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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."
It doesn't matter if it goes 250mph if it sits on the track for an hour waiting for right of way. Granted, this is just one experience, but from reading up after it happened, it seems to be the norm. Back in 1999 I decided to take a leisure trip out to Arizona from Indianapolis and I decided to take a train for fun. Instead of a speedy ride up to Chicago, we ended up waiting for an hour on a side track to get right of way. On the way from Chicago to Flagstaff, AZ, at one point we sat on the tracks during the day for 3 or 4 hours waiting again for right of way. On the return trip the train was 5 hours late getting back to Chicago and I missed my connection train back to Indianapolis.
Sure, you can build a high speed train, but if its run by Amtrak and exists in this countries rail system mentality, it will quickly become worthless. Fix the real issues.
I have an idea! Maybe if the TSA stopped molesting people, air travel would be more pleasant, and you wouldn't have to spend BILLIONS OF DOLLARS on passenger trains. Just an idea, I don't live in the States so I'm not sure how much you like being groped by goons with a badge just so that you can visit your parents.
...is a stable regulatory environment. It's the constant changing of the rules that keeps employers from hiring, not a lack of green technology. I'm sick and tired of Democrats and Republicans using the Treasury as a credit card for their buddies.
it's a function of population density. livability and quality of life go up exponentially if you don't have to deal with traffic and parking in an urban to suburban environments. people often look forlornly at the usa's lagging behind say, south korea for internet connectivity or china for high speed rail. but those things work there not because those countries are necessarily more forward thinking than the usa, but because they are just more densely populated
having said that, the west coast and the east coast need high speed rail on the order of china, asap. going from DOWNTOWN boston to DOWNTOWN washington dc on high speed rail is obiviously superior to driving or airplane. it's a simple function of productivity and business friendliness. people won't do business in the usa anymore if genuinely more forward looking areas that focus on infrastructure like belo horizonte or frankfurt or new dehli do (not saying those places are more infrastructure friendly than the usa, but those places do know that infrastructure means business). it's about simple business competitiveness: make sure your infrastructure is sound and business will prosper and quality of life will improve
as for freight: you want trucks transporting garbage and coal?! come on, get real, its a function of simple business expedience that trains make more sense than cars and trucks in many situations
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
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.
Airport security in Europe is similar to (if not as invasive as) airport security to the US, yet we don't have any serious security (theatre) in our high speed rail network. AFAIK getting on a (low-speed) train in the US isn't quite as involved as getting on a plane, either; and I don't really think that'd change if the maximum train speed is a bit higher.
In fact, attacking a train would probably result in fewer casualties as attacking a train station (or an airport). If you detonate a bomb on a plane, chances are everyone on the plane will die. The same cannot be said for a regular train, not even a high speed one. And of course, crashing a train really isn't much of an option, since high value targets are typically not on your track, and it's trivially easy to cut the power to a train (in fact, it will happen automatically if you unexpectedly drive to fast).
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.
AFAIK China had a built-up rail network before they started their high-speed effort, which is far from finished. And compared to laying those tracks, building more airports was easy (so they did that, too). But railway infrastructure scales much better than airports do. Building tracks is costly, but sending more, longer trains down them is comparatively cheap.
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.
Yeah, you should build that, too. There are probably a few connections in the US where starting a high speed network would make sense. Clearly, making coast-to-coast isn't really among those. Connecting the big cities along the coasts seems an obvious first start.
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> High-speed rail, almost without exception, relies on dedicated lines, not shared lines with freight like existing, less-than-high-speed, passenger rail in the US
To a degree, yes. But not completely. There's also a lot to be said for the convenience of transfer-free end to end service, even if it means the train has to be towed along shared tracks the last 25-50 miles to its final destination (this is common in France; they have summer TGV routes where the train runs at 180mph to the end of the line, then gets towed the last 25-100 miles to its final destination someplace where there's not quite enough business to justify the cost of building HSR all the way to the bitter end). In a place like Florida, it's *necessary* to build brand new tracks for HSR between Auburndale (halfway between Orlando and Tampa) and Tampa because the existing freight tracks are heavily used, but it's silly to build brand new 100% HSR all the way to Miami at this point because the existing tracks have barely any freight traffic (enough that eliminating it entirely would be very expensive, but not so much that good dispatching that gave priority to passenger trains couldn't overcome 99.9% of the delays that currently plague Amtrak along the same route).
For roughly the same cost as building "true" 180mph HSR from Orlando to Tampa, FDOT could temporarily scrap the electrification & HSR-only trains, build new tracks along I-4 with geometry suitable for 180-225mph trains someday, then buy and double-track the existing corridor to 110mph standards, connect it to the new HSR line north of Auburndale (along I-4) and launch Miami-Tampa-Orlando service from day one (running 80mph from Miami to WPB, 110mph from WPB to Auburndale, and 150mph along the shiny new HSR tracks for the last 40-60 miles into Tampa or Orlando). It would mean the Tampa-Orlando trains would have to be Acela-type and max out around 150mph ("true" 180mph HSR trains can't legally share tracks with freight trains, or even passenger trains legally capable of sharing tracks with freight trains), but it would also mean that Florida would end up with a useful passenger rail network instead of a largely useless amusement park ride. Move the proposed Orlando station from the central concourse of the airport to a spot adjacent to the airport (with peoplemover to the main terminal & rental car center) so trains can avoid a 5 mile detour (yeah, MCO really IS that big) and continue north to downtown Orlando after the airport station, and Florida will ALSO have a rail line suitable for daily long-distance exurban commuters to Tampa and Orlando from Lakeland. FDOT could even put additional stations between Tampa and Orlando with platforms that are "offline", so intercity trains could blast through at full speed without stopping, but commuters from the Lakeland area could have additional convenient stops to attract even more riders and business.
Another crucial element: rental cars at the major stations. Miami and Orlando have that part taken care of, and Tampa will too (as long as FDOT doesn't completely fuck up). Even better would be enabling passengers to do the rental-car paperwork on the train itself, and walk off the train with their keys in hand (or at least the codes to a wall of electronic safes containing the keys at the station) and be driving out of the parking garage 10 minutes after arrival.
One says Bush ruined the economy.. another says Obama ruined the economy.. you say that Obama is still trying to fix the economy.. and one up there goes on ranting about republicans...
You are all fucking idiots. The president doesnt have shit to do with the economy. Period and end of story. The economy is way bigger than the Executive branch.. way bigger than all 3 branches combined. Moving on, the president also doesnt have shit to do with even federal budgets.... 100% of those originate in the House.
If you are an American, than your ignorance on this matter is completely inexcusable. This isnt a conspiracy rant about big corporations ruling the economy.. that is ALSO laughable. Do you seriously think that the movement of 14+ trillion dollars annually, over billions of individual transactions, is under the significant control of an agency, or conglomeration? Seriously? Drink some fucking reality-coffee, cause the punch that you have been drinking doesnt even pass basic sanity checks.
"His name was James Damore."