Fossil Fuels And The Bulk Freight Market (And More)

Executive Summary

Fossil fuels account for 40% of ocean freight, 51% of train freight, and 56% of barge freight. 

New technologies in renewable energy, nuclear energy, electric vehicles, batteries, and heat pumps, could dramatically reduce the importance of fossil fuels in the global economy, eliminating the need for this bulk freight. 

This shift away from fossil fuels would also greatly reduce pollution, slow or stop climate change, improve workplace and transportation safety, strengthen democracy in the world's most authoritarian states and far-right domestic politics, and reduce economic vulnerability and military logistics vulnerability to unrest and military activity in countries that produce oil and gas.

How Are Fossil Fuels Used? What Substitutes Are Available?

The predominant use of coal is to generate electricity and its market share of electricity generation is plummeting, mostly to renewables like solar power and wind power, and to a lesser extent to tidal, geothermal, hydropower, and biofuels like corn based ethanol and biodiesel made mostly from restaurant waste fats. Nuclear power provides a significant share of non-fossil fuel electricity and has been pretty stagnant, neither growing nor shrinking in market share much for decades, although new advances are poised to tweak up nuclear power use in some niche applications. A very small share of coal is used for making steel, for purifying water, and in other industrial applications. Coal can also be industrially transformed into a liquid petroleum fuel substitute or a natural gas substitute when oil and gas prices are high enough for this to make economic sense, which is rarely and too briefly to justify building the infrastructure to do it.

The increasing affordability of renewables combined with environmental regulation are making coal obsolete for electrical power generation which is its predominant use.

The predominant use of oil is as a transportation fuel and its market share of vehicle fuel types is also steadily losing ground to electric vehicles (and to a tiny extent, other non-fossil fuel powered transportation modes). 

Oil is used for electricity generation in Alaska, in Hawaii (which has fairly low per capita electricity demand), during disasters and at construction sites, for heating oils (mostly in the Northeast U.S.), for fertilizers, for lubricants, and to make plastics. But all of these non-transportation fuel uses collectively are a much smaller share of oil consumption than as transportation fuels. 

There are good alternatives to oil to generate electricity in Alaska and Hawaii. Better batteries can limit the need to fossil fuel electricity generation in natural  disasters, in remote locations, and at construction sites. Organic farming and eliminate the need for petroleum based fertilizers (and pesticides). Non-plastic materials can be substituted for plastics in many cases. Heating oils can be replaced by natural gas furnaces or heat pumps (which are powered by electricity).

Natural gas (and other gas state hydrocarbons like propane) is predominantly used for space heating and water heating and as a greener alternative for generating electricity on demand at power plants compared to coal or oil. But very small shares of natural gas use are also used for cooking, ornamental lighting, and as a niche transportation fuel (especially for United Parcel Service trucks, and to a lesser extent, other fleet vehicles). Electrically powered heat pumps, electrically powered evaporative coolers, electric cooking appliances, electric water heaters, and electric vehicles are the main alternatives to direct natural gas use, and renewables (paired with utility scale batteries) and nuclear power are the main alternatives to natural gas for electricity generation.

Fossil Fuels And The Bulk Freight Market

 

The 40% breaks down as roughy 7-8% of total global ocean-going deadweight tonnage and vessel count (there are about 770 active LNG carriers in the world, which are specialized ships necessary to carry liquid natural gas) and about 32%-33% of total global ocean-going deadweight tonnage for coal and oil.[1] Natural gas is primarily transported on intra-continental pipelines, however, with some last mile transportation by truck, rather than by ships, trains or barges.

The numbers are similar for freight transported by freight train (51% of train freight is coal and oil) and over rivers and lakes by barges (56% of barge freight is coal and oil).

As of December 2009: "About 49% of rail freight is coal and another 2% is oil. About 10% consists of grain and grain products. Wood and paper account for 4%. About 10% of loads are non-petroleum chemicals. Stones, gravel, sand, clay and glass account for about 10% Most of the rest (13%) consists of other food products, metals and metal products, motor vehicles, waste and scrap materials."

As of September 2024: "In 2007, coal was the primary commodity moved by barge, accounting for 29% of all tonnages. Petroleum was the second largest commodity group in 2007, accounting for 27% of all tonnages. Crude materials, such as forest products, sand, gravel, ores, scrap, and salt, were the third largest commodity group in 2007, accounting for 18% of all tonnages. Food and farm products were the fourth largest commodity group in 2007, accounting for 12% of all tonnages."

Oil and gas firms accounted for 13.3% of U.S. capital expenditures in 2015, but only about 0.13% of U.S. employment (about 180,000 people); while in the same year the coal industry accounted for 0.16% of U.S. capital expenditures and 0.05% of U.S. employment (about 68,000 people) (and the coal industry has significantly contracted by more than 20% since 2015). By comparison, the retail trade industry accounts for 5.2% of U.S. capital expenditures in 2015 but 11.3% of U.S. employment. Wal-Mart alone employs about six times as many people as the entire oil and gas and coal industries combined. The U.S. oil and gas industry is important to Wall Street, but accounts for less than one in 500 U.S. jobs.

Fossil Fuels and Democracy

The share of an economy that comes from oil, gas, and coal is a good indicator of how authoritarian and far-right wing its politics are likely to be. The absence of production of these fuels in an economy, or reduced reliance of fossil fuel production, favors more democratic and more liberal government.

All of the world's remaining absolute monarchies (as opposed to merely symbolic constitutional monarchies) are in economies dominated by oil and gas revenues. Just one of the 36 countries with oil revenues as more than 2% or more of GDP has a healthy democracy (the outlier is Norway at #28 with 4.8% of its GDP from oil revenues is Norway). Norway's relatively healthy non-fossil fuel economy and democracy is in part due to the fact that it developed its oil and gas resources (mostly in the North Sea) fairly late in the history of these industries.

Among U.S. states ranked by fossil fuel production per capita, the only blue state in the top 8, is New Mexico (where it is 21% of GDP and which at #4 has all sorts of demographic and economic characteristics typical of red states, but votes blue because New Mexico has large Hispanic and Native American populations who are not welcome in the Republican party). Purple Pennsylvania at #9 and Colorado at #10 (each at about 5-6% of per capita GDP) are the only other blue states in the top 18 by fossil fuel production per capita. California at #19 has only $323 per capital of fossil fuel production (about 0.5% of per  capita GDP) and 17 states have no appreciable fossil fuel production per capita.

Environmental and Climate Harm

Coal and oil are probably the biggest drivers of air pollution and global climate change. They are also responsible for the workplace and transportation accidents associated with their extraction, delivery, and use. They are a very significant source of water pollution (including ground water pollution) and a major source of toxic and radioactive waste (coal has somewhat more than trace levels of radioactive elements in it). And, the extraction process destroys otherwise pristine open space and agricultural land, with coal being particularly damaging.

National Military and Economic Security

Reliance on fossil fuels, especially oil in the U.S., and both oil and natural gas in Europe, is also a major national security and economic stability risk, that subjecting economies that consume them to supply interruptions and risks caused by global military unrest associated with the authoritarian regimes that oil production based economies are so prone to be (e.g. unrest in the Middle East, Venezuela, Nigeria, and Russia). 

The Ukraine War has illustrated how vulnerable Russia has been to attacks on its oil and gas industry, which is not easy to defend, how dependent modern militaries are logistically on oil, and how dependent Europe and other world economies are on Russian oil and gas.

Reduced reliance of ocean shipping of fossil fuels also makes naval warfare and military control of seaways at choke points like the Red Sea, the Strait of Hormuz and the Persian Gulf, the Bight of Benin, the Panama Canal, the Strait of Malacca, the Bosporus Strait, the Strait of Gibraltar, and the Baltic Sea much less important and much less tempting for states that want to flex their military power and pirates.

References

[1] According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) in an entry about Liquefied natural gas made on June 21, 2024, and a report by Fortune Business Insights, Report ID: FBI103940 updated August 17, 2026 entitled "LNG Bunkering Market Size, Share & Industry Analysis, By End-User (Tanker Fleet, Bulk and General Cargo, Offshore Support Vessels and Ferries, Other) and regional Forecast, 2026-2034.

The Safety Of Trains v. Cars and Trucks

Understanding Rail Accident Risks With Appropriate Context

Honestly, it is surprising that so many railway deaths are not in the right of way (ROW). The defining characteristic of rail transportation is that it travels on fixed tracks which have a right of way.

There are extremely rare incidents of someone getting killed from a train while not being on the tracks - like when it falls off a bridge and kills someone below as one did not so long ago on I-25 near Pueblo, or when an accident releases a poisonous gas that kills people outside the ROW but nearby which happened to the parents of one of my first clients - but those are vanishingly rare.

Of course, what they are really doing in these statistics is distinguishing between deaths in the ROW at highway crossings and deaths in the ROW at something other than highway crossings, and basically ignoring the tiny percentage of deaths that fall in neither category.

The regulatory focus on highway crossings to the near exclusion of safety measures in railroad railways isn't unreasonable.  According to the Federal Railway Administration:

Highway-rail grade crossings are intersections where highways cross railroad tracks at-grade. Approximately 212,000 highway-rail grade crossings exist on the approximately 140,000 miles of track that make up the United States’ railroad system.

If we conservatively assume that the average highway rail grade crossing is 105.6 feet (i.e. 0.02 miles), then there are 4,240 miles of track in highway-rail grade crossings, which is about 3% of the total miles of track in the U.S. (and realistically the truth is probably closer to 1-2%). 

While only 30% of rail deaths nationally are at highway crossings, the number of deaths per mile of track are 10-30 times greater at highway crossings than they are away from them. But, the cost of safety measures to prevent rail deaths is roughly proportional to the length of the track when they are put in place.

Also, both passenger rail and freight rail cause far few deaths per passenger-mile than cars, to both passengers (who are safer by a factor of seventeen) and bystanders like pedestrians and bicyclists and people other cars, and per freight ton-mile than trucks carrying freight to both operators and bystanders.

In the U.S., in 2024, there were 954 railroad deaths and 6,542 nonfatal railroad injuries.

(Source)

There is about 1 fatal rail death away from highway crossings per 196.5 miles a track away from highway crossings, and there is about 1 fatal rail death per 806 highway crossings at highway crossings. Vanishing few fatal rail deaths are to people on the train itself 

People on railroad tracks who shouldn't be (i.e. trespassers) account for 69% of railroad deaths, but only about 10% of nonfatal railroad injuries, because 51% of rail accidents involving trespassers that make it into official statistics are deadly. 

The vast majority of rail traffic in the U.S. is freight. U.S. freight rail carried 1.71 trillion ton-miles per year with about 100 tons per train car. So, about 17,000 million train car-miles per year. 

Amtrak provides 6544 million passenger miles per year of transportation. About 35% of those are in the Northeast Corridor which run about 80% full on average and about 65% are outside the Northeast Corridor which run closer to 50% full on average. A coach car holds about 74 people which is about 59 people per car in the Northeast Corridor and about 37 people outside it. So, about 39 million train car miles per year in the Northeast Corridor and about 115 million train car miles per year outside the Northeast Corridor, for a total of about 152 million train car miles per year.

So, about 0.9% of train car miles are passenger train car miles and about 99.1% of train car miles are freight train car miles.

If rail deaths are no more likely, per train car mile, to be caused by freight train cars than by passenger train cars (although arguably the risk is per train and not per train car, in which cars passenger trains which have far fewer cars per train are much more dangerous, even though this is harder to estimate), we can reasonably estimate that passenger trains kill about 12 people per year on average (2 passengers and 10 other people), while freight trains kill about 942 people per year on average. Adjusting for train car length who shift this somewhat from freight trains to passenger trains, but even so, freight trains would be the dominant issue.

Do Existing Rules Reflect The True Nature Of The Problem

Of course, it only makes sense to take measures to reduce right of way deaths away from highway crossings if there is an effective (and cost effective) way to do so. 

People walk across and along train tracks all the time, and since trains are noisy, and you only need to move a few feet away from train tracks to avoid being hit by one, normally walking across or along train tracks is pretty safe, so long as you are able to hear them coming, you pay attention, you don't fall asleep on them, you don't get stuck on them, and you get out of the way when they come. And, it isn't really clear what the statistics use to define a trespasser, and we can't really understand the statistics without knowing this definition.

Is a trespasser merely someone who is in the right of way at all? Is a trespasser someone who tries to hitch a ride on a train that isn't using it like a passenger on a typical passenger train? Or what?

Common intuition wouldn't consider crossing over a train track when there is no indication that a train is coming, away from a highway crossing, to be trespassing, nor would common intuition consider walking along a train track in the right of way when there is no indication that a train is coming to be trespassing. I did that on my walk to and from school in junior high school almost every school day for two years without anyone even suggesting that I was trespassing.

Crossing a highway crossing when there are indications that a train is coming such as flashing lights or barriers that come down probably is trespassing, but that obviously doesn't apply when you aren't at a highway crossing.

The Federal Railway Administration, however, begs to differ, stating:

It is illegal to access private railroad property anywhere other than a designated pedestrian or roadway crossing. Trespassers are most often pedestrians who walk across or along railroad tracks as a shortcut to another destination. Some trespassers are loitering or are engaged in recreational activities such as taking photographs, jogging, bicycling, hunting, or operating recreational off-highway vehicles (ROVs). Riding ROVs along railroad tracks leads to the erosion of an important part of the track foundation known as ballast, or the rock and soil material that supports the ties and rail.

But, this definition is awfully harsh. From a pedestrian's perspective, it is often much safer to walk across or along railroad tracks away from a designated roadway crossing, than it is to cross at a highway crossing where there is much more frequent and less noisy car traffic, or across open ground away from the railroad right of way (indeed, railroads that are no longer in use are often converted to pedestrian trails for just this reason) which may constitute trespassing on private property (which is dangerous in much of rural America) and is sometimes uncleared brush. 

Sticking to official pedestrian routes is challenging. Many rural areas have no sidewalks, and walking along rural roads at night can be much more dangerous than walking along railroads. 

Designated pedestrian crossings are extremely very rare outside of dense urban areas and resort areas, because they aren't cost effective in places with little pedestrian traffic and only marginal safety risks to the pedestrians who do without them. 

But train tracks have to be crossed somewhere to get from point A to point B in many cases, because tracks often split whole states in two. 

In flat farmland, highway crossings are often a mile to six miles apart, and highway crossings can be even more sparse in mountains, forests, wetlands, and deserts. 

These detours can be tolerable in a car or a motorcycle, but represent immense delays relative to crossing a train track away from a highway crossing for a pedestrian who may have to cross that track to get to school or work or a friend's house on a regular basis.

So, simply writing off people who are simply meeting the strict FTA definition of rail right of way trespassing as "at fault" is really unreasonable, blames the victim, and unreasonably protects railroad operators from legal liability when the common law "Learned Hand" test for negligence liability (i.e. that the probability adjusted risk of harm is greater than the cost of a measure that would prevent that harm) would hold railroad operators liable for these injuries if they didn't take reasonable and cost effective measures to prevent them.

In the face of unreasonable trespassing definitions and regulations of pedestrians near train tracks, even extremely expensive preventative measures, like tall fences, will be routinely circumvented. And, authorities won't do much to prevent the harm, because the authorities seeing the situation up close will be aware that these work arounds that circumvent overkill prevention measures like tall fences, will mostly do more good than harm.

Also, my intuition is that ordinary pedestrians walking across or along railroad tracks, especially in rural and suburban areas, are not at all typical of people who are killed in rail accidents, because it is so easy to hear trains coming and because it is so easy in most cases to get out of the way. I suspect that these cases probably actually make up less than 10% of rail accidents involving pedestrians, even though the FTA itself admits on its own website that this is the predominant form of "trespassing" in rail right of ways.

Instead, I suspect that the typical cases that result in serious injury or death are very different. 

Maybe the pedestrian is a young child to little to appreciate the risk of being on train tracks when one can hear a train coming. Maybe the pedestrian is deaf or wearing headphones. 

Maybe the pedestrian falls asleep on the tracks while drunk, on drugs, or homeless, mistakenly thinking that this particular track which has low frequency traffic has been abandoned entirely. Maybe the pedestrian has been assaulted or knocked unconscious and left on the tracks. 

Some of these cases may be close to the boundary between reckless behavior indifferent to the grave risk that they will be killed and full fledged intentional suicide a bit like playing Russian roulette. 

Maybe the pedestrian is trying to hitch a ride on a freight train and stumbles. 

Maybe the pedestrian is on a rail bridge or other part of the right of way where there is no easy place to move and get out of the way of the train when it is coming. Maybe the pedestrian somehow gets stuck on the tracks with a foot wedged into a gap or is trying to rescue someone else.

Ideally, better data would add insight that the official statistics do not, and we wouldn't have to rely on intuition. But, relying in intuition grounded in common sense and lived experience until better data is available, is usually better than taking no action at all until better data is available, especially if the measures suggested by that intuition aren't terribly expensive or difficult to implement.

If my intuition is right and these are the predominant cases of result in rail deaths or injuries to "trespassers", then the broad FTA definition in addition to blaming the victim, also undermines its effectiveness by being so broad that it fails to distinguish between reasonable conduct that is only dangerous in the most freak circumstances and unreasonable conduct that really does pose an extraordinary risk of death which should be actively policed to prevent rail deaths and injuries. By not tolerating reasonable conduct, the overbroad definition undermines its own effectiveness at preventing the harms it is designed to discourage.

Distinguishing between "safe trespassing" within the FTA definition and "unsafe trespassing" within the FTA is also critical to determining what kind of preventative measures could reduce rail right of way deaths and injuries.

Possible Infrastructure Based Solutions To Reduce Harm

If the real problem is predominantly people who fall asleep or are otherwise unconscious or stuck or inert on train tracks away from highway crossings, then the solution might be to periodically put something like a LIDAR sensor along active train tracks that warn the train operator of the obstruction in time to stop the train (which could take more than a mile of warning about a minute before the train reaches that point), which would prevent not only deaths to trespassers, but also train collisions with fallen trees, large sleeping wildlife (for which "cow catchers" were designed in an earlier era), and debris carried there by a storm. These preventative measures weren't really technologically feasible or cost effective in the late 19th century and early 20th century when existing freight rail systems were invented. But now, these kinds of sensors and a way to send their signals to trains on the routes are cheap and easy to retrofit commercial off the shelf technologies that require only minor modifications for this application.

At crossings, something like a LIDAR system, or even just an "emergency stop" switch that someone could activate in the highway crossing infrastructure, could reduce the number of collisions arising from vehicles stuck at a highway crossing. Even if the warning was transmitted to the train when it was too late to come to a full stop, on oncoming train aware of an imminent collision could slow down as much as possible and activate maximum warning sirens to mitigate the magnitude of the harm from an unstoppable collision and could alert first responders so that they could on their way to the scene of the nearly inevitable collision before it even happened, in situation where every moment counts in saving someone's life. 

If a big part of  the problem is people who are deaf or wearing headphones, bright, flashing, motion sensor activated lights that only go off when trains are actually coming, located away from highway crossings, which are also cheap, easy to retrofit, commercial off the shelf technologies could do the trick, and might even reduce the need for loud train horns in the middle of the night.

The solutions above would be cheap, and could be implemented at a very manageable cost by railroad operators in response to newly adopted safety regulations (which would prevent a race to the bottom by profit minding companies competing with each other) over a period of perhaps five or ten years.

If the problem is people trying to hitchhike on train cars, hobo style, maybe a partial solution would be to design train cars so that they are difficult to ride or mount, without ladders or anything else to grip, and with the top of enclosed freight cars designs with pitched roofs that are too steep to rest upon for any length of time.

This would be very expensive to retrofit, but if the new design standards were imposed only prospectively to newly purchased freight cars as they were replaced over their useful lives, the new design would probably not be much more expensive than the old one, and as the percentage of new design cars increased over time, the entire strategy of hobo style hitchhiking on freight trains would grow increasingly less popular.

This gradual replacement would also dovetail with reduces consumption of coal, which is the single largest component of of rail freight, in favor of renewables, nuclear, and natural gas transported by pipeline, and declining consumption of liquid fossil fuels (another major component of rail freight) as electric vehicles gradually replace internal combustion engine vehicles, with freight rail instead being used to ship more containerized cargo.

Regular underpasses or overpasses for wild animals might not save many human lives but might prevent train collisions with wild (or domestic) animals that are unable to get out of  the way in time or don't realize the risk, which is surely something that both conservationists and train operators would appreciate, which is fundamentally, very low tech, like Roman Empire class civil engineering. But these measured could potentially be quite expensive to retrofit into existing rail lines. Still, good data on "rail kill" could identify the areas where these kinds of collisions are most common so that the investment in these solutions could be implemented first where it would do the most good, and these standards could be established for new rail lines (mostly proposed high speed rail lines).

Admittedly, none of these measures would be very effective against someone who is simply reckless to the point of being virtually suicidal, or someone who is actually suicidal. 

For these cases, a highly targeted campaign of public service announcements, that focuses only on the conduct that other preventative measures can't deal with, that actually is high risk, in channels that the people most likely to act this way are most likely to hear and take seriously may be the best possible solution - a bit like the campaigns in the 1980s about drunk driving and the importance of having a designated driver. A PSA campaign probably wouldn't be as effective as some of the new safety infrastructure suggested in this post, but it would almost surely make some difference if it was well done.

The World's Most Expensive Bridge Toll

It is quite remarkable that a bridge can support such high traffic levels with such a high toll, which implies that even with the high toll, it is superior to the alternatives in the eyes of people who use it.

A bridge connects Copenhagen [in Denmark] and Malmo [in Sweden], and now the price is higher:

…the basic price for a one-way car journey across the bridge has been jacked up to 510 Danish kroner, or £58. For the largest vans, it is the equivalent of £218.

Research by Sydsvenskan, a regional newspaper in southern Sweden, suggests this is by far the most expensive bridge toll on the planet, costing about twice as much as its nearest rivals in Japan and Canada…

Despite the vehicle toll, the total number of people crossing the Oresund by car, train or ferry hit a record 38 million last year, equivalent to about 105,000 trips a day. A one-way railway journey between central Copenhagen and Malmo typically costs only £13.

Via Marginal Revolution. 

Long Haul Amtrak Trips Still Make No Sense

This meme is misleading (in addition to being inaccurate).

I favor abolishing Amtrak outside the Northeast Corridor and a few other select (locally subsidized) routes for good reason. And, while there can be good public policy reasons for subsidizing transportation routes that otherwise make sense, there isn't a good public policy reason for heavily subsidizing a train trip that makes no sense as transportation and is really just a rolling hotel with pretty scenery along the way.

Long haul travel on low speed Amtrak passenger rail is very slow, unreliable, makes no economic sense, is more polluting than flying, is more dangerous than flying, and also undermines the quality of intercity bus options.

Travel By Commercial Airline

A non-stop flight between the same cities takes 5 hours and 22 minutes (an average of 541 mph) and costs $247 (and you won't spend nearly as much on food en route). Add $40 for a checked bag to make it more comparable to the car or train options. It might cost $60 to get to and from the airport, $20 for food en route, and 3 hours to get to and from the airport. No motel or hotel charges are necessary.

Total cost $367. Total time 8 hours, 22 minutes (an average of 347 mph). Federal airline subsidies for trip $32. Carbon dioxide: 840 pounds.

(All subsidy data in this post is from here).

Travel By Car

This trip takes 42 hours driving time by car traveling 2905 miles at an average of 69 mph (with at least $100 of tolls, motel charges for two nights of at least $60, and the cost of food for three days of at least $90). Gas at an average of 27 mpg (the average for a midsized sedan) at the national average of $31.6 a galloon is about $340, and one oil change for at least $30, so at least $620 before considering the cost of the car (which is at least 5 cents a mile which is $145). Realistically, you'll need at least 20 hours of stops in addition to the driving time.

Total cost $765. Total time 62 hours (an average of 47 mph). Federal highway subsidies for trip $32. Carbon dioxide: 2000 pounds. 

You are 104 times as likely to die on the car trip as the plane trip, and 17 times as likely to die on the car trip as the train trip.

Travel By Train

It take 79 hours and 17 minutes (on average) by train, which is an average of 37 mph (and the cheapest price I could find is $343 for the trip not the $213 quoted). Food would probably run at least $180. It might cost $30 to get to and from the train station and an additional hour of travel time. This ticket price, by the way, is in an upright seat the entire trip, not a sleeper car. If you want a sleeper car on this trip that takes more than three full days, you'll pay about $1600 more. All other options considered here assume that you'll sleep in a bed every night.

Total cost: $553. Total time 80 hours and 17 minutes (an average of 36 mph). Federal Amtrak subsidies for trip: $1,046. Carbon dioxide: 1000 pounds. You are 6 times more likely to die on the train trip as the plane trip.

Biking Or Riding A Horse

The trip by train is about three times faster than traveling by bicycle or horse (which would take about six days).

The bike trip would also cost about $800 (more than a car trip) due to the increased food and motel costs and some bike maintenance, and would have a roughly $32 government subsidy (but would be greener than any of the alternatives) and would probably be at least ten times more dangerous than driving a car and wouldn't afford much opportunity to read or work on the way. This trip would leave you much more fit, however.

The horse trip would cost much more (it would be the most expensive option by far) because stables and food for the horse aren't cheap. This would also be more dangerous than driving a car (although exact statistics on the safety of long haul horse travel as of 2024 are hard to come by) and wouldn't afford much opportunity to read or work on the way.

Comparisons

Low speed passenger rail on Amtrak is at its worst on long haul trips.

A plane is 72 hours faster and $187 cheaper than a train, and the plane is safer. (The plane is still $57 cheaper even if you find a $213 train ticket.) And, this doesn't include the $1,034 greater amount of government subsidies on the train ticket than on the plane ticket. The plane is also about 16% greener than the train.

A plane is 53 hour and 38 minutes faster and $398 cheaper than traveling by car (but you have a car at your destination, although that is as much a minus as a plus in San Francisco and New York City which have good transit systems). The government subsidies for the trip are basically identical for the plane and the car trip. The plane is about 58% greener than the car.

Also, you can't do any work or reading while driving for 42 hours or sleeping for 16 hours (all but 4 hours of your trip, some of which will be spent eating or shower or stretching), while you can do either while flying or during your waking hours on the train.

The Environmental Impact Explained

On a long haul, cross-country trip, the plane is greener than the train (which in turn, is greener than the car).

A nonstop flight from New York to San Francisco emits, on average, about 840 pounds of carbon dioxide per economy class passenger, according to Google Flights, whose data is independently reviewed. That’s equivalent to burning 420 pounds of coal, or more than the annual emissions of someone living in Cameroon. Air travel is wildly polluting.

But what about trains? I tracked down several estimates of carbon emissions per passenger-mile, including Amtrak’s official estimate. What I got back: My cross-country train journey had emitted somewhere from 950 to 1,133 pounds of carbon dioxide per passenger.

What!?

There are a few reasons for this result. Amtrak is far cleaner than flying where its tracks are electrified, along the Northeast Corridor, from Washington to Boston. But outside the Northeast, Amtrak trains run on diesel, a highly polluting fuel.

What’s more, Amtrak’s trains are decades old. (Its single-level Amfleet cars were built in the late 1970s.) Add to that generous seat pitches, large old-fashioned private rooms for longer-distance trains, a longer, winding route across the country and “per-passenger-mile emissions go through the roof,” said Justin Roczniak, a co-host of “Well There’s Your Problem,” a podcast about engineering.

Amtrak is still the more climate-friendly option for the vast majority of travelers, who on average travel 300 to 400 miles, said Olivia Irvin, a spokeswoman for the rail company. (That is, not many people are crazy enough to go cross-country by train.) A 2022 Department of Transportation study found that traveling by train from Los Angeles to San Diego generated less than half the emissions, per passenger, of flying, or driving. For Boston to New York, an electrified route, taking the train generated less than a fifth the emissions of flying or driving.

It’s when journeys start getting longer than about 700 miles that planes start to gain an advantage on trains. Planes burn the most fuel when they take off and climb to altitude. That makes short flights very inefficient — you’re burning all that fuel only to travel a short distance. (Some countries, like France and Spain, have tried to ban the shortest flights when rail alternatives are available.)

Longer flights also tend to use larger aircraft, which provide economies of scale. And aircraft have become more fuel-efficient over the years. But choosing flights with several connections, for example, can quickly add to your footprint, because you’re taking off and landing multiple times.

From the New York Times.

Simple Solutions To Big Problems

I'm a "Fox" and not a "Hedgehog". I know many things and focus on details rather than "one big thing" that solves every problem. 

But, I'm going to try to put on my hedgehog hat and come up with ways to address some of the biggest problems facing the U.S. today if forced to suggest just three solutions to each of them. The point of this exercise is partially to force prioritization of lists of proposals that can get bogged down with good ideas to solve small problems or to make lower priority reforms to big problems.

Affordable Housing and Homelessness

Housing prices in major metropolitan areas are high. What is the single biggest thing we can do to address that?

Eliminate virtually all zoning regulations of residential density, parking requirements,  minimum lot sizes, and regulation of the purposes for which buildings can be used. This primarily reduces the land value part of housing costs which is the main factor that makes housing in big cities so much more expensive. 

What is another big thing that we can do to address that?

End all property tax funding of public schools and replace the lost revenue, dollar for dollar, with increased state income taxes. This will typically reduce property taxes by more than 50% freeing up income for making principal and interest payments. It would also reduce inequities in school funding and would be more progressive as a tax source.

What is a third big thing we can do to address that?

Spend whatever it takes to provide basic housing first, immediately, to every single homeless person in the United States. Housing first is cheaper than letting people live on the street and paying the costs of that. This is less burdensome on the health care system, reduces crime, and improves quality of life for both the people who would be homeless and the people that their being homeless in their neighborhoods would impact.

Health Care

The U.S. pays far more per person for healthcare than any other country on the planet and gets poor results for its money, while inflicting great financial hardship on people. What is the single biggest thing we can do to address that?

Adopt "Medicare for All" financed with a higher Medicare payroll tax and a higher Obamacare tax on investment income. Roll in long term care coverage currently paid for, for many people, with the Medicaid long term care program. 

End Medicaid. End the Medicaid Estate Recovery System (i.e. the poor man's death tax). End private health insurance. End worker's compensation coverage of medical expenses. End the separate veteran's healthcare programs. End Obamacare insurance premium subsidies. End health insurance tax deductions and employer health insurance mandates and private health insurance mandates. End lawsuits by private individuals to pay for medical expenses. End casualty insurance policies designed to cover liability for medical expenses in lawsuits. This would greatly reduce administrative cost waste, bad debt, denial of care, linkage of health care to employment, would reduce health insurance and worker's compensation and CGL insurance expenses for businesses, would simplify tax returns for individuals, and would facilitate more effective cost control on provider payments. It would also increase use of preventative care thereby reducing more expensive acute care and would shift expensive ER care for the currently uninsured to more appropriate lower cost providers. This would especially help working class people who are mostly likely to have inadequate health insurance and to struggle with paying medical bills.

In round numbers, the U.S. federal and state governments spend about $2 trillion a year on Medicare, Medicaid, and VA health care, private health insurance policy premiums are about $1.5 trillion a year, and out of pocket health care expenses are about $0.5 trillion a year, for a total of $4 trillion a year of spending on health care, which still leaves about 27 million people without health insurance (in a country with about 336 million people). Cutting administrative costs, profits, marketing, provider level health insurance claim processing, bad debt expenses for providers, shifting ER care for the uninsured as a last resort to primary care and urgent care, price negotiation with providers from drug providers to hospitals to physicians and nurses, since the U.S. pays higher prices for everything than anyplace else in the world, substitution of preventative care that is foregone for cost reasons for later acute care, reduced worker's compensation, car insurance, homeowner's insurance, and other casualty liability insurance premium rates since they don't have to cover health care expenses, state and local public hospital funding, public employee health care funding, and reduced personal injury litigation costs associated with shifting payment obligations for medical expenses, could cut that $4 trillion to $3 trillion (about 25%). So, public expenditures for health care at all levels of government combined would increase by about 50% over current levels (some of which would be covered by eliminating tax exclusions, tax deductions and credits for health care under existing tax law) while largely eliminating household level and business level health care expenses, ending medical expense driven bankruptcies and collect litigation costs, and lower other household and business insurance premiums, and covering all 27 million of the uninsured. Tax bills for households and businesses would go up, but a lot of wasted time in households and businesses dealing with health insurance and medical bill related issues would disappear.

What is another big thing we can do to address that?

Legalize "recreational" drugs in a highly regulated and controlled manner similar to Colorado's marijuana legalization to reduce harm, while providing strong support for substance abuse treatment including drug based therapies and inpatient treatment funded with Medicaid for All resources. This would dramatically reduce the overdose epidemic, and would improve recovery rates for alcoholics and drug addicts, something that takes a particular toll on the poor and working class. This would also dramatically reduce gang crime and organized crime and would cripple cartels, and would reduce crime by addicts and would reduce incarceration costs associated with controlled substance users and jail deaths from drug withdrawal. The reduced demand would also dramatically reduce crime abroad from Columbia to Mexico, which would reduce the flow of refugees and migrants to the U.S. and would reduce corruption in the affected governments.

What is a third big thing we can do to address that?

Double the number of medical student slots for educating physicians by expanding medical school capacity and building new medical schools. We shouldn't have the same number of MD education slots as we did fifty years ago, with twice the population, and there is no shortage of highly qualified premed graduates to fill those slots. Limited supply also drives ups provider costs. Ending student loans for medical students and Medicaid for All ending bad debt issues and administrative costs for self-employed doctors and lowering malpractice insurance coverage due to not having to pay for malpractice related medical bill compensation would also allow reduced MD charges without undue hardship for MDs.

Higher Education

It is very expensive to go to college and many people leave college with large student loans that can't be discharged in bankruptcy. Many kids who are ready for college don't go, but many kids who aren't ready for college go at great expense in public funds and for themselves. What is the single biggest thing we can do to address that?

Provide 100% grant based funding for tuition, room, board, and books to students pursuing higher education whose grades and test scores and other factors show that they have at least a 50% chance of completing the higher educational program that they are enrolled in. Do not fund higher education for people who have a low chance of completing the higher educational program that they are enrolled in. End government sponsored or guaranteed student loans. This would much better utilize our nation's supply of academically competent students while reducing dropouts and failures by people who aren't currently ready for college at great expense and undermining personal self-worth. The status quo of indiscriminate state subsidies to in state students and very low admission thresholds that insure that huge percentages of students admitted at public and for profit colleges drop out without degrees is wasteful while still excluding poor and working class students at high levels from the system. Some of the political alienation towards higher education also comes from people who tried and had bad experiences since they weren't ready and dropped out and from people who were shut out of the system when they were prepared and take a sour grapes attitude towards it.

What is another thing we can do to address that?

Improve apprenticeship systems and vocational education programs, both for high school aged students whose academic performance indicates that traditional liberal education programs in a four year program don't make sense for them, and through community colleges. Adopt occupational specialty identification and training approaches used by the U.S. military for enlisted recruits for civilians. This would provide a path to missing middle occupations and recognize that not going to college doesn't have to mean that there is no path to the American dream.

What is a third big thing we can do to address that?

Forgive all existing federally guaranteed or federally provided student loans, and end the prohibition on discharging student loans in bankruptcy for all other student loans ten years after the repayment period begins if a degree is earned and professional certification is obtained in a pre-professional program, and after five years in all other cases. This would provide intergenerational justice to struggling Millenials and Gen Xers and Gen Z. These students could then better afford the American dream and could better afford to get married and have kids.

Poverty

Lots of people, especially children and single parents, but also many older adults with little education or skills, are poor and struggling. What is the single biggest thing we can do to address that?

Make the large, per child tax credit, that was available during the pandemic, permanent, and replace the complicated and audit prone earned income tax credit with a simple income tax credit equal to Social Security taxes (for both employers and employees) up to the minimum wage times thirty hours a week (or an equivalent amount of credit against self-employment taxes - reflected in not having those taxes withheld. The usefulness of the child tax credit in reducing child poverty in a simple way was demonstrated in the pandemic, and the EITC is far too complicated and has bad incentives for people trying to climb out of low income jobs and is too expensive to administer. This would make it more affordable for Millennials and Gen Z to marry, have kids, and achieve the American Dream.

What is another big thing that we can do to address that?

Reduce the regular Social Security retirement age to 55 years to people who do not have college degrees, without a reduction in benefits, and pay for any shortfalls in social security from existing obligations or new coverage, by increasing the payroll tax cap by however much is necessary to pay for it. Consider this payback for not imposing higher education costs on the public, and well as a rough justice categorical recognition that jobs that require less education are frequently more physically demanding and harder to continue to perform in late middle age. This would particularly help the Trump demographic. Many people in this demographic are already voting with their feet by leaving the work force and often applying for disability benefits which wouldn't be necessary with this categorical benefit that is much cheaper to administer and has better incentives.

What is a third big thing we can do to address that?

Provide paid maternity leave, at public expense, from six months of pregnancy to fifteen months after birth, as a short form, temporary, Social Security disability benefit. Add an additional six months to this time period for twins. Pay for this as well with an increased payroll tax cap. This greatly reduces the need for infant daycare, and increase the health of mothers and babies especially for working class families without unduly burdening employers. The pandemic proved that not being at work in late pregnancy out of economic necessity increases maternal and infant health. This would make it more affordable for Millennials and Gen Z to marry, have kids, and achieve the American Dream.

Transportation

Internal combustion engines are polluting and make up dependent upon oil. What is the single biggest thing we can do to address that?

Reduce trade barriers to importing foreign EVs and batteries, and subsidize high speed charging networks. There are lots of good EVs out there that aren't being exported to the U.S. due to trade barriers, especially from China. EVs reduce pollution and reduce fossil fuel dependency with petroleum dependency creating national security issues.

What is the second biggest thing we can do to address that?

Build dedicated high speed rail in interstate highway corridors where there is high traffic volume on medium distance routes (and upgrade medium speed rail corridors that already exist like the one in the Northeast Corridor), and use that high speed rail not only for passengers but for mail and package delivery by the USPS. Pay for this, in part, by shutting down low speed AMTRAK routes with the heaviest subsidies per passenger-mile. This could reduce pressure to expand highways, is environmentally sound, reduces highway maintenance costs, and provides mutual support between the rail system and the postal system. It would improve speed on these routes relative to both cars and to commercial flights. But it only makes sense where it makes some sort of economic sense based upon cost and demand. Medium distance, high volume routes are the sweet spot for high speed rail. Reducing petroleum dependency in addition to being environmentally and climate sound would increase national security and economic stability by reducing exposure to global oil production shocks.

What is a third big thing we can do to address that?

Convert short haul government fleet vehicles like garbage trucks, intracity and school buses, and urban postal delivery vehicles to EVs. This is a perfect niche for EVs even before charging networks are built out, reducing pollution and reducing oil demand with the benefits described above.

Personal Reflections

* This year I'm going to be a sag wagon husband, taking my wife to her Horsetooth Half-Marathon in Fort Collins in April (one of the most difficult half-marathons there is, due to extreme elevation changes in the course) and to the New York City Marathon in November. As I write this post, my wife is doing an 18.5 mile training run for the 13.1 mile Horsetooth race.

* This year, our house which we bought twenty-five years ago turns 100 years old. We've been generally good stewards of it. Its fair market value is more than triple what it was when bought it. But our twenty-five year old swamp cooler is due to be replaced, so we'll do that this spring. I'll be getting bids next week. We're suffering from renovation and repair fatigue, however, after several major projects, so we may pause that, apart from landscaping (to eventually kill the lawn and replace a badly weather damaged back patio gazebo), for a while.

* We could find ways to pay off our small mortgage faster than it is scheduled to be paid off with increased principal payments, if we felt an urgent need to do so. But why waste an ability to borrow money at a 3.625% fixed rate with tax deductible interest that helps our credit rating, while inflation eats away at the inflation adjusted value of the loan principal every year? The money that would be used to pay off the loan can be invested instead for better returns, even in very safe bond investments (or even if it were in high return FDIC guaranteed CDs).

* We've received our compost bin as part of a new City of Denver program that has finally come into being. It takes a little getting used to in daily life to split waste into three categories instead of two and we've thrown out some waste that should be composted. But, we'll get the hang of it. The City also didn't pick it up the first time we put it out on a collection day for some reason.

* In contrast, we've pretty much gotten used to the new policy of having to bring reusable bags to the grocery store or pay a 10 cents per disposable bag tax on that formerly free service.

* One of my two cars has been unofficially the kids car for a long time, but this year, we will officially be a one car household as title to our kid's car is passed down to the next generation. 

* My Nissan Juke will hit 60,000 miles right around the tenth anniversary of purchasing it this year and is in pretty much perfect condition, except for some cosmetic hail damage that we don't plan on fixing. 

* The only thing the Juke lacks that I would actively like to have is a blind spot detector. I wonder how hard it is to add one on an aftermarket basis. 

* If I drove in the mountains more, I'd get snow tires, as the Juke is otherwise a perfect snow car. But I don't drive in the mountains all that much, and Denver doesn't get enough snow to justify snow tires, in lieu of all weather tires with a decent tread.

* My plan is to replace my Juke with an EV (not a Tesla) sometime after the next generation of far superior solid state batteries enter the market, the Trump tariffs have been repealed, and the national charging network is better, perhaps five to ten years from now. This will require emptying the garage (which currently has so much stuff stored there that there is no room for a car), moving the garage stuff to a new backyard shed, and installing an EV vehicle charger (which Denver's building codes now require in new garages, I've heard). The new EV could very well end up being my last car. 

* Incidentally, even though Nissan sells decent enough EVs, it's looking like there's a good chance that Nissan won't exist anymore by the time my next car purchase rolls around. The company is in dire straights, and a contemplated merger with Honda has apparently fallen through.

* Also vaguely car related, I have dropped SiriusXM, which my car is equipped to receive. I almost always listen to Spotify using Bluetooth to my cell phone instead when I'm out and about, and don't drive enough in places with no cell phone access to justify keeping it. 

* My generation has seen vinyl records, cassettes, CDs, iPods, videocassettes, large format video disks, DVDs, 5.25" floppy disks, 3.5" floppy disks, CD-ROM, DVD-ROM, hard drives with actual disks in them, and analog broadcast television all come and go (we were too young to really experience 8-track tapes). We have seen digital broadcast television, digital radio, dead tree format newspapers and magazines, large movie theaters, satellite TV (first with large dishes and then with smaller ones), short wave radio, land line phones, pay phones, pagers, slow speed intercity passenger rail, paper checks, personal letters, "dumb" Blackberries and flip phones, and home yogurt makers, lose their shine too. Denmark's Post Office is discontinuing letter delivery at the end of this year and taking away all of its post boxes. Analog FM and AM radio are also just dying a slow and gradual death (especially AM radio). Wrist watches used to be a daily necessity and are now jewelry and a fitness tracking device. Vinyl records are actually coming back, but it's a niche thing that probably won't get big. We saw supersonic commercial flight come and go, but it looks like it will return soon, beyond a niche. So, seeing satellite radio start to lose its relevance too isn't all that shocking.

The story of AM radio over the last 50 years has been a transition from being the dominant form of audio entertainment for all age groups to being almost non-existent to the youngest demographic groups. Among persons aged 12–24, AM accounts for only 4% of listening, while FM accounts for 96%. Among persons aged 25–34, AM accounts for only 9% of listening, while FM accounts for 91%. The median age of listeners to the AM band is 57 years old, a full generation older than the median age of FM listeners.

From a 2009 Federal Communication Commission report (via Wikipedia). A person who was a median aged AM radio listener in 2009 is now 73 years old. Baby Boomers are between the ages of 61 and 79 in the year 2025. As of 2024, the average AM and FM radio listener combined is 57 years old, and 62% of all AM and FM radio listeners combined are 55 years old or older. AM/FM radio formats that were historically mostly AM like talk radio and religious programming, have the oldest listeners (although Spanish language radio formats which were also historically AM dominated have younger than average listeners, and country music formats are only a little older than that).

* I've also decide not to renew my digital Washington Post subscription this month, even though I've read it regularly since college, because the editorial interference of Jeff Bezos in the paper is undermining the quality of the product. I'll probably remove it from the sidebar of this blog as well.

* Today is the start of daylight savings time. I would eliminate it and have standard time all year round if I could. There is nothing wrong with changing the time that businesses and governments open and close during the course of the year if particular businesses and governments want to change that on a seasonal basis.

* My new office, across the street from Shotgun Willies, is so far a success. At a recent deposition I hosted there, that went smoothy from a logistics perspective, opposing counsel and her paralegal were plotting and scheming about how to get a coffee maker a nice as mine for themselves.

* Evidencing my progressing older age, I got a colonoscopy last month. It went fine and I don't have cancer, but it isn't something that I'm looking forward to the next time it is scheduled, a few years from now. The pre-procedure purging is harrowing.

* In very positive news, they are on the brink of introducing a new and affordable screening test for pancreatic cancer, which was the main cause of death of my father, his brother, and two of my not related by blood aunts. If there is a genetic risk factor, my brother and I probably have it, and we will probably live to benefit from this screening test. In even more positive news, they are close to being able to provide a pancreatic cancer "vaccine" that would prevent some subtypes of pancreatic cancer, although this isn't quite as imminent.

* It is a relief that both of our children have finished college, secured good jobs in the tech sector, established themselves in their own apartments, and found good relationships with significant others. 

* It would be nice if they could buy homes for themselves, but the housing market is the toughest for buyers that it has been in at least thirty-years right now, due to a surge in mortgage interest rates, while home prices mostly remain sticky at prices established when mortgage interest rates (and hence home affordability) were half what they are now.

* We've very much enjoyed being able to see our children's significant others this year. We'd welcome their upgrades to official son-in-law and daughter-in-law status, but that's up to the kids to decide. We are proud of the progress that our daughter's boyfriend has made toward becoming a Chartered Financial Analyst®, and are excited about our son's girlfriend's first half-marathon in the District of Columbia next weekend that she is just finishing her training to prepare to run.

* My official running competitions have been limited to 1 mile fun runs and 0.5 km races with donuts at the half-way mark. 

* I'm more ambivalent about my daughter's new dog, Oakley, because, as most people who know me are aware, I'm not a dog person. But, I'm learning to tolerate him.

* Both my nephew and the daughter of a dear friend of the family are applying to colleges this year. They have gotten out all of their applications, and have received acceptances and rejections from some schools so far. Even if none of them remaining responses are acceptances, they each have decent options. Over the next month or so, they'll each hear from some remaining schools that haven't given them an answer so far and they'll make their big decisions. For different reasons, neither will be going to schools in red states.

* Next year will be senior year for both of my nieces, so we'll get to watch the process of them deciding what to do after high school again next year as well, from front row seats. My brother and his wife will probably move to a different home in the Boston metro area once they become empty nesters.

* On July 3, 2025, less than four months from now, this blog will be 20 years old.

Has The Time Come For A Great Lakes High Speed Rail Line?

When my wife was a summer advertising agency intern in Chicago and I was a law student in Ann Arbor, we actually used the Amtrak service between those cities quite a few times.

The case for a Toronto to Detroit high speed rail line is pretty strong. It would serve a huge share of Canada's entire population with urban centers that are all along a straight line that is flat and manageable to build a high speed rail line on, and Canada is more familiar with the benefit of high speed rail from its stronger connections to Europe.

I'd need to be convinced with more facts that a Detroit to Minneapolis high speed rail line (or parts of it) could be viable and make some kind of economic sense. It might be viable, it might not.

Another route not shown that has been seriously considered for more than thirty year, but never gone anywhere, and wouldn't be too expensive to build (its flat and a lot of the land between the major cities is farmland), would be a Cincinnati-Dayton-Columbus-Cleveland line connecting Ohio's major urban centers. It wouldn't require interstate cooperation, which could make funding it operations and the political process of getting it goin easier (much like high speed rail lines at various stages of development in California, Florida, and Texas). It might give Ohio a much needed economic boost, from construction in the short term, and good transportation infrastructure aggregating the connectively of its major urban centers in the long run. But it is also possible that Ohio's economy has declined so much in the last thirty years that there isn't enough traffic between its major urban centers to support it. Projects in Florida and Texas, however, have at least demonstrated, however, that being a red state isn't an insurmountable political barrier to support for high speed rail.

I do think that the approach of focusing on specific corridors that are either entirely in one state, or in a small number of states in a single region, is a better one than pie-in-the-sky national high speed rail network approaches.

The virtue of focusing on specific corridors also reflects the fact that the sweet spot for high speed rail is medium length trips. 

For long distance travel, the speed of commercial air travel and the lack of a need to maintain expensive infrastructure on the ground between airports through varied terrain with large swaths of low population density, gives commercial air travel a decisive advantage over high speed rail. 

For short distance travel, the high speed doesn't deliver enough of a marginal advantage relative to driving and intracity rail, and having lots of local stops destroys the speed benefits of high speed rail. 

But, for medium length trips of hundreds of miles to several hundred miles, high speed rail can provide significant benefits in speed and comfort over driving, and its ability to deliver passengers all of the way to a city center and its lack of long delays associated with security and checked baggage can give it an edge relative to commercial air travel (and also puts pressure on the commercial air travel system to reduce those delays). Combining it with low volume, high value mail, parcel, and freight service could also tip the balance in favor of high speed rail's economic viability.

The Pacific Coast, improvements in the Northeast Corridor, the connector in place between major Florida cities, planned Texas triangle, and LA to Las Vega routes, for example, do make sense.

I'm ambivalent about Colorado high speed rail proposals. 

In Colorado along I-25, sometimes including cities in Wyoming and New Mexico. I-25 south of Denver is quite fast, and it isn't particularly bogged down north of Denver either. Quality bus service on I-25 could fill the needs that I-25 high speed rail service would fairly well. But construction costs for high speed rail in the I-25 corridor are pretty low since its flat and much of its isn't densely populated. 

The analysis for and against high speed rail along I-70 in Colorado from DIA to Vail or Glenwood Springs is very different. The need for better, faster passenger transportation options there that are less prone to interruption from landslides and weather related accidents is much more clear. But construction costs in the mountains are very high indeed, and much of the demand for high speed rail along I-70 is seasonal.

The U.S. is a big and diverse national geographically and economically. There are many places in the U.S. where the better approach in the intermediate term would be to end Amtrak as a passenger transportation option entirely, in favor of boosting the quality of intercity bus service, and to relegate Amtrak or some other future passenger rail service to a fully private sector, unsubsidized, scenic/mobile tourism destination service that isn't really about getting people from here to there efficiently (something that doesn't require high speed service).