bad analysis?

I'm now Officially Suspicious of Mr. Perl:

from pp 50-1:

"Paradoxically, public officials often find it easier to support private enterprises than they do to assist public enterprises--especially those with commercial mandate. [RLA: Really? Tell me more. Do.] Tax breaks, public purchasing, and other forms of assistance are justified by the jobs that private firms like the NMR [RLA: New Model Railroad, aka, Shinkansen, ICE, TGV] create, which are valued more highly than the public sector positions in an RPM [RLA: regulated public monopoly]. In the transportation sector, [RLA: okay, maybe he'll make his point finally] governments usually make terminal facilities and, often, line haul infrastructure available to private carriers at cost. [RLA: scratches head. Hunh? Okay, I'll believe you.] Airport and air traffic control facilities typify this form of infrastructure support for aviation, while the U.S. interstate highway system exemplifies the model for road transportation."

He's totally lost me. The U.S. hasn't found it "easier" to support freight on rail, which is private enterprise. At least not so far as I can tell. So that doesn't look like a public vs. private thing -- in any event, air traffic control as a public thing did not come into existence in any sort of "support private enterprise" sense. Depending on where you're talking about, it was either to support a domestic, national flag carrier (hardly private in any sense we'd mean), or served purposes beyond civil aviation, or came into existence in the wake of a massive disaster (which, IIRC, involved the Grand Canyon in the U.S.). So if the U.S. can't manage to support freight on rail, why would privatizing passenger rail (anywhere, but hey, work with me here) improve rail prospects?

I hold out hope for this book yet, but the U. of Calgary thing and the bow tie are making me nervous.

And yes, I get this is a book about passenger stuff, but this statement is pretty ambiguous, especially that "line haul" bit.

ETA: I believe "line haul infrastructure" means "weigh stations". But I could be wrong.

wonkier than thou: category railroads in Europe

See, there was a reason I was sticking to North America.

http://eur-lex.europa.eu/smartapi/cgi/sga_doc?smartapi!celexapi!prod!CELEXnumdoc&lg=en&numdoc=31991L0440&model=guichett

That's a nasty URL.

http://preview.tinyurl.com/yfz84dd

Don't bother with English language wikipedia on this one; what little there is to be found in other articles is a tad misleading. This would appear to be the relevant sentence, after wading through the whereases:

"by separating the management of railway operation and infrastructure from the provision of railway transport services, separation of accounts being compulsory and organizational or institutional separation being optional,"

Essentially, if you want to run your French train over Portuguese rail, they can't charge you for their trains, only for the use of their rail. But your French train can't attempt to supply commuter rail services for Berlin, say:

"Member States may exclude from the scope of this Directive railway undertakings whose activity is limited to the provision of solely urban, suburban or regional services."

Altho apparently if Germany wanted to let you, they could.

This bit is daunting; is that mandatory privatization or act like privatized?

"Railway undertakings shall be managed according to the principles which apply to commercial companies; this shall also apply to their public services obligations imposed by the State and to public services contracts which they conclude with the competent authorities of the Member State."

I think Article 6 and 7 amount to saying that Member States _can_ finance railway infrastructure. I don't think there is any prohibition on subsidies to the organizations running the trains, but they aren't supposed to cross-subsidize. But I'm prepared to allow for my having totally misunderstood something. Ending with a bunch of stuff about what can go into a user fee calculation, and how to complain if you think you got jacked around.

This is fairly amazing stuff. Clearly someone sat down, realized the problems associated with having any entity control track and trains, the desirability of running trains on each others track, and that if you try to solve this by privatizing absolutely everything, you'll get conglomerate/rollup/M&A crap abusing whoever is responsible for track maintenance and said, screw it, let's just separate and regulate. Of course it could in theory be solved by having One Railway To Rule Them All, but that seems pretty unlikely. Even in the EU.

cycling in the fall

Of course, everyone has to wear a jacket this time of year, which slows the out-the-door process slightly.

Today, I took T. around the subdivision in the morning. Later in the afternoon, I took him to Gardner park, where he played on the slide. When we got back, he saw A.'s seat (the Bobike mini) on the shelf, and wanted to put it on the Bianchi. We had taken our earlier rides on the Townie, since he's still under the weather and it seems to be less taxing for him. So after a brief trip inside to use the facilities and collect R. and A. (and get jackets on them), it was back out with R., T. and A. on the Bianchi, and me on the Townie. Of course I did not get a very good picture. :( Because I ran out of space on the crackberry. Should have brought a real camera; this thing has way less space on it than the Centro did.

I took A. in the stroller to go get veggie pad thai later, while R. and T. went to Kimball Farms for soft serve ice cream.