[PRCo] Re: The Rest of the World -Electric Rails - Britain

[Derrick Brashear]

On Wed, Mar 9, 2011 at 11:33 PM, Fred Schneider <fwschneider at comcast.net> wrote:
> Number one .... this started out as a Pittsburgh file and I am as guilty of corrupting it as anyone.   Sorry guys but I don't think the world's door stops at the Allegheny County line.

if it doesn't it probably will after the next round of transit cuts.

> Number two .... Industry managers always used something called a cost benefit analysis.   You put your dollars first where it got the biggest bang for the buck.    Politicians say any death is one death too many because the money doesn't come out of their pockets.   Lawyers will say any death is one death to many because they can take the money from some one else's pocket and make money doing it.  I think both of those are sad.

Only because we hide costs. If it comes out of your tailpipe, and I
breathe it, there's potentially a cost, but you're not solely paying
it. Hell, you may well be being subsidized to create it. So, well,
industry managers used to use something *called* a cost-benefit
analysis, but dollars to donuts it wasn't really.

> My personal view point is that we need to go back to a cost benefit analysis.   A freight railroad which runs a couple of trains a day needs to have very low priority.   If they don't have positive train control for the next 100 years, so what?   Do we spent a billions equipping hundreds of thousands of miles of track to save a few lives?   More people lose lives in the falling in the bath tub.   Why don't we pass a law making it illegal to bathe?

If we're going to do it (cba), we should do it. Since we've never
actually bothered to do it before, I mock the idea that we're going to
start now.