Gas prices=serious financial hardships?

[Mos6502]

And it is Fasttracks to which I refer.

And to be clear: I don't have issues with investment in infrastructure. What I do have issue with is incompetence. From what I have seen via newspaper reporting is that the whole system has been built using nepotism and inefficiency, and THAT is what I can't stand, given the incredible amount of waste.

But only recently apparently, because a couple years ago it was under budget and ahead of schedule...

I do question how useful light rail is going to be. Frankly I'd almost rather see ORDINARY rail - then run commuter trains on it. Then it has the OPTION of being used for freight too EVEN IF that cost more.

Passenger rail has never made money for any company. But freight rail is something we need desperately to keep our industrial economy running.

Are you suggesting they should build a heavy rail line down the side of I-25, set up depots on costly real estate that could better serve people through other more appropriate uses, when there's already a regular rail line only a few miles away? What? How would that make any sense?

Frankly I don't think property owners would be very appreciative of noisy diesels and freight trains running through their back yards either.

On the other hand they could use the existing light rail for freight, using electric traction but there's no point in it. There's nothing stopping them from carrying freight really except that there's probably 0 demand for it.

And multiple carriages CANNOT take the same amount of electricity to pull them. The weight is more than double, etc.

For reasons stated above it's not that simple. Rail vehicles have lower drag from rolling resistance, and electric motors do not behave quite the same way as IC engines under load.

They may get the same amount of subsidy, but they have significant additional revenue from tickets.

By that logic, the system would be most effective with zero riders.

Well that's the problem, and essentially the system is most profitable when there are fewer riders. Because while they might have fewer customers, they still get the same subsidy. Think about it like this: the city gives them a 50% subsidy that allows them to carry 10 people profitably. But then 20 people want to ride. So basically 10 of those people are eating up the profits. This is how I'm assuming RTD's bean counters view it anyway. I've heard that RTD price increases are not meant to increase profit, but actually to decrease ridership. Now that's a big problem. But it doesn't have anything to do with light rail.

[shado]

Which, does make my point, that they aren't really in it for running a railroad.

A friend of mine, who retired with 42 years working on a railroad that changed names numerous times due to meegers, and was a track engineer, tells me it is totally infeasible to run freight on any light rail, due to how the track is engineered. Note that I didn't say we shouldn't run light rail carriages on a heavy rail track.

And when was Fasteacks, NOT T-REX ever under budget? As far back as 2007 they were reporting 1.5 billion in the red.

For folks who live right next to I25 or I225, I would think that freight rail traffic would be less noisy than highways that are busy darn near 24/7.

[mikeybikes]

FRA has regulations that prohibit running light rail vehicles on any line that carries heavy rail.

[LeeG]

not that much of a hardship

[pallen]

wow, I wonder how efficient our cars would be if we went back to 1980 Horsepower levels?

[dynodonn]

not that much of a hardship

Since the CAFE standards pretty much stayed stagnant/near stagnant during the years posted on the graph, and the auto industry took the ever changing newer technology and used it to make horsepower rather than increased gas mileage. When times are good and gas is cheap, horsepower/ big heavy creature comforts will sell autos.

[Mos6502]

wow, I wonder how efficient our cars would be if we went back to 1980 Horsepower levels?

Well if everybody didn't think it was an absolute necessity for a car to have hundreds of horsepower and go from 0 to infinity in half a second, things would be a lot more efficient.

My '82 Toyota did fine with 75hp, got about 40mpg on the highway, even though it topped out at a hair over 85mph. But who needs to go faster anyway? I'll never understand how companies manage to make top speed seem like an important buying point.

[tjspiel]

Well if everybody didn't think it was an absolute necessity for a car to have hundreds of horsepower and go from 0 to infinity in half a second, things would be a lot more efficient.

My '82 Toyota did fine with 75hp, got about 40mpg on the highway, even though it topped out at a hair over 85mph. But who needs to go faster anyway? I'll never understand how companies manage to make top speed seem like an important buying point.

I don't think most people care about top speed, but they do care about acceleration and they do want to be able to pull that behemoth of a boat out of the water.

Are these NEEDs? Of course not. I rarely NEED to go 30 or 40 mph on a bike either, but I enjoy doing it.

Same with guns. As far as I'm concerned we'd be better off without them (I understand that's not a universal opinion), but that doesn't mean they aren't fun to shoot.

These things aren't that hard to understand even if they're not that important to us personally. We'll never get people to choose something more efficient if we ignore the reasons why they may not want to.