This makes sense if we assume:

1) everyone already owns a car that's reliable enough to drive to Columbus and back, and

2) they wish to spend their time behind the wheel, and

3) they WANT to put that kind of wear and tear on their car, and

4) they don't mind spending lots of money on the fixed costs of car ownership in order to make gasoline costs their primary focus of a trip decision when headed to Columbus.

 But in reality, lots of people don't own cars (25% of households in the City of Cleveland), and lots more don't own cars reliable enough to make that trip with confidence.  Even more don't want to put another nail in the coffin of their car by driving it so far.  And there are some people who, even if all the above are not true for them, simply don't want to be the one doing the driving.  And finally, there are even more people who don't WANT to spend money on car ownership (now hovering at 21% of household income on average, and more for lower income households -- more than typically spent on housing in NE Ohio).

Gasoline is only about 10% of the annual cost of car ownership -- let's not make too much fuss about it.  The killer is the front-end cost of the asset, and the price of insurance.  As the owner of a car rental company, I also wish wear and tear only cost a couple of bucks on a trip of 250+ miles.  The truth is that the IRS reimbursement rate for mileage still forces an employee to subsidize their employer -- cars cost more than 40 cents a mile to own and operate. 

I have customers with their own cars who could get reimbursed by their employer at that rate for driving to Columbus and back, and they would rather use our cars than put the miles on theirs -- even for a reimbursement of more than $100.  Those same people would prefer a train over driving our car, so they could spend the time reading, surfing the web on a laptop, or even catching up on sleep.

So let's not pretend that the entire travel market has a reliable car standing by, and is eager to drive.  The real cost of that car trip to Columbus is much higher.

Before we are able to tweak route schedules and travel times, we as passenger rail advocates must create the political will in order to be able to address such minute topics. If we don't then like today, we will continue to have no passenger rail service connecting all of Ohio's major metropolitian cities together.

The most important thing any passenger rail advocate needs to do in the near future is to attend the April 26th statehouse lobby day where you can meet with your state senator and house member urging them to support the development of the Ohio Hub Plan. Specifically, we need to make sure congressman Latourette's appropriations request gets funded.

 for more information please go to our website. www.allaboardohio.org