The Oil Drum

Well, yes. The whole transportation and "tourism" sector is obscenely oversubsidized. OTOH, car drivers at least pay towards the capital cost of the vehicle, major roadbeds and major construction, many major bridges and tunnels, insurance, fuel, and all repairs. Urban-rail riders pay maybe 1/3 or less of "operating costs", which really means 1/3 or less of insurance (perhaps), fuel, drivers, and repairs. The taxpayers usually pick up the vehicles, roadbed, stations, major refurbishing, driver pensions, and so on, even though only a tiny minority of them actually have any conceivable use for the facilities. At least the vast and overwhelming majority of the taxpayers (over-)use the highways, even though the subsidies guarantee that there are many more highways than would be economically optimal.

Perhaps even more importantly, if there's really such a big 'energy descent' in the works that our grandchildren must "bicycle to work" - i.e. it's not, as now, just a choice - then we need to begin cutting the transportation sector down to size yesterday. That can start with honest billing throughout - especially in aviation-and-conventions-and-tourism, which, though it's not the biggest slice, is such a powerful symbol of superfluous, mind-boggling profligacy; and there could be huge follow-on savings from cutting down the vast infrastructure of energy-guzzling hotels and the like. OTOH, if that much descent is not in the works, cutting transportation down to the optimum is still good economics. Either way, but given honest billing, then if people want trains, or they don't, so be it.

BTW, if that big a descent is in the works, I suppose it would be well for people living in areas supported by little but "tourism" to prepare themselves to make a living at some activity other than the likes of changing bedsheets in hotels. I can't imagine what NOLA could possibly do to earn a living in circumstances that straitened...

Oh, and people who could afford it did everything they could to live in the suburbs long before 1950. One of the perennial exhibits at the local (model) train show concerns advertisements and documents from the Chicago & Northwestern Railroad complaining rather bitterly about the competition from high-wheel bicycles in the 1890s - had the "safety" bicycle not been invented in time, we might not have bicycles as they would have been banned at the behest of the railroads. Away from the crack trains on main routes like Chicago to New York, a lot of service was that slow, slovenly, and unreliable even back then. The railroads were massively subsidized, with every-other-section of land along their routes, and dissipated much of the booty on executive high living. Not so different from now, actually. (There are many reasons why, as you travel west of the Mississippi, and until you reach the Left Coast, you still encounter the lingering remains of a tremendous, visceral hatred of the railroads.) Anyway, the postwar mortgage subsidies and the orgy of Interstate-building merely democratized an already-existing reality.

I'd be happy with "as fast as driving" or "nearly as fast as driving." Why? Well, when I'm driving, I have to pay attention to the road (not as if everybody else does, but oh well) and as a result I cannot read a book on the way to my destination. (Or do something more mind-numbing such as watching a show/movie, playing a game, etc.)

Another benefit is that it's not a potentially deadly scenario if I were to fall asleep in transit. :) (That's something that my body likes to do.)