Yeah, but you don't have to include it for simple car travel. With a car, you are pointed at your destination the moment you leave your driveway. When robot drivers are finally feasible, probably in 20 years or so, then speeds can go up and this train will be obsolete. The highway distance from SF tro LA is on the order of 359 miles, so this 520 mile route is also probably wasteful.
Who cares if they burn WOOD? That's not a fossil fuel, and the CO2 would likely have entered the atmosphere as much more harmful methane, anyway, as it decompises. Burning it will actually make it _cleaner_ overall.
Here's the deal. First, America passes the Fair Tax, a consumption tax that completely untaxes its industry. Then, along with the Donald Trump idea of a 25% tariff on everything Chinese, America recaptures industry it lost long ago from all corners of the world.
American manufactures again!
America passes a law that all new electricity to run these factories must be at least as clean as natural gas. America has oceans and oceans of natural gas, a gas that is chiefly methane, which has a chemical formula of CH4. So, we get 4 hydrogen atoms combining with the atmosphere in this huge exothermic reaction for every one dirty old carbon atom that produces CO2.
Once we get the generating capacity up, someone will likely have invented the magic battery by that time that will power a car for 300 miles, recharge or be replaced in the amount of time that a regular car refuels with gasoline, and costs little enough to allow for $30K cars that perform well, we will then be able to begin getting off oil entirely.
Note that by luring the manufacturing back to the USA, it means that that same manufacturing is NOT being done in China or India where all they know how to do is dig coal. We convert, by economic means, a lot of the world's manufacturing from coal to natural gas by economic means, and via a method that will produce prosperity in the USA, and so get the USA into the "green" category.
Finally, as technology advances, the natural gas is eventually replaced with solar and geothermal energy as it become cost-competitive with natural gas. We then have the problem of million-volt power lines to get the power distributed without too-bad losses from the desert southwest to the rest of the nation.
I think we should get started. We deserve to be an environmental good-guy for a change and doing it like this will bring us prosperity, too.
I just looked up interstate highway construction cost at 10 million dollars per mile. Looks like we could build 18 miles of interstate highway for what one mile of high speed rail costs. The highway won't have engineers that belong to a union that goes on strike, either. The highway will be "open" every hour of the day every day of the year. The high speed rail will likely close for a few hours from midnight to maybe 5 or 6 AM. Once we have self-driving cars in about 20 years, the highways should be as straight as possible to support, say, 150 mph speeds so that the robot drivers can make those highways MUCH more efficient than driving 65 mph. And the robot drivers will be able to tailgate, too, thus compacting all the traffic on the roadway and further increasing thruput.
I think we should take that money and build ROADS!
But it'd be better that we don't build anything until we balance the Federal budget.
Lessee, why would I need a car to get to a train station... well, its 90 miles away from me, for one thing. Oh, there's another airport that's 70 too, and the taxi ride last month from that one was $204. And pretend that my final destination is Michigan International Speedway, and my arrival airport is Toledo, Ohio. The two are probably 60 miles apart.
Ha! Thy're experimenting with bio-diesel as jet fuel right now. Jet fuel = about $3.50 - $4.00 / gallon. Bio Diesel = about $16 / gallon. Flying may not be cheap in the future when the envirowackos ban fossil fuels completely. And you're not going to get jet engine speeds out of batteries and electric motors, ever.
I've got a list of gripes against air travel that partially apply to this idea. I don't fly any more because of TSA and x-rays which were the last straw, and coupled with: arriving early for security, having a 10 minute bus ride to get to a parking lot I still have to pay $8 / day to park in,. bag fees, getting stuck on a tarmac for 7 - 8 hours while the pilot and ATC try to figger out what to do with you, missing connections in some remote city, having to lay over for 6 hours in some remote city to avoid missing connections, having bags diverted to Tucumcari, New Mexico instead of where I'm going, having to begin my trip simply when the plane leaves rather than when I want to leave, having TSA get sideways about some gadget I want to bring along, etc.
This train thing is simply going to be too expensive, and will likely be infested by TSA eventually which will ruin it, and operates on a schedule, instead of being able to leave just whenever I feel like it, like my car.
The future of travel in the USA is still the car, and likely always will be. You leave when you want, stop only when you want to, don't go to cities that are not on your fastest path to your destination, etc. It would do the gov't well to build ROADS, not trains.
The correct answer is to build more roads - not widen existing roads, but make alternative routes so that when someone screws up the driving task and the helicopter has to come get 'em, and the cops close down all 28 lanes of travel, you can get off, travel a mile over to another freeway, and continue. And make the new road _straight_ so as to be good for 150 mph speeds 'cuz the robot drivers of 20 years from now will be able to do that.
The magic battery for automotive use is not here yet. 10 minutes is too long, BTW, the traveling public will not buy it. I don't know what they cost, but from your description, that also may be a factor.
The self-driving car is 10 to 20 years away due to the inability to recognize all the dangerous driving situations and have software to cope with them.
I think solar-thermal with molten salt energy storage will win out, eventually, although we're going to need some really high voltage lines to get it from the desert southwest to the rest of the nation.
We have to re-open some of our rare earth mines in order to build solar photovoltaic and not be dependent upon China where the rest of the rare earth metals seem to be located. The recently began refusing to sell to us so we could not manufacture PV panels, so that demonstrates the vulnerability and national security risk that our dependency upon China is.
Yeah, autonomous cars will cure a host of problems from drunk driving to getting kids to school (no more buses - every kid has his own car) etc. Any age can go anywhere. Old people that don't see well enough to drive, can still be mobile. Etc.
Allowing private cars to be driven onto a rail system such as this would be much more useful, as long as the individual railcars were handled individually like a personal rapid transit, so people could get on and off at numerous rail stations and the train would not have to slow down at all when they did it. That would mean if such a train ran at 100 mph, it would make a 520 mile run in 5 hours and 12 minutes, but messing around parking, walking to the train, checking baggage, waiting for baggage claim, and renting a car at the destination would be eliminated. You could sit in your car for the trip, elect to stop anywhere along the line at a whim, pack all your bags in the car trunk and they will be there when you arrive. The expense of parking at the departure station and car rental or taxi fare at the end point will be eliminated. If you are a workman driving a van full of tools and, say, replacement auto windshields, you can still use the rail transport. What's needed is a switch to remove a single railcar individually without slowing down the train, and I know how to build that. The whole thing would be electric, and even if you drove a '60's muscle car with triple carburetors, or 454 cubic inches, or a model T, etc. it would be a zero emissions vehicle for the duration of the trip. At 100 mph average, you could go coast to coast in about a day and a half, again emitting zero pollutants if the system is solar powered.
So you don't have to keep watch on them every second to keep someone from stealing something. And because I usually travel with 3 - 4 bags, which would effectively make it impossible to do anything but sit in the same seat for the entire trip - no going to the dining car / snack bar / club car / observation deck, etc. because you'd have to lug all that crap along, or leave it sit and it'd likely be gone when you got back to it. If it's in the baggage car, it PROBABLY won't get stolen...
I just don't see that great a value in a rail system that essentially goes from point A to point B. Its great for those that HAPPEN to live close to a station, but by definition, way over 99% of Californians, who are going to be financing that thing, will not.
As for HS rail in general, my next big trip is in March, when I'm driving from Virginia to Tucson and then on to Las Vegas, and then back, mainly because X-rays to get on airplanes is the last straw. Make an HS rail like work for a trip like that. A self-driving car will definitely work, and the self-driving car has the entire nation's road system to use, whereas HS rail needs trillions of dollars (that we don't have) of extra construction. We will NEVER be able to afford such things, either, as long as income taxes are dragging down American industry - pass the Fair Tax, which completely untaxes US industry and lets them compete with foreign industry - and MAYBE we'll get the middle class back. But if we continue with the income taxes, we're headed for a 3rd world country, with the very very rich, the very very poor, and nobody in between.
By 2033 when this thing is SUPPOSED to be done, which will likely turn out to really be 2040, the self-driving car will have become a reality, the freeways will be exclusively for self-driving cars, and their speed limits will have been removed. A self-driving car will carry you at maybe 120 - 150 mph with an electric motor and a battery, and will leave your house with your bags packed in the trunk, where they will be when you get where you're going. You won't have to go to downtown LA or SF if you don't want to, and if you do, you won't have to worry about the traffic. The highways will be 2X - 3X as efficient as they are now because computer-controlled cars will be able to tailgate a few feet apart with perfect safety, and run at the aforementioned high speeds. By 2033 - 2040 all our new electric will likely be solar or geothermal, so transport by battery-car will be 0% pollution. We'll get door-to-door by car as fast as this bullet train, and OBTW the self-driving car will be available 24/7/365, while I'm betting the bullet trains will be all closed if you want to get to LA for sunrise services on Christmas day with your Mom at whatever time sunrise occurs on Dec. 25 in LA.
Cars are always going to win the desirability award in the USofA when it comes to transportation, so the sooner that realization hits home, the sooner people can start planning the ROAD SYSTEM to take care of future generations.
Oh, your bags are with you? How nice - now I get to manage 2 roller bags with clothes, possible other things like a large camera bag or some electronics I use for my hobby, and then the backpack for the laptop and the shoulder bag for the other work or hobby related things I wouldn't want in the roller bags, and I get to sit there, surrounded by this stuff, and can't get up to go to the dining car or snack bar without lugging all this crap with me or risk it getting stolen.
Taxis - if it were here in Virginia, I'm 60 - 90 miles from the airports. Figuring the reason for that is because I don't what to be using ALL my disposable income on a house payment for a $500K house, I'm way out in the middle of nowhere where the payment is for a $86.5K house that has appreciated to about a $200K house (was $258K about 3 - 4 years ago..) since 1996. But anyway, back to the Taxis, I paid $204 to a taxi including the $30 tip to get out of Dulles and down here to King George County when coming back from Iraq last month. I saved a bit on the way out by renting an Enterprise and dropping it off at the Enterprise rent-a-car at Dulles for $130 on the way out to Iraq, but either way, its expensive.
The article says the trip is 6 hours by car so that's what I'm going with. I generally can beat the advertised times between places when I drive them. And I don't know where these guys get a 520 mile train ride from SF to LA, since my Street Atlas USA says it's a 379.12 mile drive. Not sure why the train is going 'round Robin Hood's barn to traverse that route.
By the time this is completed, we will have self-driving cars running on electricity and soon after that, we'll have so many of them that we can ban human-driven cars from freeways. At that time, we can take the speed limits off, and the travel time from SF to LA will be... probably 3 - 4 hours or so. You'll be able to sleep, eat, etc. and your bags will be in the trunk. If there's an accident, which there won't be, you won't be going to jail for it because it'll by your computer that's responsible.
This system is not only an ultra-expensive boondoggle, but the promised self-driving cars will also make it obsolete right about the time its completed.
Yes, I'm opposed to the subsidy that Virginia gets, or anyone else, including alcohol fuel, wind energy, HS trains anwhere, etc. etc. We HAVE to stop this nonsense and balance the budget or we are going to be a 3rd world nation with only the very very rich, the very very poor, and nobody in between. Its been heading that way for 50 years, ever since we lost textiles to europe and consumer electronics to Japan, and has continued with more and more of our industries the latest being intellectual, as in software. Its gov't tax policy at the bottom of it, and the deficit and National debt are exacerbating it. We have to stop the spending, there's just no other choice.
First, we're going to invent the magic battery that will power a car 300 miles or better and be either rechargeable in the time it normally takes to fuel a gasoline car, or replaceable in that time.
Then, we're going to invent self-driving cars to get the people out of the loop and lower accident rates.
As more self-driving cars come into general use, human drivers will be banned from the freeways, and then those freeways can have speed limits removed and maybe double the efficiency of those roads without any further construction.
Natural gas to generate all new electricity to power these highways will ensure cheap fuel for the next 100 - 200 years, and reduce pollution over that time compared to coal. As it becomes more cost effective, solar and geothermal electric will be able to force the pollution emissions of the system to zero.
You're not going to get that sort of "clean" performance with airplanes. High speed rail, as long as it runs on a schedule, will have built-in delays associated with having to wait for the train to leave the station on its schedule, rather than when you wanted to leave, and then of course you have to drive to the train station and park, the latter point also adding considerable expense.
In the long run, you're not going to beat the economy of the private automobile for land travel. HSR looks cool, but unless you get it to carry your car where you're going, thus eliminating the parking expense, the rental car expense, and the time required to park your car and rent the destination car, you can't compete with the economy and convenience of the private automobile.
And lets not forget that if you want to get to a meeting at either end of the rail at 8 AM, you're going to have to board the train at probably 5 AM or earlier. Will it even be running 200 mph thru neighborhoods and small towns at that hour? After all, its probably going to be pretty noisy.
First, you have to drive to the terminal and park. Figure its probably 30 minute drive. Next, you probably ought to be there 15 minutes in advance of the scheduled departure time to get your bags checked, and then it takes you 2 hrs 38 minutes to get there. Fine. Then, you have to wait for your bags to be retrieved, which at airports is usually 30 - 45 minutes. Then, you have to go rent a car, which is about another 30 minutes, including walking or busing to the car. Then you have to drive to your actual destination, probably on average another 30 minutes from the terminal. Almost 5 hours to make the train trip with all the delays involved with scheduled service, as opposed to being on course for your final destination as soon as you leave your driveway. And of course the price of driving is the gasoline, as opposed to downtown parking rates associated with rail terminals downtown in order to leave your car, and then rental car rates on the other end in order to get where you're ultimately going. Plus, of course, there's the train fare itself.
So, how many people are going to pay all that money to save maybe 1 - 2 hours? Probably not many.
*Reduced air pollution doesn't save me a dime as far as I can tell. *Reduced worker stress doesn't save me a dime as far as I can tell. *Reduced highway congestion in California doesn't save me a dime here in Virginia
They can build anything they want with California money, but until the US budget is balanced, I'm against any subsidy for anything.
I'm going to buck the trend and suggest a couple point-n-shoots. I have a Nikon S-10. Not in production now, it has a 10X optical zoom and a 3x electronic zoom along with a vibration reduction lens. The lens rotates forward and backwards, making self-portraits easy, and is a serious hunk of glass - that is, a serious Nikon hunk of glass. The camera makes incredibly great pictures. Its major drawback is being a point-n-shoot, and so has a pretty severe shutter lag, meaning there is a delay between the time you press the shutter button and the shutter does its thing.
If you're not averse to buying a used or refirb camera, the S-10 is an amazing camera. Otherwise, I think the Nikon S9100 is probably close to it now, although I have never held it, it doesn't have the swivel lens to shoot forward and backward, and its a later model so maybe they did something nice about the shutter lag.
The most amazing thing about the s-10 is that equivalent 30X zoom combined with the vibration reduction. You can sit in a room, and just steadying the camera on a table, turn off the flash and shoot available light for candid after candid, without tipping off everybody that you're taking their pictures.
Oh, I have a Nikon D1x, too, heavy as sin, doesn't have the zoom range of the S-10 in one lens, big, etc. and there's about 1000 ways to take a bad picture with it. You need to be very careful that you have all the little knobs and switches set right or something's going to need correcting later if that's even possible. Its an amazing camera too, if a bit old, cost $4K new but you can get 'em for about $600 on ebay now. The one thing that it does far better than the S-10 is the shutter lag - there isn't any. I'm not recommending the D1x, its too heavy and complicated. But just offered that for comparison.
Ha! It won't be long until they're scanning the entire world for "likes", and extraditing some American Citizens from Skokie and Peoria off to Thailand... Kinda like we arrested the supposed pedophile that sent some messages to an alleged underage girl, the guy being from Australia, his message having been sent from his home in Australia, and he showed up here and was arrested.... for messing on the internet in Australia. Wonder how long 'til American citizens are extradited to Iran for Anti-Islamic speech... on the internet... from his home in the USA...
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah, but you don't have to include it for simple car travel. With a car, you are pointed at your destination the moment you leave your driveway. When robot drivers are finally feasible, probably in 20 years or so, then speeds can go up and this train will be obsolete. The highway distance from SF tro LA is on the order of 359 miles, so this 520 mile route is also probably wasteful.
I hate thieves of any sort.
Who cares if they burn WOOD? That's not a fossil fuel, and the CO2 would likely have entered the atmosphere as much more harmful methane, anyway, as it decompises. Burning it will actually make it _cleaner_ overall.
Here's the deal. First, America passes the Fair Tax, a consumption tax that completely untaxes its industry. Then, along with the Donald Trump idea of a 25% tariff on everything Chinese, America recaptures industry it lost long ago from all corners of the world.
American manufactures again!
America passes a law that all new electricity to run these factories must be at least as clean as natural gas. America has oceans and oceans of natural gas, a gas that is chiefly methane, which has a chemical formula of CH4. So, we get 4 hydrogen atoms combining with the atmosphere in this huge exothermic reaction for every one dirty old carbon atom that produces CO2.
Once we get the generating capacity up, someone will likely have invented the magic battery by that time that will power a car for 300 miles, recharge or be replaced in the amount of time that a regular car refuels with gasoline, and costs little enough to allow for $30K cars that perform well, we will then be able to begin getting off oil entirely.
Note that by luring the manufacturing back to the USA, it means that that same manufacturing is NOT being done in China or India where all they know how to do is dig coal. We convert, by economic means, a lot of the world's manufacturing from coal to natural gas by economic means, and via a method that will produce prosperity in the USA, and so get the USA into the "green" category.
Finally, as technology advances, the natural gas is eventually replaced with solar and geothermal energy as it become cost-competitive with natural gas. We then have the problem of million-volt power lines to get the power distributed without too-bad losses from the desert southwest to the rest of the nation.
I think we should get started. We deserve to be an environmental good-guy for a change and doing it like this will bring us prosperity, too.
I'm all for it...
I just looked up interstate highway construction cost at 10 million dollars per mile. Looks like we could build 18 miles of interstate highway for what one mile of high speed rail costs. The highway won't have engineers that belong to a union that goes on strike, either. The highway will be "open" every hour of the day every day of the year. The high speed rail will likely close for a few hours from midnight to maybe 5 or 6 AM. Once we have self-driving cars in about 20 years, the highways should be as straight as possible to support, say, 150 mph speeds so that the robot drivers can make those highways MUCH more efficient than driving 65 mph. And the robot drivers will be able to tailgate, too, thus compacting all the traffic on the roadway and further increasing thruput.
I think we should take that money and build ROADS!
But it'd be better that we don't build anything until we balance the Federal budget.
Lessee, why would I need a car to get to a train station... well, its 90 miles away from me, for one thing. Oh, there's another airport that's 70 too, and the taxi ride last month from that one was $204. And pretend that my final destination is Michigan International Speedway, and my arrival airport is Toledo, Ohio. The two are probably 60 miles apart.
Ha! Thy're experimenting with bio-diesel as jet fuel right now. Jet fuel = about $3.50 - $4.00 / gallon. Bio Diesel = about $16 / gallon. Flying may not be cheap in the future when the envirowackos ban fossil fuels completely. And you're not going to get jet engine speeds out of batteries and electric motors, ever.
I've got a list of gripes against air travel that partially apply to this idea. I don't fly any more because of TSA and x-rays which were the last straw, and coupled with: arriving early for security, having a 10 minute bus ride to get to a parking lot I still have to pay $8 / day to park in,. bag fees, getting stuck on a tarmac for 7 - 8 hours while the pilot and ATC try to figger out what to do with you, missing connections in some remote city, having to lay over for 6 hours in some remote city to avoid missing connections, having bags diverted to Tucumcari, New Mexico instead of where I'm going, having to begin my trip simply when the plane leaves rather than when I want to leave, having TSA get sideways about some gadget I want to bring along, etc.
This train thing is simply going to be too expensive, and will likely be infested by TSA eventually which will ruin it, and operates on a schedule, instead of being able to leave just whenever I feel like it, like my car.
The future of travel in the USA is still the car, and likely always will be. You leave when you want, stop only when you want to, don't go to cities that are not on your fastest path to your destination, etc. It would do the gov't well to build ROADS, not trains.
The correct answer is to build more roads - not widen existing roads, but make alternative routes so that when someone screws up the driving task and the helicopter has to come get 'em, and the cops close down all 28 lanes of travel, you can get off, travel a mile over to another freeway, and continue. And make the new road _straight_ so as to be good for 150 mph speeds 'cuz the robot drivers of 20 years from now will be able to do that.
Yeah, they're going to get 16 people to pay this fare for each trip.
The magic battery for automotive use is not here yet. 10 minutes is too long, BTW, the traveling public will not buy it. I don't know what they cost, but from your description, that also may be a factor.
The self-driving car is 10 to 20 years away due to the inability to recognize all the dangerous driving situations and have software to cope with them.
I think solar-thermal with molten salt energy storage will win out, eventually, although we're going to need some really high voltage lines to get it from the desert southwest to the rest of the nation.
We have to re-open some of our rare earth mines in order to build solar photovoltaic and not be dependent upon China where the rest of the rare earth metals seem to be located. The recently began refusing to sell to us so we could not manufacture PV panels, so that demonstrates the vulnerability and national security risk that our dependency upon China is.
Thanks.
Yeah, autonomous cars will cure a host of problems from drunk driving to getting kids to school (no more buses - every kid has his own car) etc. Any age can go anywhere. Old people that don't see well enough to drive, can still be mobile. Etc.
Allowing private cars to be driven onto a rail system such as this would be much more useful, as long as the individual railcars were handled individually like a personal rapid transit, so people could get on and off at numerous rail stations and the train would not have to slow down at all when they did it. That would mean if such a train ran at 100 mph, it would make a 520 mile run in 5 hours and 12 minutes, but messing around parking, walking to the train, checking baggage, waiting for baggage claim, and renting a car at the destination would be eliminated. You could sit in your car for the trip, elect to stop anywhere along the line at a whim, pack all your bags in the car trunk and they will be there when you arrive. The expense of parking at the departure station and car rental or taxi fare at the end point will be eliminated. If you are a workman driving a van full of tools and, say, replacement auto windshields, you can still use the rail transport. What's needed is a switch to remove a single railcar individually without slowing down the train, and I know how to build that. The whole thing would be electric, and even if you drove a '60's muscle car with triple carburetors, or 454 cubic inches, or a model T, etc. it would be a zero emissions vehicle for the duration of the trip. At 100 mph average, you could go coast to coast in about a day and a half, again emitting zero pollutants if the system is solar powered.
So you don't have to keep watch on them every second to keep someone from stealing something. And because I usually travel with 3 - 4 bags, which would effectively make it impossible to do anything but sit in the same seat for the entire trip - no going to the dining car / snack bar / club car / observation deck, etc. because you'd have to lug all that crap along, or leave it sit and it'd likely be gone when you got back to it. If it's in the baggage car, it PROBABLY won't get stolen...
I just don't see that great a value in a rail system that essentially goes from point A to point B. Its great for those that HAPPEN to live close to a station, but by definition, way over 99% of Californians, who are going to be financing that thing, will not.
As for HS rail in general, my next big trip is in March, when I'm driving from Virginia to Tucson and then on to Las Vegas, and then back, mainly because X-rays to get on airplanes is the last straw. Make an HS rail like work for a trip like that. A self-driving car will definitely work, and the self-driving car has the entire nation's road system to use, whereas HS rail needs trillions of dollars (that we don't have) of extra construction. We will NEVER be able to afford such things, either, as long as income taxes are dragging down American industry - pass the Fair Tax, which completely untaxes US industry and lets them compete with foreign industry - and MAYBE we'll get the middle class back. But if we continue with the income taxes, we're headed for a 3rd world country, with the very very rich, the very very poor, and nobody in between.
By 2033 when this thing is SUPPOSED to be done, which will likely turn out to really be 2040, the self-driving car will have become a reality, the freeways will be exclusively for self-driving cars, and their speed limits will have been removed. A self-driving car will carry you at maybe 120 - 150 mph with an electric motor and a battery, and will leave your house with your bags packed in the trunk, where they will be when you get where you're going. You won't have to go to downtown LA or SF if you don't want to, and if you do, you won't have to worry about the traffic. The highways will be 2X - 3X as efficient as they are now because computer-controlled cars will be able to tailgate a few feet apart with perfect safety, and run at the aforementioned high speeds. By 2033 - 2040 all our new electric will likely be solar or geothermal, so transport by battery-car will be 0% pollution. We'll get door-to-door by car as fast as this bullet train, and OBTW the self-driving car will be available 24/7/365, while I'm betting the bullet trains will be all closed if you want to get to LA for sunrise services on Christmas day with your Mom at whatever time sunrise occurs on Dec. 25 in LA.
Cars are always going to win the desirability award in the USofA when it comes to transportation, so the sooner that realization hits home, the sooner people can start planning the ROAD SYSTEM to take care of future generations.
Oh, your bags are with you? How nice - now I get to manage 2 roller bags with clothes, possible other things like a large camera bag or some electronics I use for my hobby, and then the backpack for the laptop and the shoulder bag for the other work or hobby related things I wouldn't want in the roller bags, and I get to sit there, surrounded by this stuff, and can't get up to go to the dining car or snack bar without lugging all this crap with me or risk it getting stolen.
Taxis - if it were here in Virginia, I'm 60 - 90 miles from the airports. Figuring the reason for that is because I don't what to be using ALL my disposable income on a house payment for a $500K house, I'm way out in the middle of nowhere where the payment is for a $86.5K house that has appreciated to about a $200K house (was $258K about 3 - 4 years ago..) since 1996. But anyway, back to the Taxis, I paid $204 to a taxi including the $30 tip to get out of Dulles and down here to King George County when coming back from Iraq last month. I saved a bit on the way out by renting an Enterprise and dropping it off at the Enterprise rent-a-car at Dulles for $130 on the way out to Iraq, but either way, its expensive.
The article says the trip is 6 hours by car so that's what I'm going with. I generally can beat the advertised times between places when I drive them. And I don't know where these guys get a 520 mile train ride from SF to LA, since my Street Atlas USA says it's a 379.12 mile drive. Not sure why the train is going 'round Robin Hood's barn to traverse that route.
By the time this is completed, we will have self-driving cars running on electricity and soon after that, we'll have so many of them that we can ban human-driven cars from freeways. At that time, we can take the speed limits off, and the travel time from SF to LA will be... probably 3 - 4 hours or so. You'll be able to sleep, eat, etc. and your bags will be in the trunk. If there's an accident, which there won't be, you won't be going to jail for it because it'll by your computer that's responsible.
This system is not only an ultra-expensive boondoggle, but the promised self-driving cars will also make it obsolete right about the time its completed.
Yes, I'm opposed to the subsidy that Virginia gets, or anyone else, including alcohol fuel, wind energy, HS trains anwhere, etc. etc. We HAVE to stop this nonsense and balance the budget or we are going to be a 3rd world nation with only the very very rich, the very very poor, and nobody in between. Its been heading that way for 50 years, ever since we lost textiles to europe and consumer electronics to Japan, and has continued with more and more of our industries the latest being intellectual, as in software. Its gov't tax policy at the bottom of it, and the deficit and National debt are exacerbating it. We have to stop the spending, there's just no other choice.
Did I do something wrong, or is not 98 billion dollars divided by 520 miles 188.461528 million dollars per mile? I mean, really? REALLY? Holy cow...
Ever look at the $$$ required to get a sleeper on AmTrak? We just don't seem to be able to do that at a reasonable price.
Not to worry.
First, we're going to invent the magic battery that will power a car 300 miles or better and be either rechargeable in the time it normally takes to fuel a gasoline car, or replaceable in that time.
Then, we're going to invent self-driving cars to get the people out of the loop and lower accident rates.
As more self-driving cars come into general use, human drivers will be banned from the freeways, and then those freeways can have speed limits removed and maybe double the efficiency of those roads without any further construction.
Natural gas to generate all new electricity to power these highways will ensure cheap fuel for the next 100 - 200 years, and reduce pollution over that time compared to coal. As it becomes more cost effective, solar and geothermal electric will be able to force the pollution emissions of the system to zero.
You're not going to get that sort of "clean" performance with airplanes. High speed rail, as long as it runs on a schedule, will have built-in delays associated with having to wait for the train to leave the station on its schedule, rather than when you wanted to leave, and then of course you have to drive to the train station and park, the latter point also adding considerable expense.
In the long run, you're not going to beat the economy of the private automobile for land travel. HSR looks cool, but unless you get it to carry your car where you're going, thus eliminating the parking expense, the rental car expense, and the time required to park your car and rent the destination car, you can't compete with the economy and convenience of the private automobile.
And lets not forget that if you want to get to a meeting at either end of the rail at 8 AM, you're going to have to board the train at probably 5 AM or earlier. Will it even be running 200 mph thru neighborhoods and small towns at that hour? After all, its probably going to be pretty noisy.
Time savings? Probably not.
First, you have to drive to the terminal and park. Figure its probably 30 minute drive. Next, you probably ought to be there 15 minutes in advance of the scheduled departure time to get your bags checked, and then it takes you 2 hrs 38 minutes to get there. Fine. Then, you have to wait for your bags to be retrieved, which at airports is usually 30 - 45 minutes. Then, you have to go rent a car, which is about another 30 minutes, including walking or busing to the car. Then you have to drive to your actual destination, probably on average another 30 minutes from the terminal. Almost 5 hours to make the train trip with all the delays involved with scheduled service, as opposed to being on course for your final destination as soon as you leave your driveway. And of course the price of driving is the gasoline, as opposed to downtown parking rates associated with rail terminals downtown in order to leave your car, and then rental car rates on the other end in order to get where you're ultimately going. Plus, of course, there's the train fare itself.
So, how many people are going to pay all that money to save maybe 1 - 2 hours? Probably not many.
Savings?
*Reduced air pollution doesn't save me a dime as far as I can tell.
*Reduced worker stress doesn't save me a dime as far as I can tell.
*Reduced highway congestion in California doesn't save me a dime here in Virginia
They can build anything they want with California money, but until the US budget is balanced, I'm against any subsidy for anything.
I'm going to buck the trend and suggest a couple point-n-shoots. I have a Nikon S-10. Not in production now, it has a 10X optical zoom and a 3x electronic zoom along with a vibration reduction lens. The lens rotates forward and backwards, making self-portraits easy, and is a serious hunk of glass - that is, a serious Nikon hunk of glass. The camera makes incredibly great pictures. Its major drawback is being a point-n-shoot, and so has a pretty severe shutter lag, meaning there is a delay between the time you press the shutter button and the shutter does its thing.
If you're not averse to buying a used or refirb camera, the S-10 is an amazing camera. Otherwise, I think the Nikon S9100 is probably close to it now, although I have never held it, it doesn't have the swivel lens to shoot forward and backward, and its a later model so maybe they did something nice about the shutter lag.
The most amazing thing about the s-10 is that equivalent 30X zoom combined with the vibration reduction. You can sit in a room, and just steadying the camera on a table, turn off the flash and shoot available light for candid after candid, without tipping off everybody that you're taking their pictures.
Oh, I have a Nikon D1x, too, heavy as sin, doesn't have the zoom range of the S-10 in one lens, big, etc. and there's about 1000 ways to take a bad picture with it. You need to be very careful that you have all the little knobs and switches set right or something's going to need correcting later if that's even possible. Its an amazing camera too, if a bit old, cost $4K new but you can get 'em for about $600 on ebay now. The one thing that it does far better than the S-10 is the shutter lag - there isn't any. I'm not recommending the D1x, its too heavy and complicated. But just offered that for comparison.
Ha! It won't be long until they're scanning the entire world for "likes", and extraditing some American Citizens from Skokie and Peoria off to Thailand... Kinda like we arrested the supposed pedophile that sent some messages to an alleged underage girl, the guy being from Australia, his message having been sent from his home in Australia, and he showed up here and was arrested.... for messing on the internet in Australia. Wonder how long 'til American citizens are extradited to Iran for Anti-Islamic speech... on the internet... from his home in the USA...