some folks saying that Joe is being anti-rail, but I don't think that's the case. I think he's misunderstanding a few things-- like the "profitabiliy" of the Ohio Hub and the ridership numbers, and I also think he's missing the bigger picture here, but I don't think he's being anti-rail. I'll respond in detail when I have time...

http://www.daytondailynews.com/search/content/oh/story/news/local/2008/03/20/ddn032008chaseweb.html Thursday, March 20, 2008 TROY,OHIO — A Bradford woman who led police on a pursuit from Greenville to the west edge of Troy, where she allegedly deliberately drove left of center and hit a state trooper's car, was listed in fair condition later Thursday, March 20. Greenville police said the pursuit began around 10 a.m. after a van drove off without paying for $54 in gasoline....

Interesting how no one thinks twice about the cost of a new highway-- some of which can run over $100 million per mile in urban areas where land needs to be acquired-- or an airport, but if it's rail, the price tag always seems to be an issue. Drives me nuts... It's more of a question of when.

"James Schlesinger, the nation's first secretary of energy, predicted at a National Academy of Sciences meeting last Thursday that energy prices would continue to rise and declared that the United States would never see energy independence as long as it depended on the internal combustion engine." http://www.energybulletin.net/41625.html Also, several articles at Energy Bulletin.net: http://www.energybulletin.net/41634.html Published on Monday, March 17, 2008 by Energy Bulletin Mainstream confronts peak oil - Mar 17 By Staff Click on the headline (link) for the full text. Many more articles are availa through the Energy Bulletin homepage Sleepily eyeing a peak in world oil output David R. Francis, Christian Science Monitor Last week the price of crude oil broke new records, running about $110 a barrel. That's well above the previous record (in inflation-adjusted dollars) reached in 1980 after the revolution in Iran resulted in the nationalization of its oil. Since tanks of crude are full to brimming, many traders in oil markets suspect that $110 could be the top price for now. But a growing number of oil-market analysts reckon the supply of oil to the world economy has reached a peak or is about to. The discoveries of new oil are now exceeded by the output of old oil. At some point, global oil output will start to decline, as happened in the United States in 1971.

Section of I-95 in Philadelphia (both directions) Closed Due to Severely Cracked Pillar: http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory?id=4469828 http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/23684974/

Another thing to consider is that the Governor's bond "Build Ohio Jobs" bond proposal will deal with some of the key infrastructure bottlenecks that the Ohio Hub and even preliminary 3-C passenger service needs. If the legislature doesn't give him the bond, it's going to be on November's ballot. Thus it's going to take some time for the financing to come through and for the infrastructure work to get started. Therefore,the 18-month time for the Amtrak study doesn't really hurt anything in the overall scheme of things.

^ You look like death warmed over, KJP (just kidding...) :-)

That's because they actually think we can come up with a solution without inconveniencing anybody (particularly their campaign contributors). Of course, Americans complain about everything. We whine about gas taxes but want free highways. We want low taxes but ample public services. We think we should be able to get something for nothing. When Jimmy Carter got on TV in his cardigan, saying we needed to save energy, everyone made fun of him and it was one of the reasons he lost the election. Newsflash: lifestyle changes ahead and sooner than we think. The longer we wait, the more painful the transition is going to be.

The Ohio Highway Patrol responded to 610 crashes over a 7 1/2 hour period last Friday (first day of the snow storm): http://www.newsnet5.com/news/15532315/detail.html?taf=nn5

I thought the city of Cincinnati was planning a new station downtown for the Midwest Regional Rail CHI-Cincy route as well as the 3-C?

\ Yeah, that interior shot... it looked like a cathedral! Boy has our country been dumb...

It thought Cincinnati was looking at a downtown site for a new station to serve the 3-C and the Midwest Regional Rail Initiative Cincinnati-Chicago route?

The way to get Akron tied into the Ohio Hub is, once the CLE-BUF, CLE-TOL-DET, and CLE-TOL-CHI corridors are up and running, is to extend say 2 of the round trips per day from these routes down the C-A-C corridor. I'm not sure of the best way to tie Akron into points south via the Ohio Hub.

Like this matters? As Boreal says: . Either you come up with a way to pay for improvements, or you keep deferring maintenance, or you rob peter to pay paul and some other program (or programs) take the hit. We've long boasted the lowest taxes in the industrialized world. That has come at a price: more than 3 decades of deferred maintenance on our infrastructure-- everything from roads to airports to water and sewer lines to our electric grid. Of course, all the corporate welfare we foot the bill for doesn't help the public purse.

^Exactly. It could also replace short haul flights such as Cleveland-Cincinnati, and ultimately the Ohio Hub could also replace Cleveland-Detroit flights. This would free up runway slots for the more lucrative long-haul market for the airlines.

Americans Start to Curb Thirst for Gasoline:[\b] http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120451858896807177.html?mod=googlenews_wsj

I'm no Chavez fan, but this is absolute baloney. The most recent surge has more to do with the falling dollar than anything. They are completely clueless.

The peak oil crisis: Catenaries and pantographs By Tom Whipple As the availability of liquid fuels dwindles, those supplies that remain will be increasingly allocated to uses for which there are no readily available substitutes -- such as powering aircraft and ships. Electric power for land vehicles appears to be the most realistic option for the present. Cellulosic biofuels may come to power some share of land transport, but this is still many years away. Electric power is a proven technology and, more importantly, a widespread distribution system for electricity is already here... Article archived at: http://www.energybulletin.net/newswire.php?id=41030 Original article : http://www.fcnp.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=2614&Itemid=35 This material is made available under 'fair use' as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, it is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml.

A guy by the name of Garry Seeman (sp?) has a talk show on WRUW, 91.1 on Friday afternoons from 2:30pm to 4 pm. He's sort of a libertarian type with ideas ranging from good to bad. Among the not so good ideas, he not real keen on public transit. Last year he was critical of the Lorain-Cleveland commuter rail proposal but only offered the standard libertarian line: "If there was a market for it, the private sector would be providing it". Anyway, he started to comment about the Euclid Corridor at the end of his show today. He didn't have time to say much. He only criticized the whole Cleveland Clinic naming rights thing (although isn't that the market at work??). However, he said it will be a topic next Friday. Shows can be downloaded (after the fact, of course) here: http://www.wruw.org/guide/show.php?show_id=409 Different subject: I understand that RTA needs the money, but I think the Cleveland Clinic and UH spending $6 million (or whatever it was) on the name is a bit ridiculous because I just think the hospitals' $6.25 million would be better spent on charity care.

^As this trend continues, Ohio's brain drain is going to worsen as young people leave for places that allow them to live without forced car ownership-- NYC, Boston and various east coast cities, Portland, various areas of California, Chicago, etc.

Wikipedia page: "Planned High Speed Rail by Country": http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planned_high-speed_rail_by_country There is also an Ohio Hub Wikipedia page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ohio_Hub

Quotable: "The US government also needs to take a hard look at the country's physical infrastructure. People who travel abroad often have a slight feeling of returning to a developing country. While most foreign cities have a fast rail connection from the airport to downtown, most US cities do not...In Europe and Japan, rail is fast, comfortable, convenient, and efficient. U.S. rail travel is torture... We cannot be competitive with second-rate infrastructure. The US government needs to make improvement a top priority." ---Three Billion New Capitalists: The Great Shift of Wealth and Power to the East by Clyde Prestowitz, former counselor to the Secretary of Commerce in the Reagan Administration. Book published in May 2006 I find it telling that a former Reaganite says the government needs to spend more on infrastructure. If you haven't read this book, I highly recommend it.