Short bit of history.

Generally, railroad ROWs west of the Mississippi (basically) were given away to build 5 East-West transcontinental railroads PLUS alternating sections (section = 1 square mile) in a checkerboard next to the 100' wide ROW. In return, the US Gov't got a discount on cargoes shipped on the railroad.

After WW II, the RRs got Congress to repeal the discount, noting that they had "paid" for the ROW and land several times over (neglecting to calculate interest). I assume that if one calculates interest against a steady income stream (with a massive payment during WW II), that the railroads just about "paid" for their ROW and land with cut rate freight and passenger charges to the US Gov't.

And the railroads WERE seen as the robber barons of their age, when they had a monopoly on transportation. Given the large number of RR bankruptcies in the 1800s and early 1900s, I am unsure how much truth there was to that.

Some railroads were (and UP still is) quite arrogant in their behavior, pricing, etc. and NOT "good neighbors". But bad PR does not necessarily = robber baron.

Alan

We need to (re)build the railroads as a key part of public infrastructure. That means public ownership. There should be noisy and contentious public meetings where the public decides where the rails and stations go. I'd like to see them - at least the smaller commuter type rail and interurbans - set up as community investment trusts or co-ops. More or less along the lines of rural electrics or the blues before they got privatized. The structure of the ownership is going to matter a great deal. They are going to have to be subsidized; the free market is not going to do what's necessary.

cfm in Gray, ME

Your figures are from CURRENT model availability which is evidence of LACK thereof.
A larger supply of small and efficient diesels would drive down the price of those vehicles. Fully a third of the European private car fleet is diesel powered and successfully so, I might add, with more and more choices coming on line every year in the small car category.
How do THEY manage it?

Furthermore, let me cite the plumbing industry, which has embraced one particular model, the "Sprinter". The switch from the heavy gasoline powered service pickups and vans to the Sprinter has leveraged a very significant savings to local plumbers all over the USA....and this is just one industry, one model vehicle, and this vehicle is large but equipped with a SMALL (3.0 liter) engine.

The difference between the gasoline and diesel models is, I bet, not solely the engine. You're also comparing completely different things - that V10 diesel is an outrageously outrageous bit of outrageousness. It has more torque than is really, well, what you might call necessary. Unless you're towing a 747:

http://www.autoblog.com/2006/11/22/touareg-v10-tdi-tows-a-747/

Take a more reasonable example. The premium for a VW Golf TDI over the gasoline model was $1500 Cdn in 2000. The difference in fuel economy was approximately 6L/100 km versus about 9 (mostly city driving). The price of diesel and gasoline has varied widely over that period, but diesel has always been at or below the price of gasoline. Let's make it simple (and biased against the diesel) and assume the prices were always the same. 3L extra fuel per 100 km means on average an extra $3 per 100 km (nowadays it's more than that, years ago it was less than that...I'm averaging). To cover the capital cost difference you would have to travel 50000 km. Over that time you'd have to see which engine cost less to maintain as well, but the point remains that it is possible to recover the difference in initial cost through fuel savings alone in a reasonable time. As you can probably guess, I own a 2000 VW TDI. Your definition of "not driving much" may be accurate for the prairies or for most USians, but my definition is this: our car has yet to hit 70,000 km.

The efficiency difference is not overwhelming, so I agree that the economics are not strongly in favour of the diesel at current prices. Guess which way I think prices are headed? :-)

More to the point, I like the 1000 km (600 mile) range per tank, and I just like burning less fuel for the sake of burning less fuel for the same task. Some people spend $1500 on a sunroof and leather seats. I think it makes more sense to invest it in burning fuel less rapidly.

(Though I would still like to be able to burn no fuel... hydroelectric generation plus battery-electric car, plus a far better public transit system, is what I'd like.)

btw, currently diesel here is $1.019/L, gasoline is I think $1.249/L.