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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.
This is a great idea, but how is he going to pay for it?
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AEZjzsnPhnw
High Speed Rail contractors help you get from point A to point B in style. But they don't take American Express.
Visa. It's everywhere you want to be.
There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
Most people in jail? USA. Most expensive military? USA. Most obese? USA.
There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
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?
"I hope you know how very lucky you are to know me, because I am so incredibly incredible."
Unless they can even prove it works in the Northeast corridor, where it most likely has the most benefit, why bother with anything else?
It's not exactly high speed rail. It's better than regular speed. But not dramatically. I think there are all sorts of right-of-way issues. Unless the country says: "I don't care what these issues are, just make them go away, and make this work", I don't think we should spend another penny.
Hanlon's Razor: "Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity."
Maybe because we don't need a Fast train? In fact, the only reason to build more trains is if we plan to be too poor for average Americans to drive their own cars in 50 years.
If California's Metrolink trains took 45 minutes instead of 90 minutes to get from LA to Irvine, I could actually use them. So about friggin' time. Let's get this show on the road before gasoline hits $6/gallon.
Invented computer? USA. First transcontinental railroad? USA. Invented internet? USA.
Yeah, sounds like "catching up" to me.
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
ohboy and it'll be between Seattle and SF?? no...? aww-nutz, left out of the political machinations again.
Right -- because personal liberties and high speed trains are mutually exclusive!
There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
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
If you thought making air travel "secure" was fun, wait
until you try to make hundreds of miles of train tracks secure.
If Obama was half as good as he thinks he is, he would give a mandate
for national energy independence instead of this questionable idea.
Energy independence will allow the US to leave places like Afghanistan and Iraq,
and return to sanity.
I voted for Obama, but I won't be voting for him again, because he is not competent to
lead the US out of the trouble it is mired in courtesy of the previous administrations.
Not only that, but don't we owe China trillions of dollars? I'm not an economist, and I don't really want an answer to this right now, but if capitalism is so great and communism doesn't work, what in the heck happened here? Again, I'm not calling for a revolution and a Communist takeover of America, but apparently someone has royally screwed up.
China has ditched most of the tenets of Communism except for the dictatorship part.
Drill baby drill - on Mars
$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.
What a fool believes, he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.
Make die Bahn running the railway. One of the things I like about Germany is their trainwork.
And on a side note, the Dutch should build the damn dam around New Orleans.
FCKGW 09F9 42
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.
the us rail system is setup for freight rail and local passenger systems.
Look, the government really needs to get behind this effort. If a train track system was built that connects major cities with one another, AND if it's designed to be fast, accommodate lots of trains at nearly the same time, and is safe, companies will line up with products to use it.
I'm talking:
1. Siemens and GE producing trains and traincars designed for the tracks
2. Caterpillar and Mack produce the engines
3. ABF, DHL, Fedex, etc will all buy the trains and engines and use them to deliver goods
4. We'll use that for our internet orders, and to transport goods and services anywhere cheaply
It's not just about passenger trains, there's an entire market segment out there ripe to be innovated by trains. I'm talking about trucking companies, we could get them out of cities. We could reduce fuel costs, and insurance.
~Sticky
which will be loaded with 1TB HDDs, enabling the USA in one brilliant 2-bird throw, to catch up in the broadband infrastructure race.
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
I hate the assumption that the US having bases overseas is bad for US security. Its great for security, and its money well spent.
I really hope I don't live to see it, but there will be another big war someday, and we better fucking hope we still have massive projectable military might, or we might wind up in a situation that modern 1st world citizens simply cant comprehend.
Looks like you just demonstrated all three in a single post. Congrats!
There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
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.
I'm claiming "Obamarail (TM)".
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.
But this would be a boondoggle. Everyone gets to pay for something that benefits mostly East and West coast corridors. Let's just say it's valid. It does no good to push alternative modes of transportation if you continue to make it easy for cars. You want light rail somewhere? Take a couple traffic lanes for the roadbed, don't build it next to the highway. You have to make it a real downer to be in a car if you hope to break the psychological pathology of 'I am my car'.
It doesn't matter if it goes 250mph if it sits on the track for an hour waiting for right of way.It doesn't matter if it goes 250mph if it sits on the track for an hour waiting for right of way.
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. Consequently, this wouldn't be an issue.
Considering that anyone can walk into a train without even a ticket check means that the barrier for bombing a train is substantially lower currently. Secondly, the worst disaster that can happen from a train bombing is the loss of the occupants (Still horrible of course) but you don't get the massive impact of major symbolic landmarks like certain disasters of the past.
For short haul trips, trains could be a lot faster from door to door. As for medium haul, you will get there slower on a train, but I imagine that the fuel expenditure per occupant is significantly higher. If you don't really need a car, or you can support car sharing/rental services, the net gain for fuel efficiency should improve.
Roads and infrastructure improvements will do nothing to prevent the eventual sky-rocketing cost of oil supply that will rock the US sooner or later. Really, whomever thought that Oil sands could ever become an economically viable oil production source... how times change.
Bye!
of can-do attitude.
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
In December 2010, California approved the first locations for a high speed train.
1) It connects a grand total of 65 miles
2) It's being built between the towns of Borden and Corcoran. Yes, if you didn't know where that is, that's ok, most people don't.
3) No trains can run on it until some other town agrees to link up to it.
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.
Well, that's a false comparison. Government services are not market commodities, even in a capitalist society. You don't get to decide whether or not you want to buy defense, Social Security, public schools, etc.
Nasty as it may sound, getting into this situation probably had more to do with democracy than capitalism. In a democracy, a politician has to whore for votes from his constituency. And you don't get votes by promising to take away people's bennies. So, of course, people vote for whoever promises the most goodies. Those goodies have to be paid for somehow.
In a dictatorship, such as China, the politicians don't have to face voters. When they need to cut the budget, they do.
Actually, the private economies of both countries are capitalist. China is communist in name only. You don't think your iPhone is made by the Chinese Communist Party, do you?
American Third Position
Finally, a real choice!
How about the US fix current infrastructure instead of creating a whole new infrastructure for which nobody has demonstrated the need? For example, air flight is already the US's "high speed rail" yet it is ridiculous burdened by two problems, a grossly inefficient security apparatus and airports with poor scheduling.
To be blunt, there's no reason that a passenger should have to wait more than a few minutes for a flight unless security screening throws up a warning sign. In fact, the only reason they do is due to insufficient screening infrastructure. You should be able to show up at the airport a half hour before the flight.
All the top airports overbook flights (in a similar fashion as the airlines overbook the actual planes), that is, they pack in more flights per unit time than can reasonable be handled. When any minor delay creeps in, then flight queues can quickly back up hours, propagating those delays throughout the air transportation system. I think a simple solution would be tiered flight service. Planes that wish to leave promptly would pay a fee for the privilege.
My view is that eliminating most of the two hour security delay and prioritizing departure traffic would go a long way towards improving existing air flight infrastructure and in the long run would be a better used of federal funds than building a high speed rail system.
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!
...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.
Already have fourteen hundred billion in deficit. What's another few tens of billions?
...in theory. Problem is, the circa-1930s railway infrastructure it runs on is designed for freight traffic, and therefore does not have the level of tolerances necessary for it to be able to go that fast.
Also, won't the oil and automobile subsidiaries in this country - who struck down a plan like this in the 50s in favor of an Interstate System - put up a fight about this?
Lower greenhouse gas emissions per passenger mile.
Air travel is a massive GHG emitter.
By taking one flight across the country, you pretty much double your personal GHG emissions
for the year.
Ready possibility for conversion to electric drive / hydrogren fuel cells to lower GHG emissions further,
as long as implemented in conjunction with greening of the electricity grid (offshore wind, massive solar etc.).
Unless of course you don't believe in anthropogenic global warming, in which case, I don't know
why I'm wearing away the tips of my fingers typing to you.
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
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
I propose a plan in which politicians are no longer allowed to take any political contributions from anyone. They must advertise their campaigns by getting on the news with good ideas. Assuming Congress approves this plan, it could end political corruption once and for all!
During "Internet blackout" cause by action on the Kill switch, you need something to transport the tapes between destination points.
The faster and greener, the better; can't beat trains to that, especially when considering the P2P traffic and porn downloads.
Questions raise, answers kill. Raise questions to stay alive.
I hope we get a line from Pittsburgh to Cleveland and from Pittsburgh to Philadelphia/NYC/Boston. I'm sure I'd use both of those and travel a lot more (if the prices are reasonable).
For every problem, there is at least one solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.
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".
Such high speed rail proposals in the U.S., for the most part, will be boondoggles.
Too expensive, lack of flexibility in destinations compared to air travel, or heck, even car travel. Limited capacity; scales poorly.
Then there are the issues of the TSA being involved...
The security lines, including the dangerous X-ray scanners (not hyperbole; TSA itself is refusing to release x-ray emissions, safety, and testing data - they know something isn't right), the pat-downs, along with the baggage searches and passenger name matching.
Plus the security to secure the rails themselves. What many people don't realize is that current low speed rail can tolerate quite a bit of track damage as in misalignments and even small gaps. High speed rail, regardless of the system, is very unforgiving in comparison.
In short, even for the few routes where high-speed rail travel may make real sense, if one must deal with all the inevitable TSA security theater, one might as well just fly anyways.
Ron
speed trains became a reality in europe. so much that they changed life - people regularly commute to their jobs in paris, from lyon.
http://www.wordtravels.com/images/map/France_map.jpg
you cant do the same thing in america. not even by plane. actually, with plane, it takes longer, even in france.
Read radical news here
Face it folks, petroleum fuels are going to get way more scarce in the next 20 years; we either find a way to wean ourselves off of it, or we go back to the dark ages.
Or we could spend that 50B on wars in order to maintain our 25% world energy consumption rate (although as 5% of the world population, the rest of the world is starting to wise up on that, especially China.)..
Who do you think we are going to buy the trains and tracks from? This will be a deal to work down the debt.
Other countries have high speed rail when it makes sense to have a handful of routes, and they need to shuttle tons of people over that long distance. For example, major cities in Japan lie in a spine of stops along the coast, and no trains need bother with the more mountainous interior. The span of the country is one long route.
There aren't many places like that in the US. In fact, pretty much the only place that would meet that criteria is the metro line that shuttles government employees (and some tourists) into DC from Maryland, Pennsylvania, etc. DC serves as a massive labor sink where people come to work jobs the employers (us) refuse to relocate or farm out elsewhere, even though no one can afford to live anywhere remotely close to where they work. That kind of geographic and economic anomaly just doesn't exist in the rest of the country.
In most of the country, people live in far-spread areas, then also commute to far-spread areas. They don't all necessarily move from the suburbs into the city central, and most surely don't move from one major city center to the another. In these cases there is not enough shared route to a rail, no matter how fast they happen to move. Obama wants a toy train to make him feel like "we're no falling behind," even though the transportation infrastructure we use every day -- highways and bridges -- is crumbling from neglect.
Invented computer? USA.
Many great things have come from America. The computer was invented elsewhere. The Z3 was the first turing equivalent machine (i.e. true computer) ever constructed. In fact Zuse built two whole computers pretty much on his own before any entire *nation* caught up. It was also pipelined and used binary floating point. It even had floating point exceptions, inf and nan (well, undefined).
In other words, not only was the Z3 the first computer, it was also two decades ahead of its time in some areas.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
High-speed trains are consistent with an energy independence stratetegy, since they reduce the need for fossil fuels.
They use less fuel per passenger mile and train infrastructure can in principle be converted to electric / hydrogen fuel cell drive, which along with massive investment in clean renewable electricity generation technology would eliminate more fossil fuel dependence still, not to mention reducing GHG emissions.
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
Colossal waste of money. On so many decisions it seems like our president is taking advice from George Castanza and always doing the opposite of what makes good sense. With only a few exceptions all of the current Amtrak routes are money losers. Every ticket purchased on Amtrak from Los Angeles to New Orleans is subsidized by the taxpayer for over $400.
Sorry for the rant. I am truly annoyed at the incredible amount of waste and wanton disregard for the will of the American People that has been exhibited by our elected Leader ship for many years now. I am just finally opening my mouth about it. Thanks all.
Highways are not subsidized.
In fact gas taxes (road use fees), instituted to build roads, are routinely diverted to subsidize mass transit.
I've heard greens claim the tax on gas is a subsidy on gas. They live in backward dumb ass land.
Every commercial airport in the USA is a money making operation. Landing fees etc.
As to your comparative cost example. It depends on how many dollars worth of damage the criminal does while on welfare and in community college. One random beating or stolen car and you are deep in a financial hole.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
That is what malicious people want you to think.
As much as I hate the idea of Obama spending even more of my money, building up our train infrastructure can only have good long-term effects, in my meaningless opinion. I'd love to take a train instead of fly or drive for a long time... it'd be awesome if I could hop on a train to New Orleans instead of driving for 10 hours, or dealing with an hour or two of security checkpoints and another 2 hours in a plane.
Hell, our national infrastructure is in a mostly-crumbling state... bridges collapsing, highways constantly being "repaired" for 2 years, only to have to be repaired again a few years later due to the lowest-bidder shoddy workmanship.
I'd much rather sink 53 billion into infrastructure than into bailouts.
Satis clankiller.com
We're talking about government spending here, triple that amount and we're starting to get a closer look to the real cost of this project xD
The "first computer" is debatable, and is debated, as the definition is vague. The "first electronic digital computing device" goes to the American ABC. But really, it's not relevant. The US has poured far more funding into developing the digital age than every other nation on the earth combined, and the thanks we get for it is trendy hipster US-haters pointing out a Chinese blip on top500 (using American-designed technology) as somehow being indicative of the technological inferiority of the US.
In your car, you better be focusing your attention on not killing yourself or anyone else.
Actually that's why I prefer driving, because I have my safety in my own hands - I can maintain a good distance, keep a watch on cars around me, etc.
On a train you are at the mercy of the people who maintain the track or a couple kids with a big log and a gleam in their eye (happened locally, 20 car derailment - thank god it was a freight train).
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Just what we need, a Soviet style rail system that will, at best, be half as fast as air travel. Is this the best he can come up with? I suppose the union sluggos are thrilled.
an ill wind that blows no good
You should invest in a Kill-A-Watt, or at least borrow one. That P4 may be costing you a lot more than the price of a brand new machine. The P4s were notorious power hogs. I know that my quad core Core 2 averages 50 watts, while my Athlon X2 averaged 180 watts. The current system runs rings around the old Athlon 2. It took approximately 10 months for the electricity savings to pay for the cost of the computer, and everything after that was money in my pocket. I live in CA, so the electricity savings are ~$0.38 kwh. I you live in a place with sane electricity prices, and you don't use your computer much anyway, an upgrade might not save you money, but for many, a buying a new computer is less expensive than using the old one they already have.
Yes, America needs to catch up to the rest of the world for an overhyped shitty form of travel (when adjusting for expense, frequency of use, and convenience).
Nefarious reason = Union Jobs and more federal employees to administer the program
Actually, those union railroad jobs relieve social security of a burden as they do not collect from it and as for federal employees, one airport has more federal employees than all of these high speed rail projects combined.
Right. Gripe about Obama wanting to spend $53B over 6 years on a program that will improve our shitty infrastructure and create jobs in the process, but praise the Repubs for spending $700B on saving the tax cut for the top 2% which creates nothing except more wealth for the top 2%. Oh, and before you say it, not collecting $700B in taxes is EXACTLY the same as spending it no matter how Fox news wants to frame it.
Sometimes the light at the end of the tunnel is the headlight of an oncoming train.
I can't agree. Our overseas bases were useless in avoiding the 9/11 attacks. When was the last time they were useful in stopping an attack against our nation or defeating the attackers? You are unable to see that we are being scammed, my fellow Citizen. Bear in mind as you answer the question that 1) Al Qaeda has not yet been "defeated" in any credible or durable sense, and 2) their main financiers, the people and governments of Saudi Arabia and the Gulf Emirates, are our allies in the "War on Terror." Also, Iraq was never a threat nor did it ever attack us. North Korea either, BTW. They are all bluster and no bite. Iran is not an enemy, it is a straw man to distract us from the Arab side of the Persian Gulf.
$170 Billion/year on our anti-terrorist wars... There's some fat we can trim
of investing money? This country's rail system is built around the idea that People who Matter take a plane or drive. $4+/gallon gas might start changing that though...
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
$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.
Give the man credit, he did try to undo the Bush tax credits that allowed the top 1% of the country to go from 7% of the wealth to 23% of the wealth. Congress, when originally passing the cuts new they couldn't be sustained, which is why they had an expiration date.
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?
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
That p4 is not saving you any money. A cheap new computer would save you money and be faster. P4s are practically space heaters.
I've seen very little to indicate that High Speed Rail is a "critical" infrastructure investment for the US. Not because I think rail is "bad", but because:
1) 53 Billion over 6 years will connect exactly how many cities with high speed rail? (Not that many, according to TFA - LA to SF is going to cost 2-3 Billion alone.)
2) Will anybody be able to run the trains on time?
If you build dedicated HSR lines and have to buy new engines & passenger cars, that 53 Billion isn't going to go very far - it's not going to be a "national" rail service upgrade. And if you DON'T build new lines, and try to stretch the money by upgrading existing freight lines, then HSR will be rated for "up to 250 mph," and will actually travel at speeds quite similar to the existing rails, due to the delays in getting a freaking right of way, plus scheduling delays, and infrastructure issues on the freight lines. So the "extra speed" benefit won't live up to the promise if we don't build dedicated lines.
This strikes me as primarily a "feel-good" measure, intended to make us look like we're doing something green, but which will mostly just spend money for the sake of spending money. And if you think that 53B is all they'll spend, guess again - overruns and unexpected expenses are the name of the game when you're trying to make large infrastructure improvements in highly populated areas. The Big Dig, here in Boston, was initially estimated to cost ~2 Billion, and ended up costing nearly 15 Billion by the time it completed (8 Billion when adjusted for inflation since the original estimate), and another 7 billion over the next 30 years in interest paying down the bonds. So, either they expect to spend around 15 billion dollars, and let the other 45 billion get sucked up by the inevitable overruns and expenses, or this 53 Billion could easily balloon to 200 Billion worth of spending by the time the projects initiated under its auspices are completed.
So, the question has to be asked: Is it an investment that will generate more revenue than it consumes in the long term? And even if it is - is the money better spent on a long-term investment, or paying down our long-term debt? How do the return rates compare? And even if it is an investment, we only have so much money to go around, so even our investments need to be prioritized. So does building HSR lines to connect SF and LA and a couple other cities around the country really qualify as a high-priority investment that deserves *national* priority, and should be taken on as a *new* expenditure by the government?
You're right - $9bn / year isn't going to fix or create the debt problem all on its own, but a former colleague shared this bit of wisdom with me over lunch one day:
"These guys just don't seem to understand that when you find yourself in a hole, you stop fucking digging."
I go BOS to NYC on Acela, and it's faster than flying. Not for everyone of course, but for me who lives on the T (Boston subway) and wants to get to Manhattan, door-to-door is faster on Acela than it is in the air.
Could it be even made even faster? Sure. Keep in mind though that the Northeastern corridor is the densest part of America. The rights of way are narrow and windy, and straightening and widening them is massively expensive because of the value of the property adjacent to them. A few minutes could be shaved here and there with some straightening, banking, passing lanes, etc, but you simply can't go fast around a sharp corner. Furthermore, the corridor is crowded, and fitting more trains on the same set of tracks is a challenge., in part because of all the commuter rail which uses the same track.
As for other parts of the country, HSR between cities under 300 miles apart could beat airplane times, wouldn't suffer from the difficult constraints facing the Northeast, and setting it up frees both highway and runway from needing to be expanded, as well as provides another transportation option, thereby increasing the robustness of the system.
Support a few technologists in Washington.
1) cost
so what if if costs 500 to 800 billion dollars
we spent way more then that in Iraq - 500 billion is quite reasonable for a good high speed rail system if we can spend more on Iraq
2) Traffic congestion
true, we have to create destinations at each end, but this is doable
3) Costs
Typical dishonest right wing BS; he doesn't mention the huge huge huge cost subsidys to cars - have you ever heard of something called the mideast ? and how much we spend on the military to defend oil there ? you did any sort of honest analysis - includuding loss of public land for cars, cost to the environment to get fuel for\ cars, etc etc etc, I bet the current subsidys for cars are higher then rail
4) Cars, and everything about them, suck; they are inherently evil
see suburban nation
see people in cities who walk, like NYC, are healthier then suburbanites who drive
Meanwhile, you can't even take AmTrak from Los Angeles to San Francisco. You have to get off and ride the bus. It's been like this for months. Do the politicians seriously think they need to invest in high speed trains when they can't even maintain the normal ones?
What would be really ambitious, and really what a 21st Century America needs, would be packet switched rail, instead of slightly faster circuit switched rail. Each car a destination car, temporarily joined for efficiency through common segments of their overall routes. Transfer between trains while they're joined together in motion, rather than requiring big stations and stops for every transfer point. Link up and split apart as each car's routes permit. Multiple sync points to complete routes so that schedules can be looser. Like a rail internet.
And plenty of roadcar carrier railcars, so commuters and long distance haulers can just roll on and off, perhaps also while in motion, especially along major commute lines.
--
make install -not war
Good way to combat the deficit! Government spending fixes everything!!
It's good to read that the executive branch is listening to the people..
Actually, in an environment where the middle glass does not have the purchasing power to fuel a recovery, most economists would agree that government spending fixes everything. The problem is that historically, that spending went into infrastructure like roads and schools and hospitals. Those things that are useful once the economy recovers. Now it goes to fight a war which might keep terrorists at bay (or might not) but does diddly squat for future economic growth.
So, actually, it's good to read that the executive branch is listening to people who know what they are talking about, like economists, and not just an angry electorate.
Our biggest problem is an economy that's stagnating at the bottom of a curve. I don't mean to say deficit spending is good. It's not, in and of itself. But we're not going to budget-cut ourselves into a prosperous future. Investing in public infrastructure projects that deliver long-term benefits might be "tone deaf" from a tea party point of view, but it's sound policy.
The "first computer" is debatable, as the definition is vague.
No, it really isn't. There is a hard, mathematical distinction between computer and not computer. Turing equivalent with limited memory is a computer. Not turing equivalent is not a computer.
The "first electronic digital computing device" goes to the American ABC. But really, it's not relevant.
Quite.
. The US has poured far more funding into developing the digital age than every other nation on the earth combined,
Maybe so, but that doesn't alter the fact that the first computer happened to be built in Germany by a complete genius.
and the thanks we get for it is trendy hipster US-haters pointing out a
You are trying to make excuses for making an incorrect claim by bringing up emotional arguments. Forget thanks, how about the heaps of money that the US has acquired through its investment in computing.
Chinese blip on top500 (using American-designed technology) as somehow being indicative of the technological inferiority of the US.
Supercomputing is about who had the most money to spend most recently. Every so often some other country gets a faster supercomputer for a bit. Not really a big deal, especially as the US has mych higher spec machines on order and in the process of being built.
But that still doesn't change the fact that the first true computer was made by Konrad Zuse in Germany. Please, don't do the guy a disservice. Instead read about him and the incredible things he achieved.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
Forget all the technical problems. First problem is financing. Will the Chinese approve a loan for this?
akma
Right, Germany is just so likely to get uppity again. All of the money we are wasting only serves two purposes, it increases the profits of the companies that sell to the military, and boosts the swagger of those who feel the having others people kill foreigners in their name makes them oh so big and macho.
How is high speed rail going to help commuters? By the time the train got up the 200+ MPH it's supposed to go you'd have passed by the station it was supposed to stop at.
High speed rail is for vast distance city to city traffic. It's not going to reduce local commutes and it might only help those people who have over an hour commute. Even then you'll probably spend more time getting to the station, waiting for the train, and getting a taxi from the station to your work. You may actually be spending more time trying to get to work.
Every time I start to have faith in humanity, I ruin it by driving to work between 7 and 8 am.
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
No average americans will afford to drive cars in 50 years. Peak oil has been reached and it is estimated that we only have a max of 30-40 years of oil left and that is only going to get more expensive. Even given other energy sources coming online, the big fat cheap battery has been depleted.
Didn't you see the Wikileaks thing about how Saudi Arabia is running out of oil? The slide has begun. Maybe that is why people are looking to try to head off problems before the cataclysm.
Go to Europe ride their rails then say that. You can travel at 200mph, while getting up to walk around and drink alcohol. Normal humans can afford a bed for the nights travel. Trains are far more fun to travel on than cars or airplanes. They have their part to play in a transportation system. If modern rail was available in the USA I would never fly again, except to cross an ocean.
One of the things we like to hate air travel about is that we can't use our cell phones on a plane. If we were on a train travelling at 250mph, would a cell phone be able to switch towers quickly enough to be useful for a conversation?
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
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.
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. So the speed gain would only show up in a few very specific cases, like maybe LA to Vegas.
Wouldn't we be better served either putting that 53 Billion into our roads and infrastructure? Or not spending it at all?
53 billion will provide 53,000 new miles of roads. Exactly where are you going to put those new miles? Could the northeast corrider or the west coast really add enough lanes to the highways to make a difference? The $1 million per mile cost of a highway also only includes construction costs, not the purchase of right of way. Face it most of the highway congestion is in and around the major metropolitan areas. The exact places were there isn't any more room to build highways.
As for bombing trains, usually that doesn't happen, it is much easier to derail one than bomb one. While that kills people, too, it is usually a lot fewer killed than people falling 35,000 feet.
A large chunk of cars Americans buy and drive are built here, either by American companies or by companies with factories in the United States employing American workers, and a lot of the other ones are made in Mexico and/or Canada out of parts sourced from the US, Mexico and Canada, it all helps keep the North American economy going. Even BMW, the Japanese makers, VW, the Koreans, Benz have factories here in North America now.
Boeings are made in the US, most of the Airbus that fly for American flagged carriers at least use American made engines, regional jets, turboprops similarly are made in Canada out of a mix of US and Canadian parts.
We don't however build high speed trains here, nor do we develop the technology, so a huge chunk of this $53 billion is going to go to fund foreign workers and foreign companies. That's not a good political move in this economy with a deficit this big and Republicans holding a house of Congress.
+1 Sad Truth
It breaks my pluginses, my precious!
China has the fastest super computer. US rail system sucks. US internet is throttled.
It isn't about invention. It is about continuing innovation.
3rd world countries are just going to do an end around while we think we are so great.
To be great we have to innovate.
I guess I should have prefaced by saying that I live in the Northeast U.S., and in an odd area where many of my coworkers commute by train from the larger cities more than an hour away. I guess those are the people I was thinking of.
I hate the assumption that the US having bases overseas is bad for US security. Its great for security, and its money well spent.
I really hope I don't live to see it, but there will be another big war someday, and we better fucking hope we still have massive projectable military might, or we might wind up in a situation that modern 1st world citizens simply cant comprehend.
The poster of the comment didn't actually say to close foreign bases, but do we really need a Coast Guard base in the State of Kansas? And if there is another world war, it won't be fought with today's soldiers or technology (unless its in the near future). It seems the US did a pretty good job of ramping up the military machine for WWII at a time when the country and the military was in shambles. Is there a reason why you would expect they wouldn't be able to do that again?
"but most people would like the government to create jobs during a recession rather than cut them, don't you think?"
No, not based on the most recent election
How I hate it when people pretend that elections are some sort of a single issue ballot measure. There are dozens of reasons to be unhappy with the current party in power: a lousy economy, wars, Constitutional and civil rights issues, health care concerns, environmental issues, etc...
Neither you nor any politician have any right to claim that the last election proves anything about your pet issue.
We hope your rules and wisdom choke you / Now we are one in everlasting peace
Did Mr. Obama make any projection as to how long it might take such a rail system to be self-supporting even on OPERATING expenses? OK, so maybe an extra few billion (BILLION?????) poured down that particular rat-hole will do our economy some good right now. But I'm not minded to spend it on a home-made Viet Nam War, where we have to CONTINUE to pour more and more dollars into it every year, with NEVER a hope of getting out from underneath.
Show me the dough, Mr. O!
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.
Switch back to Slashdot's D1 system.
*until = untold. in "...removed using until numbers of Tax Payer Dollars..."
we need sustained speed. I have considered and rejected rail travel on several occasions because of one catch in using it or another, whether it be a small baggage allowance or a crazy routing or an unfriendly schedule. I'd love to travel overnight across the country for a reasonable fee and I don't give a damn whether the train reached 250MPH at some point on the journey, I just wish it could average, say 100mph. That way I could board a sleeper in NYC on Friday evening and wake up as it pulls into in Miami the next day.
Nullius in verba
The US had a pretty robust array of rail systems before we got the idea that the car was the American dream. The current paradigm has worked for America. The push for high speed rail is a realization that the interstate system as it is now will be a dying beast as we run out of oil in the next 35 or so years.
Must move on. Better get started.
btw.... love riding the rails in Europe. It was awesome and a real pleasure. Rail done right!
Where the fuck was your bitting sarcasm 3-10 years ago, smartass?
I'm pretty sure we had political pundits back then, too.
Bow-ties are cool.
For the most part you are right. Although, depending upon the year, Russia is neck and neck with the US on most people incarcerated.
Given that we are bailing out union pensions all the time (GM), I don't see why you say that. I also don't see why you think there won't be hundreds or thousands of additional man-hour by federal employees in the unlikely event that this ever gets started in earnest.
China is communist in name only.
Hey, I thought they were a peoples' republic...
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.
If I travel by car, I need to drive it. If the destination is hundreds of miles away this can be very wearying. If there's traffic involved it can be agonizing.
If I travel by air, the actual travel time is usually quite nice, but I spend far too much time dealing with airports. If I'm at the airport for a few hours at a stretch, I have some time to relax - but getting to the airport an hour before departure, going through security, sitting around waiting to get on a plane, getting on a plane, waiting for the plane to take off, and then repeating the process anywhere I have to change planes - it's all kind of a drag. It is possible, as you say, that high-speed rail will have all the same problems.
What I enjoy about rail travel presently is that it's very low-stress and generally quite enjoyable. I can get to the station five minutes before my train leaves and walk on when it's time. The travel itself takes a long time, but there's not a lot of switching trains. Mostly I can just stay put in my seat, sleep continuously through the whole trip if I need the sleep, or use the computer or whatever.
Somebody else pointed out that it's very difficult to crash a train into a skyscraper - obviously if the train were to be used as a vector for a terrorist attack they'd figure something else out - but offhand I couldn't say what could be done with a train to make it as dangerous as a hijacked plane... Put a nuclear weapon or bioweapon on it? Assuming you've got such a thing in the country in the first place, it seems you'd be better served just driving it yourself...
Bow-ties are cool.
Invented computer? USA. First transcontinental railroad? USA. Invented internet? USA.
Yeah, sounds like "catching up" to me.
The US has the habit of inventing incredible products that other nations perfect and sell back to us.
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."
I spent 4 hours on a bus listening to half of Cletus' conversation with his girl friend back in Possum Hollow, as entertaining as it was I'd rather not relive it every frickin time I travel. Trains should be equipped with cell blockers, a few hours without service won't kill you.
Never let a lack of data get in the way of a good rant.
Railroads do not participate in Social Security. As for bailing out corporate pension funds, all I can say is that it was the corporation that raided those funds, not the employees. As for the additional man-hours, well, the plan is for the government to build the infrastructure but private industry run the railroads.
If you thought making air travel "secure" was fun, wait until you try to make hundreds of miles of train tracks secure.
Suppose you don't make tracks secure, though. What's going to happen?
I mean, you bomb the train or you bomb the tracks, what you've accomplished is damaging some rail, wrecking a train, killing the people on the train and doing some damage to anything the train hits when it derails. A horrific scene to be sure. But it doesn't measure up to the level of damage done in the WTC incident (thousands dead, the whole incident broadcast live to the whole country as it dragged out over hours, toxic building debris scattered through the surrounding air, etc.) - it's not as destructive and it's not as potent in its "terror". So while it'd be a relatively easy target, I don't see it as being a particularly worthwhile target for terrorism.
Bow-ties are cool.
Everyone will still use a car. Big cities already have a subways & railways. Obama needs to stop being an Ostrich with his head in the ground thinking the hunter (real issues) disappeared with a new and unrelated strategy. The only strategy I see is spend spend spend on non-essentials. Spending is a temporary fix. I don't want my kids to pay insanely high taxes.
Meanwhile, you can't even take AmTrak from Los Angeles to San Francisco. You have to get off and ride the bus. It's been like this for months. Do the politicians seriously think they need to invest in high speed trains when they can't even maintain the normal ones?
Maybe they think they need to invest in high speed trains because the normal ones aren't sufficient?
I mean, they could invest the same money in the regular rail system, but one of the basic problems with passenger rail at present is that it runs freight rails. To make the system work better you need more rail, so the passenger rail isn't constantly at the mercy of freight rail schedules.
Bow-ties are cool.
...that most other countries made: don't let the transportation companies keep the rail networks. (At least) one company for the rails, and as many for the trains as are willing to invest-- the same way cable/DSL should be handled. Unless you want Amtrak to become the Comcast of transportation, of course.
That being said, I've commuted by rail in Germany, and I've travelled through much of Europe and parts of Japan that way, and it beats all other forms of transportation I have tried. Based on that, I'd consider a 10% increase in federal taxes to finance European-level public transportation to be a good deal.
Is to have just a few lines to major metro areas (ie: NY, LA, Chicago, D.C., Orlando). With the bare minimum stops along the way. (ie: NY 2 LA might stop in Las Vegas).
But here's the rub. The cost for this far outweighs any benefit, as you can simply take a plane and achieve the same result, far cheaper, with less infrastructure. For those who think it'd be an alternative to long security lines, think again. They want those for trains too...
This is a waste of money. If Obama had half a brain, he'd declare that we were no longer going to spend billions on Amtrak subsidies. People afraid of flying need to get over it or drive.
We're staring down default in 20 years and the government wants to play with choo-choo's. great.
Are high speed trains good? Yes.
Would it be bad to not have a high speed train? It would be inconvenient.
Which is more important, having a high speed train, or making sure that the U.S. doesn't default and cause a world wide depression?
ALL government funding now has to be justified in terms of:
Do the benefits of X project outweigh the massive problems that would be caused by a U.S. Default and world wide depression?
If the answer is no, then the project doesn't get funded.
And since we're running a 1.4 TRILLION dollar deficit (that's per year, kids), we have to ask that question about all existing projects.
Until the budget is balanced, we don't need shit like this.
Every time I travel between Washington DC and NYC, I can choose a subsidized train for about $100 one way or an unsubsidized bus for less than $25. I usually choose the bus.
We would be much better off to upgrade the freight railroads to take the trucks of the roads. Along the I-95 corridor on the East Coast there are a few choke points, such as the pre-Civil War tunnel under Baltimore, which are too small to allow truck-on-flatcar traffic through . The railroad paralleling I-81 needs upgrading too.
Taking trucks off these roads would clear the roads for buses and cars, reduce wear on the roads, and save great amount of oil. If we electrified the railroads ( another project ) we would use no oil for transport.
Middle America is not most of the country by population. It is also full of welfare queen states. They take in far more tax dollars than they provide. To squawk about wasting money while accepting all those subsidies is mighty two-faced.
We could have easily done that. Letting the bush tax cuts on the top 2% expire would have been worth like 700 billion.
P4s are practically space heaters.
ALL computers are nothing but very complicated space heaters. The heat density (emission per square inch) from a Pentium chip is more than from the burner on an electric stove. :)
Of course, our brains are also just complicated heaters...
It's easier to be a result of the past, but more fun to be a cause of the future! http://www.spacefinancegroup.com/
As much as I like taking the train, I have to admit that you're right. It makes me sad, but we as a country made a decision that our primary means of terrestrial travel will be on roads. We can regret this - and I do - but we also have to accept it. What you say about rail freight and electrification are also right on.
I'd kick your ass, but I've been court-martialed for being overweight.
Random Thoughts From A Diseased Mind (Not For Dummies)
I believe you will find that most americans that are not spoon fed pro-war propoganda from Fox News (and it's satellite affiliates) are very much in favor of that very thing: bringing troops home, and letting the middle east explode like it wants to.
The problem is that the government knows that it cannot do this while addicted to foriegn oil, and it also knows that it cannot get over its addiction to foriegn oil while the senators all make their money from oil and oil related industries. Because the senators comprise the government, the government's only motivation to bring troops home comes from the bad press they get. (They are financially motivated to keep sending american troops to die for their financial interests, while spinning it as national security. See EG, Dick Cheney and his heavy investments in Halliburton. He's a bit of a poster child for that kind of corruption, but a good portion of our currently elected career politicians also fall into this niche to one degree or another, and are culpable to varying degrees accordingly.)
The end result is that we get "Token" efforts to get away from foriegn oil (like that 50 million dollar offshore wind project), while bankrupting the country by hemmoraging money to maintain "Diplomatic" interests in the middle east (so that cheap oil keeps flowing.)
A concerted PR effort appears to be in effect to conflate lack of support of the middle eastern occupation and the managment of tinpot dictators there as a lack of patriotism, lack of national loyalty, and a lack of support of "our men and women in uniform." This is simply untrue; Many, if not most of the people that call for these forces to be recalled care deeply about the men and women that are there-- what they lack is support for the OPERATIONS that these people are deployed there to do. This distinction is almost religiously marginallized by the talking heads of this PR front, which while not started by Bush, was greatly emboldened by his cabinet and his policies. This same PR campaign tries to spin any and all outcry over the middle eastern bullshit as the rantings of un-american terrorist sympathizers, and similarly tries to paint the whole middle east as one giant terrorist training camp. [with alarming levels of success.]
Take for instance, the recent hemming and hawing of capitol hill over the imminent deposal of Egyptian president Mubarak. Mubarak has been "Our man" for decades, and has been instrumental in maintaining the imbalance of power in the middle east in favor of US and other developed countries' energy supplies, and in performing several "nasty extradition" services for our government. His deposal by citizens seeking a truly democratic regime free from foriegn interference places the policy makers on Capitol Hill in a nasty pickle because of their two-faced rhetoric, and now conflictory interests: On one hand they want to retain voter confidence, and spew pro-democracy rhetoric to get re-elected, and on the other they want to protect their financial interests so they can fund their next re-election bid. They REALLY want to retain Mubarak, and are "Very concerned" about the situation, because they would lose a key player in their investment and power strategies.
This is why the US media is trying desperately to create a connection between the (mostly) peaceful protestors and the extremist "Islamic Brotherhood", because that would allow the heads on capitol hill to decry the protestors without looking like the crooks they are-- despite the fact that both the islamic brotherhood AND the protestors deny any such connection, and have consistently done so for more than 2 weeks. The only support for such an allegation comes from an extremist islamic cleric (Khomeni sp?) who sees an opportunity to do some spin doctoring, and to derail the legitimate democratic nature of the protests there to further his own power base. These inconvenient truths aside, you will find no shortage of articles online or of televised newscasts with reporters and anchors asking loaded questions t
Throw out the "terrorist" argument and you might as well stick with airplanes. They are faster, and require a less extensive infrastructure.
I think hooking up free p2p encrypted internet for every citizen would cost less, and help more with telecommuting and other such ways of cutting costs. Then sure, maybe I'll take your fast train on vacation. Maybe.
rhY
I hold very few opinions. I hold information based on observation and fact. If you wish to disagree, please use facts.
Train tickets already cost more then plane tickets. 53 billion spent means we can all save money buy traveling first class on a plane rather then one of these new trains.
--- Always remember. 99.36% of all statistics are inaccurate.
The USA has hundreds of military basses
Are they ill-tempered?
I meant they do very little useful computation for the amount of power they turn into heat. P4s are phenomenally inefficient.
I live in DC and the Eastern Corridore Amtrak lines are really awesome. By car it takes 5-8 hours to get to NYC depending on traffic. Amtrak takes 3.5 hours. This is the busiest route on Amtrak as far as I know, and it would be great if it had a dedicated high speed track.
We just had a very successful auction for $24 billion of 10-year notes. Rich people don't think that we're a credit risk (and they also don't think that inflation is coming back any time soon).
Want a sig like mine? Join ACM's SigSig today!
Hey you know what? We have this amazing new technology called "Google maps", you can actually see what a route between Borden and Corcoran would look like!
And you know what? If you were building a new rail line from LA to San Fransisco, you'd almost certainly build it through that area at some point (the other option is the coastal route, which already has a train). It's almost like this is just one segment of what will eventually be a fully working railroad! It's almost like they're planning this out years in advance, instead of just doing whatever looks good right now!
So you want faster rail and green energy? Spend the money on nuclear power, etc and eliminate the coal fired power plants. I live next to a rail line that serves both freight and Amtrak. 90% of the train traffic is 100+ car coal trains...several an hour at that. In our state Amtrak has the right away. The only problem is that many of these coal trains are too long for many of the "pull over" areas. Get rid of the coal trains and you open up the tracks for significantly more passenger rail...assuming that's what you want because I personally think the idea is a waste of money for 90% of the country's land area.
you really have no idea what you're talking about. We were in Germany for 3 weeks visiting friends in Hamburg during August. We had planned a 4 day trip to Paris via train. The German trains were nice and we rode all 3 types: a small commuter train, a medium sized inter city train, and Germany's high speed train out to the French German border (Strasbourg). But the French TGV was truly impressive and awesome. Quiet and smooth - no click-clack rail noise, seating was very comfortable - and the speed - wow. And the power -- in really open flat country you could feel a slight pressure against the seat as they opened up the juice. We arrived in Paris well ahead of schedule - and well rested. I felt totally safe during the trip.
I believe we need to start with 2 North - South corridors -- one on each coast. Something like Seattle to LA with limited stops: Tacoma/Olympia, Portland, Salem, Eugene, Redding, Bay Area, Sacramento, LA.
AND - we should partner with one of the existing high speed trains in operation to leverage at lease some of their infrastructure parts - pieces - engineering. Things are cheaper in volume and why re-invent the rail-bed and rail technology.
Its not the years, its the mileage
Not a troll (really, I like trains).
I would like to know what part of the US Constitution would allow federal spending on such a project?
Yep, I was just exercising my urge for gratuitous pedantry. :)
It's easier to be a result of the past, but more fun to be a cause of the future! http://www.spacefinancegroup.com/
So true! In college I had tried several times to travel from Pittsburgh PA to Philadelphia PA. Sometimes I arrived only a few hours late, but often I arrived 18 or 24h later later than scheduled. (No had nothing to do with the weather!)
Let's get the facts straight: Obama isn't the proponent here, it's our choo-choo loving Vice President Joe Biden. Obama just cannot say no to anything with a multi-billion dollar pricetag. Besides, Christmas is over and Mr. Biden didn't get the set of trains he wanted soooo much!
Anyhow, given Amtrak's past record, can anyone expect a new rail system to work well? It would be like giving the US Post office a few billion dollars and expect them to recreate FedEx. It just isn't going to happen.
As it is now, Amtrak needs tremendous subsidies from the government just to maintain the only rails it actually owns (the "Northeast Corridor"). The $53 billion is just the beginning. We will be paying billions more every year to maintain a system that will not work in the US.
I can say that our infrastructure cannot support this. There is potential for very specific areas to be overhauled and for something like this but it will be a wasted venture. The other thing is that every high-speed rail car maker is foreign so we will be pouring our money into some other country, be it Japan, Europe, or Spain... which could be the real reason for this.
http://teasphere.wordpress.com - A little spot of tea
More money we don't have for more shit we don't need!
Change I can believe in my ass!
The only "change" is the changing of WHICH pork projects the money we SHOULD be using to pay off our debts is getting siphoned into.
Republican, Democrat, etc, etc. All just a bunch of money-hungry asshats who just need to be put up against a wall and shot.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
>>Roads fill to capacity no matter how big you build them
Eh, the Orange County / LA difference is quite profound. The OC has been upgrading its roads consistently for the last 30 years. LA killed interstate improvements back in the 70s, IIRC, because Tom Bradley wanted to focus on light rail and bus transportation instead of cars (he had an attitude like yours).
So when you go from the congested, stop-and-go LA traffic to Orange County, it's like night and day. Suddenly the roads all widen up, and traffic goes from 15 to 75 in the span of a mile. Coming back the other way, it's a nightmare at most daylight hours.
I have to drive between Fresno and San Diego round trip about twice a month, and I tend to leave at 2AM simply to avoid LA traffic. While I think Bradley's decision was boneheaded, I do support the California high speed rail system, simply because it will provide a way around the LA nightmare.
Amtrak = worst run organization = Government
I guess that about sums it up in one equation....
FragHARD or don't frag at all
I remember those halcyon days when a billion dollars was a lot of money. A 10% cut to the combined DOD spending and Homeland Security budget would make this plan almost revenue neutral over the 6 years.
Pain is merely failure leaving the body
the aviation industry won't allow this.
The Hoover Dam helped pull America out of the last depression. Investing in public infrastructure does work. Oh, but wait... America now hates Keynes and his policies... Well then, go Hayek! Though I wonder if the latter would have approved bailing out the banks. Oh well, I suppose America simply likes to base its economic policies on the worst of Keynesian and Free market economics. Hopefully, its piety will help lift it out of this depression.
Were you also court-"martialed" for spelling-related offenses?
There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
Small light rail travel is awesome in urban centres. Look at the skytrain system in Vancouver.
And if you want people to use a larger rail system for long cross-state trips, it's not hard.
Make it outrageously cheap in terms of distance:dollars (to the point of almost being a loss) so you would have to be a retard to want to fly or drive to anywhere that has two rail stations on it, even if the trip does take longer.
Pack the bastard with whole cars full of alcohol, food, coin op video games, internet access, bathrooms, tables, comfortable seating, and shit.. all hotel grade kit.. and make your profits off the fact that people get bored and hungry during long trips, and will gladly pay anything to solve those problems when they're completely trapped.
Then simply advertise it with catchy ad campaigns targeted towards lower to middle class people. Pay google to suggest trains, with pricing, when you use google maps. Whatever you have to do.
Russia doesn't have black people, so that's a 39 million handicap.
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
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.
"Rich people don't think that we're a credit risk"
They thought that of Maddow too.
Trains are much tougher than planes, and can take more damage without catastrophic failure. Nothing terrible is likely to happen to you on a high speed train unless it derails. To derail it from inside, a terrorist needs to penetrate the floor and damage the wheels. They need to achieve this with equipment you carried on, in a crowded environment. By comparison, if a terrorist want to derail the train from the outside, they have thousands of km of track to target without a train floor in the way, no onlookers, and potentially a truck's worth of equipment. (Indeed, a truck as the equipment would work pretty well.)
Security screening the passengers really doesn't make sense. So, yes, probably you'll wind up going through the same security as you would at an airport.
Quattuor res in hoc mundo sanctae sunt: libri, liberi, libertas et liberalitas.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_debt_by_U.S._presidential_terms
*ducks*
"This will be a deal to work down the debt."
I do not think that word means what you think it means.
Dept reduction would be when the Chinese buy the trains from the US.
"Peak oil has been reached and it is estimated that we only have a max of 30-40 years of oil left and that is only going to get more expensive. "
And don't forget 2.5 billions Chinese and Indians are buying cars like crazy.
In fifty-odd years, fuel will be so expensive that flying will be something that most people can't afford.
Time spend in a car is dead time, because you have to drive. Time spent on a train can be used productively.
Hmm....guess you don't drive right...I have no problem finding good food or alcohol on driving trips either...
That doesn't compare. I don't see restaurants going down the freeway at 150mph while people calmly sit inside, walk around, and eat and drink while they travel. I understand driving may be fun, but that's only because there is challenge, risk and danger involved. But in the overall picture of modern transportation, each person conducting an engine at 80 or 100 mph is not even fast, and nowhere near safe or efficient.
Build your own energy sources from scratch. http://otherpower.com/
basic economic data is that when countries are in a recession, they should increase government spending (especially on infrastructure like rails).
You are taking a good theory and misapplying it. Infrastructure spending is usually better timed when periodic economic downturns occur but it is erroneous speculation to say that rails are the better project, more so for high speed rails. There are far more important things than rails: water, sewage, bridges, roads, ... maybe electrical too. All of these are in serious need of attention. Only after these are addressed would rails become a reasonable project. Right now rails just seem to be a pet political project.
Yes, we owe them. However, if we ever want to pay them back, building a decent train system might help.
Moderation on your moderation should be troll. Hehe... =)
Selling bonds does not disprove the original poster's claim of "spent all the money". Money is not only created by the printing of bills, sometimes it is created by the selling of newly created bonds.
Also countries and banks buy bonds too, they are not just for "rich individuals".
My only question is... why can't the States involved fund this? What benefit do the people in Kansas get from this high speed rail? Why are they paying for part of it?
Why does any level of gov't have to build rails? Why not repeat what worked in the past? Grant the land to a private concern who will privately invest, build and operate. Gov't really only needs to regulate not build. For example grant a 100 foot wide strip of land between Los Angeles and Las Vegas and I bet the casinos will find the money for two high speed tracks.
I see your point...should turn the governance of America and the future of our nation over to the banks and Wall Street, who together have succeeded in demonstrating the self-correcting mechanisms inherent to capitalism at least once every 50 years - well within the lifespans of most totalitarian banana republics - and have additionally and individually confirmed that corruption is stifled by the free market before it ever has a chance to take root.
Give or take.
Orwell: "In a Time of Universal Deceit, telling the Truth is a Revolutionary Act"
Taking other peoples money to create grand schemes like this is fucking immoral, if we can't understand that, then any other rational discussion is worthless.
Ahhh, now I understand. You're talking about virtual monopolies like Big Oil has developed, wherein they levy the private taxes they call "profit" upon the American people without giving the American people any voice - any choice - whatsoever?
You're talking about how highly monopolistic industries like energy can and do take other people's money whenever the whim strikes them at whatever rate they choose? A situation made possible by the American people's absolute dependence upon the products of Big Oil? A dependency that exists soley due to the nearly 40 year record of success enjoyed by the pawns of Big Oil in their efforts to block all alternative energy and conservation measures - to include blocking all attempts to develop and deploy efficient forms of mass transportation like high-speed rail? Those pawns whom the American people know as "Republicans"?
Yes, in that context...in the context of reality, rather than the context of ideology...you do indeed make sense.
Orwell: "In a Time of Universal Deceit, telling the Truth is a Revolutionary Act"
Our ability to repay our debt depends on making society more efficient.
The US government has ~ $160T in unfunded liabilities through the first half of this century. That's 100% of GDP for a quarter of that time or 25% (additional) of GDP for the entire time (on top of the current 22%). Attempting to raise the required funds would crash the economy.
Sorry, the numbers don't work, no matter how high the productivity gains.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
Its obvious but continues to need to be pointed out to the ignorant masses.
Furthermore, the depression and WWII drove the nation's debt to GDP ratio over 100%. We can't go that high with all the other factors we've screwed up but we probably can go higher than we are currently are today-- basically as high in debt as we can find creditors to overvalue our "money". The ONLY time debt is good is to jump start the economy; its risky but its pretty much basic economics --- its more like a LOAN which future prosperity will payback (and less risky than most loans) because remember that the economy is a HUGE factor in government revenue!!! I'm so sick of this BS about overspending like economic losses don't exist. (the real problem is that healthcare isn't fixed yet and military spending is NOT stimulative unless we get massive amounts of stolen resources in return; any of which today goes to some megacorps not our real economy.)
Maybe we should made deals and invade nations producing coffee and force the world to pay for coffee in US Dollars? (sounds silly but coffee is the 2nd most traded commodity in the world...that is, until we screw up enough water and privatize that.) If Dollars weren't tied to Oil things would be so different...
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
Is this the one the morons in this state voted to build a couple elections back?
Per the data published in the voter info packet, if you ran the numbers for projected cost vs expected ridership, ticket price worked out to around $1000 per trip.
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
Come to mention it, who's going to manufacture the rolling stock and the rails? Cuz we've long since shut down all that industry in the U.S.
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
I grew up in Europe and moved to China in my late twenties. In both places trains are in widespread use. They're good for some things, but let's not get overexcited on this:
* Pretty much all decent rail networks are subsidized. They are not profitable.
* Despite the subsidies, train rides are expensive. Unless you enjoy traveling cattle-class and like standing for the duration of the ride, you'll pay more than you would with your car. Remember, we're talking "fast" 2 hour train rides here, not 20 minutes on a subway. The only 'good deal' rides are on off hours, great for grandma to take her grandchildren on adventure perhaps.
* Sooner enough the new rail network will be packed and over-scheduled. This makes it very vulnerable and the smallest issue turns into something big very quickly. Trains will depart late more often than you can count and sometimes simply don't show up.
* Trains are very popular with people who commit suicide. While I realize that removing the train does not prevent suicide, it's something to consider. A suicide will jam the network for hours, traumatize the driver for life, etc.
* Trains can be fast only if they don't stop everywhere. Unless you live and work near the station on both ends of the ride, this means relying on secondary transport to get to and from the train. As great as the train may be for you, don't forget to address the rest of your trip and it's impact on your day, the environment or whatever magic you were looking for the train to provide.
* The real beneficiaries of the rail network are transportation companies. Living conveniently near the train station also means living conveniently near dozens of nightly transports, incl. chemical and nuclear. Again, I realize that removing the train doesn't cancel the transports, but it's something to consider.
* Trains carry many people. They have been the target or terrorists attacks before and I'm sure they haven't forgotten about them. It's an illusion to think that trains are any safer than planes or that airport-style safety measures won't kick in at the first threat received.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AEZjzsnPhnw
in Germany (extensive InterCity Express (ICE) high speed train network) and Switzerland (local ICN, german ICE and French TGV), there is no security theatre at all. You can show up unannounced at the last second, jump into the first train going in the right direction,and buy your ticket inside the train from the personnal.
in France (Train à Grande Vitesse - TGV ; split among Lyria,Thalys and the like) and Belgium (TGV Thalys), the only difference is that they ask you to buy a ticket to reserve a seat in advance (due to limited amount of places and great demand). As long as you printed the reservation's barcode at home or saved the confirmation SMS, you can still run straigh from the bus to the train.
no queue in front of security check points, no x-rays checking of luggages (take as many as you want with the shape you want. The only exception is that you have to pay extra for bikes), no back-scattering voyeurism, no full-body fondling.
no security theatre *at all*, yet we fail to see the many thousand of deaths or hundreds of saotages from terrorist causes that you seem to fear.
if any security check happens in the US train stations,that will only be as a result of air-transport lobby trying to impede concurrence by trying to impose the same stupidity.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
So, exactly how long does Mr. Obama get a pass for everything he does because he was preceded by Bush? 4 years? 8? While that might fly with the core Democrats, I doubt the independents who helped put him in in 2008 will be so forgiving in 2012. This last election should have been a wakeup call that the majority are sick of this endless spending (and yeah, I'm including the two stupid wars in Iraq and Afghanistan) and want it to stop. Seems the White House didn't get the message.
all those little podunk towns have the same rights as the people in cities.
unless you dont believe in equality under the law?
"just walk on and hand someone a ticket."
all of the slashdot-reading suicide bombers just had a lightbulb go off in their heads
Thanks.Wisconsin. Do your Governor stop to think that a fraction of travelers might actually stop off in Wisconsin on the way to Chicago?
Packet drops, however, might become a problem for these trains.
It works just fine in Europe. Actually, it works TOO fine for those who have to listen to conversations of fellow passengers.
Except our overseas bases have nothing to do with projection because we already have nukes that do that for us. The vast majority of them are simply token presence in order to justify retaliation in case someone else attacks that country. The people we have stationed in South Korea aren't there to be a foothold, they're there to be wiped out if North Korea decides to become crazy enough to unleash their artillery onto SK and justify us retaliating instantly.
If a "big war" ever goes down again all of our overseas bases in hostile countries would be the first things wiped out. Any friendly countries would only need a day or so to set up a base for us in their borders, or for friendly countries to set up bases in ours.
"We need to get over this notion, that, for Apple to win... Microsoft must lose." - Steve Jobs, 1997
To pass the Monetary Reform Act, President Obama. This is a perfect example of the sort of infrastructure that would be a boon to the economy and to society.
Utilizing the synergization of benchmark e-solutions to pre-workaround action items!
I think HSR's dead before it gets out of the station and I'm therefore unenthused at the prospect of dumping a lot of money into it.
It's biggest theoretical competitor is commercial air travel. Both CA and HSR require concentrated entry points. You can have smaller, closer-together HSR stations than you can CA airports but that helps little; planes can approach/leave airports from/to any direction but trains have to stay on the tracks that are laid down.
Trains - especially HSR trains - require fixed maintenance-needing infrastructure for every inch of travel; planes just need the sky.
Planes, for the vast majority of their gate-to-gate time, are oblivious to terrain, water, land usage, and other forms of transportation. They are somewhat affected by weather, at least close to and at airports. Heavy snow or ice would either bring HSR trains down to a crawl, especially to the extent that a snowplow locomotive would have to roll down tracks ahead of a train.
Trains of any sort are most useful when the stations are near where people actually live, but where people actually live is the hardest place to lay track.
I think the money ought to instead go into mass transit that gets people out of grinding commutes and gives people better options for getting between home, school, and work, and that's why I rah-rah for monorail. Monorail mostly uses aerial right-of-way and therefore can be built in, around, and over even densely populated communities. Both large and small stations are practical and being able to have small stations is key to being able to put in stations near neighborhoods. Monorail costs less per mile - something which counterintuitively keeps monorail from being built more than it is because it's the public and not corporations who benefit the most. There's still plenty of corporate benefit with monorail but monorail doesn't maximize their profits. That's why government at some level would have to drive monorail projects - the whole "general welfare" thing must come first.
Or for that matter, the mass of people either queuing up at the security check or saying their goodbyes before it. If I were crazy enough to want to blow a lot of people up, forget the airplane, I'd blow up the line before the security check. With a bit of luck, you can actually nail more people than on most airplanes.
Hmm, I know... it means we need a pre-security check before we let people queue up for the security check. Wait. And a pre-pre-security check before it.
I'm off to sell the idea to the TSA. Something tells me they'll love it.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
It's doubtful the US will ever have a billion people.
Fertility is going down in just about every country.
Once it comes below replacement rate (2.1 or so), the population is going to quickly stop increasing.
The US rate is 2.05.
I'm not a lawyer, but I play one on the Internet. Blog
I don't think that is much a problem here. It is when a north/south train meets an east/west train. You have to bridge or wait.
Has anyone thought of putting regen brakes on trains?
I'm not a lawyer, but I play one on the Internet. Blog
China does have built-up infrastructure. They have trains that go all over the place. And they have roads. They even have--get this--canals. Every major city (by our definition, anything with 1 million + people, which is a minor city by their definition) has an airport. Planes fly to all of them, a lot. So, that point of yours is quite wrong and uninformed.
China is also an extremely large country in terms of area. It is larger than the United States and only exceeded by Canada and Russia. So they have long distances, and how.
The rail system in the United States does not work 'just fine' for passenger service. As other posters have accurately pointed out, passenger traffic is secondary to freight traffic here so it always has to yield right-of-way to freight trains.
Naysayers often base their objections on population density. Either it's too small here (ie. not enough profit per mile of track) or it's too high, meaning too much trouble securing right-of-way. Both arguments are ridiculous because American urban centers were built around and developed around railways, because it was the way to move large amounts of goods and passengers before the airplane was invented. That is, the United States today was built and optimized for rail travel.
It is hard to argue that high-speed rail will replace planes for coast-to-coast trips, but then, most travel is regional. For that high-speed rail competes rather well. If you throw in overnight travel with sleeping berths, the range over which rail can compete with planes grows; how pleasant it is to go to your local train station, hop into a sleeper in the evening, and wake up the next morning at your destination.
Try living in and experiencing other parts of the world before declaring that the status quo in America is the only way to do things.
Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.
Meaning no disrespect, I think that you don't have your eye on the ball and you're not thinking medium-long-term.
The most important travel need in the US is simply the daily grind of home/school/work/store. Our interstate highways and our airlines work quite well, but grinding commutes are what eat up people's time, health, and cars and burn gasoline, oil, and rubber. I'm entering middle age, have a small family, and live about 31 miles east-northeast from the center of a major US metropolitan area. Working in IT as I do, I don't really have a whole lot of control over where I work from one year to another and right now, my work and life situation has me in the car about 12 hours from Monday morning to Friday evening. It would be even more if I took a job outside of the northeast quadrant of the metro area. A few years ago, I worked a contract job right in the center of town; most of the time I drove about 18 miles to get to the closest heavy-rail station and then took a third-rail-powered train with self-propelled cars the rest of the way in (about 25 minutes). I'm sure many of you have worse stories but my point is that a heavy-rail system can't provide me with a station within three miles of my house, much less one I can walk to - and the roads don't support biking.
I'm big on monorails because you can place smaller stations out where people live - a design freedom that comes from being able to have cheap inobtrusive aerial right-of-way, which means no grade crossings. A computerized transit system that would make it possible to get in a monorail car in one station and have the system get you to the station you want to go to in a close-to-optimal fashion (i.e., in near-minimal time and with nearly as few car changes as possible) would be the most transformative and beneficial use of mass transit money you could have. Of course, nothing precludes having trains or individual cars at smaller stations getting you to larger stations where long-haul monorail trains or for that matter heavy-rail trains stop and take you to other cities.
Don't live with the idea that "culture, ideas, people [crossing] distance boundaries much more easily" is a good thing. People freak out when they're surrounded by people and concepts that are alien to them and especially if they lose control over how much of that they're forced to process. Freaked-out people aren't content; they make trouble.
When you think about the future (just decades; no need to look out hundreds), the biggest difference between then and now will be that *distance will be expensive.* $100 ATL -> RDU flights will be gone and an 18-wheeler going from Minneapolis to New York City will be significantly more expensive to hire. Getting an object or a person from one city to another by *any* means will have significant costs, so the ability to not just get around and move objects around but also *get things done* within a relatively small geographical area becomes more important. "Cheap distance" connecting cheap labor to American consumers is what has decimated American manufacturing; this is something that we can expect to see reverse and the idea of buying a refrigerator or furniture that was produced within a few hundred miles of where you buy it may become reasonable.
>Why are there so many comments saying that we don't need a high speed rail?
Because, surprise! Not everyone agrees with you! Just because you think something is correct doesn't mean it is.
>Are you telling me that countries like China, Japan, etc have worthless rail systems? It seems pretty darn effective to me.
Passenger rail systems are successful because of population densities. Rail is very successful in this country in areas of high density - the northeast, Chicago, etc. Rail is unsuccessful for long-haul, low density transport, i.e. middle America.
> Allowing easy transportation over long distances could do a lot for any country....
Agreed, which is why we have things like airplanes and cars. High speed rail is doomed in the US because cars and planes have too many advantages over them. Planes are quicker, cars allow more flexibility with respect to destination. The problem with train travel isn't getting to the city, it's getting the last 10 miles from the train station to your final destination. Why would I want to take a 3 hour train ride from Chicago to Peoria just to have to rent a car when I get there to go my final destination? Why not just drive the 4 or 5 hours it would otherwise take, and save the $150 car rental (along with the train fare)?
Japan can operate high-speed rail because most of 100,000,000 people are within close range of a mostly linear rail system running the backbone of a long narrow island.
China can because the people will, in general, live where told and pay what told to build what told.
The USA can't because it would require laying new track across some six million square miles to connect dozens of cities spread between the disparate corners of Boston, Seattle, San Diego, and Miami, and because the population won't stand to be taxed for massive subsidies to a hugely losing investment.
I keep asking a question of proponents, and keep not getting answers:
On average, what is the total travel time and cost per passenger INCLUDING travel to/from terminals, vehicle ownership/rental costs to get to/from said terminals, waits for train arrival/delays, waits for security screenings, and adjusted for impact of limited luggage?
Answer: prohibitive.
All factors included, it's helluva lot easier and cheaper for me to throw two adults, two kids, two dogs, and a month's luggage in the SUV and make the 1000 mile drive 15 hours overnight from Atlanta to NY.
Trains are great for the few people who actually live near them and travel to places near them. Key words: "few" and "near". Most people will expend the balance time & cost from the actual train ride on travel to/from the train. What's the point? With air travel you don't have to run a 1000 mile stretch thru 1000 miles of back yards, AND you get there faster.
Can we get a "-1 Wrong" moderation option?
Public transportation is socialism. If you want to get to work, get a job and buy a car you liberal bum.
You know, you could do a better job of supporting your position. Maybe you have some data to back up your opinion?
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
you mean we threw away all of that money on banks when we coulda bought a dozen of these systems? :(
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.
Where does the budget originate?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Us_federal_budget
The Budget of the United States Government is the President's proposal to the U.S. Congress which recommends funding levels for the next fiscal year, beginning October 1.
So who is an idiot, exactly? The people who passed civics class and realize the president sets the budget and congress says yay or nay, or you who obviously failed civics and who thinks the budget originates in the house?
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Nobody is saying Obama should get a pass on anything, but he should not be blamed for spending money that was actually spent by his predecessor. And according to all recent polls, the majority care more about job creation than the deficit or taxes.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Clearly, it does make sense to build something using borrowed money, if the thing you build has a higher return-on-investment than the interest you're paying on the loan. You seem to be saying that a high speed rail network doesn't have a high ROI; well, okay, that's a different argument.
Switch back to Slashdot's D1 system.
Once Amtrak and the unions get involved this will simply become a huge money pit until the plug is pulled. Culturally, trains are not embraced by many Americans except for commuting and even that can be a huge hassle. We prefer planes because they are faster and now we get sexually assaulted on the way. Woo hoo! Of course we prefer our cars for shorter commutes. Oh and incidentally....we are broke. Bankrupt. Kaput. Done for...... Perhaps government should let private industry determine if there is a sufficient demand and act on that demand....if it exists. Better yet, let's stop the subsidies (bail outs) to Amtrak and see how that all plays out.
Maybe instead of trying to go off calling people idiots and saying our information in "completely inexcusable", maybe you should go ahead and read up about who actually proposes the budget. Mr. "Look At me I am Political and call people idiots for now believeing my Fox News mindset" fails at being political. Now can you please step down from your soapbox kid, the adults are trying to talk here. Go do your homework or something
The world is how you make it
I stand corrected if that's the case. I was speaking from my own experiences of using the system, but it's been a while since I lived in England. After BR I noticed a slight improvement in the quality of the services I used, but maybe that was an outlier. I'll check out that book. Thanks.
Drill baby drill - on Mars
The proper spelling is, in fact, "court-martialed".
I don't suppose you've ever heard of Muphry's Law?
Cheers,
"What in the name of Fats Waller is that?"
"A four-foot prune."
>>>"Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity."
I don't think either Obama or his white house advisers are stupid. On the other hand, they do act as if money is unlimited. - There are some people who simply don't understand the concept of "cutting spending". I have a niece like that who buys a new color printer or computer every year, a new car every 3 years, and spends almost $300/month on CATV/cell service. She went bankrupt, and STILL spends money like mad. Last I heard her new credit card carries $5000 in unpaid bills.
Obama, Bush, the Demopublicans, and my niece have a lot in common. In contrast my TV is free, my internet is only $15/month, and my cellphone costs $0.00. We need more people like me in Congress - people who know how to cut costs, rather than ring-up the credit card bill.
FREE magazine : http://clarkesworldmagazine.com/prior/
I think that all foreign bases should be closed, but I also think that wars of the future will be fought like the 6-day war. A real war (not the occupations of foreign countries) takes a few days. It took the US about a month to crush Iraq. Sure, it's going to take more than a decade to leave, but it took less than a month to invade.
And no one could invade the US. There is about one gun per person in the US. Spread them out and send over 1,000,000,000 Chinese to invade. They can't get here, but even if they could, I think the people would do a reasonable job of repelling them.
Learn to love Alaska
Highways are massively subsidized. Even if the fuel taxes are somehow diverted, the cost of roads is many times more than the sum of all gas taxes. So whining about some small portion of the gas tax getting diverted ignores the fact that the feds spend billions from your income taxes on the roads and counties spend property tax on roads and states spend sales and income tax on roads.
Learn to love Alaska
Again, genius, Obama's debt numbers are much higher than Bush's. The deficit jumped from about $450 billion in 2008 to $1.4 trillion in 2009. The $800B Waste of Money Debt Stimulus assured that.
The election was wipeout for Dems, the worst since FDR, and you can thank the cut-the-budget and no-more-bailouts Tea Party. Only someone "incapable of rational thought" can look at 54 Dem incumbents losing seats and only 2 Republicans losing seats (one of who voted for Obamacare), or exit polling, and say it was merely anti-incumbent sentiment. Bailouts and the arrogance of ramming Obamacare down our throats killed Nancy.
And you're so brilliant, tell me how GWB (as opposed to the Fed and Fannie and Freddie and a nation full of greedy people) caused the housing meltdown. Only a partisan hack could blame Bush for that.
Slashdot "libertarians": Small government for me, big government for those I disagree with. -1, I disagree with you
>>Anyone promoting mass transit in sprawling suburbs needs their head examined. Sprawling suburbs are beyond redemption. There is no hope for them. Your 75MPH road today will be down to 15 soon enough an you'll have to make them 20 lanes wide before the cycle of induced traffic begins again.
While you're right that mass transit was a total failure, the success of Orange County keeping its roads moderately usable in contrast with LA's hopeless and perpetual snarl means that road development can actually work at keeping traffic under control.
Despite the news on NPR and the negative connotation imposed on the decision I applaud the Governor of Florida for making the difficult decision to return the 2.4 Billion dollars. to the Federal Government.
I also feel that it is not a sound investment for the Tax Payer. We need to reign in the national debt before we even consider spending untold billions on this sort of infrastructure improvement.
That is not to say that our existing infrastructure does not need help, but learn to use what we have, pay down the debt, design efficient and cost effective solutions, then in a time of more prosperity we can enhance the infrastructure and bring it up to date.