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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.
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?
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Hanlon's Razor: "Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity."
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
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
$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.
How about pulling out of two very costly wars that were lost years ago? $53,000,000,000 is almost nothing compared to what has been wasted in Iraq and Afghanistan. Hell, and at least it'd be an expenditure that directly helps the American taxpayer.
If spent properly, $16 billion will come back as tax income directly (by spent properly, I mean "if you have a bank account in Ireland, there's no need to apply for the funds, contractor). After contractor profits and material cost, probably $10-ish billion of that will go to guys actually doing work. Those people will no longer be unemployed, making a significant dent in the unemployment rate.
On top of than that, since this money goes largely to people without money, that money will get spent quickly, meaning products will be bought, businesses will be kept afloat by those sales, and those businesses will lay fewer people off by the truckload. Hopefully someone can convince them to spend it on things with a Made In America stamp.
The investment will likely mostly pay for itself when the lines are leased to private companies to run the lines after they're built.
The American people benefit by the additional infrastructure.
This is exactly how government should spend money. But obviously that's a huge amount of money and its application should be careful, thoughtful, and efficient. That's usually where these things go awry; they let private business tell them "what they need" instead of hiring an insanely over-qualified team to actually manage the job with Uncle Sam's interests in mind.
Why the knee-jerk reaction? Government spending money on infrastructure is hardly the same thing as you or I shelling out $63B for a super-cool backyard train set.
Consider the following:
Building a rail line like this creates jobs, especially in the demographic that is currently stuck in the welfare loop. When these people get their paychecks, they pay taxes. Plus, they have money to spend on retail, who pay both taxes and their employees...see where I'm going with this? Granted, taxes only amount for so much, but this is a case of the government putting money into an essentially closed loop.
After construction, the rail would then be held by the government, right? I would imagine riding the rails would not be free-of-charge, so if they can get commuters to ride it, they should be able to make a considerable amount in revenue.
Beyond the direct jobs created by the construction, consider how much material would be needed. If the material could be collected and precessed in the U.S., then refer back to the benefits of the government directly creating jobs.
I am not an economist, and I'm also pragmatic about this, so I really can't say whether or not this rail system would be worth it. But I do know enough about economics to know that government spending is not necessarily a bad thing. The only time you really get into trouble is when you establish excessive free programs with little or no revenue to cover them, not when you're building lasting infrastructure.
I have an idea! Maybe if the TSA stopped molesting people, air travel would be more pleasant, and you wouldn't have to spend BILLIONS OF DOLLARS on passenger trains. Just an idea, I don't live in the States so I'm not sure how much you like being groped by goons with a badge just so that you can visit your parents.
...is a stable regulatory environment. It's the constant changing of the rules that keeps employers from hiring, not a lack of green technology. I'm sick and tired of Democrats and Republicans using the Treasury as a credit card for their buddies.
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".
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.
The Soviet rail system is vast and excellent in performance, under much worse terrain and weather conditions than in the US. If only the US had such a rail system, we'd be the envy of the world.
As for the unions, I suppose you're thrilled that you don't have to work weekends starting from age 5. But you're probably scared that your job will be outsourced to somewhere with no environmental or labor protection. Somehow you don't think "shareholders" is as bad a word as "unions".
--
make install -not war
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
A deficit is something your grandchildren will be paying off. But building infrastructure like this is an investment that your grandchildren will continue making a profit from, too. Certainly a better long-term investment than fighting an overseas war.
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> High-speed rail, almost without exception, relies on dedicated lines, not shared lines with freight like existing, less-than-high-speed, passenger rail in the US
To a degree, yes. But not completely. There's also a lot to be said for the convenience of transfer-free end to end service, even if it means the train has to be towed along shared tracks the last 25-50 miles to its final destination (this is common in France; they have summer TGV routes where the train runs at 180mph to the end of the line, then gets towed the last 25-100 miles to its final destination someplace where there's not quite enough business to justify the cost of building HSR all the way to the bitter end). In a place like Florida, it's *necessary* to build brand new tracks for HSR between Auburndale (halfway between Orlando and Tampa) and Tampa because the existing freight tracks are heavily used, but it's silly to build brand new 100% HSR all the way to Miami at this point because the existing tracks have barely any freight traffic (enough that eliminating it entirely would be very expensive, but not so much that good dispatching that gave priority to passenger trains couldn't overcome 99.9% of the delays that currently plague Amtrak along the same route).
For roughly the same cost as building "true" 180mph HSR from Orlando to Tampa, FDOT could temporarily scrap the electrification & HSR-only trains, build new tracks along I-4 with geometry suitable for 180-225mph trains someday, then buy and double-track the existing corridor to 110mph standards, connect it to the new HSR line north of Auburndale (along I-4) and launch Miami-Tampa-Orlando service from day one (running 80mph from Miami to WPB, 110mph from WPB to Auburndale, and 150mph along the shiny new HSR tracks for the last 40-60 miles into Tampa or Orlando). It would mean the Tampa-Orlando trains would have to be Acela-type and max out around 150mph ("true" 180mph HSR trains can't legally share tracks with freight trains, or even passenger trains legally capable of sharing tracks with freight trains), but it would also mean that Florida would end up with a useful passenger rail network instead of a largely useless amusement park ride. Move the proposed Orlando station from the central concourse of the airport to a spot adjacent to the airport (with peoplemover to the main terminal & rental car center) so trains can avoid a 5 mile detour (yeah, MCO really IS that big) and continue north to downtown Orlando after the airport station, and Florida will ALSO have a rail line suitable for daily long-distance exurban commuters to Tampa and Orlando from Lakeland. FDOT could even put additional stations between Tampa and Orlando with platforms that are "offline", so intercity trains could blast through at full speed without stopping, but commuters from the Lakeland area could have additional convenient stops to attract even more riders and business.
Another crucial element: rental cars at the major stations. Miami and Orlando have that part taken care of, and Tampa will too (as long as FDOT doesn't completely fuck up). Even better would be enabling passengers to do the rental-car paperwork on the train itself, and walk off the train with their keys in hand (or at least the codes to a wall of electronic safes containing the keys at the station) and be driving out of the parking garage 10 minutes after arrival.
One says Bush ruined the economy.. another says Obama ruined the economy.. you say that Obama is still trying to fix the economy.. and one up there goes on ranting about republicans...
You are all fucking idiots. The president doesnt have shit to do with the economy. Period and end of story. The economy is way bigger than the Executive branch.. way bigger than all 3 branches combined. Moving on, the president also doesnt have shit to do with even federal budgets.... 100% of those originate in the House.
If you are an American, than your ignorance on this matter is completely inexcusable. This isnt a conspiracy rant about big corporations ruling the economy.. that is ALSO laughable. Do you seriously think that the movement of 14+ trillion dollars annually, over billions of individual transactions, is under the significant control of an agency, or conglomeration? Seriously? Drink some fucking reality-coffee, cause the punch that you have been drinking doesnt even pass basic sanity checks.
"His name was James Damore."
My taxes also pay for roads I'll never drive on, schools I'll never attend, medicine for people I'll never meet, etc. etc.
The right to only pay for what YOU will use in your taxes is not a civil liberty under any sane political philosophy.
There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
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.