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Is a US High-Speed Railway Economically Feasible?
An anonymous reader writes "The federal government has committed at least $8-billion (and counting) for the development of a nationwide high-speed intercity passenger railway system in almost three-dozen states. Rail advocates have long dreamed of an extensive railway grid that will provide clean, speedy, energy-efficient travel. The high-speed rail program is also expected to create thousands of desperately needed jobs, while reducing the nation's dependence on foreign oil and easing gridlocked highways and congested air-space. However, this noble, ambitious, multi-year plan faces a multitude of obstacles — including costs that will no doubt escalate as the years pass by; and an American public that may be reluctant to relinquish the independence and convenience of their beloved automobiles for a train."
Once they're paying as much as people in any other first-world country, "beloved" will give way to "practical". And it brings in some nice cash too.
How can I believe you when you tell me what I don't want to hear?
...In that you can sleep in them, lying down. In Sweden, there's a six-bunk pullman car model, and a more expensive two-bunk model that's more like a proper "fluffy" bed. It's not all that nice to sleep with your boots on in a closed compartment with complete strangers (and they never get the heating right), but it's better than sleeping in a seat.
Emotions! In your brain!
Cut subsidies for all forms of transportation. Then, tax in proportion to carbon emissions. Trains win in every densely populated region, hands down.
You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it dissolve.
A high speed rail network should be targeting air travel. There are many short haul air routes (e.g. New York to Washington) where high speed rail could provide an comparable door-to-door journey time (especially once you take check-in, security and all the other things into account). High speed rail has none of the big downsides of air travel like the need to get to the airport 2 hours before the flight to check in, the need to pass through 3 layers of security, bans on liquids and other things, cramped seats etc.
Now obviously trains cant compete with long-haul air travel such as New York to LA but for short haul, it could really work. (but only if its given proper high speed track and doesn't have to share that track with slow freight trains)
If it was really cost effective some private company would have already built it.
I have a better way to cut down on traffic and save money....require all government contract business show that 25% of their workforce telecommute.
And make all federal senators/representatives telecommute from their home state.(plus not really traffic related, but make their pay propotional to the percentage of votes they cast).
This is just a few people getting slush funds for their states that everyone else is expecting to pay for.
In some places yes, in other places no.
Next question?
With reasonable men I will reason; with humane men I will plead; but to tyrants I will give no quarter. -- William Lloyd
I'm all for eliminating all transit subsidies.
In practice, this means that taxes on car sales, oil, gasoline, and such need to pay for all road maintenance, or all roads are toll roads. Really, all roads being toll roads is silly. Thus, you end up with much higher gasoline prices, but that income specifically pays for the road infrastructure, causing drivers to see the actual cost of their automotive traffic, just as the subway system here is forced to make at least 50% of its income on fares.
Willy Wonka is fit to run a chocolate factory, not a long-distance rail network in the south-western united states.
Emotions! In your brain!
never gonna happen, corp. america has way to much at stake, the auto industry is in trouble; but big oil is healthy and Ain't gonna let it happen
A private consortium tried just that back in 1991 in Texas. Then Southwest Airlines called in a few favours and had the project destroyed (some details on Wikipedia here.). Free market capitalism may or may not have worked here (if it did then one could certainly expect other consortia to follow suit) but the Texas state government never gave us a chance to find out.
People love their automobiles because the great majority of them aren't given a choice in the matter.
Wouldn't it be great to be able to hop on a train to head to a concert, sporting event, famous restaurant, etc. a couple hundred miles away and back on the same day? That sort of casual impulse travel would be of new benefit to the economy (particularly of hub cities) even if the railway itself didn't pull in the cash.
Or they could design the train so that people could drive their cars onto it and park.
It'd kill the airlines in a week.
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
If we just stopped subsidizing it, we wouldn't need to tax it, and we'd get the same revenue benefit without the infrastructure needed to enforce the tax. Bastiat has a lot of interesting things to say about both subsidies and taxes. I personally hate driving and flying, so I'd really enjoy a national rail system. I'd like a local transit system even more, but that is not something my city is even close to.
refactor the law, its bloated, confusing and unmaintainable.
My problem with trains in American isn't speed.
I'd rather have a train system that had a range of trains to different places at lots of different times, every day. But most importantly, I'd like to have a train system that actually follows the time table. Nobody wants to pay for public transportation when you have to arrive early, wait a long time, and then not leave on time... and probably not arrive at your destination on time.
Wait, we do that for airplanes. Nevermind. Go about your business.
http://www.tenjou.net/
Europe has certain zones where high speed rail makes sense. Those also exist here, such as the Acela route, also perhaps Miami to Orlando to Tampa Bay, LA to San Diego, and Dallas - Fort Worth. However, extending high speed rail across the US makes no economic sense now, and would place the government into direct competition with private commercial transport. It is unlikely that high speed rail will become economically viable on a nationwide basis given the huge costs of creating dedicated, isolated rails on such a broad spread basis. While I strongly support high speed rail in high density, closely located urban zones, especially where urban mass transit exists to get people to and from the train stations, it doesn't seem either economically viable or practicable in other locations.
I'm pretty sure that simply raising taxes isn't the cure to all that ails us. Keep in mind that everything you eat, wear and touch is delivered in one way or another on transportation of some kind, so literally everything would become more expensive. From experience, I can say that often a very large part of the price of goods is from transportation. When you double that cost, everything now costs 10% to 50% more overnight. That is called inflation, and it cuts demand dramatically, which is likely not the best solution considering we have the highest unemployment since the early 80s, and the most persistent unemployment since the Depression.
The problem is that the US is one giant suburb sprawl, and because our population densities are so much lower between cities, trains will never be viable all over. On the east coast, yes, and maybe even a few in fly over country. But to have trains in most of the rest of the country would take more carbon than driving cars. From building the trains cars that would only be partially full because of the lower density, to the fuel used for those smaller passenger loads, it doesn't make sense in the US for most areas, at least not for daily travel.
Also, you have to condemn land, lay tracks, uproot people and remove farm land and utilities, and in the end, most people here would still rather drive less than use the train. You can't turn America into Europe by simply taxing fuel at the same rate.
Tequila: It's not just for breakfast anymore!
It's not going to be cost effective for some private company to do it and still be able to turn a profit. It'll be so expensive that tickets will be unaffordable. Or the tickets will be barely affordable, but service will be absolutely terrible. If we want this to happen, the government will have to grant money, land, and privileges. Unfortunately, the company that gets to build it will avoid paying the government back, and will just use what they have to further screw the consumer. Then we'll be looking at Amtrak of the 2010s.
Job? I don't have time to get a job! Who will sit around and bitch about being broke and unemployed then?
I want a monorail.
Monorail. Monorail. MONORAIL.
I think it's the need of the day. Given how horrible air travel is becoming every day, there needs to be another option. Trains are more comfortable too. I've found 3 things problematic with train travel in the US 1. speed- It takes about 2 days to get from Seattle to LA. 2. Costs are at times way higher than those of flights. 3. Schedule & frequency- There's got to be more of them and they have to be at convenient times. 4 in the morning is neither here nor there.
The US is not built to support high-speed rail, nor is there a need. Consider the Florida High Speed Rail program, part of which will run between Tampa and Orlando, a grand distance of 85 miles, or about 90 minutes driving. According to Wikipedia however, "bullet train would beat a car by only 30 minutes." Odds are even that advantage will be lost when the Lakeland stop is opened. Additionally, that doesn't even take into account that you're going to have to drive to the station, then when you get to your destination, you're going to have to drive wherever you need to get to!
High-speed rail can work in certain environments, but it's self-defeating the way it's being implemented here in the US, because it's just being used to buy votes, as the summary itself all but admitted.
If thou see a fair woman pay court to her, for thus thou wilt obtain love
"and an American public that may be reluctant to relinquish the independence and convenience of their beloved automobiles for a train."
The automobile is far more of a ball-and-chain than an independence-granting device.
...require all government contract business show that 25% of their workforce telecommute.
As an electrician, I would love to telecommute, but no one can tell me how to twist that wire nut from home.
Let's look at some more realistic likely project costs shall we:
High Speed 1 in the UK (our first 'high speed' but really only reaching 180mph, which people do on their motorbikes nowadays)
- 67 miles, £5.2 billion ($8 billion)
Cross-Rail (our newest train project in London, crossing the capital)
- 73 miles, £16 billion ($25 billion)
The 'big dig' in Boston
- 3.5 miles, $22 billion
So, we've got $8 billion to spend - you'll be lucky if you see 100 miles of track, let alone purchase any trains with the leftovers!
and an American public that may be reluctant to relinquish the independence and convenience of their beloved automobiles for a train.
Well, duh. Convenience and independence are huge. Public transportation isn't "when you want it" or "where you want it" and just doesn't have the trunk space. In many major american cities, the suburban sprawl is enormous, bordering on ridiculous. It's too late for the US. You'd need to throw in something like $100 TRILLION in order for (rail) mass transit to work. You'd need to interconnect each sprawling suburb with each other--not just with downtown, regrettably how its often done--in order to make it even feasible.
And it still won't be convenient to travel by mass transit if you have more than you can carry in your arms.
And then, at some point, it's still not the cheapest. For example, $5 a roundtrip ticket for me, my wife, and two others to travel downtown for a baseball game. Even with expensive event parking, that's already about even. If we had a van and squeezed in another couple, it'd be cheaper to carpool, perhaps even including the amortized costs of vehicle purchase & repair for that event, especially since we still needed a vehicle to get us to the rail station...
This plan is worrying. America is probably neck and neck with Canada for having the most efficient freight distribution system in the world (it's far and away more efficient than Europe's), and I worry that this high speed rail plan has the potential to throw a major wrench in this system. The issue is that virtually all major rail initiatives occur on existing freight rail corridors. There are a handful of examples of brand new corridors for freight use (KCS is building one in Texas right now to try to fill in the missing link between the Lazero Cardenas port and its American rail network), but usually building brand new mainline (particularly high speed mainline!) is prohibitively expensive.
...
I can smoke in my car, I cannot do that on a train. That is just one reason there is zero chance I would pick a train over a car.
Got Code?
how about more inner city rail as well?
add buses, moving walk ways, more inter city rail and that will cut down on cars.
The reason trains haven't been very popular with Americans has a lot more to do with train scheduling than trains themselves. Basically, if you decide to take Amtrak, you have almost no idea when you're going to arrive at your destination. As I understand it, much of the problem is that Amtrak runs over railways owned by other entities; they aren't Amtrak's rails. So when a freight train comes rumbling along, the passenger train effectively yields to it. This rather complicates scheduling, so if you know you need to be in Springfield by 11:00 AM Tuesday, you can bet that you won't get there in time if you don't take the train scheduled to arrive on Monday. Even if Amtrak doesn't have to yield, the tracks are crap so the trains can't run at their design speeds.
Out here in the West, I don't think I've ever heard of the Coast Starlight being on time. Not even once.
In the Northeast, where Amtrak owns the rails, the trains are actually useful.
Dedicated rail lines would actually allow the trains to run more-or-less on time. Dedicated rails would also let them run fast. Then trains can be quite a nice way to get around, especially when weighed next to the bullshit you have to put up with when you fly. Realistically, it takes pretty much all day to fly anywhere, even for very short flights, given the lines, misery, and chaos at the airports. So if you can get a comfortable seat on an uncrowded train where you're not required to be photographed naked to get a seat, and you can walk around a bit, and maybe have some acceptably palatable food, you're not charged an extra $50 because you had the gall to bring your purse and a bag, and it costs 1/2 the price of an airplane ticket, trains could be pretty nice -- if only you could guess +/- half an hour when you might actually arrive.
Fixing rail service in the US means installing dedicated passenger rails.
I gave up cars several years ago. I do have a motorcycle, but I either walk, ride a bicycle, ride my motorcycle, or do public transportation. A motorcycle can go crazy places. I do all my shopping with it; and on the rare occasions I need something that won't fit in my large hiking backpack, I rent a truck.
Point is, we're not all members of the planet-destroying hippy generation that dramatically increased our meat consumption (the beef industry is more destructive to the planet than all the transportation industries combined). I had to help solve a software bug this morning when a customer had an order go through for an overnight delivery of a handtowel from California to Hawaii, and the shipping wasn't computed correctly. The customer's site specializes in eco-friendly products. So, somewhere there's a person in Hawaii that thinks overnight shipping an empty box (just forget the damn contents) is somehow more environmentally friendly than ANY handtowel they could have bought at their walkin stores. $80 shipping for a $7 item. That shit right there, with environmentalists driving SUVs and doing whatever they want because they buy carbon neutral credits is the problem. But fortunately, that generation is getting old and will die off soon enough, and we'll have a healthier planet because of it.
There are PLENTY of people who would love to get in a high-speed train from LA to Phoenix, LA to SF, that sort of thing. They might not be children of the 60s, but that doesn't mean they aren't worthwhile consumers.
I suggest you read this: Sewers and Storm Drains.
Yes, paying a million people to fix up our crumbling infrastructure (or in this case, to build a high-speed railroad) will be expensive. However, all those million people will no longer be unemployed, which means that they will go from being a drain on society to being a benefit to society. This sort of thing would lead to much faster economic recovery than your "everyone stop spending money right now" plan.
We already move a lot of freight by train, which makes a great deal of sense because it's so heavy. Humans weigh so little that all the fuel goes into moving the train, which means very little fuel savings per mile unless the train is very full. If it takes one ton to move four people by car and four tons to move four people by train, even at twice the gas mileage the train loses out. And the train does not get you door to door. And the train has to make stops. And the train sticks to a predetermined and therefore inconvenient schedule. Etc.
"If it was really cost effective some private company would have already built it."
Like the internet. And train systems in every other country. Or the road system.
Or it could be that you don't have a clue what you're talking about. It can be cost effective for the nation as a whole (have a net economic gain) without providing companies with a profit necessarily. That's why the subway is subsidized. That's why road are subsidized. It isn't a good thing to have private roads, but roads in general benefit the economy.
Next time please engage a little bit of grey matter before you spew your ideological BS.
I fear the high speed rails will be deployed on the east and west, and those of us in "fly over" country will be left out in the cold.
Which is a shame, because in many ways the middle of the country is where high speed rail could really shine: the trains could get up to speed and stay there for a significant length of time.
However, a few random points:
1) France has a total of 1000 miles of high speed track. The Southwest Chief runs from Chicago to LA - about 2000 miles. That's just ONE of Amtrak's routes.
2) In Europe, they have auto-trains: put your car on, go, take your car off, drive. The only place this happens in the US is on the east coast, on one run. Again: were it possible to put your car on in New York, pull your car off in Flagstaff, and drive up to the Grand Canyon, I think it would be much more attractive to many people.
3) Were autotrain runs more common in the US, then driving an electric car with limited range wouldn't be the deal-breaker for long trips it is now: again, put the car in in NY, off in Flagstaff, with a fully charged battery courtesy of the train's power.
4) There is a great push on just to restore old-style rail service in the middle of the country: see the Heartland Flyer extension effort.
I routinely travel long distances: Wichita to Los Angeles for example. I'd love to be able to put my car on the train, roll overnight, and be able to make the trip in a day rather than two. I'd love to be able to hop on the train for my business trips to Kansas City and Austin. The idea that Americans won't take the train doesn't square with how many ride it now, when Amtrak seems to go out of their way to make it unattractive. Over 4000 people used the Amtrak station in Hutchison KS last year, and that is a little station in a town of about 40,000 people - the station isn't even manned, and the train gets there at 4 in the morning.
No, rail COULD work in the US - it's just that no big company will make $$$$ from it, so no CongressCritters are motivated to do anything about it.
www.eFax.com are spammers
It just doesn't make sense, and even politicians recognize that.
Now, what I have heard suggested is more routes for rail travel. When I lived near the Pocono's, there was a large number of people that traveled to New York City every day by bus for work. It was worth it for them to spend 3/4 hours on bus one way due to the lower living expenses and high wages. For them, having rail service(shorter travel time) would have been a god send. But, again. That was not high speed rail. Just new/additional rail service.
Anonymous comments are as pathetic as the anonymous "sources" that contaminate gutless journalism from the New York Time
http://www.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/europe/03/24/uk.smoking.ban.cars/index.html
London, England (CNN) -- A British doctors group called Wednesday for a ban on all smoking in cars, saying the secondhand smoke inside a vehicle can cause severe health problems for children and adults.
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
The very fact that something is unprofitable, and that no private party has stepped up to do it for that reason, does not mean the thing is not worth doing and worth having the government do it.
Speaking of the military, just a small fraction of that $500B-$600B (more?) annual offense budget, currently being in great part wasted on failing attempts at nation-building, would buy us this rail service and a whole lotta other stuff besides, without adding to the deficit. The military is just a few (well, a hell of a lot) of people getting massive slush funds for their states that everyone else is expected to pay for.
I'm with you on telecommuting though. It's idiotic for most people to transport a sack of meat - themselves- in a one to two ton container just to sit at a desk and in all likelihood be no more, if not less, productive than they'd be at home. And then transport the same meat/steel back at the end of the day.
The man who dies rich dies disgraced. -- Andrew Carnegie
Not only that, but I think they may have underestimated the value of mass transit over long distances and the general distaste for air travel these days. I dread flying now simply because it takes longer to go through the whole flight process, check-in, security, etc, than actual time spent in the air. You also have to worry about late flights, being held hostage on the runway (in the sense of delays, not actual hostage situations). It's just a big mess.
I could easily see myself taking a train, were if readily available, for long trips and simply renting a car if needed on the other end. Trains would seem to provide a lot of convenience (good speed, no need for bathroom stops, means served on the train, etc). I think part of the issue has simply been availability for most of the U.S.
Travel to any major metro area that offers a decent public transit system, and you will find that, properly managed, they are not that horrible to use.
The choice is not between 'car' and 'rail'. The choice is between 'rail' and 'airplane'.
There is a nice Amtrak route from Seattle, WA to Portland, OR. It takes about 3 hours, and a plane flight is less than an hour. At least, until you factor in getting to the airport (way outside of town, and the Amtrak station is right downtown), going through security, the cramped seating, and the overall icky stupidity of the entire process of air travel nowadays. Then the Amtrak starts looking a heck of a lot more attractive than a plane flight.
I also travel to San Francisco from Seattle sometimes. My current choice is to take a plane. If there were a high-speed rail corridor to San Francisco that took less than 5 or 6 hours, I might well choose it instead. Sure, it's an hour or two longer than even the total time spent to travel there by air. But it's an hour or two of comfort, not an hour or two of not-quite uncomfortable enough to be unbearable that air travel is.
Need a Python, C++, Unix, Linux develop
You overstate the case. In Britain, fuel prices are vastly higher than they are in the USA, and driving is still usually cheaper than taking the train.
People travel by rail in Britain when it's more convenient. For commuters it makes sense because you can work or relax on the train; of course, many US cities already have popular commuter rail services. For other people, it often boils down to things like the very poor parking facilities at urban destinations and the poor roads at rural destinations -- an expensive train ticket looks a lot more attractive if you know the alternative is going to be six hours stationary in heavy traffic on a narrow road, or an extortionate charge for commercial car parking. These latter problems tend not to exist so much in the USA, where there's plenty of room for wide roads and large car parks.
Next question please.
If I didnt put down the railways first in Sim City, I was basically screwed.
My main concern is cost and time. If it takes me about the same amount of time and costs more to go by train I'll take the air transportation. However with my recent delays due to weather I'd consider train if amtrack didn't cost so much. I flew from Boston to Washington for $100 (taxes included). I think amtrak would have been like $250.
I know you're trolling, but sometimes I can't resist.
Rail is the most efficient form of long-distance travel other than water, assuming that there is no value accorded to speed of transport. If you're a steel mill, or a power plant, or any of a thousand other industrial processes that do not concern themselves with transit time, then rail is incredibly efficient and logical. After all, it's not as though coal goes bad if it takes a week to get to you. If you're a dairy producer, the rules are rather different.
Seriously, what the hell are you basing this on except your personal lack of vision?
We do pay as much as people in any other first world country with comparable population density and GDP.
A full bus can get over 250 passenger miles per gallon. A full electric train can get 800, before you factor in the ~50% efficiency of electricity generation. Bus size can be quickly changed to meet the number of passengers. Trains often have many empty seats.
I hope you understand why that plan would be unpopular, is impractical, and no rational politician would actually vote for it.
Think about it: a good number of Americans are willing to go to war to keep gas prices low. Do you think they will appreciate it if gas prices rise double for no reason other than some people (you) don't like their cars? Not to mention there's a good portion of the country where people couldn't ride the train even if they wanted to.
Qxe4
Hey idiot, "area's" means "belonging to [the] area". You meant "areas". Idiot!
If you connect every "major" city with high speed rail, and then let the cities choose to build their own light rail system to handle all the secondary stops, then I think it would work. And when I say major cities, I'm talking things like Kansas City, Las Vegas, Chicago, etc. The minimum distance should be 300 miles or something to that affect.
But if they plan on making this thing stop every 60 miles or so, then it's really not worth it. Most people will drive that distance.
The real Sig captains the Northwestern. This one captains
Don't be silly. Building a rail link is essentially impossible unless you can use eminent domain to acquire the necessary land; there's no way a private company could realistically expect to persuade thousands of individual landowners to sell them land in a straight line from one city to another, possibly crossing several different states in the process.
The CCC did some wonderful things. And quite a bit of those things are up for repair or replacement. If we're in the 'worst recession since the great depression' then we need to treat it as such. Cancel 'handouts'. If you want welfare, you can work for it. Everyone gets a job and stuff gets built.
Bridges, Dams, Power lines, roads. Quite a bit of stuff was built during the great depression putting people to work. After the MN bridge collapse inspectors are coming out of the wood work going "Yeah, these could fail at any time now too."
Take all those 2.9M employees that are out of work and have them start building shiat. If they want to sit on their Union ass and do nothing, they get nothing. Turn off unemployment. There'll be no shortage of jobs. Pay them what they're actually worth as manual labor. Caterpillar & Deere, the big 2 domestic construction manufacturers would need to increase their workforce (Which is partially union). Truckers would get more work shipping construction supplies and equipment. Mobile home makers would need to up production for temporary housing. Concrete, asphalt, and steel industries would need to up employment to help keep up with demand.
Along every road and every bridge run fiber, it costs nothing compared to what a new road does, so run a fat pipe to every town in America. The next Wozniak or Linus could be sitting at a place that currently just has 14.4 dial up. Maybe the smartest of the high school students could take part in remote learning at MIT or some where where they'll not be kept behind with the rest of their class.
In addition, toss a rail line down the center of the interstates. Get a light rail connecting most large cities. Maybe even a 'ferry' service. Need to go to CA? Load your car up on a rail. Go sit in the comfortable seats and in a day. You're in CA.
Just like all those roads and bridges helped spark the auto boom a decade or so later, in 10-20 years we could really see the economy back on its feet doing something else productive.
no subway but I think they get to 55mph
This program would go well with inner city banks of public/ private electric cars,working from rail hubs with govt subsidies and special privileges,parking rates and or lanes. It would reduce infrastructure cost in the long run reduce inner city smog (looking at you L.A.) and reduce oil consumption. AND stimulate construction in suburbs.alleviating unemployment there.
If they weren't hugely subsidized they would not be economically feasible.
And where will the money to pay a million people to do busywork come from? Out of Obama's ass?
Paying a million people a year say, $50000 (to cover their wage plus the usual overhead) is $50 BILLION, and that doesn't buy any materials (such as trains, or track, or even coffee). That's a far cry from the $8 billion being discussed here.
I'm an American and normally don't agree with anti-american sentiments but I have to say I've ridden trains in Europe and the US and there's no comparison. European trains are clean, efficient and cheap. US trains are dirty, undependable and just as expensive as air travel and some times more expensive. Cross country trains are useless because they cost a fortune, stop in every little town and take forever. I found conditions filthy and food disgusting and expensive. Generally with cross country trains there are only a couple a week and they are often hours to a day late. You could take nearly two weeks to travel coast to coast and back again. It was faster and a better experience in the mid 1800s and I'm including having to breath coal smoke back then. The officials that run trains in this country need to quietly take a trip to Europe and ride the trains then ride Amtrak and the commuter trains here. If they can't match Europe in price and efficiency then fire them all and find people that can match Europe.
As long as VP Biden wants to play with his trains and as long as Congress is wasting billions and billions of dollars, of course it's "feasible".
but airports are harder to get to then trains and parking is like X6 - X10 + times more as well.
I love my car, but I also love trains. I would love to travel by train for long distances, it gives me the ability to relax in long trip without putting miles on my already high mileage vehicle. If only it didn't cost 200 bucks to travel in the lowest quality at 1.5x as long as a car. It is ridiculous. But I would rather travel by train if they could fix the damn system. I would choose rail over airplane any day. I love my car as a grocery getter, and it drives me where I need to go well. I see no need to give it up, and I don't see why this car or train thing keeps coming up. You can be just as free using a train where you would otherwise use an airplane. We should really be investing more like 50 billion in national high speed rail system, to allow for easier national travel, and open up the US to everyone here.
Where is the mod rating for "scary"? Also,
What subway system is forced to make at least 50% of it's income on fares? Surely you don't mean the MTA? Transit systems are already heavily subsidized by Vehicle Taxes, tolls, federal, and state governments. For *far* too long transit passengers have been getting a [half] free ride on the backs of commuters that use other means of transportation. Enough BS, and charge the riders the real costs of operating these fleets of trains and buses. And No, they shouldn't get priority handling on roads, etc. Equal is equal!
Increase the spend to $30 billion.
Considering $700+ billion was used on banks, rail infrastructure construction would be good for your economy - give people jobs, get money flowing and do so in 30+ states.
The comment about air travel being the real competitor is right on the money.
Survey after survey has shown that people would much rather take a train (where they can get on easily, walk around during travel, not get slapped suddenly into their seats for an impromptu ride on the biggest roller coaster on the planet, drink a beer or eat a sandwich for a reasonable price, not have to wait in long lines for a restroom, and "land" within a short cab ride of their actual destination) than suffer through the growing indignities of air travel. Even adding in proper security screening, it's still no contest. But the obstacle to high speed rail is economic and political -- the extensive government subsidies to auto travel are dwarfed by those offered to private commercial air carriers (the whole TSA thing, but also the airports themselves and air traffic control, not to mention the weather service and other such incidentals that are nominally for other purposes). Investment in high speed rail directly undercuts the most lucrative air travel market: short haul trips. That's why the hub and spoke system all the air carriers use exists, and why you can hardly ever find a direct flight to where you're going if you aren't lucky enough to live in a hub (but also notice that if you leave directly from a hub, you'll pay a big mark-up compared to people who are simply transferring there).
So the bottom line is that there is a gigantic, lucrative industry whose whole existence depends on never having effective rail transportation (such as high-speed rail that connects urban areas as well as major airports and provides competitive, timely, cost-effective, weather-insensitive service for trips ranging from 200-500 miles). So you've got a bunch of noble idealists without a dime to their name lobbying for high speed rail, and you've got all the airlines hell-bent on preventing it from (so to speak) getting off the ground. It's a miracle the current administration thinks they can beat those odds, and I wish them all the best. But this is sort of like trying to outflank the medical industry with health care reform, and unfortunately there's probably just as little chance of substantial success.
This is precisely why rail is typically only added to the most population-dense areas. It doesn't make sense to use it unless you can walk everywhere else you go. It could possibly work in Los Angeles if you stationed a cop in every car, but only if they stopped hiring cops that taser or even shoot people at the least provocation. Most of the places it could work could be more cheaply (up front, anyway) served by adding lanes to existing roadways.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
It is not in any other country.
Why should the USA be different?
Dave Barnes 9 breweries within walking distance of my house
The AutoTrain, with a single route is always sold out. Busses and planes can't take your car, and driving 2-5 days in your car is much less inviting than a relaxing train trip. A few high speed routes would attract a lot of people, ny and dc to Chicago, chicago to Denver, la, San Fran, and seattle. Cross country in 3-4 days with your car? I bet that would be popular.
A couple of weeks ago The Economist had an interesting article about this: http://www.economist.com/node/16636101. It pointed out that upgrading America's railroads to handle high-speed (or even pseudo high-speed) traffic would have a negative economic impact on freight train service, which is among the best in the world. I had never seen America's train system called "the best" in anything before, but I do think this does point out the dangers of just focusing on the benefits in one specific area.
If they don't scare off customers by treating them like criminals with the security theater, I and many of my friends would be very happy to travel by train. It isn't the speed of the train on the tracks that is the problem, though. The last time I tried, there was no connection between Pittsburgh and Boston that didn't take two days.
So let's have plenty of parking at terminals, connections to major cities, and no long lineups for search and seizure shenanigans.
You can't turn America into Europe by simply taxing fuel at the same rate.
There are many on the left who, out of a desire to see "good" things done quickly, reflexively support higher taxes and increased government spending, regardless of the prevailing economic circumstances. In response to their claims of concern for the plight of the common man, Milton Friedman once said, "I admire the softness of their hearts, but unfortunately it very often extends to their heads as well."
Just so long as I can load my car onto the railcar at some convenient hub, and get myself and 3 passengers carried along with the car to a distant hub near my destination, and at a price cheaper than the cost of just driving there. It is faster than 8-10 hours of driving then sleeping, etc. if the high speed rail goes hub to hub with minimal stops. This is not likely. The localities will lobby to be a stop, that will increase the trip time, and it may "go fast" in theory but it will be like the Soviet era (and now) overnight trains that travel 400 to 500 kilometers and have a huge number of stops in small towns and villages ... And in the US we are great at making sure OUR concern (i.e., a stop in our town) is met.
- Tjp
I am in wallow with my inner money grubbing capitalistic pig. ... Oink!
High Speed Rail as it exists in Europe or Japan will never work in the US. In the areas of the country where it is commercially viable, there would be too many railroad crossings. Imagine the cost of involving everyone's construction brother-in-law for making a bridge at every crossing. We already have "high speed rail" in this country it is called the Acela - fast for about 10 minutes, then slows down for the rest of the journey because of crossings. Besides, it's about 3 times cheaper to fly from Boston to New York City than it is to take the train. Much more of a pain, but cheaper. In the areas of the country where it would be possible to actually build a high-speed railroad, with a minimal of crossings, there wouldn't be a market to support it. How many people really want to take a high speed train from Fargo, North Dakota to Omaha, Nebraska? Enough to support the cost of building a decent railway? I don't think so.
In the US, when you arrive at a city, the first thing you need is a car. Otherwise, you can't get anywhere.
NYC is an exception. Almost anywhere else, you will need to get of the train and immediately rent a car. Without addressing this issue, this might as well be a train to nowhere.
On statistics: The train throughput numbers ( passengers per hour ) are often very deceiving. The numbers are based on trains being closely spaced ( very frequent ) and 100% full of passengers. Just look at Caltrans in CA. I've seen numbers showing how the train corridor carries a lot more people per hour than the same sized road. However, the assumption is that you can run one train every 6 minutes. Caltrans can't get anywhere near that rate of trains. Also, the Caltrans trains run virtually empty through the middle of the day. There are no passengers, but the engine is cranking out massive amounts of pollution from the big diesel engines. The pollution per person must be awful.
"program is also expected to create thousands of desperately needed jobs, while reducing the nation's dependence on foreign oil "
I've been hearing that phrase since 1976. And of course, it's been en vogue since 2006. Can we retire this phrase--we know the result (hint: it's cyclic).
How true, how true. Of course, you bring up an interesting side point: Which organization stands to lose the most from a functional rail system with good routes and coverage? Greyhound Bus Lines, hands down.
And that's not an idle issue. For instance, at one point there was consideration of setting up passenger rail service between Boston and Concord NH, with stops at significant cities such as Manchester, NH and Nashua, NH, both of which have a lot of people who are commuting to Boston daily and clogging up the interstates during rush hour. The costs involved in creating such a route would have been relatively low, because there's already track laid for freight rail, and the cities which were likely stops conveniently had their public transit centers about 100 feet from the tracks.
It was shot down, primarily because of opposition by the bus line that is making good money running buses along that exact route. It doesn't matter that rail would have made things faster and more convenient for everybody.
I am officially gone from
High speed rail is not to replace cars. It is to replace regional airlines.
I didn't have a car, but the only time I rode the train was when I was going from the town I lived in (Lueneburg) to Hamburg. If I was going anywhere more than about 3 hours hours away, I flew. The reason being was a flight from Hamburg to Muenchen was something like 120euro round trip with a single carry on and took about 3 hours to get to the airport, on the plane, and arrival at destination. I was often traveling on weekends and time was something I had limited amounts of while studying or working in the country. If I were taking a regional train, the fare was 140 Euro and the trip took like 13 hours one way. If you wanted to take a ICE (Fast) train, the ticket was like 400 Euro with 6 hour travel time. And that was back when they had a Junge fare.
"The problem with socialism is eventually you run out of other people's money" - Thatcher.
We have to stop sabotaging mass transit in the US.
Mass transit is made hard-to-use. Consider, for example, arriving in Chicago via train at Union Station. Chicago's got a good subway system, but to get on it, you've got to leave the station and walk several blocks outdoors. Metra? Somewhat better, if you're lucky enough to be leaving on a train from Union or maybe Ogilvie, but LaSalle and Van Buren are quite the hike. God forbid you want to take rail into Chicago so you can get to O'Hare for an international flight. If you come into Union, you're faced with hauling your luggage down a dingy concrete stairway to a subway station for a long el trip to the airport.
Mass transit is made second-class. Amtrak has for years struggled to be on-time, even though they're supposed to have priority over freight, they're using the rails of the freight railroads, and it's quite common to be waiting for some freight train to do its business before you can continue on your way. The tracks are poor and the trains wobble. People who suffer from motion sickness sometimes get sick from them, especially on the upper deck of a Superliner. Train speeds are low, meaning that a long haul trip is probably overnite, and if you want to be able to sleep in peace, that means paying for a roomette on the train, at substantial extra cost.
If we had high speed rail that was interconnected intelligently with subways, regional rail, buses, airports, etc., it'd be a great incentive to leave the car at home. I for one have driven enough miles that I'm happy to let someone else do the driving, but it also has to be convenient. For me, driving to O'Hare for an international flight and paying to park the car for several days is still more compelling than taking Amtrak, walking to the subway station, wrestling our luggage down the stairs and through the turnstiles, then taking the hour long trip to O'Hare.
I don't expect the current high speed rail proposals to address this sufficiently, so it isn't clear to me just how many people would start to take the train.
I'd totally trade my car for a train. I'm not sure where I'd park it, though.
It doesn't matter what the damage is, just measure the emissions. We can assume damage is proportional to emissions.
Then please allow me to rephrase phantomfive's comment: You can't tax emissions accurately if you can't quantify the proportionality constant of this damage.
We also know that riding a train is better than driving a car
Does this include the initial cost of building railroads, the cost of getting passengers to and from a train station, and the passengers' time cost of waiting for the next train?
Steal more from the citizens and give it to the unproductive poor, and other countries!
Shit, wish I'D thought of that.
We used to have a nationwide railway system - why not again?
Americans attempting to keep control of oil by military means is a short-term measure; they can't stop other people from buying and using it. The gas prices aren't going to stay cheap forever. You can't shoot economics or the eventual exhaustion of a finite resource. Also, there are many other compelling economic reasons to develop a new railway system that have nothing to do with whether or not people can keep their cars. Even just building out a railway system on a local level in major metropolitans like Los Angeles would be a big boon to reducing gridlock and pollution.
In exactly what parts of the country could people not ride the train even if they wanted to? Those parts without trains?
"Give a man fire, and he'll be warm for a day; set a man on fire, and he'll be warm for the rest of his life
alot of in city interstates don't have the room for rail and ruining fiber is one thing but all the links and switch boxes is a other.
They tried that in Ontario, Canada, in the 1990's. Mike Harris pushed through legislation to cut welfare benefits to those who were not participating in workfare projects.
One million unemployed formed a mob outside the parliament (legislative) buildings, arguing that having to work for a living was slavery.
Surprisingly, 97% of those who's benefits would be cut "magically" found jobs suddenly.
Socialism creates some real weird la-la land illusions in some people's heads.
In Liberty, Rene
In at least one city of roughly 200,000 people in the midwestern United States, there are routinely stretches of 36 to 60 hours when public transit does not operate. The buses don't run at night, on Saturday evenings, on Sundays, or on seven holidays.
I've never ridden a train, at least in my adult life. The last time I rode a train as a child, there was no security if that gives you any perspective. I'd be curious as to how such things are handled now, and if what you describe is the norm. I wouldn't think a train would be a very attractive target, as they tend to be far away from populated areas for a large part of their trip. It would be somewhat ridiculous if the manage to 'ruin' the train experience just as they have (although necessarily so) for air travel.
...is that it'll steal customers from the airlines, which are already hurting. What will we do then, bail them out?
We're spending too much and we need to stop.
- real hackers don't have sigs -
Transportation is a really big thing. Think of it as analogous to the conveyor belts in a factory, Actually part of production. Let us amuse ourselves by noting that freight is not apparently not part of the proposal. But of course that is so nutty that I must be mistaken.
China and Russia on the other hand want to do high speed freight from home to Europe right now and to the US if we suddenly decided to have a future and even to Africa. The agreements have already been signed and I imagine the money is starting to flow.
Now let us take a broad view. Realize that the Reading Railroad and Lincoln's trans-continential railroad came real close to transforming the geopolitics of the whole world. Simply put, a railroad culture may be "better" than a maritime culture. This is an aspect of why the Brits were able to rape China,. And may be in the front of some Chinese minds as they become the world leader in doing cold-weather rail. Oh, the last time Asia was doing railroads like now? After the Philadelphia exposition had been absorbed, and the effort was modeled on Lincoln's.
Of course, we have no money. But Geithner figures we have a consensus to spend 3 trillion on another bank bailout, on the top of the 2.3 trillion already spent. I guess it is to be officially for foreclosure prevention.
You're thinking about it the wrong way. People will pay you to tell them how to twist that wire nut from your home.
It doesn't hurt to be nice.
Aaand if you live in a rural area that won't see a train (or likely any other regular means of public transportation) for the next 200 years then yeah, taxing something MORE that you have no choice but to use seems like a great plan.
If trains are more valuable and easier to use than driving then people will use them. But that can only come with an equal coverage of street transportation through trams and bus systems. Otherwise people will be screwed once they use a long distance train to get to their destination.
> If it was really cost effective some private company would have already built it.
No. At least, not unless it were possible to build today with the kind of free land grants that enabled the original railroad corridors to be constructed 150 years ago.
The fact is, without the authority to condemn land via eminent domain, it would be point blank impossible to build a rail line (or freeway, or even a sidewalk for that matter) of any useful length anywhere in America besides maybe the desert or Alaska -- REGARDLESS of how profitable it might otherwise be once constructed. The moment landowners along the way realized you were building something that needed a continuous path, every last one of them would instantly demand rent-seeking amounts of money for THEIR property. Even if Oprah Winfrey, Warren Buffet, Bill Gates, and Madonna pitched in everything they had to buy the necessary ROW to build a rail line heading north from downtown Miami, they'd collectively be bankrupt before they got to the county line 15 miles north.
Rail lines have an additional disadvantage when it comes to negotiating ROW purchases with individual landowners. Unlike a normal road, which increases the value of land it passes by, a rail line only hurts the property values of adjacent land unless there happens to literally be a station nearby. When stations are 25 miles apart, good luck convincing a landowner 15 miles away that just about anything you care to offer is worth considering, especially if the rail line's construction will effectively cut off access to property on the other side.
Germany is 1/2 the size of Texas: 357,022 sq. km. vs. 678,054 sq. km., into which they've jammed a little over a quarter of the population of the U.S. 82,282,988 vs. 310,232,863.
What are you smoking that makes you believe the same transportation economics will apply in the U.S. as in Europe?
-- Terry
The Roads Must Roll
The Heinlein story was not only cool and groundbreaking, he had segway-style carts carrying the maintenance workers inside the people-mover "roads". The beltways had slow-to-fast lane changes from 10MPH to over 100MPH incrementally stepping on faster beltways. Heinlein knew his shit and wasn't afraid to express it.
How did you get modded funny? I found your statement to be quite insightful. I vote to replace the term "lefty" with "softhead"!
What about moving taxes instead of raising them? Right-wing economists like Milton were often in favour of flat taxes, and if resource use is inflexible as you claim, a resource tax is really just that.
Once they're paying as much as people in any other first-world country, "beloved" will give way to "practical". And it brings in some nice cash too.
Never traveled British Rail, have we?
All the posts talking about rail (hsr/intercity/commuter/LRT/RRT) vs other modes of transportation have got it wrong. It's not about supplanting one of the current modes with trains (although that may happen), it's about providing regional (and local) transportation options where it makes sense to. A HSR system linking a village in Wyoming with another village in Wyoming probably doesn't make much sense. A HSR system linking major metro areas in regional spots like CA, the midwest, the Pacific NW, New England, etc makes perfect sense given that those are spots with the density to support rail and who's highway and air infrastructure are overburdened.
Is it economically feasible? It's gonna be expensive, no doubt. However expanding our current roadway/air infrastructure will also be expensive. The other issue is that the longer we wait, the more expensive it will become. If you feel that our current transportation system is adequate for our current and future needs, then fine; if you don't than you have to accept that "pricey" rail is also going to be part of the mix.
If you are someone who loves your car, you should be backing rail wholeheartedly for one reason: every rail passenger means one less driver on the road, which will make driving easier for you. It only takes a couple percent reduction in traffic to go from level-of-service F (stop-and-go traffic) to LOS D (traffic slow but moving)
(ftr I'm someone who does consulting for the rail industry and I'm also a member of a rail advocacy group)
In the words of the Republican party: NO.
Your argument amounts to, "at some time in the future, things will get bad. Why not just make it bad now and get it over with?" Do you see why this thinking is not popular?
I do agree that building a rail system on a local level in major metropolitans like Los Angeles would be a good idea, but even there it faces obstacles, mainly that people don't want to ride it. I read a survey recently from LA that showed most people favored public transportation, but for other people. It was something like 85% liked the idea of other people getting off their roads (sorry, I tried, but can't find it now). The truth is, public transportation is slow and inconvenient. Going to Costco is hard without a car to haul stuff back home. People would rather have cars. And this isn't even addressing the difficulty of making a good system that covers a sprawled out area of suburbs like you find in LA.
And finally, it is true that you can build a train anywhere you want, but for it to be anywhere close to economical, you need a relatively high population density. The US is really spread out in that sense.
Qxe4
"If it was really cost effective some private company would have already built it."
Maybe in the XIX century... Hell, they did it!!!
With current corporate culture you won't get a gigantic project returning costs in 15-25 years starting from private hands.
Why not high speed cars? Or high speed motorcycles? The fastest way, point to point, by land is motorcycle.
Now my understanding is the exact inverse. http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn16819-city-dwellers-harm-climate-less.html
Though I am open to a rational rebuttal.
Storm
There is absolutely NO DOUBT that a high speed rail system could be economically feasible. It's a matter of making it competitive with airlines, on price, and on convenience, and on speed. If that is done. You will replace the airlines almost over night.
I for one would much rather NOT stand in the homeland security line, and if the train doesn't have a 2 hour take off your shoes wait, well, I'll risk riding with the terrorists.
I hold very few opinions. I hold information based on observation and fact. If you wish to disagree, please use facts.
"Rail is the most efficient form of long-distance travel other than water, assuming that there is no value accorded to speed of transport."
Door to door over 200~400 miles times for high speed train are quite comparable to that of plane.
Coast to coast serviceability is quite comparable too (you can travel by night).
Greetings and Salutations....
I have always enjoyed traveling by train, and, would be on it like a duck on a June Bug if it were available. However, there are three things that will have to happen before it will become successful.
1) Whoever takes on this project (and I suspect it will have to be the Federal Government), will have to lay out a growth plan that will continue to add lines to areas in the USA where access does not exist. One of the massive fails of Amtrak was that the company built a few lines...then stopped, apparently expecting that this would be enough. For a model, look at the light rail systems in larger cities, such as Washington D.C., New York, or Atlanta. In all three cases the lines are laid out to minimize the distance that a passenger has to travel to get to a station.
2) Arrange for auto transport cars to be part of the long-distance lines. This would allow the passenger to drive up to the station, get their vehicle loaded, and, enjoy a pleasant and comfortable ride across country. Upon arriving, they would have their own transport immediately available, which would go a long way towards making the trip more enjoyable.
3) Ensure that the cost of a train ticket is no more than that of an airplane ticket. A few years ago, I was going to travel to Washington D.C. for an event. The cost of a round-trip train ticket was close to $400.00, and, in order to GET to Amtrak I would have had to drive to Atlanta. The airplane ticket (also round trip) was $175, and, I could fly out of Knoxville. Prices may be more at a parity now, but, there is still that long drive to get to a station.
I would love to see train travel come back, as it is a great way to see the countryside, especially if one is not in a huge hurry.
Regards
Dave Mundt
YAB - http://blog.beemandave.com/
Obviously its not as crime riddled as LA, but up in Vancouver,BC we have cameras in trains. If there's a crime, they're on camera doing it. Say what you will about privacy, but the only times I've remotely felt insecure was around drunks that were too blitzed to know what they were doing. Speaking of which, another benefit to public transit is less drunk drivers assuming they run late (which Vancouver thankfully does).
Bye!
Wish I had mod points right now. Your post is Interesting, Informative, Insightful, and Well-written. Given the declining quality of English written on /. these days, that last one merits extra karma by itself.
I'd rather you rationally disagree than irrationally agree.
That would make sense, except that government size and the current scale of spending is the result of folks on the right, largely. It's always boggled my mind to hear people call for smaller government and then vote in favor of things like the patriot act and new government departments like the DHS and TSA. The left may be accused of tax and spend, but the right is definitely about spending *and* tax cuts. Pretty amazing stuff.
Here's a scale model, prototype, whatever you want to call it:
http://townhall.com/blog/g/a729a846-1368-41a5-addf-3b95513d2693
"Paying a million people a year say, $50000 (to cover their wage plus the usual overhead) is $50 BILLION"
And that's, what? about 10% of the defense budget? There you have your money.
As a European living in China, two places with extensive train networks, I tell you: it will not work. Trains are not as convenient or cheap as you may think. I don't know of any country that has a fully profitable train system - they are all subsidized because nobody is willing to pay the real price of a train ticket. Mind you, that's in European countries where gas is already much more expensive than US. Simply cranking up the gas price a little to force a few folks into the train won't cut it. The real deal with train is this: they are supposedly "greener". This means that if you are against them you are, supposedly, against a better world. On the back of this guilt-trip, the people will be asked to pay for the new trains, some people will be asked to relocate, others will be asked to suffer the noise of a train. All with really just one goal in mind: providing new infrastructure (at your expense) for the GOODS transportation industry. They're the only guys who are going to profit.
Do you know where "Pullman" comes from?
It comes from the Pullman Company of Chicago, IL, USA. They invented the idea of a sleeper car, and they were very popular in the US.
Back when we had passenger trains.
Then people gave up passenger trains for flying, and all the railroad companies that depended on passenger traffic either went full-freight, or went out of business.
The Pullman company made some cars for Amtrack in 1982, sold all of its intellectual property to Bombardier in 1987. Now it's gone.
You see, we tried cross-country passenger trains in the US.
They failed.
The problem is that the people here aren't old enough to remember it.
I have to say, there would be another war over gasoline if prices were to double for no reason ... AGAIN.
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
Here's my main issue with the density argument: ever been to Japan? We've ridden all over the country on the rails. Much of it is incredibly rugged terrain. In a lot of the country, your train dives into a tunnel, then a couple minutes later emerges on the other side of the mountain and immediately onto a bridge over a ravine, then straight into another tunnel, and so forth. The cost per mile must be obscene -- at least an order of magnitude higher than the cost per mile across the Great Plains. Yet they've not only merely "managed", but they've built a wonderful system.
Here's another issue: air travel suffers equally to density problems. For example, last winter, we wanted to visit my grandfather's cousin in Cimarron, NM. We had to fly in to Amarillo and then drive 4 1/2 hours to Cimarron. We could have gotten the drive down to about 3 hours by flying in through Colorado Springs or Santa Fe. Either way, air serves these remote places poorly as well, even with our current air-focused infrastructure and rail neglect, so it's hardly an argument against rail.
If you can't connect the dots at this point, it's because the dots are too f***ing close together.
Tough shit. Living in a dense, urban area has certain economy-of-scale advantages over rural areas
Does that advantage extend to stealing money from rural areas so you can feel smug about your high-speed rail that no-one actually uses?
It's rather funny how the OP cries to cut of subsidies while backing something that only 10% of the people who will use actually pay for.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
However, extending high speed rail across the US makes no economic sense now, and would place the government into direct competition with private commercial transport.
There is no such thing as private commercial transport. The highways are all built and maintained by the goverment. The airline industry gets "bailed out" with public monies every other day. Airport authorities are not private corporations, either. Saying transport mode X can't "compete" with transport mode Y is just another way of saying that X is less heavily subsidized.
Hey ! High speed and cross country catch my eye.
Well screw flying! Whatever they want for a ticket for this can't be as much as you pay for a gaping by the Airlines with the wait and the hassle and Security and lack of alcohol.
I bet they show Silver Streak w/ Richard Pryor for the movie and I'll watch it with a beer..
*Repent!Quit Your Job!Slack Off!The World Ends Tomorrow and You May Die!
Is there a chance the track could bend?
So you want more people to use mass transit, but to hell with those people who aren't using any of your particular stops? Trains are cool with you as long as it is your personal train, only starts and stops where you want it? Your particular definition of what is big enough and important enough? The rails already go to these places, they are cities, why can't the residents there have as much of a right to board or disembark as you? It is NOT the same as driving to a large airport, of which there are far fewer You are special because you live or embark from one of the larger and more "elite" areas?
Then you can be riding your elite "only the big end point" trains for you "special" people and start posting with your laptop, a nice rant about all those unimportant subhuman energy hogs who live "out there" in the useless wastelands and "drive personal cars everywhere, probably SUVs, why don't they take the train"!!
So the real solution is for the local governments to do a horrible job "planning" cities in the U.S. so that we end up with horribly overcrowded roadways and little or no parking thereby creating demand for "public" transportation. Awesome!
This is the standard process for government intervention.
1) Identify something that is working well.
2) Regulate it and tax it to the point of failure.
3) Mandate a "public" solution that would have never been acceptable to the public before step 2.
4) If step 3 fails, go to step 2.
U.S. health care is beginning step three as we speak.
How do you suppose that the Tea Parties have gained so much ground at the expense of the Republicans here in the United States? There are a lot of people out there who are tired of both high spending AND high taxes. The Republicans have tried to absorb the Tea Parties, but they have largely failed to do so. Bush the younger completely destroyed, through very high spending (mostly on the wars), the fiscal credibility that took decades to build beginning with Reagan and later with the '94 contract with America. It is true that the conservatives lost their way and the Tea Party has fed off this discontentment.
As I understand it, the T-Rex project in Denver cost $1.67 billion. And the denver light rail is practically useless, it covers very little of Denver.
And now they are going to cover the entire nation for $8 billion? That doesn't seem to add up.
What you state as the problem, "[...] that the US is one giant suburb sprawl," could be curbed by raising transportation prices, either by raising taxes or cutting subsidies.
I happen to believe that sprawl is symptom not a problem. Cheap fuel seems more like the problem. Luckily, and unfortunately, we're beginning to run out of the cheap fuel.
The US has a great rail system and we need to make sure that we do not ruin it by doing what Europeans have done.
"Europe's dependence on trucks stems from the failure of its vaunted passenger-rail network to provide a cheap, efficient alternative for cargo. Between 1995 and 2005, the percentage of European goods shipped by truck rose to 73% from 68%, while rail's share fell to 17% from 20%. The rest goes by canal or, in the case of oil and gas, pipelines. In the U.S. in 2005, 42% of freight was moved by train and 33% by truck."
"EU Looks to Cargo Trains To Ease Load on Trucking" by John W. Miller, in The Wall Street Journal on June 5, 2007 at p. A6
The US has optimized its rail system for freight, not passengers, and that is a good thing. Distances between population centers in the US are larger than in Europe, Americans will tend to prefer air travel for long distance intercity travel.
In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.
The Economist has a great article subtitled "America's system of rail freight is the world's best. High-speed passenger trains could ruin it".
Europe has an awesome high-speed passenger rail network, but a messed-up freight rail network. The US is the opposite, we have one of the world's most efficient freight rail networks, but not a great passenger network.
Passenger rail doesn't tend to pay for itself. Freight rail does.
Freight rail is a much more energy efficient way to haul bulk freight long-distance compared with trucks.
Trying to mix low-speed freight and high-speed passenger trains on the same track results in one or the other losing a lot of efficiency.
On the other hand, a great deal of US freight trains carry huge amounts of coal...should coal ever carry a carbon tax, that might drop off.
I could see it working in larger areas, or between larger cities. Example, in North Carolina, If I could go from Winston-Salem, NC to Raleigh, NC, however we're talking 120 miles highway, and possibly 160 via rails, although I don't see myself driving 30-60 miles to get to a train station, to hop on a train that only runs 2 times a day, to get to a city where I would have to rent a car or get a ride from a friend because... in some cities in NC... public transportation only stops most places 2 times a day.... so I think I'll just drive the 80-100 miles to get where I need to go and do what I need to do. K THX GIVE ME MY TAX MONEY BACK BAI
Once they're paying as much as people in any other first-world country, "beloved" will give way to "practical". And it brings in some nice cash too.
That would work great... until the next election! I don't think you realize just how much Americans love their cars.
If I can be modded down for being a troll, can I be modded up for being an orc, or a balrog?
If my choice was to either starve, do back breaking labor for a fraction of the cost that's outside of my field or take a menial job but it's not physical labor, I'm taking the menial out-of-my-field job. The reason why I'd opt not to do the lousy job and take the unemployment *insurance* payout is that the lousy job keeps me from spending a majority of time finding a much better job.
(Hint you lolbertarians: unemployment is an *insurance* program designed to be there when you're out on your ass and your options are limited.)
Non impediti ratione cogitationus.
In fact, Muslims DO blow stuff up all the time. They fly planes into buildings, you might have heard about one, oh nine years ago. Happened back East somewhere.
Fact: Globalization (and that we don't forbid Muslims from living in or entering the US) means that Muslims blowing stuff up inside the US will happen. Again. And Again. And Again. And Again. What, your cheap Chinese made motherboard has a price? And its Muslims blowing stuff up in a system where the politics of East Dirka-Dirka-stan comes right to your doorstep?
Yep.
The ONLY solution to Muslims blowing stuff up (which happens in Moscow, and London, and Mumbai/Bombay, and Beijing, and Xian, and Paris) is to kick all Muslims out of a country and don't let them in. Japan doesn't have a Muslim terrorist problem (because unlike China) they don't have Muslims living there, or visiting.
Which is the fatal, ending flaw in a global system connecting everyone to everyone else -- it connects Muslims (who blow stuff up in Beijing, including plenty of buses) to everyone else. Without a global "ruler" to brutally enforce "rules" to keep the peace. So the very idea of "Muslim terror is not a problem" is a joke. Of course it is. Muslims WILL keep on blowing stuff up -- because that's what they do. Its the whole point of being a Muslim in the first place: to blow stuff up.
Eventually every nation and society will be like Japan. No foreigners (particularly Muslims) and those that are there, kicked out. That's the problem with fantasy PC/Multiculturalism stuff -- it just does not work. Human beings are just not built that way.
Speaking of the military, just a small fraction of that $500B-$600B (more?) annual offense budget, currently being in great part wasted on failing attempts at nation-building, would buy us this rail service and a whole lotta other stuff besides, without adding to the deficit.
If you think "a small fraction" of, lets say, $600B will build a nation wide rail system, then I want some of what you're smoking. Here in Wisconsin, a State that's been granted $800+million (that's close to a billion) to help build one single train line between Milwaukee and Madison. Just one. And it's not even covering the entire costs.
Suffice it to say, such a line would also be a) unpopular and b) more expensive to maintain than it's worth.
Now, all we need is to build 10's more to actually connect the whole state. In other words, Wisconsin alone would need a "large fraction" of that $600B just for this state. Now lets multiply that by the nation and bye-bye military. Sure, some people probably would like to see that go, but not me.
And this comes from a guy who fucking LOVES commuter trains! Damn, I dream of my time in London, UK and taking trains everywhere or my frequent visits to France (my wife's country) and the flexibility of trains there... oh, except we pretty much drive the entire time we're there because it's a) cheaper and b) more convenient.
But I still dream of being able to live an hour away (by car) and commute to work in the US by train. In fact, I dream about it every day because I've got nothing better to do on my driving commute to work that wastes so much time, when I'd rather be doing a cross word, napping, doing some work or playing a game.
Yeah, I honestly want a train system as much as the next, I'm just not a bloody fool who thinks it's actually --->Reasonable
Yeah, a train system in the US is a pipe dream. The shift that would be needed to make it work is beyond most peoples comprehension, but I do see quite a lot who's actually through it through and isn't just being all emotional about it.
we wouldn't have to subsidize it. Private industry would build it, because it would be profitable to do so.
Of course, we live under a government that thinks that Atlas Shrugged was a book about railway management policy, so certainly money will get thrown at this. Gotta buy the votes somehow.
-- Two men say they're Jesus. One of them must be wrong. - Dire Straits
Of course, cursing those 'dirty' Americans and their addiction to the car is easy.
Actually looking at the issue an understanding that 'building more trains' will NOT solve the problem is a little more complicated.
The fact is that in most US cities the former 'Union Station' is not only gone, the concept is buried under GENERATIONS of city planning (or mis-planning, if you prefer). One can't simply plop a rail grid into most US city plans and have any actual value. Sure, people can ride the train from Station A to Downtown (or whatever) but lacking any serious public transit from that point, or anything within walking distance, or amenities that one takes almost for granted are nearby any significant train station in Europe - your riders will be essentially debarking in the midst of....nothing.
This will make rail use unattractive and fail.
FIRST the cities have to undergo a serious and sustained effort to make them public-transit friendly (which can be concurrent with car-friendly, at least to a point).
THEN when the infrastructure is ready, trains will be useful and successful.
Of course this implies a voting base willing to forego their particular issue du jour and vote for a long-sighted body of legislators. Looking at the current (or previous) administration and congress - I say, fat chance.
-Styopa
and if resource use is inflexible as you claim, a resource tax is really just that.
I made no such claim. However, it is well known that taxes, however small, always distort the marketplace and produce some dead weight loss. The principle is well known from basic economics. Now, some minimal amount of revenue is required to fund the necessary functions of government and the government mostly derives its revenues from taxes so taxes are not entirely dispensable. However, it would be desirable for taxes to be limited to the amount minimally required to fund those necessary functions. You can argue about what level of functionality is necessary, but most people would agree that it should be substantially less than what the government currently wastes each year. It is also possible to discuss the relative efficiencies of various taxes in generating that revenue, but that is separate discussion from the issue of minimally necessary government revenue.
But you can change flight plans drastically, even in mid flight if you really must. Rerouting train tracks is a whole different beast. Flying scales, up and down, much better than rail. Airports don't cost "per mile".
Rail is viable for freight only, passenger rail runs at a loss everwhere in the US... even in New York... We just don't have the population density to make it cost effective. The proposed Milwaukee to Madison line in Wisconsin is expected to cost $60 per round trip ticket... At $300 a week, $1200 a month for daily week-day trips, I can lease a pricey sports car for that price. And even at that, it runs at a loss to the tune of 2 billion dollars a year, and the local communities have to fork out even more to maintain the local rail stations. Add that to the fact that with the stops, it turns into barely car-speed rail. I tell you what - use that money to upgrade the horrible roads I drive on to work every day instead.
Milton Friedman once said, "I admire the softness of their hearts, but unfortunately it very often extends to their heads as well."
Milton Friedman is also largely responsible for the economic practices that lead us into this current financial crisis. You can quote the man all you want, but the words don't really mean anything unless you understand the context behind them.
The left may be accused of tax and spend, but the right is definitely about spending *and* tax cuts.
True enough, but two wrongs don't make a right. You will notice how the Republicans, for example, have not been very successful at assimilating the Tea Party. There are substantial numbers of citizens disgusted by both high taxes AND high spending. The libertarians here amongst us have consistently argued for less of both but for different reasons, both the right and the left don't much care for us.
With automotive gasoline being responsible for more than 40% of our oil use (the single largest usage), creating a national transportation system that is energy efficient, timely, and practical to use needs to be at the top of the list.
High Speed Rail is one of the better solutions, but a national system would be an immense project, bigger than the Interstate Highway System -- and it would more than likely require nationalizing the regional railway oligarchies.
Economically feasible? No. Necessary? Absolutely.
(It's never too late to join the Renaissance)
Sadly, far too many are like you and fail to see the benefits that are sometimes staring them in the face through any level of abstraction.
Japan has poured cement and run rails all over the place, for the past twenty years, and is still mired in deflationary recession, ever since 1990. The Kansai Airport, the world's longest suspension bridge, and a host of massive infrastructure projects have made NO IMPROVEMENT AT ALL IN THE ECONOMY. The same was true in 1930's America, with the CCC and Hoover Dam and the electrification of the Tennessee River Valley.
What works ... is MILITARY SPENDING. The kind Reagan used in the early 1980's. Because even in the 1930's, mechanization meant that construction of Hoover Dam took only say, 50,000 people direct and indirect. Now, a project on that scale would create maybe 20,000 jobs, maybe less. Constructing an Aircraft Carrier group, on the other hand, can employ half a million people or more, direct and indirect. Cancellation of the F-22 Raptor program by Obama cost 135,000 jobs, direct! Even more when you factor in the ancillary jobs feeding that production line. Because military production is massively labor intensive, in a way that infrastructure building is NOT.
Moreover, military production gives you far greater benefits than Joe Public getting to work in ten less minutes because you built a bridge instead of a ferry. You now have military force to THREATEN ugly nations and peoples who threaten the peace, like Kim Jong Il, or Ahmadinejad, or Pakistan, or any number of folks (Putin ain't that cuddly either). None of these guys respond to a session of Kumbayah at the UN where everyone holds hands, but back off when five new carrier groups and the planes to operate on them roll out. Because they understand the power. Yes its possible to overdo it, you can kill yourself running too much. But who picks fights with Randy Couture at the Supermarket checkout line? You don't even have to know who he is to see its better not to mess with the guy.
The best way to prevent a fight is to deter an idiot from starting one. That means being strong and being seen as strong. What ended the Depression was WWII. Unemployment in New Orleans in most of 1940-41 was 75% ... by the time the war had ended, Higgins Boat Manufacturing Company had built three factories, running 24/7 in 3 shifts, hiring everyone, Black and White, and unemployment was around 2% or so. If the US had not had all those lefty peaceniks aligned with Hitler (after the 1938 Molotov Ribbentrop pact, Woody Guthrie made albums "urging us to keep out of Roosevelt's War for Jews" and for his efforts got an award from the Daughters of the American Revolution) and built say, 25 Carrier battle groups, even Hitler would have read a map and figured Rommel could not sink the US Navy. Hence no WWII.
The San Francisco bay area, Chicago, and many other cities are the right structure for trains that really cut down on road congestion.
Personally, I feel like the problem is needing that seed... a perfect A-to-B transportation line that allows you to branch out organically. People move in California to be near the BART lines, which allows the BART to grow, which allows people to move to be near the lines, etc. BART cannot cover anywhere near everyone. But the people whose endpoints can be serviced by BART tend to move close to the lines, which allows them to extend, which allows them to reach more endpoints, etc. The LA train tried to service a route... that terrible pass between the valley and the city. But they didn't have enough of specific endpoints for there to be people drawn towards the rail. And without being extensive enough to get people within a mile of their destination, they can't grow organically.
Personally, a high-speed rail (that could compete with the busses) between Boston and New York would be brilliant. As would Boston to Chicago. But of course, there is the rub: being squashed between the cheapness of busses and the speed of airplanes. The Acela between Boston and New York costs ten times a comparable chinatown-to-chinatown bus, but takes just as long. It's just as expensive as flying, yet takes hours more. And, of course, it is currently the only "High-Speed" railway in the US... an embarrassing joke when "high speed" here means 70 miles per hour.
But yes, rail as a solution in the west can work. It's really just a question of identifying if your city has the right intersection of specific destinations, and potential startup ridership (working poor, college students, the elderly, etc). Once you have a genuine seed going, it's much easier to grow it out.
The ______ Agenda
Sure nobody wants to sit in an uncomfortable seat for 22 hours. Make the trains cool. Have sleepers, bar cars, chill cars, game cars, library cars, sports cars, play cars (with babysitters), sex cars, etc.
A 22-hour party? Sounds good to me. Here, you can have my 10-year-old truck.
The other place it makes sense in flyover country, is to connect the long distance air systems that is already in place to a solid rail system in the dense sections of city. That way travelers can take the more efficient air travel for long distance, but then have good public transportation within the city to alleviate the need and hassle of renting a car.
Amtrak, our much-maligned medium-speed rail, has been heavily subsidized for years and it hardly can be considered successful by most accepted meanings of the word successful. Why would anyone thing a high-speed version of it would be any more successful?
I live in China where they are building a huge high-speed rail network. (http://wikitravel.org/en/High-speed_rail_in_China) Large parts of it are already in service. On key routes, they are already replacing the first generation fast trains, limited to 250 kph (~ 150 mph), with second generation ones capable of 350 kph (~ 220 mph). Using these is a pleasure. Fast, comfortable, reasonably priced, and in most cities you can walk off the train and right onto the subway. For most domestic trips, they are priced a bit above a bus but well below flying.
A side benefit is that as more passenger traffic moves to these trains, often on dedicated lines, the old lines have more capacity free for freight. Both the fast trains and the increased freight capacity are helping to open up the inland provinces for development.
The first fast trains used technology from Bombardier, later ones Kawasaki and Ascom. Nearly all the parts are now made in China, though, and China is aggressively seeking export markets, especially in Latin America. One example: http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=aCcJrs3oM6ME&refer=latin_america They are also talking about international high-speed lines, South to Singapore and West to Moscow, each crossing several countries: http://www.2point6billion.com/news/2010/03/08/china-to-build-pan-asia-europe-17-country-rail-network-4328.html
I'm sure they'd happily bid on systems for the US, quite likely at competitive rates.
I hate the idea simply because it would likely ruin our 3rd best in the world freight rail industry. We lose something as essential as that and we're just shooting ourselves in the foot.
The cost of passengers time in waiting for the next train should be taken care of in the price of the ticket.
So you draw a demand curve that incorporates the opportunity cost of time spent waiting. In that case, I doubt that demand for passenger rail travel will be high enough that an unsubsidized passenger rail system can set a price that will allow it to remain in business. Bus systems in many cities already have to take subsidies because ridership is so low, in turn in part because potential riders find waiting 36 hours between the last bus on Saturday and the first bus on Monday unacceptable.
to reduce demand for energy especially produced by fossil fuels
What about the fuel spent by cars that come to a dead stop, idle while the train passes the railroad crossing, and then accelerate?
So you believe that the government has a right (if not a duty) to control what citizens do via oppressively high taxation?
And spare me lines about the 'public good', Chairman Mao. The very idea that the government is capable of judging what is best for individuals is beyond laughable; it's offensive.
I'm all for cutting subsidies to all forms of transportation, energy production, and agriculture, but to Hell with using taxes as a weapon to stamp out things deemed "doubleplus-ungood" by the political elites.
-- "Government is the great fiction through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else."
I love trains. They're fun, and every guy who had a train set still has that affection for them. But they have good and bad points.
The good points is a train station probably already exists, or can be built fairly easily, in the center of town. Not so with airports. You can go inter-city mode quite easily with trains, and with less noise, pollution, hassle, than a plane, for most trips under 400 miles or so, particularly with high speed rail. You can take a train from say, Paris to Brussels, in less time than a plane, and be in a meeting in the center of the city without much fuss.
Trains use less fuel. They are far less vulnerable to being used as a weapon of mass destruction, unlike airliners. Though they are vulnerable. They provide redundancy to air networks, and that is a good thing, its not always terrorism that closes the air networks. Think the Iceland volcano. Or even high activity solar flares (modern airliners cruise at 30,000 feet or so).
But trains have one issue that most people don't like to talk about. Particularly for commuter rail. That is SECURITY. The LA Times did an excellent story on the Blue Line. A commuter rail line going from Long Beach to Downtown LA. Paralleling the 110 Harbor Freeway. It goes through some of LA's worst neighborhoods, and per the story, is filled with folks peeing on the seats, homeless panhandlers, guys hawking pirate DVDs (of movies still in theaters), and guys "getting off" ... while people get on and off. The place is a zoo, and respectable, middle class people avoid it like the plague.
Any area that has lots of poor people (we are talking mostly Mexicans and Blacks here, outside Appalachia) will have White Middle Class folks avoid the public transit like the plague unless there is no other way, because of the hassle of daily life with a mostly criminal class that has little fear of the law and a substantial dislike bordering on hatred of Whites in general.
Cars are a great way for White middle class people to avoid dealing with the homeless, the gang-bangers, the panhandlers, the street hustlers, who make life in the Ghetto and Barrio a misery for everyone that lives there.
For public transit to be effective, it has to be heavily and efficiently policed, including rousting and jailing said gang-bangers, street hustlers, homeless, panhandlers, etc. without fear of consent decrees, or "racial profiling" or the like. Otherwise the White Middle Class, when you get beyond all the PC BS, will simply refuse to ride and will stay with their cars, fighting the idea of "riding the Blue Line" to death.
Multi-racial and multi-ethnic societies like Singapore have safe, clean, efficient trains that are sparkling. A Singaporean I knew in Hong Kong thought that city dirty and disgusting (coming from Beijing it was a clean jewel). Singapore has safe, efficient trains because its policed within an inch of its life, with no concerns for Muslims or Hindus or anyone else crying racial profiling. To a lesser extent, Hong Kong does the same thing. Its subway/train system is amazing, the amount of traffic it handles.
I like the idea of systems redundancy, an alternative to the air network, competition introduced, and the efficiency of trains. But it does require policing. Air traffic already has pretty efficient policing (not the least of which is the cost of the ticket and the metal detectors) that trains would need to replicate in the short-haul mode like Long Beach to LA.
It wouldn't take stolen money to make it happen.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Why is it YOU get your way but he doesn't get his?
Because he hasn't offered to pay me for the damage that his car's smoke does to my lungs and to the climate where I live. Just as smoking in an enclosed area inflicts an externality on others in the area, driving on an enclosed planet inflicts an externality on others on the planet.
There's still no security to speak of on the trains I've seen recently, just get on the train and go. It's an amazing experience compared to air travel.
We hope your rules and wisdom choke you / Now we are one in everlasting peace
people started to piling into cities. cities are the ideal for a social species
"Cities are in no way efficient, pretty much everything about them is inefficient."
uh... what? if you pile everyone together, all communication and transport is minimized between people. yes, you have to move food and water in... why do you believe this is the most important or the most intensive form of communication/ transportation? the obvious truth is that cities are the ideal for efficiency (what's inefficient is the suburbs, but this is a quirk of the last century when oil was cheap, the suburbs will die as energy becomes more expensive)
look: people prefer to live in cities. as of 2005, 81% of americans live in the city or the suburbs
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_the_United_States
does that factoid mean anything to your bizarre anti-city bias?
cities are the ideal environment for mankind, by choice, and by design. we invented them, we overwhelmingly choose to live in them. all other species adapt to their environment, but homo sapiens adapts its environment to itself. and what we have chosen to make, and prefer to be born, to live, and to die in, are cities, as point of historical and contemporary objective fact
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
It would be if we weren't spending 54% of our federal tax dollars fighting two wars and maintaining the second largest military in the world with more than 820 installations in at least 135 countries. After that maybe we could scale back on the 11% of federal spending that government bureaucracy gobbles up. Then we could lighten the tax load, so that more families could afford to have one income winner in the house. Which would drastically reduce social issues that lead to increased spending in the criminal justice system. This would free up even more money to start chipping away at the $ 13 trillion in national debt and the $110 Trillion in unfunded liabilities, which would let us spend money to bolster our education system, public services, research grants (including alternative energy sources) and finally some much needed infrastructure. Infrastructure that would include a nationwide rail system that will never pay for itself, but would be a great service for many Americans and allow me to sleep on my way to the office.
It worries me that you didn't feel even remotely insecure about the government thug watching everything you do
"The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants." ~Thomas Jefferson
Well for feasible you have to take into account the oil industry's feasibility which is a far larger bribe than the US population can ever give.
Jesus christ, I'm sick of trolls who claim that we went to war for oil. If we went to war for lower gas prices, then why the frak did gas prices double after the war started? Yes, some of it was due to price gouging on the parts of oil countries and speculators, but that's already been negated by the recession and gas STILL costs twice what it did before the war.
Yes, I get it, you hate Bush. So do I. I also think the war is pointless and unprovoked. However, you're only hurting your arguments with claims that we went to war over oil.
"The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants." ~Thomas Jefferson
rail makes sense in high density populated areas
therefore, the east coast: yes. the west coast: yes. the middle of the country: no
this is why the usa lags in high speed rail from countries like germany (dense), france (dense), japan (dense), china (dense), etc
on a national basis, rail makes no sense, due to our overall low population density
but in isolated sections, like the california coast and the northeast: its a no-brainer yes
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Would-be social planners love the idea of raising taxes to get the rest of us to behave the way we're supposed to. Taxes for them are not a source of revenue for essential government services, but the financial equivalent of an electric fence for the cattle they see the rest of us as. Get bent, buddy.
No.
Anyone who's flown probably wishes they could ride on a high speed train where you might actually have legroom, and pleasant people servicing the passengers. The problem is that once you're off the train you typically encounter zero public transportation.
I've been to South Korea and lived there for some time and traveled around that country. They have it right, subways/trains get you to the towns you want to go, and the buses and taxi's are plentiful and cheap.
The only way this will ever take off and work will be for all the connected cities on the high speed railway to have extremely good local public transportation systems. Right now, there are maybe three or four cities in the country which can be said to have that. If people can not get on/off the local public transportation network within 2-3 blocks of their destination(s), this will be a failure. If people can not get onto the local public transportation network within 5-10 minutes of arriving at one of the stations/stops, this will be a failure. If people have to make more than 2 changes at local transportation hubs to get to their destination, this will be a failure. If it takes more than 30 minutes ride time to reach their destination, this will be a failure.
Again, all those things are just for the local city public transit required for a nation-wide high-speed rail system to work. Don't get me wrong, I would love to see this added. I have used the European Eurorail system many times, and have loved it. It is a much more relaxed way to travel between cities than by air or car (especially with all the current air issues with long security lines, lost luggage, delays on the tarmak, etc). For traveling within 500-800 miles, a high-speed train system would really be the best choice. I just don't see cities having the needed infrastructure for this to happen.
We were all warned a long time ago that MS products sucked, remember the Magic 8 Ball said, "Outlook not so good"
Ok, so if your household is running low on cash do you raise your kids allowances and add more chores? You cannot say new public projects will improve the economy because they don't actually bring more money in they just cause new money to be needed. I'm all in favor of fixing up our crumbling infrastructure, but I also realize that I currently pay for it's maintenance. Every time you go to the gas pump you pay for roads and bridges to be repaired, the problem is the company (the government) who is supposed to repair those roads has been spending the money in other places. So send them more money, that will fix the problem.
Damn socialist. Screw you and your redistribution of wealth. If you feel you make too much money, by all means go hand out money to "help the greater good" but don't steal my money because of your ideals.
Amtrak is going to get referenced a lot in this thread, but it's a terrible point of reference for judging the merits of rail travel, high speed or otherwise. If you've ever been to Europe, Japan, or anywhere with real quality rail service, you surely know that Amtrak's only contribution is that it serves as an example of how not to build and operate your national rail service.
How is it a half free ride? Have you perhaps forgotten that the riders also pay taxes? Obviously your main point stands that it's partly subsidized but then you auto drivers get a lot less traffic in your way, fewer commuters to deal with, and you get slightly less pollution in your city, all without having to change your own behavior at all; surely that's worth something.
A small fraction, EVERY SINGLE YEAR. Straight from the offense budget. From TFA: "China is reportedly spending $500-billion over 20 years to construct a massive high-speed rail network."
So $25B/yr. Divided by the $685B/yr (Wikipedia) offense budget (2010), and that's 3.6% a year if we were to do the same. A Small Fraction.
Using your numbers, this Small Fraction would buy us 25 train-lines PER YEAR. I'd say that in 20 years we could have us quite a nice network of them.
Also I note from Wiki: "By the end of 2008, the U.S. had spent approximately $900 billion in direct costs on the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars".
We have annual military spending greater than all of the other nations of the world combined, We just wasted a $1T+ on overseas wars, and those costs continue to mount. That would have bought a hell of a rail system, maybe a couple of them. Yet according to you, a proper train system is a "pipe dream". It's not a pipe dream at all if we get our priorities right and spend money to improve our country rather than demolishing overseas ones.
As an aside, this line of reasoning applies to the renewable energy issue as well. "It can't be done, it's not realistic, it's just a hippie pipe dream". Let's see how much of a pipe dream it is if we put the kind of resources into green energy R&D as we do into weapons-related R&D and related ongoing weapon-system costs.
The man who dies rich dies disgraced. -- Andrew Carnegie
and if resource use is inflexible as you claim, a resource tax is really just that.
I made no such claim. However, it is well known that taxes, however small, always distort the marketplace and produce some dead weight loss. The principle is well known from basic economics. Now, some minimal amount of revenue is required to fund the necessary functions of government and the government mostly derives its revenues from taxes so taxes are not entirely dispensable. However, it would be desirable for taxes to be limited to the amount minimally required to fund those necessary functions. You can argue about what level of functionality is necessary, but most people would agree that it should be substantially less than what the government currently wastes each year. It is also possible to discuss the relative efficiencies of various taxes in generating that revenue, but that is separate discussion from the issue of minimally necessary government revenue.
No you didn't claim it, but "there are many" on the right who do :). My proposition is simply that this dead-weight loss is a positive thing if it discourages consumption of limited natural resources, and if you agree that taxes are a necessity, why not discourage wasteful behaviour instead of discouraging business.
But on the Acela, I can travel like a civilized person, not a sardine. I've done all three (bus, plane, Acela), the Acela is pretty darn nice. And I don't need to arrive hours early, and I don't need to sort my luggage before I go. They definitely need to go faster, but you are definitely getting something for the extra money. It might not be worth it to all people.
Yes, but road/gasoline subsidies distort the market for transportation, preventing the market from finding the most cost effective way to move things around. As a result, we all pay more in the end. Removing the subsidies will raise prices at the store a little, but not by as much as it will reduce the amount of money spent on the subsidies.
Any sufficiently unpopular but cohesive argument is indistinguishable from trolling.
Yes I always wondered why those on the right were so soft in the head.
Since increased government spending and higher taxes helps an economy grow, we have to wonder why the right keep insisting on a smaller government and lower taxes. I am not sure why the right wants to keep destroying the economy by lowering taxes and cutting government.
America needs a big government to be successful.
We need a small government like we need to be Somalia.
Let's at least try to teach future generations that, to be successful, we need a bigger. Somewhere in their education system, they received the mistaken idea that a small government and lower taxes was somehow better. We need to find out where they get this mistaken ideology, and fix it.
Let's make sure to teach everyone the lessons learned by Greece, who did the "austerity" thing and are now seeing a collapse of their nation.
Much of the US rail network was built by private industry in the 19th Century, true, but even then with it was done with, and only because of, the considerable federal government subsidies that supported it.
Surprisingly, I didn't claim that we went to war over oil. Read again what I wrote, and next time don't jump to conclusions.
I said that a good portion of America would be willing to go to war over oil. Whether we did or not is another matter entirely.
Qxe4
Your argument amounts to, "at some time in the future, things will get bad. Why not just make it bad now and get it over with?" Do you see why this thinking is not popular?
The argument I have for making it "artificially bad" right now is to preserve the remaining crude oil to ration it out for non-fuel purposes, like plastics, or reserving it for strategic fuel purposes.
Consider the case of Halon. We used to use Halon in all kinds of fire suppression systems, from computer rooms to hospitals. But Halon damages the environment, so the world agreed to stop making it. The replacements don't have all the same characteristics -- either they are more toxic to humans, or leave a damaging residue, or take up more volume to provide the same amount of protection. It turns out that Halon is still the ideal fire retardant for submarines where there's no possible escape for the contained humans, but since it's not made any more, they have to buy existing Halon for their subs. Current reserves will get the Navy through many decades to come, but they wouldn't have a single cc left if we had kept filling commercial tanks with the remaining Halon. The price for real Halon is now so high that the installation of a brand-new alternative system is essentially free just for trading in your existing Halon tanks. (Just imagine trading in your old car with a full tank of gas even-up for a new electric car!)
Fossil oil will be in the same situation as Halon at some point in the future. If we stopped burning the stuff today, we'd have centuries worth of supplies for the non-fuel uses of petroleum. Or maybe crude oil is exactly the right fuel for certain farming or construction or rural Alaskan needs, but the rest of us city dwellers can get by with electric vehicles. By jacking the "road fuel use" price today (by taxing at the pump) we shift transportation's demand to alternative fuels quicker, before we run out of fossil oil completely.
John
The government isn't building the railroad, they are incentivizing railroads to modernize, under the guise that if we can save fuel and make the economy more productive we can stay competitive with the rising second world nations like China and India with more modern infrastructure. China has historically been the largest economy in the world. Only recently has a capital- and consumption-based economy existed. Prior to that it was just lots of people needing lots of shit to live. Until we Americans proved it's impossible to live without at least 3 TVs and one car per person in the household. Not that I'm complaining, but I do think we need to modernize and I think it's a good use of our collective tax contributions to our common good.
Cool! Amazing Toys.
Why is the answer to all questions the politicians propose always solved by them in the form of throwing more money at it? Why not address the issue of sprawl? Why do cities continue to extend services to rural locations and let the existing infrastructure deteriorate? The systems can't support it, but dammed if the money now doesn't trump what the system can handle or be cost effective for. Encouraging people to move out of the city is the last thing cities should be doing. They should do what only a handful of cities have done, say that they are not extending services past a certain point and stick to it.
And when they take even more land for Federal government use, you can be grateful that you can ride a train to a homeless shelter.
Funny you should say that; I suggest you read this blog post by the same author.
Our household isn't only running low on cash. We are unemployed. It is a time to cut back and spend less, yes, but it's also the time to find a job. That might mean spending money to get to job interviews, cleaning old suits, patching old jackets - all of these things cost money right now, when the budget can least support it, but are beneficial in the long run because they will help us find employment.
And employed people pay a whole lot more taxes (and thus do a whole lot more to help the budget) than unemployed people.
'kay. Stop stealing my money by driving on the roads I helped pay for, using the pipes that come to your house, living in a country whose independence I help pay for (and pay way too much for, but that's another deal entirely), using technology I helped research, the education I helped pay for, the health care that raised you - stop using all those resources that society has given you, and maybe then we can talk about not "stealing your money" any more.
However, extending high speed rail across the US makes no economic sense now, and would place the government into direct competition with private commercial transport.
1. Is really there any serious private passenger rail across State lines?
2. Is there any such thing as unsubsidized high speed rail lines?
Those questions are mostly rhetorical since I'm pretty sure the answers are "no" and "no."
Highspeed rail is kinda like nuclear power plants: nobody in private industry wants to do it without gov't money.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
Driving in Europe is only cheaper because the average engine size is around 1.8L and car size is what many Americans would consider "too small".
why don't we get rid of the corrupt-ass zoning laws that make it so that a car is needed? They escalate the price of building massively (in some areas you need more than 40k before you lay a brick on your own property) and they prevent small businesses from starting up. It's very rare for someone to live 5-10 minutes from just about everything you need, and the average person has to commute to work at least 30 minutes (I think that's the figure). The problem is that large oil/car companies own the government, and the most basic of solutions for a economic crisis are ignored so that the wealthy get wealthier.
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2 hr flight, 2 hrs at the airport going through security and waiting, 1/2 hr waiting to take off
compared with
get on the train in the evening, sleep through the trip in a bunk, arrive in the morning
I wouldn't even look to the defense budget. Look at the cost of the stimulus and unemployment extension packages. Take the money out of those for these kinds of projects, validate the SSNs to make sure it's only legal workers getting it, and put people to work. A significant portion of it (more than in the case of unemployment) comes back in taxes to both the state and federal governments.
Much better way of doing things if you have to spend the money.
You can never go home again... but I guess you can shop there.
But you can change flight plans drastically, even in mid flight if you really must..
Huh? How often does *that* happen? That's like saying that we shouldn't drive cars because every so often, someone will catch a disease like Ebola and drive cross-country, infecting people at every gas station along the way. But, of course, that's not the "normal" driving case, so we don't base our opinions about driving around that. Rerouting planes is not "normal" behavior. Planes leave point A and arrive at point B, as per plan, just like trains, virtually all of the time. If you have an urgent emergency on a plane, yes, you need to re-route it to the nearest airport. If the same happens on a train, you pull the train off at the next switch or simply stop it where it is if it's that urgent. Planes are far more constrained.
Airports don't cost "per mile".
Sure they do. Unless your only goal is to hop from coast to coast, you need airports at intervals all across the country.
If you can't connect the dots at this point, it's because the dots are too f***ing close together.
I do, but I think the opponents are wrong and dangerous. While we still have some time and control, we can gradually but irreversibly raise the price of gas, so that businesses (particularly those developing alternatives) can predict and adapt to the new environment. By the time we're actually running out, alternatives of all sorts would've developed, and everybody would've adjusted their behaviors slowly and relatively painlessly. If, however, we wait until the market deals with the problem, the price swings can be quite violent, wars may have to be fought, and alternatives may not have had time to develop.
I wouldn't think that turning America into Europe would be a good thing at all. Much of it is to do simply with grass is greener (no pun intended) on the other side fallacy. Perhaps Europe is a bit greener but that's one of the few advantages. Even on the Human Development Index, so beloved by the liberals, the US is above every large country in Europe except France: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_Human_Development_Index US is about the same as Finland and Austria, ahead of Denmark, slightly behind countries like Sweden and Norway and a lot better than UK, Germany, Italy, Spain (which are a more fair comparison)
And that is with lower taxes and generally less interference by the government to provide all these services that supposedly help the poorer people (in fact harm them but that's another argument). Not to mention that in the US the salaries for equivalent jobs are higher, prices for equivalent good are much lower (I live in USA but am in Europe right now). All this is easy to look up. Americans also live in bigger and cheaper houses, drive bigger and cheaper cars. Educational standards at lower levels (run by the government in the US) are better in Europe, depending on the country, but at university level the US is definitely better than every country in Europe. Again easy to look up any rating system. High speed internet is more available in certain wealthier countries in Europe but its horrible in others.
In short, what is so great about Europe? In my experience Tarantino got it right, same shit but a little bit different (and as it seems quite obvious to me, but for some reason not to others, a little bit worse).
Negative moral value of force outweighs the positive value of good intentions.
Wasn't this already tried in Brockway, Ogdenville, and North Haverbrook? As I recall, it did wonders for them.
Remember: Those who do not study The Simpsons are doomed to repeat it.
The #1 key to a strong economy is the ability to move from point A to point B. We currently use trucks FAR more than we should to move around freight that should be moved by efficient trains instead. Problem is, it's too expensive. Additionally, with budget airlines out there, taking a plane is cheaper than Greyhound most of the time. That's just STUPID.
The biggest shortcoming of trains is their dependence on rails. There's no way around this. After all, trains are... well trains. But, let's be realistic here, a single mega-train with hundreds of cars can move around substantially more than a fleet of airplanes... but they're slow and for shipping, it's more efficient to move things by plane. Trains are far smarter than planes many times because they often eliminate the need for hotel rooms for business travelers. You can take an overnight train to your business destination and take a shower in the morning and be ready for a meeting when you get to where you're going. Additionally, if trains sold their rooms in a similar fashion to hotels, so you could bring your whole family by train on a vacation and just rent a room on the train instead of paying per person, then using a 200Mph train, you could transport a family from NY to CA in 18 hours and because the trains don't have a million security checks before boarding, it would actually take only a little longer than using an airplane (it definitely works this way on shorter trips, tried in Germany). Additionally, the "lost money" from the ticket sales can be made up for on food, drink, etc... use RyanJet as a model for trains. Pretty sure they're going to start charging for using the bathroom pretty soon.
Problem is, you can't possibly put a train system like this together in the U.S. using normal government contractors for $8 billion since they'll just piss away all the money on the big-wigs. This is a great opportunity to invest in small business. Have one firm design the rail, it's not that complex (compared to things like making a space shuttle or airplane), then find small subcontractors that are used to performing services for fixed rates and eating the losses if they fall short. Give them enough seed money to expand and buy construction vehicles and get them each to build a portion of the track. The result would be creating lots of new businesses and business opportunities. Making companies across the country that are ready to rebuild the parts of America that are falling to pieces (Detroit anyone?) and the return on that investment alone will pick up a huge amount of the business.
If the larger government contractors start failing and having to sell off chunks of their business, these new businesses which are established upon the basis of getting jobs done for what they quoted in the first place will step in and pick up after them. The large government contractors are big, fat and sloppy and spill more money than they use productively into fat men's pockets. If they can't perform competitively in a modern market where the little guy can, then let them fall and the little guy will take over instead.
As for the trains, well don't reinvent it. Germans, Chinese, Japanese etc... all have them already. Just buy what you need from them or buy the designs. They've done all the work already. Just build the rails to meet the needs of their trains.
Unlike the current rail business which is a disaster from end to end, it's time the U.S. simply owned its rail system. After all, the U.S. owns the interstate highway system, how is this any different? If the rail companies can't make it work, then maybe they just need to fade away.
The end result is, the U.S. has a new rail infrastructure. Train owners can rent tracks from the government and therefore new companies can become involved without being stonewalled by greedy railway owners. A bunch of new little big construction companies are established and willing to do big work for reasonable rates without the bureaucracy, people have an alternative to flying and hotels, and the cargo busi
And how could increasing taxes on gas to subsidize trains possibly help the poor? What are the benefits: few lucky enough to live near a train station would have cheaper subsidizer transportation only in cases when they happen to be traveling to another place near the train station (or suitable public transport). What are the costs: The "common man" would still need a car for all the rest of the transportation needs, but he would have to pay more to run it. He will also have to pay more for every other product that is transported, which is basically everything, hence making him poorer. How is it that just about every scheme dreamed up by the big government supporters ends up harming the poor?
Negative moral value of force outweighs the positive value of good intentions.
So, there are some experts who believe that high speed rail is too expensive to build or operate. Others think that it can be feasible economically. Did I miss something? Did the article say anything really new? Why is it Slashdot-worthy?
Well I apologize then. As I said, I'm so sick of seeing people spew that crap that I assumed you meant it as you believe we went to war for oil (since most people initially supported the war).
"The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants." ~Thomas Jefferson
One interesting aspect of American politics right now is that a branch of the Republican party has broken off to oppose that kind of thing. Look at the tea-party platform, and you'll see it's primarily economic: they've dropped the 'moral' aspect of the right and have focused mainly on cutting deficits by cutting spending. Surprisingly a good portion of their energy has gone towards opposing establishment Republicans, enough so that some pundits began commenting about the divide in the Republican party.
I think it's kind of similar to liberals who get upset when Democrats turn out to be beholden to the big corporate interests they are supposed to be fighting. Politicians are always hypocrites, don't expect otherwise.
Qxe4
We went to war for a number of reasons, most of which are irrelevant to this discussion. Oil, however, was almost certainly one of those reasons. But we didn't go to war to avoid the volatile price swings of oil markets, but to secure long-term access to a geostrategic resource. Oil is (second perhaps to water) the most important resource in the world. The middle east is one of the most important sources of oil in the world. To a certain extent it doesn't matter what the price of oil is because the global economy is almost entirely reliant on it. Until there is a satisfactory replacement, oil will be a preeminent issue in international security for some time to come.
Rather than wasting money on HSR systems, we should be trying to make our air-space traffic-control systems better and concentrate on trying to get people to learn to fly themselves! HSR makes sense between high-density urban centers, but as some have indicated, they aren't very efficient for outer-lying sprawling communities. As it is subways and other rail systems require us to drive the same distance from our point of origin to a HSR departure point, as it is from the departure point to our intended destination.
My solution?....AIRCARS!!!
-Oz
If you believe the Iraq and Afghanistan wars were/are for oil, then Europe and all the other "first-world countries" should have to pay us all those fuel taxes, as we Americans paid (both in lives and in cash) for their oil. We pay, your corrupt governments tax you and get rich. Therefore, you should: 1. pay us the fuel taxes. or 2. stop believing our wars have anything to do with oil.
Trains and mass transit is a fake solution. Do not assume it to be more efficient, because most are bad. Some mass transit is slightly more efficient than an electric car. Most buses are similar to cars. Some poorly designed street car systems are less efficient than Hummer H1 SUVs. Practical isn't a train or a bike or a bus. Practical is a motorcycle with no emissions controls. Practical is an aging diesel pickup truck with fuel from Jim and Jill's BBQ, belching black smoke as it drives. Practical is a nuclear power plant cranking out synthetic gasoline. Practical is a revolution against high fuel taxes and the people that want them.
Responsibility is an addiction
Virtue is a temptation
Community is a cartel
California voters approved a high-speed rail ballot initiative recently that would build really high-speed trains from San Francisco to LA to San Diego, and also to points in between and Sacramento. The initiative approved $10Billion in bonds for construction - but the official estimated cost was about $30B, and the followup Oops-you-mean-the-WHOLE-Cost cost was about $40B, so they're depending on $30B of Federal money to magically fall from the sky. They've gotten approval for something like $2B of that $8B the Feds want to spend in the whole country, but they'll need a lot more. So the finances have been a total crock from the beginning.
By the way, the route from San Francisco to LA alone is longer than the TGV from Paris to Bordeaux, which is about the longest of the French TGV routes. (The highway distance would be a bit shorter, but the existing train routes across the mountains make the actual route zig-zag for a longer distance.)
I don't think you mean Marin County NIMBYs, though -that's across the Golden Gate Bridge from San Francisco, and there's no obvious way to get a train across the bridge. There are lots of NIMBYs around Atherton and Menlo Park who don't want the train going down the Peninsula, or at least not near them, or hidden in underground tunnels.
There have also been arguments about whether the route from San Jose should go south first, or should go up the East Bay and east before heading south, but that's been people who want the train to go near them, not people who don't want it.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
James J. Hill would disagree with you. You'll note that the Great Northern took no federal subsidies, got no land through eminent domain or land grants, and was only one of a handful of railroads that didn't fail in the Panic of 1893 (a run on banks caused by overexpansion of railroads, similar to the bubble caused by overexpansion of housing we're currently experiencing - kind of odd that federal subsidization are core to both, but, well, who needs history to avoid repeating things?).
It's also worth noting that The Pacific Railway Act was horribly inefficient, encouraging the railroads to build shoddy track and in the most inefficient routes possible. A good chunk of the transcontinental railroad had to be rebuilt before it was even usable and despite all the subsidies, both the Central Pacific (entirely leased out in 1885 to avoid bankruptcy proper) and Union Pacific (1880 and 1893) railroads went bankrupt shortly after finishing.
Just a little history that most people are never taught these days.
Stop Koolaid Politics
If you think that our (US) wars on Iraq and Afghanistan are for oil, then the rest of the "first world" owes us those taxes to pay for the costs of the wars. The truth is that governments have been allowed to charge undue taxes on fuels, and have likely impeded economic growth with this corruption. This is bad for all of us.
What is practical is unlikely trains and public transport. Public transport is not always energy efficient. The best cases of public transport are slightly more efficient than an electric car (like a Tesla roadster or a Rav-4 EV). The worst cases are worse than Hummer H1 SUVs. Practical, in the event of undue fuel taxation, is to vote the bums out. Practical is a motorcycle with no emissions controls. Practical is a diesel pickup fuelled by Jim and Jill's BBQ, belching smoke as it drives. Practical is a nuclear powerplant, cranking out synthetic gasoline. Practical is a dead pickup truck full of lead-acid batteries with a generator in it.
Responsibility is an addiction
Virtue is a temptation
Community is a cartel
WTF? Please ignore this post and pay attention to this one. Slashdot did not show my post and I thought it had not made it through. The content of the posts is basically the same.
Responsibility is an addiction
Virtue is a temptation
Community is a cartel
Well, at least they are willing to go to war for it as long as they don't have to go to war by themselves and as long as it is kept out off their backyard.
It is very convinient to have your war elsewhere but if not a single bullet is fired on your own turf I would rather call it an occupation.
Yes, but in Britain the train prices are also vastly inflated. Not least because of the union involvement that gives a train driver (who does little more than open and close the doors while a computer drives the train) a £40k wage when a starting, university educated, tech worker is on £20-25k.
And they get 40 days paid holiday a year.
You overstate the case. In Britain, fuel prices are vastly higher than they are in the USA, and driving is still usually cheaper than taking the train.
Not as simple as that. For one person, taking the train is usually cheaper if there is one going in the right direction. (For a family, a car is cheaper, but whole families moving around are not the most common case for any mode of medium- or long-range transport.) The trick with costing is that you've got to look at all the costs; a solution with cars doesn't just involve fuel costs, but also financing, insurance, depreciation, parking, and taxes. With other forms of passenger transport, those costs are rolled into the headline price.
But the reason I prefer to take public transport is that then it is someone else's job to do the control of the vehicle. Like that I can do something else at the same time as traveling (e.g., reading, working, sleeping).
"Little does he know, but there is no 'I' in 'Idiot'!"
Pay them what they're actually worth as manual labor
can you please expand this part of your post? Not the "how much" but the "who pays" and "what money" will be used for this payment?
That does make sense considering that Greyhound and other bus companies are lobbying for breakdown lane access on the main highway north of Boston to NH. These same breakdown lanes are open to all traffic during rush hour, so this would likely make traffic even worse.
Traffic around Boston is a nightmare, so much so that I won't even consider commuting from just-inside-the-outer-belt (495) to downtown. We have a train station in town, but the lot is entirely full by 6:45AM, and the private parking nearby is 250 dollars a month. And with 8 stops on the way in I can't imagine it is timely at all.
We never built the Inner Belt nor extended the NW and SW highways into Boston, so there are only 3.5 main routes in.
The Big Dig mostly functional now, but the traffic jams have just moved to the middle belt (Rt128/95) and other suburban areas. For example, we have the northern 4 line highway connected to the 4 lane east/west highway by a single lane offramp that has a speed limit of only 20MPH since it was designed in the 1950s for the east/west highway being only 2 lanes then. It would be possible to put raised ramps in, but during commute hours it wouldn't help anyway.
No wonder this state is losing population, all the traffic of NYC and LA, but almost none of the cachet.
Exactly. I live in Europe and the high speed train to Paris from my country needs 2 hours 5 minutes. It's enough if I'm there 1 minute before the train leaves and I arrive in the middle of the city.
With my car I need 3 hours 20 minutes if nothing's amiss on the road and then I need to park in Paris.
With the plane I need to drive to the airport, be there at least 1 hour before departure, taken all my fluids away, fly for over an hour and get out in Paris in the middle of nowhere.
IOW the train is cheaper and faster, the only problem is that everybody knows it and train seats during the weekend are hard to come by.(reservation only)
High-speed rail between cities works in Europe because when you arrive by HS rail you can get from the main station to whereever by light-train, tram, or bus and only have to walk five minutes. High speed rail won't work if you have to hire a car once you get there, or pay for an expensive cab, in order to complete the last leg of your journey, where you wouldn't have had to do so if you had jost drove your car the whole way.
Most of the US does not have high-density high-frequency public transport: meaning you usually have to walk for really long distances and wait a really long time.
I have lived in rural and suburban U.S.A. for most of my life. Recently, I have moved to much more densely populated areas and experienced mass transit use. I have the following to say:
1. Mass transit is practical for densely populated areas only. (I think this is obvious and self-evident)
2. High-speed railways should be built to compete with airways. Airlines are too much of many things including polluting, expensive, annoying.
3. Densely populated areas are unfriendly areas... especially those filled with taxi cabs. I don't like driving in those areas.
4. Rural and suburban areas are more friendly areas. They are convenient for driving in.
I think what should be identified are dense areas that need mass transit and what are the mathematical breaking points that determine which areas will benefit from mass transit and which will not. There should be a long-distance, high-speed rail network among cities and states across the nation. This infrastructural advantage has been long overdue since the building of railroads began hundreds of years ago. It made sense then and it makes sense now.
Surprisingly, 97% of those who's benefits would be cut "magically" found jobs suddenly.
[citation needed]
I've use long-distance (>100 miles) trains about every other month, and suburban and subway trains about three times a week, for the past five years.
The only time I've been checked before using a train is on the Eurostar train from London to Brussels/Paris, and the Eurotunnel car-train from Folkstone to Calais. I assume this is because the it's difficult and expensive and/or impossible to deal with any incident that happens in a multi-billion-pound undersea tunnel. (Rescue, rebuilding, routing around etc), and the route could be considered a high-profile political (ish) target.
If the USA is going to go OTT with security no one will like the train -- they'll feel unsafe, even if statistically they're safer than the alternatives.
(I find the other reply "It's an amazing experience compared to air travel" amusing -- taking a train stopped being an "experience" for most people I know once they were about 12 years old, at the latest. But then, I was 12 when I first flew somewhere.)
We don't meed monorail.
We need more cowbell.
The UK is not a great example, because our rail system has been systematically destroyed by successive governments since the Beeching Report. It started by killing off the 'unprofitable' lines. Unfortunately, a lot of these lines got people from the middle of nowhere to the profitable lines. Once these lines were removed, people needed to buy cars to be able to get to the main lines, and once they owned cars it was cheaper for them to just drive everywhere than to take the train for part of their journeys.
After the rail system had languished for a bit, the last Conservative government decided to privatise it. While private rail can work, they did it in a really stupid way: selling off the profitable and unprofitable bits separately, so the shareholders got a lot of profits and the government had to spend a lot of public money bailing out the infrastructure after a few high-profile crashes.
The rail system is not integrated with other forms of public transport in any way. Rail links to airports tend to be quite bad, and busses don't arrive or depart in a way designed to mesh with the train timetable at either end.
Public transport is one of the few areas where the whole thing could be improved a lot just by throwing some processing power at the problem. Timetables are still fixed and designed in more or less the same way that they were a hundred years ago, rather than quickly adapting to changes in demand.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Your comment:
"When you double that cost, everything now costs 10% to 50% more overnight. That is called inflation."
is wrong about inflation. Inflation is:
"Economics. a persistent, substantial rise in the general level of prices related to an increase in the volume of money and resulting in the loss of value of currency."
Inflation will be the end result of the former Bush Government adding $2 Trillian to the monetary base behind the US dollar. They effectively doubled the amount of US dollars to deal with the 2008 financial crisis so at some point in the future many people are expecting the price of goods to approximately double in terms of today's sticker price.
...to where you don't need to be. The modal switches needed to get from your departure point to the railway station and from the end station to your destination are killing transit time.
My former boss was a public transport fanatic. In order to get to out customers he preferred to
while I was tagging along carrying 30 pounds of diagnostic equipment. Nice. Very nice.
For the next visits I got in my car and drove from my garage straight to the visitor's parking spot. Less hassle, faster, cheaper and infinitely more comfortable.
You can have your f*cking public transport and eat it too.
Flourescent (adj): smelling like ground wheat.
First: history has shown that Americans don't care for rail transportation. Otherwise Amtrak would actually make a profit. But instead Americans choose the efficiency of time, and take a plane, or the efficiency of their schedule and take their cars when and where they want.
Second, while high speed rail works well in Japan or Europe, do you have any idea how much bigger the United states? The single state of Alaska is bigger than all of Japan and Texas alone is over half its size. And if you haven't traveled across Texas or other large states such as Montana, Wyoming or Nebraska... THERE AIN'T NOTHING THERE. There's nothing worth while to stop a train at. So while Japan can count on the commerce and traffic from Osaka, Nagoya, Kyoto and Tokyo on a rail line... In the same distance in california from Los Angeles... Nothing. Maybe San Diego and almost to San Francisco. But quite frankly, there isn't enough inter-city commerce between these locations to support commuter rail service. This might work from Washington DC to New york city but even that's a stretch. The distances are so great it just makes it more valuable for the few who need to commute it to do so by air.
So yeah. 'nother super waste of tax payer dollars. You'd be better off just dividing the $8B and give 100,000 homeless people $80K each. But sure, we're $3 TRILLION in debt for just the last two years, why not go for broke... literally.
I will never live for sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine.
http://www.publicpurpose.com/ut-lrt2001.htm
The problem with rail is not their speed. I'd be perfectly happy with rail travel at 60 miles per hour. The true problem with rail is that people prefer to ride cars because they are more convenient. When the time is right this is what may happen:
say 12 years from now when gas becomes $10 a gallon...
This will price a lot of people of of their jobs (no more 60 mile commutes for a $12 an hour job).
Some industrious individuals get together and buy time on heavy rails which web the whole country already. They make train stations combined with communal car rental businesses. The cars they rent out are done so on an hour per hour basis for say $0.70 cents per hour. If you are on an 9 hour shift it will then cost you $6.3 per day to rent your temp car. Ride with a friend to cut it down in half. These cars are cheap little cars with low top speeds and limited range. They might even be electric because you don't need long ranges in a lot of areas. I'm thinking smart cars with wifi network fleet management. If these cars are being used 75% of a full day (from 2-3 shifts of workers) they will gross $10.8 a day. Each year they could bring in $2754 if used 5 days a week on average. If the smartcar cost $10,000 it would take 3.63 years to break even. If each car is driven 10 miles on average per shift per day with 75% utilization it would run about 40 miles per day. At 5 days a week each year the car would be driven 10200 miles. These things when properly taken care of should last then about 13-15 years, plenty long enough to make money on I think.
Say you live in Marion Ohio and want to commute to Powell Ohio (36 miles) for some kind of factory job there. Get in your beater car, drive it to the station get on the train for $4.5 bucks. Rent a car with a pal for $3.25. Your transportation costs will be not much more than $12.25 for the day. You save wear and tear on your beater car and you avoid the worst parts of traffic between home and work. if your beater car gets 26 miles to the gallon like mine then you don't have to spend $26.38 on gas for a savings of $14.13 in fuel alone
Heavy rails are already in place.
This plan wouldn't work with out super high fuel costs. But who knows how much longer our cartopia can last?
The trains always make more money than the road vehicles. Why? Because they can haul more than the trucks.
Railways are a nineteenth century passenger solution. Today, bus lanes are a much cheaper alternative. New railways are just too expensive.
In Britain, railways are expensive and slow, and most people catch coaches or fly. Mind you, this is not due to the inherent suckiness of railways as a technology but due to an unsympathetic and ideologically-driven privatisation of the state railway. The Tories in the 1980s hated public transport, seeing it as a form of socialism; Thatcher ran down British Rail, and Major finally privatised it, selling it off to several different companies. Rail fares went up, while the system continued to be dependent on government subsidies to keep the operators from leaving. (For some years, the annual subsidies amounted to three times as much as the entire British Rail budget of the last year of its operation.) Meanwhile, budget carriers like Ryanair and EasyJet have been running cheap flights between British provincial cities, undercutting the railways.
A better model for what railways can achieve would be found on the continent. France's state-run carrier, SNCF, manages to make a profit (its high-speed lines subsidise slower provincial lines), and internal flights in France are all but unknown. In Spain, meanwhile, the AVE high-speed rail system has all but killed the market for internal flights.
This is precisely why rail is typically only added to the most population-dense areas. It doesn't make sense to use it unless you can walk everywhere else you go
Integrated transport. Rail stations are on bus routes, have taxi ranks, have car hire offices, have bike racks.
Of course, it can't work in sparsely populated areas. The nice thing about putting public transport in densely populated areas is that there's plenty of people there to take advantage.
8 billion dollars is nothing. The new high speed train connection in the Netherlands between the border of Belgium and Amsterdam (125 km long) is 7.2 billion euro's.
and an American public that may be reluctant to relinquish the independence and convenience of their beloved automobiles for a train.
Hint to the American public: taking a train does not mean you have to sell your car, or that you can't use it anymore and ONLY ever have to take a train in the future. It's possible to have the best of both worlds!
Milton Friedman also ran around supporting juntas and authoritarian regimes since they were willing to bash their citizens heads in to get his economic policies in place. Let's stop treating the guy like some sort of economic god, please.
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
My troll parent was talking about highly efficient bulk traffic, not HSR.
There is a certain incompatibility between "timetables" and "quickly adapting to changes in demand".
OK, after all this rail talk I thought, "man wouldn't it be nice to take my girlfriend on a weekend rail trip somewhere?" I figured KC to Chicago. I picked an arbitrary date about 3 months out. Typical flight is 1 1/2 hours and about $280 for the both of us. On Amtrak with a 2-bed bunk, that's about an 8-hour ride both ways and $760.
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
If Amtrak can't even compete with the airlines, then what do you think the answer to the question is?
I just checked a flight vs. rail for a round trip from here to Atlanta, and Amtrak is only $20 cheaper than the airline ticket, and the trip takes 14 hours longer each way.
I hate to think of how much money a high-speed rail system would lose in the US. The government already has to bail out Amtrak year after year after year to the tune of several billion dollars. There's absolutely no economic reason or justification for continuing our current rail system, let alone spending a trillion dollars to build out a nationwide high speed rail system that will cost 5 times as much to use as a commercial airline, and still take longer and be less convenient.
"as we Americans paid (both in lives and in cash) for their oil."
I think you'll find plenty of europeans especially british died in Bush's middle eastern revenge tour of iraq and afghanistan so go fuck yourself you out of touch insular prick.
Meh, who cares about the US citizens? What the world really needs is a really long high-speed railway... from Canada to Mexico.
Ask me about repetitive DNA
Errr, no. Both the DHS and TSA were proposals made by left-leaning Democrats in the weeks and months following 9/11. The Bush administration was initially opposed to the idea, but finally gave in to the "were all in this together" bi-partisan mood that followed the attacks. Having the last 2 years of Bush with Democrats forcing continual 90-day war funding+lotsa pork bills didn't help much on the spending front...
And the death of Concord was due to nimby obstruction: cannot go supersonic over land in case someone's house prices are reduced by the flight path.
Funny how "banks foreclosing and reducing property prices" wasn't likewise fixed at the behest of the same crowd...
YES! When I am in Europe, I look forward to the high speed train as a place to relax and rest between visits with in-laws. That is, I look at it as a restful spot on my vacation. That's how nice it is. It's fast, comfortable, good service, accessible toilets. Price and speed are comparable to air travel (Remember to factor in drive to airport, delays, security.) The only drawback are the stinking hikers who crash the maternity cabin to sleep and refuse to move for the people with the screaming (also stinking) baby, or who sit next to you stinking in the regular cars. But the conductor will generally roust them if you ask nicely. And, yes, there's a special cabin for people with children. No extra cost, but extra room, with walls, for privacy for the family and peace of mind/ear for the other travelers. At any rate, in the trains between Bavaria and Austria. My experience is a bit limited.
Spaniards still use trains in Madrid, Atocha train station remains as busy as ever.
Londoners keep using the Underground (and buses may I add, one of the bombs in London went off in a bus).
Mumbaiites (is that a word?) keep using Mumbai train station's trains.
In other words, what you are saying is utter nonsense.
In spite of the fearmongering by the media and not few politicians, people have common sense and are making the correct risk assesment.
Cancel 'handouts'. If you want welfare, you can work for it. Everyone gets a job and stuff gets built.
Oh yeah, that works wonderfully.
Bridges, Dams, Power lines, roads. Quite a bit of stuff was built during the great depression putting people to work.
You are forgetting that there was almost a century of progress and innovation since then. Where it once took 50 men to dig a ditch, now you would employ only one guy who knows how to operate an excavator.
And believe it or not, even those "menial labor" jobs require skill and experience.
Also, if you didn't catch on from the video above - half of those are women.
Back in "golden age" when all those dams and bridges you mention were built almost the entire workforce were men.
And it is not like you could employ a single mom of 2-3 underage kids to "mix concrete and lay bricks".
Turn off unemployment. There'll be no shortage of jobs.
O RLY? Jobs will just fall from the sky because you say so?
Again, most of those "menial work" jobs from 1920s DON'T EXIST ANYMORE. John Henry was replaced by a machine.
Pay them what they're actually worth as manual labor."
In other words, let them eat cake.
Here is a nice list of requirements you might use to calculate how much their "manual labor" is worth.
Enough to feed, clothe, room, bed, educate and entertain a family of four. Plus medical expenses.
Alternatively, you can just buy all your luxury items and replace locks on your doors and windows every few weeks - as life of crime is about the only option those people have once you "cancel handouts". If they want to survive.
I'm not saying that everyone will simply turn to stealing right away. No.. far from it. After all, producing and dealing drugs is far more profitable.
It's their customers that will come to your door. Or simply stab you in the street before they run away with your wallet.
Caterpillar & Deere, the big 2 domestic construction manufacturers would need to increase their workforce (Which is partially union). Truckers would get more work shipping construction supplies and equipment. Mobile home makers would need to up production for temporary housing. Concrete, asphalt, and steel industries would need to up employment to help keep up with demand.
1. Unemployment is a "global" issue. Companies offer jobs on highly local basis.
2. Machines, machines, machines, machines... No humans needed.
3. You don't just put a person in a truck and call him a trucker. Same as you wouldn't put a person in a cockpit and call him a pilot.
Driving a truck is VERY different from driving a family car around town.
Driving a truck for living is an occupation that requires significant endurance. 30, 40, 50 hours behind a wheel is still a very common thing for a trucker.
Also, there is the issue of getting the training and a trucker's driving license.
As for the rest of your comments, I find your suggestions doable but the expected results you envision are simply delusional.
"If you build it they will come" formula only works in Kevin Costner movies.
How many "Steves" or "Linuses" are turning up at the places that already have "a fat pipe"?
And "a rail line down the center of the interstates" is... ugh...
Have you ever seen a railroad? There is a reason for all that gravel around the tracks.
And putting something that weighs couple of hundred tons and moves at 70 mph in the middle of the road (or even on the same parallel plane) is a recipe for disaster.
And wouldn't it be smarter to put it on its own plane and a bit away from the roads so it does not intersect that often AND so you could actually get on and off the train without dodging cars?
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
Wow I've never heard of a more thoughtful solution. A new tax!!! Ohhh.
Narrow-gauge railways are cheaper to build and can negotiate sharper curves but broad-gauge railways give greater stability and permit higher speeds. One of the main concerns is the minimum turning circle your train can make without derailment. Yay Railroad Tycoon!
"Kill 'em all and let Root sort 'em out"
Despite the highly taxation of fuel all over Europe, we have far too many trucks on our highways.
And if you look at the material flows, everybody with a little common sense will shake ones head.
Example: Milk is produced by ranchers in northern Germany, then it gets transported over the alps, roundabout 1000 miles (1600 km) or more to central or southern Italy to be processed to yoghurt, curd or cream and filled into plastic cups, which are produced at other places in Germany or other countries of the EU as well, also transported by truck.
Then all these products are carried over the alps all the way back to Germany partly labled as italian delicacy or as german milk product.
Now lets look at the figures.
A 40t truck loads roundabout 26 to 30 tons gross. Let the packaging and handling means (pallettes) count for 5% or 1.5 to of the load there remain for easier calculation 26t of the product.
The truck consumes roundabout 35 to 40 l / 100 km (~ 10 mpg) equals 650 l (170 Gallons) for the 1000 miles. 650 l * 1.20 €/l gives 780 € fuel cost.
A cup of cream of 125g is sold in the store for 0.80 € to 1.20 € so the price per kg is 7€ to 9€ per kg. 780€ / 25000 kg gives 0.03 € per kg merchandise. from these three cent, two cent are tax.
BTW the rancher gets 0.25€ to 0.35 € / l of raw milk and the retailer calculates a gross margin of 5% to 8%.
So even with tripling the fuel taxation, the cost of road transportation is a neglectible amount.
This is just an example of the complete madness in modern markets because of far too little taxation of the transportation.
Just my two cents
You can certainly argue the other way, too. Having cheap transportation causes lots of goods to be transported over way too long distances, because it is somewhat cheaper to transport than manufacture in the vicinity. As soon as the transportation costs go up, this will no longer be the case and locally made goods will be preferable, so the transportation cost only makes up a smaller part of the picture. Prices will go up anyway, but not in the order of 50%. And all you are really doing anyway is exposing costs normally just being loaded on everyone through pollution etc.
I love all the armchair central planners on here. Hasn't it ever occurred to you lot that it might be somewhat pretentious to claim to know what travel other people should be encouraged to use and forced to pay for. On that thought, I doubt a bunch of politicians and bureaucrats spending other people's money are going to find a good solution.
most row crops recieve massive govermental subsidies and also rely on heavy applications of herbicide and fertilizer which end up dumping into waterways and creating dead zones. Corn is the major violator here; it's major end use being to feed cattle before slaughter. Eating corn in fact makes cattle sick and requires the massive use of anti-biotics which accelerates the evolution (gasp!) of superbugs which also ends up in the waste water stream. Oh, and don't forget the gluttonous use of water for irrigation; most plains states water tables set a new record low with each passing year. Even more water is wasted on the obscenely subsidised production of ethanol from corn. But you'll never hear about any of this in a country song praising the simpler, gentler, and more natural way of rural life. Nor any mention of Monsanto and Archer-Daniels-Midlands that lie at the heart of this agri-business web. Oh, and some of the richest US 'farmers' live on Park Place in New York City.
Counterpoint: In France, fuel prices are vastly higher than in the USA, and taking the train is cheaper than driving.
When I was in Britain, it shocked me how expensive train tickets were... even just within the London area! I don't know if this has to do with the privatization of the rail system under Thatcher or what, but prices were just outrageous!
Taxing gas more would bring many benefits. It would encourage people to use less gas, push the development of alternative energy and give the government more funds.
The only problem is that it will never happen.
Pushing a gas tax would be political suicide for any politician who dared propose it.
Trains (Amtrack) is already popular in the northeast corridor of the US.
There are plenty of short shuttle flights, say form Washington D.C. Boston or New York. We love our cars just as much as the rest of the country. Yet, Amtrack is very popular as it is a reduced set of traveling hassles.
The only problem people have with these non-high speed trains is the cost.
Many people would take it a lot more except for the ticket price which can sometimes rival a plane trip.
Am I the only person who thinks a highspeed rail system would be a juicy target that would be even harder to secure than air travel?
Thousands of miles of track, impossible to guard, to sabotaged?
WTF? Reagan? Fiscal credibility? The only even remotely fiscally responsible republican in the last 20 years was Bush Sr, and he had to be sly about it by leveraging a democratic majority in the house.
The Federal Government is already running on borrowed money and fumes.
I'm not sure borrow billions for a high speed rail is a bad idea. If it has a good business plan it will make money and help to pay for itself. It would create jobs and tax revenues.
However, I think there is justification about the large amounts of government spending that has already happened.
No, I am not a republican. I voted for President Obama and plan to again.
No offense meant, really, no offense, but do you think the dozens to hundreds of people involved in planning and engineering a high speed rail route would want plan to do it between two small towns?
They would likely plan a route between major cities, because that is most likely were large amounts of people would drive and want to go.
... except that government size and the current scale of spending is the result of folks on the right, largely....
Yes, because a $109B healthcare plan is chump change (and that doesn't include the six-hundred-and-some-odd billion dollar ObamaCare reserve either).
These are also probably right-wing spending-conspiracies too:
http://blog.heritage.org/2009/03/24/bush-deficit-vs-obama-deficit-in-pictures/
http://blog.heritage.org/2009/02/26/quick-observations-on-president-obama’s-budget/
Since people around the world read this - is there an example of privately run national railroads that actually work, are mostly on time, and are comfortable, clean, etc. ?
The examples I know sound like evidence that a railroad system can not be run by private companies. Trains in the UK are famously dirty (and I was riding 1st class!) and late. Germany used to be famous for its punctual trains - on the minute, no matter the distance - and excellent service, but ever since they've made the train company private, both has been going downhill rapidly.
What seems to work are public railroads (Switzerland, as I recall, is now what Germany used to be) or local, private railroad companies (several good examples exist in Germany).
I wonder why that is, and I wonder if it's a general thing or just a problem with the countries I know.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
This is a debacle from start to finish. A complete waste of tax-player money. The project cost, once the unions are involved, will certainly balloon to $20B. The locations will be cherry-picked based on politics and won't ultimately serve the people that could really use it. It won't relieve road congestion and the airlines won't be affected. Our dependence on oil won't be touched. The problem with trains is that the track only goes to one specific destination. What if the town you want to go to isn't on that line? You will end up driving. The vast majority of the American population doesn't live in a city. They live in rural urban areas, being forced to pay for a train system that will never make a profit, just like Amtrak. Americans love their cars. We have big roads and lots of them. And that is the way we like it.
Bearded Dragon
Last night, I was discussing how the US will probably be the last to implement a real future-proof clean solution like http://www.et3.com/
When I used to work downtown, I always took the bus. Because of where I lived it would've taken just about exactly as much time for me to drive as take the bus, but I wouldn't end up having to pay the $300+ a month parking fee. On top of the probably $400 or so cost of car ownership. But it did have its downsides, if I wanted to do anything after work it was a real pain in the ass.
Taxes on gas are a part of the solution, not the entire solution. Taxing parking and requiring employers in densely packed areas to put up for congestion relief is also a part of the solution. But ultimately the only way you solve traffic is by getting cars off the road.
Seriously. If you want trains to rule pass a law allowing gambling on trains. Just like in Vegas and Atlantic City the rates would drop to nothing.
"But I've read this factoid numerous times, "
Then surely you know it's false.
http://www.thefreedictionary.com/factoid
Factoid - A piece of unverified or inaccurate information that is presented in the press as factual, often as part of a publicity effort, and that is then accepted as true because of frequent repetition
Trust met (now that I'm living in europe) that the reason why everyone will switch to trains who can is: NO MORE DUIs. It is soooo nice to take a train to a bar, or downtown, or another hotspot, and never have to worry about who can't participate or cheating the law. Cars bring about freedom, sure, but they are also a mighty big burden in a lot of cases. Living without a car would make anyone see that, provided the trains are fast, on time, and effective.
No, but you could get a single mom of 2-3 kids to run books. Do phone support. You still need people doing office work.
And John Henry was replaced by a machine just because we say he was replaced by a machine. Even if we did nothing I'd rather pay someone to dig a hole one day and fill it in the next than let them sit around doing nothing on unemployment & welfare. I bet you'd see a dramatic drop in crime because people were too tired to go gangbanging after a day of hard labor.
If drugs were legalized, it'd take away a huge cash incentive to go make or sell drugs. I don't remember hearing stories from my grandpa how his family was 'entertained' while he was away. It wasn't an easy situation for anyone, but it got America through.
If everything was 'machines machines machines' then why do we hear about people being laid off when production goes down? Shouldn't there just be stories about how Cat had to flip some breakers?
No, but you train them and they're a trucker or a pilot or a machine operator. I bet a majority of CCC workers weren't brick layers, or cement pourers, but somehow they managed to build the stuff that we've used for the last 70 years.
Have you ever seen the middle of an interstate? In 90% of the country there is a reason they're called 'divided highways'. Plenty of room to add a rail service Once you get to the city, you take it elevated or under ground, or just have main hubs outside of cities with commuter trains or subways actually going into the city.
And "on and off the train without dodging traffic", seriously? That's the best argument you have? You'd build overhead stairs. Just like trains in every other damn country have, or an elevated platform that the train goes up on.
Truck drivers.
Upgrade our rail network so that freight trains can go where they need to today (instead of where they needed to go in the early 1900s) and can do so at 60mph while still carrying a reasonable amount of freight. You do that and nine out of every ten long-haul tractor trailers you see on the road will disappear overnight. It'll reduce traffic congestion, it'll reduce fuel consumption, it would probably reduce shipping times and costs (once the up-front expenditure is paid off), it'll reduce wear and tear on roads... the list of benefits goes on.
Oh, and don't forget that a rail network which meets the above requirements would probably be good for high-speed passenger rail too. You'd want to add more tracks if you started doing that -- otherwise your fast 150mph passenger trains will just get stuck behind your 60mph freight trains; though in many areas of the US, even 60mph would be an improvement over what our current rails can support -- but they can share at least some of the infrastructure and up-front costs. Since the up-front costs would be the biggest and least predictable parts of the total cost of a railway project in the US (NIMBY lawsuits, buying up land from people who don't want to sell, etc.), that could be a major win.
Britain is not representative. It has the worst rail network in Europe.
The average journey on a typical high speed railway is actually shorter than 200 miles. It competes about equally as much with cars as with planes.
I mean you can use the time on board the train to do useful stuff, like reading or answering emails. Some people have bosses that allow them to "stamp in" the time that they spend connected to the company network from the train.
I live between Chicago and St. Louis, and for the past 10+ years high speed rail is a re-occurring topic of discussion. I believe as envisioned american high speed rail is a joke. What they intend as high speed is less than 100mph and when you factor in stops along the way the actual average speed between end points will be much lower. It is a sad irony that countries like Spain can have high speed rail cutting across mountaneous areas at 180mph, but in flat land corn growing Illinois the best envisioned is 100mph. Along our rail coridor which is one of the leaders for anticipated federal funding the plan is to retrofit existing tracks for high speed rather than lay new rail from the ground up. So by decision to retrofit they're unable to achieve the real performance speeds that should be easily acheivable. IMHO the federal funding will be going into a retrofit of existing tracks that won't deliver on expected performance and results, and the average speed uptick will be modest. Just my $.02.
Republicans and Libertarians will just defund it half-way through the build cycle. America must simply get used to seeing all complex and expensive next generation technology and science projects that require advanced education and government coordination and funding die. Only the Asians and Europeans will be able to develop such systems in the future. Instead, America must settle instead for a consumer economy based on wingnut ideology, theocratic principles, and advanced weaponry increasingly made abroad. After all, thats the bargain Ruppert Murdoch has with the Chinese, so it must be part of Gods plan.
I recently took a trip from Rome to Florence by rail. While nice and convenient, it cost around $100 USD for two people. Even with gasoline at €1.45 per litre (€5.48 per US gallon, which is $7.03 USD per US gallon, almost three times what I pay in the USA) and tolls, it's still cheaper to drive and I have the convenience of going on my schedule.
I didn't factor in the cost of the vehicle (purchase price, insurance, maintenance, etc.), however assuming you already own a car, you're pretty much just paying for fuel/tolls. Now the train still gets there faster and it's nice to sit back and take a nap instead of having to worry about driving, but it's certainly not more cost effective, especially when you have a family. If you're going to a destination that doesn't have any public transportation, it's nice to have that car.
As much as I'd love to have a nationwide rail network, I just don't think it's going to work, no matter how much money is thrown at it. Trains work great in Europe where there are many large cities that are relatively close together, and even more so if your destination is an urban area with a good metro/underground/subway system. Things are just too spread out in the USA. The Northeast Corridor has the most potential to be a practical solution for rail travel, however even then it seems nobody can get it right. Amtrak's Acela is only 30 minutes shorter than the standard service because they're not allowed to get up to speeds that the trains are capable of. Now if Acela could get up to speed (literally), it might be a better service. Price is another problem. I have an upcoming business trip in DC, and I considered Amtrak to get from NY to DC, but the price is ridiculous. $120-$160 depending on the train. If I drive my own vehicle, I can get there at a fraction of that cost (fuel/tolls) and I can get to all the places I need to go in DC and Virginia that aren't served by the DC Metro.
Regional rail still has the greatest potential. NJ Transit has great rail service that helps get people to work in Manhattan and back, however it could be significantly improved if the trains would run faster.
Cameras don't prevent crime. They may help solve a crime after the fact, but I imagine a camera means little to a crackhead wearing a ski mask.
London is one example of this. Total "violence against the person" rates are largely unchanged in the last 5 years. Similar statistics can be seen in Chicago, USA, despite thousands of cameras added in "high crime" areas over the last 5 years. The cameras have been a bonanza for local contractors who install and maintain them, but that's about the only benefit.
To paraphrase Bruce Schneier, replacing smart people with dumb technology rarely results in increased security.
China has 3696100 sq. miles and is building high-speed rail lines at a rate more than double that of Japan, UK, and Germany combined. In 5-10 years Chinese high-speed rail will extend to Europe. They believe in the role of government to get things done. Thats the biggest difference with Texas and most of the US. Its no wonder they have passed Japan as the second largest economy and will overtake the US in 10 years at their and our current rate of economic growth.
It will be interesting to see how the anti-government, "don't tax me" crowd is going to come up with SOLUTIONS to deal with that. I suspect they will simply base America's future transportation and economies on watching FOX News, which the Chinese help Murdoch operate to keep America in ahyper-reflexive catatonic state, totally oblivious to a rapidly approaching reality of a Chinese dominated world. That can be done without a transportation infrastructure, thereby allowing Americans to live their lives on the sofa, without the need for jobs or expensive train tickets.
Look at the tea-party platform, and you'll see it's primarily economic: they've dropped the 'moral' aspect of the right and have focused mainly on cutting deficits by cutting spending.
Hardly. The libertarian right views its form of meritocracy as a moral issue. It's immoral to give healthcare to the needy because you take money from those who "earned" it. I haven't seen any tea-partier actually support reducing the size of the government by cutting funding to the largest military in the world. I haven't seen a single tea-partier come out in favor of personal liberty through marijuana reform, or legalizing prostitution, or really any other actual limits on our liberty. The tea-party platform is total bunk. It's the same old conservative, right wing, republican platform dressed up in colorful rhetoric.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
That would make sense, except that government size and the current scale of spending is the result of folks on the right, largely.
I'm no fan of either side, but that isn't accurate. It certainly is true that the Republicans have increased spending military, etc., substantially (and increased the debt even more), but the largest part of the federal budget is still entitlements, which is primarily due to the Democrats.
Personally, I would find high gas taxes with the proceeds used to fund alternative energy, mass transportation and research into environmentally-safe local oil production to be an acceptable idea. But only if we see corresponding cuts in the federal income tax and in federal spending in other areas -- I'd like to see both the entitlements programs AND our federal military forces largely dismantled, with their functions moved to the state level. Pipe dream, of course, but I will argue/vote against ANY expansion of the federal government without a corresponding reduction somewhere else.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
I live in Atlanta, GA in the "suburbs" and work in Downtown Atlanta. There is a rail line that stretches from somewhere close to where I live to Downtown Atlanta. I fight 1.5 hours of traffic, or 1.5 hours of bus time and some car time, to get back and forth. I always wonder what stops someone from saying, let me use the EXISTING tracks to put a rail from the so called suburbs to Downtown which would cover atleast three cities and would run along the WHOLE STRETCH of I85, and this has not happened as of yet. So, I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for this or any new solution. If anything
Yes, America should become hard-hearted and develop a truly individualistic credo of "every man for himself". That way guys like Milton Friedman can be admired for turning over America to the Chinese, who have an entirely different view of the role of government.
People travel by air because it is faster than other forms of travel. With all the security headaches, and the need to change planes because most airlines do not provide non-stop service, a FAST rail line might become an acceptable method of traveling long distances. The key to success or failure is really how often the train stops since that is what slows down current rail systems. Try going from Penn Station in NY City to Montauk(the east end of Long Island), on anything but an express, and you will feel that traveling by car would be faster and less annoying. At the same time, if the train only stopped two or three times, it would be a better option if the train ran more than 4-5 times a day.
Convenience is the real key to what makes using any form of transportation a better choice. If driving is faster and/or easier, then that is the best option. If taking a train is faster and/or easier, people may use that if it travels every hour. If something only runs every four hours, that will make people avoid it.
So, Boston to NY to Washington, DC to Atlanta. If there are no additional stops and trains leave every two hours, that would be seen as a very acceptable run if you could go from Boston to Atlanta in six-seven hours(rail not shared by other trains, and going 200 miles per hour with only those three stations). Keep in mind that it would take you 18+ hours by car.
If the speed could be pushed to 300 or 400 miles per hour, that would easily make people choose this method of travel over flying, just because you don't have to change planes or anything annoying like that.
"How do you suppose that the Tea Parties have gained so much ground at the expense of the Republicans here in the United States?"
New Corporation. Both the republican and tea parties have become wholly owned subsidiaries.
I agree with the comment about idealists, but I'm not so sure about the noble part. Every time the subject of public transportation comes up here a lot of people chime in with starry eyed idealism about how taking the bus is wonderful. Public transportation basically sucks, and no amount of wishing is going to convince millions upon millions of people otherwise.
Survey after survey has shown that people would much rather take a train (where they can get on easily, walk around during travel, not get slapped suddenly into their seats for an impromptu ride on the biggest roller coaster on the planet, drink a beer or eat a sandwich for a reasonable price, not have to wait in long lines for a restroom, and "land" within a short cab ride of their actual destination) than suffer through the growing indignities of air travel. Even adding in proper security screening, it's still no contest.
I recently visited Paris and Tokyo. To my surprise, both had extremely convenient trains. In paris, the Taxis stand is about 100m from the actual tracks -- no security, no lines, etc... Just walk up from the road, onto the train, and sit in your seat.
Why isn't air travel this easy? Can a 200km/h train stop that much faster than a plan can land? After my train experiences, air travel seems more like a convoluted torture scheme than a service.
Even in Tokyo, it was still convenient -- no security, no long lines, no overbooking.
However, on one of my international flights, they canceled my outgoing flight (not-weather-related) and overbooked the return *international flight* back to the US. [They only flew about once per day, so this was a substantial delay to passengers]. I had to spend almost double just to get on another flight for the same day [I was flying for work]
I would think that in any other industry, the willful selling of items which do not exist (or be delivered/fulfilled) would be a civil (and possibly criminal) offense, why the hell do airlines get away with this? (It would only make sense to me if people did not buy tickets ahead of time or frequently missed their flight. So instead of fixing their system, they over-sell to make up for the seats they failed to fill [by running on-time] in the first place? WTF!)
Near where I live, it is easier to drive >200 miles (at 60mph) to a neighboring big city instead of taking a *direct flight* there. [something is seriously wrong with this picture!]. Not counting the time traveling to/from the airport, just the air-travel related part would be slower (security, boarding, unboarding, baggage claim, etc)
"Think about it: a good number of Americans are willing to go to war to keep gas prices low. "
By such reasoning one might have thought that after two wars, gas prices would have gone down. Might want to think twice before pursuing that economically "rational" option, which was all part of the big lie anyway. Remember the republicans telling us how oil would pay for the cost of the wars? How did that work out for ya?
And likewise, idiot, once the roads are clogged WHICH DOESN'T TAKE MUCH TRAFFIC TO HAPPEN, and it takes an hour to do a commute in a car, you quickly hit equilibrium again. No one wants to be driving in deadlocked traffic for an hour when he can spend fifteen minutes and twice what he would in gas (a few dollars perhaps??) taking the train.
Gas prices will go up and there will be a reason (in addition to the natural greed of oil company CEO's). The Chinese economy, unlike our own is growing, so they will buy more oil to fuel it. They have the distinct advantage of having the money to pay for it, unlike America which borrows from the Chinese, Saudis, and Japanese to pay for it. So to compete for it, we will have to pay more, much, much more.
Sure, the people will be employed and they will receive their nominal paychecks.
Unfortunately these people will STILL be a burden on the society.
1. People employed by government work on government projects, which are designed specifically to reduce unemployment but not to improve economy.
2. Improving economy means creating jobs that actually produce valuable THINGS that people WANT especially things that can be EXPORTED.
3. USA is running a trade deficit, which is the actual reason the economy is shit. Some argue that the reason economy is bad is because the rich are not taxed enough, which is complete nonsense. Federal Income Taxes are only there to pay for Federal Government Expenses. However Federal Government has NO PROBLEM PAYING for expenses FOR NOW. They print t-bills and bonds and they print dollars. T-bills and bonds become their debt and printing cash simply increases inflation. However Federal Government is NOT firing people. It is NOT cutting expenses. It is still SPENDING at an increased rate, for example the number of troops in Afghanistan went up under Obama, not down and the Federal Government is paying for this. Of-course Federal Government cannot repay the DEBT, but nobody asked it to repay the debt YET. Once that becomes a problem, I expect the Fed simply to print more USD and to create hyper-inflation to buy back all of those debt obligations. So it is nonsense to say that cutting income taxes lead to the economic collapse, because nobody felt the effects of the Federal Government not paying its expenses YET. In 2008 when the housing bubble burst, even then the Federal Government continued to pay for its expenses, in fact at that time even more t-bills were printed as foreign banks thought that US government is a more credible debtor than the private banks.
4. The reason why US economy is dead is the same why the USD will collapse after the Fed is revealed to be bankrupt and will print USD out of existence. The reason is loss of Production Capacity and the resulting Trade Deficit.
5. Production Capacity and Trade Deficit CANNOT BE ADDRESSED BY GOVERNMENT JOBS!!!
So this is an absurd statement saying that just employing people by the government to do useless work (useless in terms of reducing the trade deficit) will be beneficial for the US economy. USSR has done this and it fell apart, it had plenty of such public projects where millions of people were 'employed' working for nominal fiat currency, enough for them to eat basically, when in reality they would have been better of if they were allowed to work for themselves and not taxed on their income, so they could save and then create their own businesses.
Government is a destructive force, which produces nothing of any value, a parasite on a society, and it shows especially clearly when the economy starts to collapse.
You can't handle the truth.
Cigars and pipe tobacco also have nicotine. If you were referring to cannabis, that would fall under state impaired driving laws even if we weren't under a federal prohibition since the 1930s.
at the most possible fundamental level of human behavior, Democrats have always trended toward more densely populated areas (the city), whereas Republicans have always trended toward rural America, small towns and the country. This parallels the respective political philosophies, ie., Democrats like other people where Republicans don't. The most exreme Republicans come from Alaska, where people go to die in the wilderness, cold and alone.
Buses going 100-200 mph??
I like the way you think! Though I still think trains are more cost efficient to accelerate and run at high speeds
Hint: you were almost right: buses have obsoleted trams, not trains
""The problem with socialism is eventually you run out of other people's money" - Thatcher."
Funny, how it never stopped the iron lady from collecting her "socialist" pension. Eliminate social security and health care and privatize the military - Vote republican.
using Telepresence technologies, such as that marketed by Cisco and others to simply stay home to do all their commuting. Its a lot cheaper to lay fiber than rails or building roads and generates a lot less pollution. You could get their much faster than any other form of transportation.
You would think this would catch on much faster in America, where a couch placed in front of a TV set is America's favorite mode of transportation already.
Linksys, where are you?
indeed, the one time I took Amtrak, the timing of leaving overnight and sleeping on the train was favorably comparable to catching a flight in the morning.
Wish I had had better luck falling asleep though, but trying to sleep on an airplane is even less productive.
I listen to both RIAA and non-RIAA stuff if I like the music, tangential business/politics nonwithstanding.
Which grants more freedom?
* taking the train to an interview or driving
- Having done both, I'd say train. Most places that you have to drive to have controled parking so you have to allow extra time to find a place to park. An amount of time that is difficult to guage.. I know how long the train trip will take and the walk from the station helps calm me down before the interview. (verses the stress of driving).
* taking the train/bus to get groceries or driving
- I do that all the time as well. Having done both I'd say I like getting the smaller amounts that you get when you are transit dependent. When you go to the mega store in your care it takes 1/2 hour if you were to go in and just buy a stick of gum! You end up shopping for a week or so because shopping is such a miserable experence. Because of this you stock up on pre-processed junk because it keeps. When you are transit dependent, you go to the smaller stores that you can buy local fresh food. You meet your neighbors and it is quite plesent and quick. You can also buy stuff that you have a tast for that day and not have to guess what you will have a tast for next week.
* packing the kids up and taking the train to grandmas -or- driving
- No question here (though I have to admit I don't have kids but I remember being a kid) Taking the train is an adventrue. You see a lot more and you get to move around on the way. There is nothing worse then being a hyperacitve kid and cooped up in a car for a long trip!
* going for a weekend picnic in the country on the train... and walking a dozen or so miles.
- Now that sounds like fun! When you get to your picnic are you feel like you acomplished something. Also since you walked, you are not likely near a busy road (as you are with a car). I have to say this is your best argument for trains yet! Thanks!
* going on a business trip, takign a plane, a train, a bus, a taxi, and then doing the same on the way back, lugging your one small bag the whole two days... or driving.
- Again you make a good argument. It is difficult to drive around strange towns with thier driving patterns. Trying not to get lost and piss off drivers who know where they are going as you miss your turnoff, or an easy to use mass transit system. No question there. You've sold me!
dead-weight loss is a positive thing if it discourages consumption of limited natural resources, and if you agree that taxes are a necessity, why not discourage wasteful behaviour instead of discouraging business.
The deliberate waste of valuable resources, which could be put to other more productive uses, strikes people who see it as being incredibly foolish and insensitive. Remember the "cash-4-clunkers" program where people from around the world watched in horror on the video sharing sites as Americans took perfectly serviceable vehicles and ruined them? Read some of the comments on those videos about "wasteful and stupid Americans". No, the proper way to handle the limited use of natural resources is for everything, including the rights to clean air and water on real property, to be privately owned by someone. The private owner is a much better steward of his own property than any third party (i.e. the government). There would still be some large scale externalities that would require government regulation to address, but like taxes they could also be minimized. In summary, the solution to waste in the economy is not high taxes which encourage even more waste. Indeed, this is reminiscent of those, like Paul Krugman, on the left who suggest that the way to get our over-indebted economy moving is to borrow and spend even more (i.e. the stimulus didn't work because it wasn't big enough...the classic escalation of commitment to an essentially failed policy). Note to those on the left: A failed policy doesn't become successful simply through increased efforts and unlimited subsequent tries; the next time won't actually be different.
Was "NYC" a reference to local mass-transit systems?
Expanding those might also be a key, to complete the picture in the manner you're describing.
I've never been to the Big Apple for any length of time, but I was fine with walking+subway/train when I took vacations to Boston and Chicago.
Train/bus station dropping me off in the middle of the city was in both cases easier than the airport. (Chicago was better than Boston at connecting the local mass transit to the airport(s), though.)
I listen to both RIAA and non-RIAA stuff if I like the music, tangential business/politics nonwithstanding.
[The El itself could have run faster, but I was staying out in the Evanston suburb, and its affected by the bazillion-stops problem that seems to plague all local mass transit.]
However, for me, the walking was not the problem, just the navigation of knowing where the stops were.
Yeah, Amtrak *really* could run faster. The wobble hadn't bothered me much. The trouble falling asleep on the overnight train may or may not have been my fault. (There was still a lot of room even in coach.) Yeah, it was late, but with sample size n=1, I can't personally say much.
In that regard, Boston was better, with the bus/train station in the same complex as local subway stops.
I listen to both RIAA and non-RIAA stuff if I like the music, tangential business/politics nonwithstanding.
support higher taxes and increased government spending, regardless of the prevailing economic circumstances
That's just the classic problem of spending in a democracy and has little to do with "the left" in this country. Democrats quote new Keynesian economic policy(which I think matches reality better than Friedman's brand of Classic Liberalism) to spend during a downturn, but fail to save substantially during economic upturns. Where as Republicans follow "Reaganomics" which calls for spending more on military whenever they think they can get away with it(more during upturns) and trying to block everything else in downturns.
Here in the Midwest United States ( Wisconsin ) . They are starting Work on a HST line that will eventually link Chicago to Milwaukee to Madison to Minneapolis. The right wing Radio Screamers are deriding the whole concept of a "Choo Choo Train" and the two Republicans running for Govenor have vowed to kill the project if they are elected. Here it seems like its not a case of NIMBY but a case of why should I pay for something I personally would never use. It has gotten so bad here they are outraged when the transit department wanted to put bike racks on the busses so commuters could ride a bike from the Bus Stop to their destination.
I've always though that you can't force or tax people into using trains (ignoring London's congestion charge for a moment). People will use trains - gladly - when they are the most efficient way of getting to where they want to go. Last time I checked, DC - NYC on Amtrak took about 3.5 hrs, compared to driving in about 4hrs, ignoring traffic. Make that journey 2hrs instead, price it competitively, and every seat would be full. High speed rail only works on a case-by-case basis (i.e. on specific routes). If you can't make it a better than most of the alternatives, it'll never catch on.
it does bother me that people are trying to limit the freedom of others via taxation in order to pay for it, or discourage people from taking a form of transportation they don't like. I could potentially get behind a federal income tax increase for it, but I have some serious misgivings about the whole thing...
We're currently working on a family of (first kid here, second on the way). Past the age of two years old, airline travel will become prohibitively expensive since we'll then have to pay for two additional seats. A trip from where we live to the SF Bay Area cost me and my wife $900 round trip. Double that cost? I guess we're driving. We currently own a 2006 Volvo XC90 V8. Not the most fuel efficient vehicle, but we needed something to tow our pop up camper with and still be able to carry the family. And, we opted for a pop up instead of a hard sided camper so the towing profile is smaller and towing more efficient as a result.
Let's look at a trip breakdown for example. We're going to Disney World in December, with camper, four adults, and one kid. Total round trip is 1280 miles. If we consider that the car might get 10 MPG towing the camper and all occupants (normally it gets 20 MPG on the highway with only passengers.. haven't actually towed with it yet, but I'd think that's a bare minimum). 128 gallons of gas at $2.60/gallon: $332. For 5 passengers. Easily the cost of just ONE plane ticket. We're camping at Disney on Disney property... for $67/night (I might add there are cheaper options down to $44/night, but we "splurged"). For the same timeframe, 5 coach tickets will run $1200 for all passengers. Plus we need hotel accommodations on top of that, Disney property will run $200/night easy.
So, $332+$345 for Driving, $1200+$1000, $677 vs $2200. We'll drive, thanks.
Alright, now let's compare with Amtrak Autotrain (since we want to take our camper). Let's first keep in mind that Autotrain isn't available near us and is only available on 1 route in the US, but lets pretend it does by looking at another route that has it at a similar travel distance, for 4 adults and 1 kid: holy crap! $1464! And that's not accounting for the camper, just the car. Probably add another $350 for that.
So, flying is marginally more expensive than the autotrain is by taking our SUV+camper and 5 passengers. And it gets there much faster.
Granted, this is a somewhat extreme case, but in many other cases I'd probably want to have a car with me anyway (such as visiting one or more national parks), and would have to otherwise figure in the price of a rental car which would probably cost just as much as the gas alone to drive where ever it is I'm going. I think that the train could compete with the car in some cases, but for a small family there are other considerations. Consider to that the model of train transporation many people uphold, Europe is still quite costly unless you are a student or otherwise under 25 compared to driving. I wish single people would realize this and stop looking at the problem 2-dimensionally. Also consider that rail transportation for freight is VERY efficient, but the breakdown for passenger service is not as big a difference as it is for road freight vs rail freight. Figure in an electric or hybrid car the difference is even smaller still.
Don't try and make life decisions for me through taxation, please...k thx bye.
Here is something to think about: All U.S federal government spending has infinite cost. If the federal debt is never repaid (with 12 trillion in debt that's not an unreasonable assumption) then nothing will ever be paid for. Taxpayers will be servicing the interest on the principal debt forever. Have a nice day! :)
For further consideration here are some words from Thomas Edison printed in the NY Times Dec. 6, 1921 on adding debt to increase the public wealth. Skip the first column of the article.
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=9C04E0D7103EEE3ABC4E53DFB467838A639EDE
http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?res=9C04E0D7103EEE3ABC4E53DFB467838A639EDE
That was just phase one
Tearing up rail lines, to be replaced by bus-only routes is phase 2 :-)
There is a certain incompatibility between "timetables" and "quickly adapting to changes in demand"
Nope, not really.
You simply need your system to be able to determine how to return to the timetable schedules as fast as possible in the event of blocked or broken track/trains etc.
Regards.
The argument I have for making it "artificially bad" right now is to preserve the remaining crude oil to ration it out for non-fuel purposes, like plastics, or reserving it for strategic fuel purposes.
Then your argument fails. The consequence of a single country (like the US) inventing some scheme to ration oil internally is of no consquence for any country that does not adopt your policy of making things "artificially bad."
Unfortunately, even if the US doesn't use the remaining crude oil, someone will. Even if the US made the cost of oil based products triple and thus supressed it's use internally, the slack that was created would be taken up by other countries.
Unless you are advocating a single world government, that can ration it? That might work, but would be a bit of a challenge, not to mention undesireable in other ways.
Certainly your argument is rational in that IF we managed to do it THEN we would have more stockpiles later but there appears no real way to globally "ration" oil besides the prices charged - and that will remain based on the actual monetary cost to extract, not some trumped up value.
Regards.
Well, no.
The most-delayed California budget ever was for the 2009 State Fiscal Year (July 1, 2008 through June 30, 2009) and was passed on September 23, 2008 -- extremely late, but less than 1/4 of the way through the year, not "just before the end of the year it was supposed to represent."
And that's the worst case ever (to date, at any rate), not a regular occurrence.
Think about it this way: We need to put a large tax on gasoline NOT for the purpose of "controlling citizens" but instead as a method of paying for all of the externalized costs of using fossil fuel (such as wars in the Middle East, dealing with the effects of global warming, etc.). We can then hand that money directly back to the same citizens IN CASH so that they can use it as they see fit. If they still want to use it to pay for gas to drive everywhere, fine. They are free to do that. My bet is most will choose to pocket the money and ride a train or a bicycle.
The current state of the government is largely the fault of morons who turn it into a red versus blue/right versus left issue and walk into the polls and check one box on their ballot to vote en masse for their team.
The instant you say 'its because of the other team' you've already proven you don't understand the problem.
BOTH TEAMS ARE CORRUPT MONEY GRABBING ASSHOLES and they will continue to be until people like yourself stop fucking voting based on stupid shit like whos team someone is on.
Things will change when people stop voting for people based on a political party rather than what they do. If you don't know if you want to vote for one person over the other, and your choice comes down to 'well, hes a republican and so am I' or 'shes a democrat and so am I' then you need to not vote for that person because you're just contributing to the problem. Your vote is not doing any good if you just randomly give it to someone who happens to fly the same color ignoring their real actions and accomplishments.
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
There is non-high-speed passenger service that runs this trip (not all the same stops, but it has many more in the Podunk towns between). In 2000, I road it between FTW and SAS. It took 12 hours exactly and cost $30. It was fun for a while, but got boring quickly because I was alone. Now I see you can still do it, but they've apparently cut out a lot of stops. It costs $48 and takes 7 hours. It stops in DAL afterward adding another 1hr 20 min. Getting off in DAL actually reduces the fare by $10. http://tickets.amtrak.com/itd/amtrak . I'd do it again if I had a traveling companion.
As far as all the stops you suggest, I'd submit it wouldn't be worth doing on a high speed train if you include all these stops. You'd end up with a 12 hour trip again because of the stopping, boarding, and getting back up to speed. Low speed service would be good enough on that kind of trip. A high speed train could go San Antonio to Dallas with stops at Austin, Waco and Fort Worth only and still get you there in a reasonable amount of time.
I just adore all this fuss about the special high tech needs of high tech trains. What they *really* need are:
* for Congress to change the contracts where Amtrak leases trackage everywhere
except in the northeast corridor, so that
a) passenger trains have priority over frieght trains, and
b) trackage used by passenger trains are maintained to high-speed
standards, not frieght standards.
* Give Amtrak the funding to reclaim the rail right of ways that are currently
unused.
* Fully fund Amtrak... or did you think that every airport and every highway
were built and maintained for free?
* Make Amtrak actually run *limiteds*, and not have everything but the Acela
Express be milk runs.
Oh, and does anyone here know about how the Pennsylvania RR's Broadway Limited hit 127.1mph in June of 1905? (and no, that's *not* a typo, yes, a century and five years ago).
Then, of course, there the "speed" issue: after 9/11, even the pilots' union was saying that for trips under 300-400 mi, trains were *faster*, esp. since they all come right into every downtown, and aren't way the hell outside cities.
But you'd rather sit in traffic jams and watch the price of gas go through the roof.
mark
Huh? From where I'm sitting it looks exactly like the Republican talking points of "Get our country back for God-fearin white Americans", "Deport all the Mexicans", "Reduce taxes for the rich and it will trickle down on us like a golden shower", and "Reign in bad government" (where "government" means policies and court decisions they disagree with). They might not be talking specifically about marijuana, abortion, gays, etc, but given all the figureheads of the movement, it's obvious where they stand.
I agree to some extent.
Those people will still be a drain, as it'll still be my tax money paying to support them because they couldn't get a job that wasn't paid for by my tax money. It still confuses me how so many illegal immigrants have no problems finding jobs ... yet Americans can't seem to figure out how to get one ... God its great to be in a country full of lazy fucks. Fortunately, we'll be replaced by hard working immigrants soon and it won't be as much of a problem.
The up side is ... at least my tax money will be going to provide something I see as benificial rather than just paying them to sit at home and collect unemployement.
The fastest economic plan in general is to just stop with unemployement and welfare payments, but thats not going to happen so I'll settle for making them actually do something for their money.
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
Dude. Ontario has 13 million people. Current unemployment (which is historically high) is 9.2%, or about 1.1 million people. There is no way that ~90% of the unemployed made their way to Queen's Park. When was the last time that 90% of any geographically dispersed group did anything?
grey hound has a shit schedule, you try to go from a remote place to a city on one, stops every 30-45 minutes any time there is a group of buildings that more than 30 people live in.
All of the above was encrypted with a Quad ROT-13 method. Unauthorized decryption is in violation of the DMCA.
I hate to say this, but you are really inattentive and putting yourself in the same group as Glenn Beck. You've painted the tea-partiers with the same broad, slightly insane, strokes that he uses to paint the left, when he says they are all marxists trying to make the government bigger.
The main focus of the tea-party is cutting deficits through cutting spending. Learn to be more nuanced and not divide the world between 'us' and 'them'.
Qxe4
Here, and a primacy cite ?here.
For more information, seek "Common Sense Revolution".
The figure of "a million" unemployed was bandied about in the popular press, though more likely, it was a million unemployed and their supporters.
In Liberty, Rene
but when the government has to tax you because it needs money to clean up an oil spill, that also drives up the price of stuff. Heaven forbid the government tax oil to pay for the damage that oil creates! lets just increase the income tax and keep oil cheap, and the profit margins of BP and friends high.
Trains are a chicken and egg problem. People don't like trains if there are too few trains running to too few destinations. Andcompnaies that operate trains aren't going to run more trains and lay down new lines because not enough people use them.
but as Richard Nixon once said "We're all Keynesian now"
What about the Contract from America? Written by Dick Armey (former house Republican leader) and Ryan Hecker and consolidated from polling Tea Partiers. It's all about reducing taxes and challenging the parts of government they think are unconstitutional.
And according to polls, they're predominantly white, middle class, gun owning, religious, Conservative Republicans. Are there other smaller groups within it? Undoubtedly, though when Tea Partiers rally around Republican leadership like Dick Armey, Newt Gingrich, and Sarah Palin, it's hard to take the rest of it seriously, and given that kind of leadership, it's not at all unfair to paint the sky with broad strokes of blue.
...there is only one citation for this claim that Southwest scuttled the THSRA, to a broken link of a 2009 HSIPR application form. Exactly what legal barriers were erected? As I recall, the real death of the project was that private funds were unable to be secured, and they unsuccessfully lobbied for direct funding through law change or additional subsides and preferential financial treatment.
Of course Herb Kelleher was going to lobby as a citizen to protect what he felt like was the Texas government assisting a group of extremely wealthy companies from threating a profitable route for a still small airline he built from scratch. But did he really do anything that could be considered anti-competitive or untoward? He was no stranger to legal and political harassment. When starting Southwest, Braniff, United, and Trans-Texas among others sued for 3 years to keep the airline grounded. It was so bad, they got an injunction from a Texas judge against those airlines from filing any more suits. I believe that was a first ever for a Texas court to issue an injunction preventing one company from suing another. The Wright Amendment was another example of political wrangling meant to limit Southwest's growth.
I've searched with very limited success, for more information on the THSRA before after seeing the Wiki article, and also reading interviews with Herb Kelleher where he said that while the funding would have originated from private sources, there were inherent subsidies and loan guarantees costing over $100 per person per trip on the line. He told the THSRA (with his tongue firmly in cheek) that they'd save a lot of money buying every one of their potential travelers a full fare ticket (about $90) on his airline.
I'd like to learn more about what actually happened during this time, as I was still in High School and only vaguely remember the stories in the newspaper. I don't argue that having HSR in Texas would be nice. And I don't know that Southwest would be that opposed to it now that they focus on medium and long routes, since traveling short distances by plane is less attractive because of higher costs and longer times through security.
Disclaimer - Texas resident since 1976, Southwest Employee since 2001.
Why do you hate america...
I've looked into the current train, but the times are total shit. To go to DFW on a Friday I'd have to leave in the morning, missing the whole day of work. To return to Austin on Sunday I'd have to do it in the afternoon, later than I'd want to get home.
Really they just need to add a second trip each day and it would be worth it. Making it high speed with limited stops would encourage more riders and make it more likely they could afford to add that second trip.
It doesn't hurt to be nice.
For the most part, people don't FLY from Los Angeles to Las Vegas. They drive. The I-15 North is backed-up solid on Friday night, and I-15 South is backed-up even worse Sunday night.
To a lesser extent, the same is true of Los Angeles and San Francisco. It's not a short drive, but most people would rather drive it than fly it. It's those in-between distance where high-speed rail shines. Cross-country, flying will always be significantly faster, though I expect it will take a decent sized chunk of business away from them.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
Harris cut taxes massively during his common sense revolution, along with cutting programs like crazy. Having been in highschool during that period, I felt those effects directly. I am all for responsible government, but what you're describing is a fantastically slanted view of what Harris did.
Many of his reforms were needed, but the execution of those cuts were extremely damaging to many different parties - and I, at the age of 14 and 15, was one of those people.
.
It's always boggled my mind to hear people call for smaller government and then vote in favor of things like the patriot act and new government departments like the DHS and TSA.
This is precisely why I haven't voted Republican since those things happened. What they promised wasn't what they delivered.
The main focus of the tea-party is cutting deficits through cutting spending
So which tea party leader has come out in favor of cutting spending to the largest military in the world? Or saving some money by not imprisoning more of our citizens than any other country in the world?
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
OK, this is a simple concept, but you apparently have trouble with simple concepts, so I'll try to go slow here.
Suppose not one tea-partier had favored cutting military spending or reducing prison sizes. Suppose that were true. It would still in no way contradict the idea that the main focus of the tea-party is cutting deficits through cutting spending. Please use logic in the future.
Qxe4
... if you don't build it, they won't come.
Everyone who says that people won't use a train instead of an automobile is just guessing based on current short-range, low-speed options available today. The utility measure of taking a trip via an actual high-speed train vs. car or plane is probably going to be much different. I'm already fine with taking a low-speed train from Portland to Seattle rather than driving or flying. I'd be even more happy if having a high-speed train would knock another forty-five minutes off the trip. I'd be willing to go even further and say I'd take trips as far as the Bay Area via train because (a) train travel is a lot more relaxing and (b) I am really tired of airport security theater (Yes, there's now some of that on trains, but not nearly as much).
That is all.
It would still in no way contradict the idea that the main focus of the tea-party is cutting deficits through cutting spending.
Yes, yes it would. Military spending accounts for more of our budget than any other program. If you claim to want to cut spending and ignore the single largest expense, you're either a liar or an idiot.
The real goal of the Tea Party is to obstruct anything and everything Obama does, in order to give Republicans a better chance in 2012.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
Americans are in love with their cars and hate not having them at their destination when they travel. Rental cars are an expensive workaround solution, given that cars cannot be carried in planes. However, cars could be carried in trains, even in high speed trains. The Eurochannel shuttles show that this is not only possible but relatively cheap and efficient. Marriage of high speed train and cars is the way of the future for America. Gone would be the increasingly more paranoid hassles of air travel and the inconvenience of not having your car with you. The rental car industry would suffer but the tourism industry would bloom, as people would be able to do more when they travel than they can now. I am surprised that so few people in the US see what a win-win situation this is for the US.
The current Amtrak system makes travel between some cities very easy, but travel between other cities is simply not a viable option.
I currently live in Atlanta, for example, and there are dozens of direct flights between ATL and MSP, but if I wanted to take a train between the two I get routed via Charlottesville, VA or DC and Chicago, adding a LOT of time and mileage to the journey.
Try getting from ATL to SEA via Amtrak. It currently costs $643.00 one way, and it takes over 78 hours (again going through Charlottesville or DC). You could probably drive it in 40 hours direct if you were tag-teaming, and you'd pay a lot less for gas. I estimate $400, assuming $4 gas and 30 mpg. The train would be more relaxing, but is it relaxing enough to spend three days trapped on it?
Mainframe/UNIX Bit Twiddler and long time Windows/Linux Hobbyist.
The Theorem Theorem: If If, Then Then.
The high-speed rail system is also projected to be half the cost of building new airport runways, gates, and expanded highways necessary to handle the same capacity of travelers, to accommodate future demand due to California's increasing population.
"I'm too busy to research this and form an educated opinion, but I do have time to tell everyone my uninformed opinion."
Note the things you don't see. You don't see "Get our country back for God-fearin white Americans", you don't see anything about immigration. Now, the majority may feel some way or another on those issues, but the thing that holds them together is the economic. If that goes then they break up into segments, the religious right, the anti-immigration group, etc.
Actually your entire post shows a lack of understanding of political realities. For example, gun-rights advocates aren't divided along the dem/rep lines, they are divided in a rural/urban way. The NRAA pays a lot of money to Democrats. In 2008, 20% of their budget went to Democrats.
You've also misunderstood the power balance. The tea-partiers are not following Newt Gengrich, Newt Gengrich is following tea-partiers. He knows how to attract a crowd, and he's saying all the right things to make them like him, but he is following them.
it's hard to take the rest of it seriously,
63% of mainstream Americans stated that their views were closer the Tea Party Movement than to president Obama (mainstream as opposed to the political class). You better take anything like that seriously, whether you agree with it or not.
it's not at all unfair to paint the sky with broad strokes of blue.
You're repeated attempts to paint things in broad strokes account for a lot of your stupidity. Stop doing it. It only makes you dumber.
Qxe4
The real goal of the Tea Party is to obstruct anything and everything Obama does, in order to give Republicans a better chance in 2012.
A clear case of confirmation bias. You see things the way you want to. If made even a basic attempt at unbiased research you wouldn't have come to this conclusion, that's how obviously wrong it is.
Qxe4
Like what, and why couldn't you do what I did at 14: "GET A JOB!", at least for the summer?
Lesse, when I was last living in Ontario (Whitby), I made the mistake of hiring a 15 or 16 year old kid to mow my lawn in the summer. Paid him $20 a week for about 30 minutes work, lazy ass that I was to mow my own lawn. I figured that was a damn fair wage at $40/hour.
But, noooo! The neighbors, who, up until that point were rather friendly, revealed their socialist selves and complained "How dare you enslave a boy to mow your lawn! He should be playing! Clearly you are cheating on your taxes to have that much money." In never occurred to them that if they stopped buying enough beer and cigarettes each week to get drunk out of their gourds on Fridays and Saturdays and set themselves up for lung cancer in 20 years (why not? what with free health care), they too could hire a kid to mow their lawns.
In Liberty, Rene
it prefers to congregate
it is not a solitary animal
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
The cash-for-clunkers program was not an US-only phenomenon. Wikipedia lists at least 10 countries were a similar scrappage scheme was in place in 2009: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scrappage_program
The German equivalent was called Umweltprämie and although it was highly criticized for being wasteful, it was also very, very popular.
Free Manning, jail Obama.
Yes, that part of my statement is pretty subjective. The first part of my statement was not. Military spending is the single largest item in our budget. If you honestly want to reduce spending, you look for where the most spending is first. No tea-partier has done so. The only logical conclusion is that they are not honestly interested in reducing spending. Since you're such a fan of logic, please tell me where mine is wrong.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
That's an artifact of the top 1% of income earners paying over 40% of all federal income tax.
The top 1% of income earners earn 23.5% of income. Note, however, that the top 1% of income earners ALSO pay very, very low tax rates on social security and investments, which is where their income comes from.
A middle-class person might pay a 28% marginal tax rate on money they earn by working. A rich person pays a 15% tax rate on money they make by already having money.
If anyone in the top 1% of earners thinks that's a bad deal, I would be happy to trade places with them.
paintball
Oh also, concerning the way I want to see things. I'd really love for there to be a viable party that actually wants to reduce the size of our government and restore individual liberties. I'm no fan of Obama, he's scarcely better than Bush. But I haven't seen anything that indicates that the Tea Party is anything but a bunch of frightened reactionaries. They certainly show all the hallmarks of an authoritarian movement.
The tea party can say it's about a lot of things. But actions speak louder than words. When they organize to pressure the government to cut the largest source of spending in the budget, I will believe them that they seriously want to reduce the deficit. That hasn't happened, and I'm not optimistic that it will happen.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
I'm sorry, what? US health care was working well except for the tax and regulations? Well, you certainly seem to be enjoying the drugs they're giving you. Out in the real world, where people care about things like output per unit of input, otherwise known as productivity, US healthcare costs a bomb for some pretty shitty results. If you want to talk about a successful health system, quote Singapore, as people who actually know something about this field do.
I hope you understand why that plan would be unpopular, is impractical, and no rational politician would actually vote for it.
Think about it: a good number of Americans are willing to go to war to keep gas prices low. Do you think they will appreciate it if gas prices rise double for no reason other than some people (you) don't like their cars? Not to mention there's a good portion of the country where people couldn't ride the train even if they wanted to.
I think you underestimate the power of propaganda. I highly doubt you could find a single, average, American war supporter that believes the wars were over oil.
Simple: tax gas heavily, exempt diesel. Tractors and trucks can keep operating at current rates, but Hummers are no longer used for daily commutes.
HOWEVER, that would simply result in the strawman of bad-bad-commuters being shown for what it is, while the real problem of electric power production by burning of fossil fuels remains untouched. But at least some people would stop barking at the wrong tree.
Today much energy is spent on making vehicles drive themselves. But this problem has already been solved and it's called trains. You could also add relatively hardware to a car at the time of construction, or as a retrofit for full-frame vehicles on which attachment would be relatively simple, to permit them to operate on a light railway, such as an elevated monorail. But immediately we can use available and highly compatible train technology to serve the most populated markets if we only provide sufficient public transportation and safe, comfortable foot and bicycle paths to serve those who we expect to ride it.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I met a long-time Republican state legislative type. When he decided to do something else, he ran his campaign on legalization of prostitution and drugs! The result was predictable, but somehow I do not think your complaints apply to him! Anyway, saying tea party platform is ignoring reality. The rank and file are trying to deal with some critical issues, with no competent leadership. When you talk about platform, you are dealing with theater, and I figure pretty much a Republican coop attempt. Really the only thing the Republican economics policies have going for them is that Obama's economics policies make the Republican policies look good!. Just today, "respectable" people are talking about the real unemployment figures. Now you know how this works. Every since Nixon, every administration has tweaked the study protocol and it always somehow reduces the unemployment numbers. Now it turns out if you take the Reagan or even the Clinton protocol, the unemployment numbers are 22%. This is *nationally*, not Detroit! And is it not great!Timmy say we are getting a consensus to nationalize all the real estate mortgages to avoid foreclosures. Now it happens all the money would end up with the banks. We spent 2.3 trillion on bailout so far and here is another 3 trillion coming. Can you say "hyper-inflation". So tell me what the so-called "tea party platform does to employ another 20 million people? The rank and file know in their guts it does nothing.
Your logic really sucks, it's so bad I hope you are drunk or something. As an analogy, consider my personal budget. The biggest single expense is my rent, and yet, if I am personally going to try to cut costs, it is one of the last things I am going to change. You don't have to focus on the single largest item in order to cut spending.
That is just your logic. Now I am going to mock your information gathering skills. Tom Price, for example, has proposed a budget that reduces military spending, along with practically anything else. I haven't investigated it deeply enough to see if it is a rational budget, and I suspect it is not overall politically viable, but it is something.
Now I am done mocking your information gathering skills, I am going to mock your general knowledge of the budget. Defense spending over the past 50 years has dropped or remained fairly stable (viewable here), and it's reasonable to assume it will continue to drop or remain stable into the future, especially as Iraq and Afghanistan wind down (let's hope we don't start anymore wars after that). In other words, defense spending is a manageable expense. Entitlement spending is exactly the reverse. It is continuing to grow, so much that even if we cut military spending completely, we would not be able to cover it all. Here is the relevant pretty graphic. Notice that Medicaid is the main growing expense there, and that actually, if you include the recently passed healthcare plan, entitlement spending is growing much faster than that. In other words, you can focus on military spending all you want, but that alone is not going to fix the budget.
Now I am done mocking you, I will make a prediction. As with all forward-looking predictions, this is speculation, and may include inaccurate statements. The budget issue is the most important issue facing the next decade, as the baby boomers leave the workforce and begin to collect money from the government, putting the US on the path of fiscal ruin. The democrats led by Obama had a chance to address the issue their way, but they didn't. As a result, the balance of power will swing back to the Republicans in the next few elections, and we will see if their competence has improved at all since the last time they controlled government. If it has, then they will have the chance to remake the federal government according to their liking. If they can do it without cutting defense spending, then that's what happens. I suspect they ultimately will cut defense spending though, since it's such a convenient place to cut.
Qxe4
you got the mistaken notion that republicans like any sort of freedom. The libertarians are probably more in line of how you're describing the republicans, and after libertarians, democrats usually score higher on freedom issues, republicans tend to be very authoritarian when it comes to issues like morality and privacy.
But everyone can usually agree that republicans tend not to understand issues as is demonstrated by the post I'm replying to.
The defining advantage of high speed rail, restaurant cars, when things go wrong generally things slow down
Let me introduce you to a little concept me and a few hundred thousand scientists like to call "momentum".
Here's a portrait of what happens when things go forcibly wrong on a massive object moving at a quarter the speed (or slower) of the proposed system:
http://marketrewind.blogspot.com/2010/05/european-train-wreck.html
Mechanical failure of the train itself MAY just result in it slowing down. But there's also track failure to consider, or tampering, or some idiot putting logs in front of a train (and yes, a single large log can derail a train as was done to a local fright/coal train near where I live a year or two ago).
No hassle at the train station, buy you ticket, dump your luggage and get on the train, no strip searches, no harassed children, no you name sounds like somebody else's name
All because no-one uses the train. What happens if it becomes a primary route? Just one or two incidents and the TSA is there with a body scanner.
no stolen notebooks and cameras
What the hell?
On a train you not only get stuff stolen at the station but also from you while you sleep. Never taken a train in Europe, have you?
Of course in the 21st century private cabin
What makes you think there will be more than a handful of space-wasting private cabins on a train? What makes you think to try and make it profitable they will not pack in seats like airlines do?
how much can yet get down on they way there and on the way back and still enjoy the restaurant car and of course the view.
While you are "enjoying" $4 cokes from the single restaurant on the train I'll be eating a fine meal in whatever city I arrived at long before you because I travelled by plane.
Airports are hellish but they are at least a compressed hell. I have have been on a number of trains and while they can be fun for a lark they are not an efficient means of travel. You might as well advocate crossing the Atlantic via boat for all the same reasons you just gave...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
No, public transportation in large parts of the US sucks. Here in England, even given the disgustingly expensive costs of tickets on much of the rail network and the lack of a high-speed network, train travel is a substantially nicer experience than car travel. London to Cambridge. Manchester to Leeds. London to Manchester. Leeds to Edinburgh. All of these journeys and many more are faster, more reliable, more comfortable, more fun and set you up better to work when done by train vs done by car. Not to mention the joys of train travel vs the hideousness of car travel when you have kids.
Btw, re buses. In London, the bus network is regulated vs the rest of the UK where it's not. Consequently, buses are more highly used, more reliable, more frequent, and used by a wider cross-section of society than in the rest of the UK.
I think you underestimate the power of understanding what you read. I said that a good number of Americans would be willing to go to war for oil, not that they thought we went to war for oil. There's a difference.
Qxe4
As an analogy, consider my personal budget. The biggest single expense is my rent, and yet, if I am personally going to try to cut costs, it is one of the last things I am going to change. You don't have to focus on the single largest item in order to cut spending.
You should still seriously consider it. If you're going deeply into debt, reducing your rent by taking in a roommate or moving back home is a great way to save money. If you're unwilling to consider changing your living situations, you're not really serious about saving money.
Now I am going to mock your information gathering skills. Tom Price, for example
Tom Price is a Republican representative. A Republican moving to reduce the defense budget is a breath of fresh air, but doesn't do much to indicate that the tea party is anything but a tool of the Republican party.
In other words, defense spending is a manageable expense. Entitlement spending is exactly the reverse. It is continuing to grow, so much that even if we cut military spending completely, we would not be able to cover it all.
Clearly we do have to get entitlement spending under control. But we should take care of the low hanging fruit first. We could cut military spending in half, and we'd still have the largest military in the world by a very large margin. We should do this. Today.
Cutting military spending is one place where the small-government right and pacifist left should be able to work together to do some good. I understand why it's so hard to cut entitlements. No one wants to deny medication to Grandma. Military spending however is a no-brainer. How people can push for the former and ignore the latter is just beyond me.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
All true, but it makes perfect sense if you consider Greyhound's business model.
They're essentially in the business of catering to people who can't drive, and getting them from one place to another as cheaply as possible. The more places they can go, the better a job of that they're doing. If people want to get somewhere quickly, they don't take Greyhound, they take Southwest Airlines.
I am officially gone from
Now you're just grasping at straws to support your own personal viewpoint. Me personally, I am not going to cut my rent until I am utterly desperate. You can prioritize differently if you want to.
A lot of people in the tea party movement prioritize cuts in a certain way. You personally have a different set of priorities. This doesn't change the fact that they have centered around economic issues.
PS If you continue to say stupid things, I will continue to mock you.
Qxe4
Here's another question. If Tea Partiers are honestly in favor of small government and reducing the deficit, why have so many of them accepted Farm Subsidies? Stephen Fincher, Marlin Stutzman, Clint Didier, Michele Bachmann, Kristi Noem, all speak at tea party rallies and tote the small governemnt, free market line. Yet, they've all received farm subsidies.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
Your argument is that certain politicians are hypocrites, and you expect this to be a point, how? People are hypocrites, politicians are hypocrites, it's been well known for centuries and goes without saying.
Qxe4
Well, why don't the tea partiers make a bigger deal over this? They'll rant and rave about socialism when we talk about welfare. But they'll happily vote for people who have received handouts from the government. What this indicates to me is that they don't care about the handouts themselves, but who is getting them. Handouts to the poor, that's socialism. Handouts to the rich, that's just business.
When angry middle aged white guys start ranting at rallies about subsidies their own candidates have received I'll believe it's just a few odd hypocrites. For now though, it looks like the whole movement is hypocritical.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
The only movement I know of that is not hypocritical in some way or another is the Free Software movement led by Richard Stallman, and that's only because he has worked carefully to avoid hypocrisy.
Tea partiers are hypocritical because, much like you, they are only seeing one side of the picture and don't have a complete view of the information. The difference is both of you are seeing different sides. When you see welfare, you see poor people being helped. When they see welfare, they see freeloaders taking advantage of the system. Both are true representations, but neither one is a complete picture. The truth is there ARE freeloaders in the welfare system, and also that there are poor people who need help.
Ignorant people often point to hypocrisy as if it is the ultimate evil. In reality, it doesn't matter too much because voters would rather elect someone who flip-flops but does what they want, than elect someone who consistently does what they don't want.
Qxe4
If Chicago and New York want a high speed rail making a run between their cities, then Chicago and New York should come up with the money to get one laid out. The federal government should only provide regulations/recommendations on track/train compatibility. If it makes enough sense then eventually every city will be connected to the growing high speed train network.
Stop subsidizing the interstate system from the general federal budget and fund it with federal gas taxes and licensing of commercial drivers only. Roadways are needed and shouldn't be 'sin taxed' out of existence but at the same time they shouldn't be a favored son over the possibly better railway technology.
The people that want to use rail should pay to have their rail system funded, the people that want to continue to use roads should pay for the maintenance and expansion of the current road system. They aren't mutually exclusive.
Assuming an online poll counts as 'consolidating' (did you mean confirmed?)
Did you even click the link? The top 10 list was whittled down from 5000. That's what I mean by "consolidated".
anything, and ignoring that Dick Armey and Ryan Hecker are not leaders of any tea party,
Dick was on the Daily Show two days ago talking an awful lot like he thought he was part of the Tea Party movement. But who else do you want me to throw in their? Someone is setting up rallies.
did you even read that contract? More than half the issues mentioned there are economic issues.
Half of what I said was economic issues.
Note the things you don't see. You don't see "Get our country back for God-fearin white Americans", you don't see anything about immigration. Now, the majority may feel some way or another on those issues, but the thing that holds them together is the economic. If that goes then they break up into segments, the religious right, the anti-immigration group, etc.
Those are the exact conservative talking points. Regardless:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/16/us/politics/16rallly.html
Actually your entire post shows a lack of understanding of political realities. For example, gun-rights advocates aren't divided along the dem/rep lines, they are divided in a rural/urban way. The NRAA pays a lot of money to Democrats. In 2008, 20% of their budget went to Democrats.
Oooo, 20%? It's not like they're an industry lobby group paying off whoever they can to get what they want or anything...
Besides, urban areas lean much more towards Democrats and rural areas tend to be more Republican. They all have a lot of the same correlation.
You've also misunderstood the power balance. The tea-partiers are not following Newt Gengrich, Newt Gengrich is following tea-partiers. He knows how to attract a crowd, and he's saying all the right things to make them like him, but he is following them.
Huh? That's how every political party works. I don't think that there's people with mind control powers or dictators forcing anyone to march in lockstep. That doesn't mean that there aren't figureheads, and the figureheads that get reported on are current or former Republican leadership.
63% of mainstream Americans stated that their views were closer the Tea Party Movement than to president Obama (mainstream as opposed to the political class). You better take anything like that seriously, whether you agree with it or not.
80% of Americans think that the government is covering up the existence of aliens. Many, many people will believe stupid things. Regardless, poll results show a much fewer numbers actually following the Tea Partiers. Most people tend to be apathetic (non-voters are more common than voters for any presidential candidate in quite some time).
You're repeated attempts to paint things in broad strokes account for a lot of your stupidity. Stop doing it. It only makes you dumber./quote> Again, depends on the broad strokes. It's a broad stroke to say that the average physician has an MD (a small minority don't, but the vast majority do). If statistics can be found to back up the stroke, it's not uncalled for. Again, the vast majority of Tea Partiers are the conservative Republican base. They're not some vast number of untapped libertarians coming out of the woodwork, to rain economic theory manna from the heaven, so don't pretend that they're only interested in economic issues.
Let me rephrase then, because you are right that there is a difference:
I highly doubt that you could find any American willing to go to war for oil, given that propaganda is so effective at providing fake reasons for Americans.
Lets pretend that no propaganda existed though. I still doubt that you'd find any sizable portion of the population willing to kill to keep gas prices low. Your claim is pretty bold, and lacking evidence. Unless the American's you are referring to happen to be the past Presidential Administration.
There's a significant problem of specialization there - you're talking a *trade* in that it's something people spend a significant portion of their lives studying. You're going to tell somebody how to do something that is potentially extremely hazardous if they skip some mundane detail? Telecommuting is great for fields that it works in, but not everything can be done on the internet.
+1 Disagree
You're right that unemployment is meant as an insurance program - but that isn't how it's always viewed. In some seasonal fields unemployment is counted on as supplemental income (IE wildland firefighters). How many people do you know that sat out their entire unemployment benefits simply because the jobs shown available were "beneath" them? Job searching takes time, no doubt about that, but convince me that it's worth several months of *full time* effort. If you're going on a few weeks without potential leads and aren't starting to dig up applications for retail or part time work to pay the bills, I have zero interest in underwriting your insurance plan.
+1 Disagree
I would agree that few Americans would answer affirmatively to the question 'would you kill for lower gas prices?' But if you phrase it differently, something like, "do you support military action to maintain peace in the Middle East so oil prices remain low?" I think you'll agree a lot of people would answer yes. It is easy to justify action protecting our interests when you can destroy something 'evil' at the same time, and I think most Americans agree with this. During the buildup to the Iraq war, several bloggers made essentially that argument; I don't remember all of them, but I do remember Orson Scott Card was one of them. Unfortunately I know of no survey that addresses this point specifically, it would be interesting to get a better picture.
Qxe4
So what you're saying is that the Tea Party movement is just politics as usual. That is pretty much what I suspected.
On the topic of welfare, what bothers me isn't that they see welfare recipients as freeloaders. I understand that. What bothers me is that they don't see corporate welfare recipients as freeloaders. If you're against government handouts on principle, you should be against them for everyone. That they don't tells me that their opposition to government handouts is not in fact principled. Knowing that, I see no reason to consider any of their rhetoric as anything but crass political gamesmanship. If you follow the Tea Party movement, you are being used. But to be clear, I hold the Democratic and Republican parties in similar esteem.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
So what you're saying is that the Tea Party movement is just politics as usual. That is pretty much what I suspected.
It's mainly an interesting movement because it seems to be bottom up, similar in some ways to 'moveon.org' on the left. It's worth noting that among the first targets of political action were not primarily Democrats, but Republicans. In part this is because primaries come before general elections, but there is a lot of frustration at political leadership in Washington, and distrust of both parties.
What bothers me is that they don't see corporate welfare recipients as freeloaders.
I am not sure that's actually the case. There is definitely animosity towards TARP, for example. I am not sure what you are specifically referring to by corporate welfare, but I think most people are opposed to it unless of course it benefits them personally.
Qxe4
Perhaps you could think of it this way then; A user owned cooperative owns a monopoly on all natural resources in a given area. Instead of giving those resources away for the price of mining them, the cooperative charges a margin on those goods, and then pays that amount back as a dividend to its shareholders. It matters very little to me whether or not it's a government or private ownership of these resources, as long as someone charges more for them than the extraction costs.
Military spending accounts for more of our budget than any other program.
That is true, when considered as a single item. However, is it really fair to lump all defense related spending under a "defense" category while simultaneously drawing distinctions between "medicare & medicaid" and "social security"? Why not combine "medicare & medicaid" and "social security" into an "entitlements" category as 39% of the budget? You will notice that the "defense" budget includes many other items besides just direct military spending (i.e. guns and bombs), which is what most people think of when they think of defense spending. For example, the "defense" budget includes veterans affairs, veterans pensions, part of NASA's budget, interest on debts incurred in past wars, FBI counter-terrorism, Department of Energy defense related expenditures, etc. My point is that whether or not "defense" makes up the biggest single budget item depends upon how you slice the pie and it is no surprise that different groups like to slice it differently to make ideologically motivated points. Lies, damned lies, and statistics.
A) Consider a hypothetical Shinkansen from Boston to NYC (will require new tracks which will require new rights-of-way, all-told it will cost billions of dollars and decades of time).
0) US Shinkansen - maybe 2.0 hours how much do you think?
1) Acela "High Speed" Train - 3.5 hours, about $130
2) Regular speed train - 4.0 hours, about $100
3) Chinatown bus - 4.0 hours, $15.
Do you think that the riders of the Chinatown bus will jump to a Shinkansen? They are unwilling to jump to Acela at present because of the big price difference.
B) Consider that while billions are poured into "high speed rail" there are even more billions pouring into investment in higher speed communications, better virtual meetings, 3-D holographic images, etc. So when your high speed rail is ready to go (in maybe 15-20 years), it might be that the business traveler (the one who is the least price sensitive) prefers virtual meetings to travel.
Also, virtual meetings can go anywhere there is internet; high speed rail only goes where there are tracks.
There is one issue with high-speed rail I seldom see mentioned in articles and discussions, and that is this: it is impossible to run both passenger and freight trains over the same rails at vastly different speeds. Because a curved section of track has to be banked for the fastest train that will run on it, or it will tend to fly off the rails to the outside of the curve. Freight trains are much heavier (and thus much slower) than passenger trains, so when they pass over track banked for a passenger train, they exert shearing force on the top of the rail in the direction of the inside of the curve. My father, a life-long railroad man, once showed me a dual-use curved section of track he'd laid only two years prior. The top outer edges of the rails had a such steep bevels worn on them that the track was going to have to be replaced soon, or freight trains would begin to slip off the rails (derail) toward the inside. Those passenger trains were running at between 70 and 80 miles an hour, while the freight trains were averaging 45 to 50 mph. Think how much worse the situation will be if we try and use the same tracks for 50 mph freight trains and 100-150 mph passenger service?! The only sane (from an engineering standpoint) way to do it would be to secure additional right of way and build a second set of passenger rail tracks either right next to the freight lines, or elsewhere if that were more efficient. But no one who understands the political and legal system here in the States would bet a penny that that could ever be done.
The Federal Reserve currently gives near 0% interest to those who wish to gamble... we give them near zero money to buy treasuries and create a ponzi scheme of tax payer rip off. Why fund government debt from treasuries and give wall street free money to make money for doing absolutely nothing? Here's the practical solution: instead of giving zero interest money to wall street, make them pay reasonable interest and it will force them into productive investment. Instead, give near 0% interest money to infrastructure! An extensive maglev system can easily be funded on near 0% money... also we could do the same thing with nuclear power and other stuff required to energize and power such a system... this would also solve the fresh water crisis as new fresh water can easily be made from nuclear powered desalination... so are you going to mod me down to protect the masters on wall street? Or mod me up so we can do something about this situation we're in...
I think you'll find plenty of europeans especially british died
179 brits died. 4400 americans died. Britain (AFAIK, correct me if I'm wrong), spent 7 billion pounds = 12 billion dollars. America spent 3 trillion. The rest of the world lost 139 people. However the point of my post is that if you accept the following:
1. People should have to pay high gas taxes to offset the negative externalities of oil
2. The Iraq war is the a negative externalities of oil
3. People pay gas taxes for oil
Then: some of those taxes should be an aid package to the united states, britian, and everywhere else that fought the war
If you don't like one of those points, then my argument falls apart, and I'm okay with that.
Bush's middle eastern revenge tour of iraq and afghanistan
This whole thing was an utter disaster. I wish it never was fought.
go fuck yourself you out of touch insular prick.
I'm sorry about the insular nature of my post. I'm sick of Europeans saying "imperalist america" and reaping the benefits. I'm tired of being told to destroy my country with high gas taxes. I'm tired of my countrypeople doing the dirty work and getting yelled at for it.
Responsibility is an addiction
Virtue is a temptation
Community is a cartel
Well, first of all, citizens can already see the monetary costs of wars in the Middle East, etc. Hiding little taxes here and there to nickle and dime people to death seems dishonest and cowardly. Simply say: "here are the costs for each of the things we're doing" and then apply appropriate taxes right out in the open (income tax, sales tax, etc) so people can see what it's costing them. If they don't want to pay that much, they have the option of working to change government policy such that spending is reduced on items deemed less worthy by the taxpaying public.
Secondly, even if you're buying into the idea that fossil fuel use is causing some sort of climate shift (and that's far from universally accepted, especially among the people you're trying to tax), your ability to quantify a monetary cost specifically associated with the exact effects of that particular influence is virtually nil. So again, you're back to hiding costs and taxes from the public, which is dishonest.
Most cryptic is your comment about giving this money back to citizens. If you're going to hand it back to them (minus huge amounts of administrative costs, corruption, accounting errors, etc), it's a completely inefficient mechanism of simply moving cash around for the purposes of trying to make a point.
I say we eliminate gas taxes AND subsidies across the board. Let the gas cost what it costs. If you're looking to educate the public on a particular issue they should be more informed about, you do that via public education campaigns; not taxing them to death with hidden taxes. The complexity of the income tax code is another area that does nothing but adds hidden costs for citizens to pay. The whole thing is simply solved: apply a blanket tax to all non-essential goods and services sold to end-users only (otherwise you're hiding taxes within the supply chain) and adjust them to sufficient levels as needed in order to cover spending. That provides a progressive, fair, and humane tax structure that's overtly transparent to citizens, cannot be avoided by anyone dealing with a legitimate business, and which can fund all necessary government operations.
Of course, I would also eliminate all other government subsidies (excluding temporary, emergency public assistance to individuals in immediate need) because if you're subsidizing a product at one end and taxing it at another, all you're doing is adding overhead, creating inefficiencies, and begging for corruption.
-- "Government is the great fiction through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else."
Because the job market's fucked right now. High unemployment and low job creation numbers. Beyond that if you're not employed currently, there's a weird bias *against* you(see: Here.).
Non impediti ratione cogitationus.
We still have to solve the auto problem!
Was supposed to point to California
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
"I don't know, why did you try?"
I (and greenman) are countering the "we would do better to double CO2 levels" part.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
No, but you could get a single mom of 2-3 kids to run books. Do phone support. You still need people doing office work.
Or serving milkshakes to rich people. While their kids shoot other kids.
All those job-categories require training - which costs additional money. Plus, those jobs are already taken by people who already have those skills.
And where would the government dig up all those jobs? By increasing its bureaucracy by additional million or two workers?
And John Henry was replaced by a machine just because we say he was replaced by a machine.
No, he was replaced because he died. And because machine does a better job for less money and faster.
Even if we did nothing I'd rather pay someone to dig a hole one day and fill it in the next than let them sit around doing nothing on unemployment & welfare.
Oh, so what you are saying is that your problem with welfare and unemployment is actually that you hate poor people?
Cause, YOU wanting to see them waste everyone's money, time and energy is the reason enough for them being paid to do meaningless jobs.
Siphoning even more money from the system (which gets its money from the tax payers) then just giving them welfare - WHILE PRODUCING ZERO VALUE.
Regardless of the fact that many of those on welfare are in that situation because they are unemployable - due to injury, illness or birth defect.
You just want them "off their asses". Cause they didn't deserve to sit. Cause they are lazy. And lazy is evil and they should be punished.
Because you say so.
If drugs were legalized, it'd take away a huge cash incentive to go make or sell drugs.
And if pigs could fly, maybe your "arguments" would hold water.
I don't remember hearing stories from my grandpa how his family was 'entertained' while he was away. It wasn't an easy situation for anyone, but it got America through.
Your grandfather father lived before invention of radio and written word? Are you sure you are thinking of America and not African savanna while our ancestors still lived there?
Radio, TV, Internet and even libraries are all both forms of entertainment AND sources of information and education.
In many cases inseparable AND a prerequisite for education and job seeking.
If everything was 'machines machines machines' then why do we hear about people being laid off when production goes down? Shouldn't there just be stories about how Cat had to flip some breakers?
Like I said... 1 man with a machine replaces 50 with a shovel. But when there are no ditches to dig... even that one man has no job.
And just as there is profit to be made from hiring 50 men with machines when ditches are a wanted commodity, so are there cuts to be made in workforce when no one needs a new ditch.
No, but you train them and they're a trucker or a pilot or a machine operator. I bet a majority of CCC workers weren't brick layers, or cement pourers, but somehow they managed to build the stuff that we've used for the last 70 years.
And that again costs ADDITIONAL money. For nonexistent jobs.
But it would sure as hell create a shitload of that particular workforce - which would devalue their skills across the board.
Why pay someone $10 per hour when there are 100 of his colleagues waiting outside for that same job?
$5 should be fine. Or $3. Or $1. Or a bowl of soup.
And again... Where 50 unskilled workers were needed back then, now you need 1.
In 90% of the country there is a reason they're called 'divided highways'.
Actually, that is not the reason why they are called that.
And have you ever wondered why didn't they just put more lanes there when they
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
"179 brits died. 4400 americans died. "
Considering it wasn't even our war thats 179 too many. And you might like to find out the percentages of total troop deployments those represent.
"I'm tired of my countrypeople doing the dirty work and getting yelled at for it."
No one is asking you to. Your country takes it upon itself to be world policeman. No one is fooling themselves that this is some sort of charitable work - the USA only does it when it has something to gain. Otherwise you'd have invaded Zimbabwe and deposed Mugabe - a despot just as bad as Saddam - years ago not to mention a dozen other tin pot african dictators.