Biden on high speed rail - "I'm Mr. Amtrak" [View All]

[PatSeg]

The next question from the audience came from Jeff Kurtz, the legislative representative for the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and the Teamsters Rail Conference. He does the political and safety work for the 800-plus members around the state.

Kurtz' concern was the topic of climate change, but he already had a solution in mind. He said high-speed rail would make a definite impact and wondered if Biden would promote that as an alternative.

Biden apparently was a kindred spirit of rail transportation and assured the audience that this was not a planted question.

“I commute 250 miles a day on high-speed rail,” Biden said. “I'm Mr. Amtrak.”

Biden proposes an interstate high-speed rail service similar to the interstate highway system.

“One mile of one lane of I-80 costs $22 million,” Biden said. “One mile of I-95 (on the East Coast) holds more traffic and costs $41 million.” By contrast, “One mile of high-speed rail costs $1 million.

“You can fit more people on a rail car and you'll be taking 50 automobiles off the road. Rail uses 1/50th of the cost (of a car) in terms of energy consumption.”

Biden said the reason why railroads haven't been used more in the past is because of special interest groups, most notably the airline industry. “They get $350 million a year to go where no one wants to go,” Biden said, qualifying that by saying that there is not enough business to support a commercial flight. He said people don't like the idea of subsidizing railroads, yet the airline industry gets subsidies to fly to sparse locations.

http://www.dailydem.com/articles/2007/12/18/news/news3.txt