The Political Environment: $5-Gallon-Gas? Just Take The Train

Tuesday, December 28, 2010

$5-Gallon-Gas? Just Take The Train

Read here for the prediction.

But no trains for you.

13 comments:

Anonymous said...: All the more reason to drill baby drill.

And at $5/gal, driving is still cheaper than your loony rail projects.; December 28, 2010 at 9:36 AM
Anonymous said...: How will it help me if I am not going to Madison?; December 28, 2010 at 9:38 AM
Joshua Skolnick said...: I see the fact free commentary is again being spewed in the comment section, with little to add to the discussion. First of all, the high fuel prices and massive oil industry profits have not caused a massive increase in oil production...all the easy to get oil is gone. Ever heard of Deepwater Horizon. Spill baby spill. As for $5 a gallon gasoline, if there is a viable rail network, it is much cheaper than driving. I use myself as an example: When I used the train (Metra) to get to work from Harvard to Wheaton, IL, it cost about $10 a day to take the train to work with a monthly pass plus about 1 gallon of gas to drive to Harvard. That was for a 150 mile roundtrip, or about the same distance (77.2 miles) from Monona terrace to the Milwaukee Amtrak station. At that price, the break even for me with a 25 mpg vehicle was about $2.10 a gallon, not including wear and tear on the vehicle, which these people conveniently forget. Even if the Milwaukee-Madison train cost $50 for a roundtrip, it would still be more cost effective to take it with $5 a gallon gas, when wear and tear is factored in. The federal government allows a 50 cent per mile tax deduction for driving as that is generally thought of as a cost of driving. So, driving 154 miles from Milwaukee to Madison round trip would cost $77 for the round trip based on current mileage allowances. It would likely go higher with $5 a gallon gasoline.

As for not helping you if you don't go to Madison (Anonymous #2), the segment was supposed to be an incremental upgrade to a whole Midwest rail network, and furthermore the existence of it would spur new business and JOBS, and also induce light rail and buslines to be put into place as feeders. Additionally, a successful new rail segment tends to build demand for similar projects to be built elsewhere.; December 28, 2010 at 10:28 AM
James Rowen said...: To the first Anon: Seems someone is forgetting the Gulf oil blowout, and the ore oil we use, the dirtier the air and more enriched are countries around the world that hate us.

To the 2nd Anon; see above. And the train is an economic connection for midwestern cities and economies.; December 28, 2010 at 10:37 AM
Anonymous said...: To Joshua & James - your entire argument is based on the need to commute from Milwaukee to Madison, which for myself and about 99.9% of Wisconsinites will virtually never occur.

If you want it so bad - pay for it yourself and leave the rest of us alone.

And as far as economic development goes, is there anyone more clueless about private sector dynamics than Progressives.

We all realize how upset you from the choo-choo set are about losing your train, but on Nov. 2nd even the average dim-witted voter in Wisconsin figured out how bad of an idea this was.

Btw where is Ray LaHood when you need him?; December 28, 2010 at 12:23 PM
Anonymous said...: "
And as far as economic development goes, is there anyone more clueless about private sector dynamics than Progressives.
"

Some of us progressives actually work in the public sector, as opposed to the right wing talk machine, which is made up of kids recruited out of conservative campus magazines into the right wing think tank system, and who go their entire lives now writing about the private sector and never actually working in it.

As for the train, how's this for a deal: you free us from having to pay for the enormous bill Wisconsin is racking up for highway construction, and get private money to pay for it all, and in exchange, we'll find private money for the train. Sounds reasonable?; December 28, 2010 at 3:48 PM
Anonymous said...: "Some of us progressives actually work in the public sector"

My impression is that virtually all of you Progressives have jobs in the Public sector.

And apparently you have no clue what the terms 'public' and 'private' sector mean.

As far as actually working, no comment.; December 28, 2010 at 9:35 PM
Jake formerly of the LP said...: Boy, with such fact-free commentary, no wonder you Walker wacks stay anonymous. Hey moron, I would sure like having the option to not to be beholden to $5 gas, road construction, 3-inch snowfalls, ice storms, and the other forms that can make driving so entertaining.

And stop calling it commuter rail. It is rail to connect city-to-city, Madison to Chicago, Milwaukee to Minneapolis, and all places in between.

You take your choices, and I'll take mine. Why do you get to choose what options I can take advantage of? You got a problem with freedom there, son?

26% of the state is not a mandate to take out your mediocrity on everyone else. Scotty's already derailed in the real Wisconsin.; December 28, 2010 at 9:45 PM
Anonymous said...: "As for the train, how's this for a deal: you free us from having to pay for the enormous bill Wisconsin is racking up for highway construction, and get private money to pay for it all, and in exchange, we'll find private money for the train."

Don't we pay for road construction with a user tax call the "gas tax"? O.k.-let those who ride the train pay for it strictly from a user tax, not federal gas tax, general revenue tax, not any other tax than a user tax. In fact, let's start completely funding Amtrak with this suggestion starting immediately.; December 28, 2010 at 9:48 PM
Joshua Skolnick said...: Its the cheap labor conservatives that constantly whine about infrastructure spending being a waste. For your information, the money spent on local infrastructure creates jobs, putting money in people's pockets as opposed to shipping jobs to China for the benefit of Wall Street, which the reactionaries perennially commenting as "Anonymous" conveniently ignore. Most of the train money would have been spent in Wisconsin, actually creating jobs. When the race to the bottom is complete, the bottom 95 percent of Americans will have nothing, so where is the demand going to come from for goods and services?

And, by the way, I have worked in the private sector for 10 years, previously having been employed by government. The reason work is slow is because the economy was crashed by shoveling way too much money to the financial industry, the upper 2% of the income distribution in the form of tax cuts, and to two pointless, endless wars in the Middle East. That has done a lot more to generate a deficit and weaken the economy than a piddly $800 million dollar train project.

Get serious here, more money is spent every year subsidizing the extremely profitable fossil fuel industry than is spent on renewable energy and passenger rail combined. Of course the "anonymous" reactionary trolls posting here parroting Limbaugh talking points and being paid to blog by the Koch brothers foundations can't let a few facts get in the way. Its called propaganda.; December 29, 2010 at 1:10 PM
Anonymous said...: "
Don't we pay for road construction with a user tax call the "gas tax"? O.k.-let those who ride the train pay for it strictly from a user tax, not federal gas tax, general revenue tax, not any other tax than a user tax. In fact, let's start completely funding Amtrak with this suggestion starting immediately."

No, we don't. The gas tax pays for less than half of road construction around Wisconsin.

Are you right wingers incapable of basic math?; December 29, 2010 at 1:46 PM
Anonymous said...: Quick Fact Checking.

The train was only between Milwaukee and Madison.

Wrong. As pointed out it was part of the Midwest Regional rail system and was only part of a route connecting Chicago and Minneapolis (with Milwaukee and Madison stops in between).

Look at a map-or doesn't right wing radio want you to do that because you may figure out how often they lie to you?

Its operating costs were too high.

Wrong. The operating costs for the initial part connecting Milwaukee and Madison may have been mostly covered by the federal government. When Walker talks about the state paying $7-10 million dollars a year he was lying.

But I'm just curious would you turn down a somebody giving you $800 dollars if they told you you had to pay somebody else $7 for the next 100 years?

If alive you and still paying that $7 you would have a profit.

But you gotta love the arguments Walker gave. He complained about the cost and wanted to spend that money-not save it.

About the not liking temporary government jobs.

What do you think road work is?

Walker wouldn't have saved any of that money and would have spent it on things that have an operating cost (yes it costs money to patrol, inspect, and maintain a highway).

The vast majority of comments republicans made against the train were BS.

Grab a copy of the DOT's proposed map of the Midwest Regional rail network as proposed in WI and another of the whole Midwest if you still can.

Show either of them to people ask them if that looks like a train that ends at Madison and Milwaukee (which is what Walker and his friends were trying to get people to think).

Show people how they were deceived.; December 31, 2010 at 3:51 PM
James Rowen said...: The HSR map is here - - http://thepoliticalenvironment.blogspot.com/2010/11/high-speed-rail-is-national-economic.html; December 31, 2010 at 4:25 PM