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Obama Calling For $53B For High Speed Rail
Antisyzygy writes "President Obama is calling for $53B to be appropriated for the construction of high-speed rail in the United States over the next 6 years. Assuming Congress approves this plan, the funding would be spent on developing and/or improving trains that travel at approximately 250 miles/hour, as well as spent on connecting existing rail lines to new developed high speed lines."
Amtrak runs on commercial rails. They've always been a second class citizen.
But I agree you can't run passenger rail on freight tracks and expect either high speed or prompt routing.
But you needn't worry about it, because this is never going to happen.
Someone should point out to Mr. Obama that he already spent all the money. We couldn't possibly afford this now.
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Yes, I had a similar experience to you: The rail connection between San Diego and Los Angeles is also just a single track for part (most?) of the way. Two major cities not far apart and they can't even put in two tracks. As a European living in the US, I find this mindboggling. I bet that most emerging countries don't have this problem! Truly pathetic! I often tell my friends in Europe that the US is a weird mix between a 1st and a 3rd world country. And don't even get me started on health insurance here!
When 1person suffers from a delusion,it is called insanity.When many people suffer from a delusion,it is called religion
High speed trains vs Airplane? With all the crap going on with airlines and privacy and charges every increasing for baggage and less and less room on the planes and higher and higher prices...yea a train sounds nice right now. Plus the jobs in can create and the decrease in commuter traffic and pollution (if it works well and people start using it) will be well worth the $ spent. Perhaps we can take a little money out of that huge defense budget and put it towards something that might be useful for the country for once?
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High speed rail would need its own right-of-way.
Well of course, but we're not just talking about upgrading the northeast passage are we? We're talking about upgrading the entire infrastructure. One that's been built over 150+ years and includes many tunnels, bridges and cuts over large areas of land. Most likely they are not going to build a second set of tracks. Someone down the line will say "Hey, we can cut the costs in half if we just upgrade the existing tracks" Perhaps they will build new tracks, but that's probably going to cost a lot more than 53 billion. Its likely that they will build such a set of tracks so that they are dual use for both passenger service and freight, so we're right back in the same boat. And because they are politicians and don't have to deal with the details of their plans, they will just make token changes that seem to solve the problem, but really don't.
To really have something like they do in France or Japan, we have to really want it and there has to be a generation of people who want to really make it great and support it, and I don't think we have that anymore. In Japan, a 3 hour rail ride across country doesn't sound so bad when compared with a 45 minute plane ride plus 45-60 minutes waiting in an airport + 30 minutes parking, etc (about 2 hours). But in the US it would be a 12 hour rail ride cross country (even at 250 mph) vs. a 4-5 hour plane ride.
High speed rail for the US is a dumb idea. We have an EXTREMELY functional interstate system for local travel, and for all other domestic travel we have airplanes (very efficient and low cost if tickets are bought in advance. Don't like fees? Fly southwest).
High Speed Rail would have the EXACT same security measures as airplanes, except they would be even less safe as blowing up track is easy, especially when you have hundreds of miles to choose from. I would be shocked if there weren't more deaths due to high speed rail than plane travel.
It also isn't necessary for the distribution of freight. The current rail system will continue to serve that purpose for years, as well as the large trucks that are used to transport goods and services.
High speed rail is useful in china because they don't have the built up infrastructure the US does for airplanes (or trains for that matter). If you were just starting a rail system in the US, of course you would build high speed rail. But we already have a rail system, and it works just fine.
An additional question: Where would it be efficient? Very few cities have the public transportation infrastructure to support such a train station. Remember, you're competing with driving and airplanes. To replace driving you need a public transporation system. To replace planes you need it to be cheaper, safer, and actually faster. For driving locations you ou get: Boston, New York City, Chicago, and (so I'm told) Washington DC, Portland, and San Fransisco. Is there anywhere else? Where would it replace airports?
Obligatory link to the Simpsons Monorail song! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jF_yLodI1CQ
What we really need to do to improve transportation in the US is to get our head out of ass with this stupid security bullshit at the airports. If we don't do it in the airports, then they are just going to imply the same silly restrictions on new trains as well, and then we won't be any better off.
Ok...and exactly WHAT orifice is Obama going to pull this spare $63B out of?
Unless you start cutting some spending...quit fucking trying to spend more!!!!
Bring the troops home then. Deal?
Drill baby drill - on Mars
Easy. He'll raise taxes. Of course I'm sure this will make businesses love him, and the people too. Especially when your economic situation is very close to a depression style event.
Om, nomnomnom...
For what it's worth, I used to enjoy walking to work. I still ponder ditching the car from time to time, it would save me money overall. I used to be all about "faster" too, but when I was forced into walking (lost my license for three months a few years ago) I found I enjoyed it, relaxed, and actually ended up feeling I had more time because I had more time to think, and I stopped wasting so much time watching TV etc, because I actually started going for walks in the evening as well. The exercise of course helped me to feel better too, so I've made sure to keep up with it. So many people say they have no time, when it's just a matter of stress and tech addiction making them feel that way. It's so easy to piss away the hours checking for messages on Slashdot, Facebook, gamng, whatever..
which is totally what she said
$53 billion over six years is chump change. We need to cut spending by $500 billion per year and raise taxes by $500 billion per year to maybe dig ourselves out of this hole in two decades. We can't simply stop spending altogether until we pay off the debt, so you can't go faulting every program that costs $9 billion per year for the debt problem.
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This is a great idea, but how is he going to pay for it?
He is not going to pay for it . . . the taxpayers are going to pay for it.
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How about pulling out of two very costly wars that were lost years ago? $53,000,000,000 is almost nothing compared to what has been wasted in Iraq and Afghanistan. Hell, and at least it'd be an expenditure that directly helps the American taxpayer.
If spent properly, $16 billion will come back as tax income directly (by spent properly, I mean "if you have a bank account in Ireland, there's no need to apply for the funds, contractor). After contractor profits and material cost, probably $10-ish billion of that will go to guys actually doing work. Those people will no longer be unemployed, making a significant dent in the unemployment rate.
On top of than that, since this money goes largely to people without money, that money will get spent quickly, meaning products will be bought, businesses will be kept afloat by those sales, and those businesses will lay fewer people off by the truckload. Hopefully someone can convince them to spend it on things with a Made In America stamp.
The investment will likely mostly pay for itself when the lines are leased to private companies to run the lines after they're built.
The American people benefit by the additional infrastructure.
This is exactly how government should spend money. But obviously that's a huge amount of money and its application should be careful, thoughtful, and efficient. That's usually where these things go awry; they let private business tell them "what they need" instead of hiring an insanely over-qualified team to actually manage the job with Uncle Sam's interests in mind.
Why the knee-jerk reaction? Government spending money on infrastructure is hardly the same thing as you or I shelling out $63B for a super-cool backyard train set.
Consider the following:
Building a rail line like this creates jobs, especially in the demographic that is currently stuck in the welfare loop. When these people get their paychecks, they pay taxes. Plus, they have money to spend on retail, who pay both taxes and their employees...see where I'm going with this? Granted, taxes only amount for so much, but this is a case of the government putting money into an essentially closed loop.
After construction, the rail would then be held by the government, right? I would imagine riding the rails would not be free-of-charge, so if they can get commuters to ride it, they should be able to make a considerable amount in revenue.
Beyond the direct jobs created by the construction, consider how much material would be needed. If the material could be collected and precessed in the U.S., then refer back to the benefits of the government directly creating jobs.
I am not an economist, and I'm also pragmatic about this, so I really can't say whether or not this rail system would be worth it. But I do know enough about economics to know that government spending is not necessarily a bad thing. The only time you really get into trouble is when you establish excessive free programs with little or no revenue to cover them, not when you're building lasting infrastructure.
You want to actually inspire people? Challenge us to make it to Mars before the end of the decade. It would be a true show of superiority, unlike building something China has had for years, and we might just get some useful technology out of it.
Plus, if it doesn't work we can just fake it like last time!
The main advantage of a train is that they don't generally require acre upon acre of sprawling concrete infrastructure to be built outside of town just to interface with passengers. Passengers don't need to be shipped to these suburban monstrosities, you can build a train station slap bang in the middle of town within walking or short cab ride range of the final destinations. Over medium distances like between the main coastal cities, trains are faster than planes if you count the door-to-door journey time. Over longer distances like coast-to-coast then the plane makes more sense.
The "terrorist target" argument is getting a bit tiresome on /. If you're really that paranoid, sit in the house and don't move. High speed trains have been running all over the world for decades and I don't know of any that have been blown up.
No. Roads fill to capacity no matter how big you build them. Add another lane and your commute might get a bit quicker for a few years, but road users will adapt. Developers spread their suburbs farther to the edge and people take advantage of the 'quick commute.' Before you know it's back to bumper-to-bumper again because a few thousand extra cars have appeared on this new road. Spending on adding new roads is a terrible waste.
Maybe. But deficit spending to get the economy moving is a whole lot more productive than deficit spending to get defence contractors rich at the cost of the US taxpayer's dollars and the Iraqi citizens' lives.
Drill baby drill - on Mars
This isn't a troll, I would really like someone to explain the situations where a high speed train is better than an airplane or a car.
Its faster than cars and more energy efficient than cars or aircraft, and, as I understand, the stations are smaller for their capacity than aircraft making them easier to locate in convenient places and integrated efficiently with local public transit networks.
The security will be just as bad as at an airport if the government runs it, especially considering that just as many trains get bombed by terrorists as airplanes.
As apparently a large number of people have forgotten this in less than a decade (judging from the comments on topics like this on Slashdot), the event that precipitated the creation of the TSA and the intense focus on airline security wasn't airline bombings, it was hijacked airliners being used as a manned bombs against high-population targets chosen by the hijackers. This is somewhat impractical with trains which, even if they are hijacked, have very little freedom of maneuver once the hijackers take control.
Wouldn't we be better served either putting that 53 Billion into our roads and infrastructure?
High-speed rail is infrastructure and, as such, is not an alternative to "roads and infrastructure".
There goes that false dichotomy again. It isn't rail lines or food. They are doing both. No amount of train building rationing will make food magically grow faster. Train builders are usually not very good farmers. And what country is this that is building high speed rail whilst its citizens starve?
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Which is exactly what the US did. Doh!
Shaking up the freight trains is a really bad idea, while the US lags far, far behind the rest of the rich world(save Canada) in passenger trains, we have a much more efficient freight system than Europe does. It's probably one of the most "hidden" strengths of our economy, and the reason China can actually sell goods to people on the East coast for as cheap as they do.
Monstar L
They see it as simple as this. My debt is 1000 dollars, my food bill for the year is 1000 dollars so I stop eating for a year and all my troubles will be over... eh yeah... they will.
China is not just catching up, it is not in danger of going in front, it is already there. The Chinese just build the high speed railnetworks that break record speeds over record lengths and order a new train model in the HUNDRETHS. They are re-colonizing Africa often rebuilding the same railroads the Brits used for pretty much the same reason. Get their hands on the amazing amount of raw materials they are going to need and raw materials the US will find it far harder to get.
People tend to think of the US as this superpower but forget that pre-WW2 they were nothing. America entered the war late and we all know what happened when they finally were forced to enter. They got their asses handed to them. It wasn't until the Americans got their act together and ramped up their massive potential that things turned around. And then America fell asleep again under Reagan with the same exact attitude that had led America to become a sitting duck to Japanese expansion. Except this time it is the Chinese and the Chinese need not fear the waking of the American giant. It is to fast asleep and the Chinese are pretty damn big themselves and growing rapidly.
The world is changing and America is watching the Super Bowl on its fat asses believing the bread and circusses. Saw some of it on the BBC and my god it was pathethic. Linking a silly sport with world events? How self congratulitory can you get?
The US is living in a dream world where its economy is in tatters, production is going down hill, it is involved in wars it can't win, has more people in jail then any other country only being beaten per head by ruthless dictatorships and can't even build a 2nd rate rail network...
It is truly sad because unlike most people who see China beating the USA I don't think that is good thing for anyone even people in China. The Chinese government ain't nice and we don't want to see a Chinese run Britisch empire reborn thank you very much.
So America, get of your fat asses and show some of that can do spirit. Do you really want to be known as that place where road bridges are falling apart and everything is made in China?
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You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
The Soviet rail system is vast and excellent in performance, under much worse terrain and weather conditions than in the US. If only the US had such a rail system, we'd be the envy of the world.
As for the unions, I suppose you're thrilled that you don't have to work weekends starting from age 5. But you're probably scared that your job will be outsourced to somewhere with no environmental or labor protection. Somehow you don't think "shareholders" is as bad a word as "unions".
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You do realize that Obama is still trying to clean up what Bush left behind, right? Stuff that was in play during the Bush times will have effect on Obama. You don't seriously think that once Bush leaves, that any issues still going on in the country are now Obama's fault right? Odd enough, your statement makes it seem that way.
The world is how you make it
OK, then how about China, which has spent $40B on high speed rail over the last 4 years, and went from nothing to more miles of high speed track than all of Europe in that time.
Indeed you are right. Over the kind of commute distances in the USA, and given the vast urban, suburban and semi-rural sprawl that characterises large parts of the US, it's very true. Mass transportation doesn't work in large parts of the USA, due to the low densities of housing. Unless you count Aircraft. Which seem to work fine as a mass transit system (see later!)
High speed rail (and by high speed I mean anything that goes at 100mph+) can help with shrinking the sprawl effect though. If you do high speed right, you can co-ordinate express commuter and long distance high-speed trains. The Japanese do it on the Shinkansen. The British on their High Speed routes. The Germans... need I go on.
I used to commute about 20 miles (in each direction) every day, from a commuter village near a small city to a business park in a much larger city. That involved a 10 minute bus ride, followed by a 12 minute train ride, followed by a 5 minute metro ride, followed by a 10 minute walk. That journey took an hour, including all changes, door-to-door. In rush-hour traffic, you're talking about 50 minutes drive. So, despite all those changes - what kept the journey time down? Spending those 12 minutes on the train at (or near) 100mph. It meant I could do 16 of those miles in 12 minutes. I tried going the whole way on the (more frequent) bus. Add 30 minutes.
So High Speed rail can help in the daily commute. In the UK, daily commuters to London come from as far away as Yorkshire (170-200 miles). They can do the bulk of their commute in 1hr 45 minutes.
The big trick with commuting using high-speed rail is plumbing the high-speed rail system into the cities' mass transit systems at either end. By doing this you can start to make longer-distance commutes effective by public transport. Most European cities have their subway, light rail and bus networks closely tied into the intercity train system, usually sharing station sites. That makes a difference. Even just making the nearby city bus routes stop at the front of the station can make a huge difference to this. That's where I think agencies like RTD in Denver have the right idea - bring the trains and the buses into the same place.
The other important thing is that the FRA (Federal Railroad Administration) need to get their heads out of their backsides and quit imposing utterly ridiculous crashworthiness standards on the trains. On a high-speed rail system you put the crashworthiness (or lackofcrash-worthiness) into the infrastructure itself, not the trains. That's what the entire rest of the world does. It means you can use light, efficient train sets, allowing the commuter trains to accelerate all the way to 100mph+ at the same rate as a light rail vehicle. It also reduces the maintenance required to the route, making both the trains and tracks cheaper to run, because of the reduced axle-loadings and lower energy costs. The imposition of a "Positive Train Control" system over the entire existing intercity networks will go a long way to preventing crashes, and once it is implemented, the FRA really need to reconsider their approach.
To be honest, any approach to high speed rail would likely take 20-30 years to truly bed-in. "Transit oriented development" needs to be more than a buzzword - it needs to become second nature - for a true change to work. That means people need to get in the habit of thinking "I will buy this house because it is near a good bus route" or "This house is only 10 minutes walk from the station" in the same way that people currently think of "only 5 minutes from the interstate". That's when the big changes will start. But to get there, you need to reduce the barriers to using transit, and consider raising the barriers for running a car. High Speed Rail can form a part of that.
The final question is what is being competed against? In most of the developed world, the high-speed train networks are often geared around being competitive with airlines on journeys in the 100 - 400 mile area. If you site your stations well, and use
A deficit is something your grandchildren will be paying off. But building infrastructure like this is an investment that your grandchildren will continue making a profit from, too. Certainly a better long-term investment than fighting an overseas war.
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I don't see why getting into the movies doesn't require an extensive security check. Perfect occasion to hurt a lot of people there. Or on a bus, subway, ball game, or even a walk through Times Square. All dense concentrations of people, opportunities to kill many more people than on an airplane. Heck I think a ballgame has more people more exposed and is easier to setup than the wtc was at the time.
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We can't afford it period. Not the people at least. In order to do this right, you would need a huge construction project to build *multiple* railways side by side. Mimic the Interstate system. In fact, I would think putting the new railways close to the Interstate would be a great idea anyways.
If we have multiple personal railways it would alleviate your concerns about commercial rails and right of way. You could dedicate some railways as been one way only. That way you don't have to worry so much about head on collisions and more about distance between trains. Putting in multiple points where a train could pull off to a maintenance track would help as well.
Of course this would cost billions to do which means I hardly see it as being competitive with the airlines. Only reason why a person would choose the same price over an airline is getting rid of the TSA experience and crappy ass experiences flying......
Guess what would happen if we magically had this huge railway infrastructure tomorrow and trains moving 250mph across the US? The Terrorists!
Terrorizers would come out of the woodwork with ample targets at any point along the tracks to sabotage the infrastructure requiring us to absorb billion dollar costs to pay some military industrial complex behemoth to secure the infrastructure and I would still need my nutsack groped and inspected to get on a train that moves at half the speed of a plane.
I am not going to pay for something like that, and giving huge subsidies to private industry to create it either. It's not like all the money given to the Telecoms and all the right of ways resulted in cheaper communications available to people. They still screw us at every opportunity and we are having to fight tooth and nail to keep content companies from influencing/merging with the Telecoms to give us even less service, choices, and competition.
High speed rail? Uh huh....
How about we invest 53 billion working on automated driving. Then I can take my private car AND not have to drive.
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My taxes also pay for roads I'll never drive on, schools I'll never attend, medicine for people I'll never meet, etc. etc.
The right to only pay for what YOU will use in your taxes is not a civil liberty under any sane political philosophy.
There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
Why can't we afford it? The market is willing to buy our debt at attractive interest rates and if the return from this project is greater than the interest rate, then we should do it. A successful high speed rail network would lower road maintenance costs and reduce the need for emergency services. It would lower traffic congestion, which would result in a faster commute for car drivers. Other benefits include lower gas prices which translates into a stronger US economy and less money for petro dictators. IMHO fixing the transportation system is our only chance to pull ourselves out of this mess and that's why we can't afford NOT to build this. Our ability to repay our debt depends on making society more efficient.
hope they have integration with bicycles -- if the new system is anything as good as germany's existing system, it will be amazing. in germany, they have an incredible integration of subway and regional trains, and all station platforms are level with the train - so you can roll bikes on and off the train at any stop, and it continues with bike paths.. it makes getting from A-B with bikes and trains pretty seamless. although, in america, maybe just having a place to lock your bike up at the station might be considered progress.
Why would we want to imitate two countries that have spent the last 15+ years in economic decline (called "the lost decade" in Japan)?
Flawed argument. Nobody proposed anything similar to copying the entire country, it's culture, political problems, history, and economic problems. Not even the entire transportation system or even the entire train system. But they undeniably have the US beat in train technology, and have the world leadership in that technology. It's entirely recommended to learn anything from anyone who has done it well. No need to copy their other shortcomings. It's a groundless argument to claim that when importing any technology from anywhere you're also importing all of that country's worst failings. Even if the trains built with their technology became failures, it's not like the United States economy would sink for 15 years because of that 53 billion. Wikipedia lists US GDP at $14.6 trillion (2010). That's only one year, the train would take several to build, and financing can spread over many years more.
Build your own energy sources from scratch. http://otherpower.com/