Correct. In fact ONLY the US has not increased their CO2 emissions year over year. Even the EU has been increasing CO2 emissions every year. So just stop already. We aren't going to do anything about it. We will just need to live with it.
Actually, if European governments stopped "doing something about it", Europe could be lowering their CO2 emissions as well.
The problem with the global warming activists isn't so much what they advocate (lowering carbon emissions), but their idiotic belief that the best way of accomplishing that is through government action.
There is nothing wrong with sceptics, its the deniers you want to eliminate
Would you like to send us to reeducation camps, subject us to electroshock therapy and sterilization, or just shoot or gas us right away? I mean all of those are methods that have been employed by the "science is settled" crowd over the past 100 years to rid themselves of people who disagree.
Nor do they have that kind of convenient access to an airport.
So? We're talking about HSR in California. Serviscope_minor was using his own experiences in Britain as an argument for how wonderful HSR is. I'm just pointing out that he is in a privileged position relative to other Brits and that his experiences fail to be a good argument for HSR in California. The fact that the rest of Britain's infrastructure may also be deficient doesn't make HSR any more attractive for California.
But everything you've said hints very strongly that you don't know how public transport works. You are arguing with people who are using these very systems daily and telling them they are wrong.
No, they are saying how wonderful train service is, and I agree: it's a great way to travel, provided you are in the lucky situation that you can afford the tickets and live close to train stations.
If you have a home in central Paris and central Karlsruhe (Angelosphere), or in downtown SF and LA, HSR is a great deal for you. But most people just pay higher taxes and don't see any benefit from HSR.
It would be hilarious if you were not serious. As you are, it's tragic. It appears just because the US is spending money on education, it doesn't mean it's money well spent. You are a pretty good example of why:)
Well, good point, except for one little detail: I was educated in Europe.
You can easily find out for yourself by going on Google Maps and checking the same routes by car and public transit. Worms to Wittenberg 4:30h vs 7h, Trier to Gotha, 3:40h vs 5:50h, Poole to Cardigan, 4:10h vs 7:30h. Even on direct routes, isn't much of a win: Munich to Berlin is 5h vs 6h (train still being slower). Note that with trains, you still need even more time to get from your home to/from the train station, while the car travel times apply pretty much from anywhere around a city.
There are, of course, other factors, like rush hour, traffic, and train scheduling constraints. Those add travel times to both modes of transportation, but in my experience, cars come out ahead in terms of trip time even with the worst traffic congestion.
Read the bottom note on the article: Carnegie study uses "passenger vehicles, which means cars, pickup trucks, SUVs, and minibuses". The Carnegie study actually uses those vehicles relevant to this discussion, namely vehicles used for personal transport that cause congestion.
The methodology behind the OECD numbers is unclear, but they don't seem to attempt to make data consistent; they just seem to compile numbers reported by national governments, which can differ widely in their definitions.
Anyone has to admit that for most of recorded human history, women have been suppressed
Not at all. In many societies, women have wielded enormous power, just power that's different from the kind of power men have. It's quite ironic that in the US, feminism has actually served to diminish this power greatly.
What men are seeing now is how it feels to be the under-served, and men don't like it.
As a man, I don't speak out against people like you out of fear of losing privileges or "eating shit sandwiches", it's simply because I object to your sexism and bigotry. And make no mistake: what passes for feminists these days isn't hurting men, they are hurting women.
Humans are a fairly diverse species and you can't make such blanket statements. Some women may prefer sharing a high-ranking male, others may prefer a stable pair bond. Which they prefer is determined by a mix of circumstance, genetics, and culture. And, of course, often, polygamy wasn't the result of choice on the part of women, it was the result of force or environment.
Of course it is known to be hereditary, in the sense that there are already thousands of common mutations that can prevent porn and/or video game addiction. Extreme examples are blindness to attention deficits and problems with motor control, but there are likely much more subtle ones that aren't otherwise very harmful. If such "addictions" are harmful to reproductive success, then one or more of these mutations will be selected for, balancing out the harm caused by the mutation against the benefit from not suffering from those "addictions".
So, yes, nature will breed these behaviors out fairly quickly if, in fact, they are harmful, even if there is no obvious gene associated with them right now.
I trust the Carnegie study more than the OECD, since the OECD data appears to be a simple compilation of national sources without harmonization of methodology.
Even if you take the OECD data at face value, it also disproves the relationship between availability of public transportation and car ownership that Bruce postulated. Instead, in the OECD data, car ownership simply correlates roughly with wealth.
You can keep your higher productivity per person: I've got a life to live, thanks.
You said "Infrastructure leads to a functional country which improves the GDP." Now you say you don't really care about GDP.
A cleaner somewhere else can afford to live MUCH better because everything is cheaper. Minimum wage is the same country wide.
So what is your explanation that people move to London or stay in London if they can live much better elsewhere (unemployment is lower elsewhere too)? My explanation is simple: they receive lots of unaccounted benefits from living in London. Your explanation is...?
Poor people are poor because they can't get jobs. One of the reasons is that they can't get to jobs. Can't afford a reliable car and insurance and gas in the US? Can't work! Too often, that's the equation.
But long distance rail travel is unrelated to commuting. If people commute by public transport at all, they commute primarily by bus, both in the US and Germany.
The other reasons they are poor are that we were equally bad in investing in other things we should have spent more upon publicly, like good primary education.
The US actually spends slightly more per capita than Germany on primary education relative to per capita GDP, and a lot more in absolute terms, so that's simply not true.
No. If anything, I assert that good trains are a hallmark of the set of good economic policies that lead to the general well-being of the citizenship.
Railroads in Europe are a legacy of imperialism, nationalism, crony capitalism, and pleasant transportation for the upper classes. Given that they are only responsible for 10% of passenger miles even in places like Germany, they are not a big part of the "general well being". They made some sense pre-automobile, now they are an expensive anachronism. Once self-driving and electric cars are widespread (likely long before HSR's completion date), they will be completely obsolete.
I think you have the tax picture wrong, and it's still the better-off people who are contributing the most to mass transit through their taxes.
Even if that were a good way of looking at it, buying luxury transportation for the well off would defeat the ostensible purpose of progressive taxation.
More importantly, "well off" is only part of the equation. I pay above average taxes, and I don't see why I should subsidize HSR. I enjoy rail travel, but HSR isn't practical for me. Why should I subsidize your HSR travel?
Regarding the bus, I'm not convinced. The biggest problems are that it can't be connected to electricity efficiently (San Francisco's catenary busses can't exceed 40 MPH while on the wire, and rarely approach that speed because they share the route with cars), it is labor intensive compared to rail, and it has the traffic and safety issues of an automobile.
Even if all of that were true, buses actually travel the routes people need to travel. No rail system ever achieves the flexibility or coverage. And buses are an essential part of the European public transport system, far more important than rail for most people.
Your problems with them are mostly easy to address (and are addressed that way in Europe): special bus lanes and rights-of-way for buses, and LNG and battery operation. It's labor intensive because people actually need to travel lots of different routes; a labor-efficient train that carries lots of passengers between places they don't want to go doesn't help. The safety profile of buses is much better: they have professional operators and a huge mass. They may crush cars, but they themselves are extremely safe for riders.
And the main problem with bus service in California compared to Europe is the same problem you want public transit in the first place: the road and highway system in California is poorly planned and inefficient. Countries like Germany spend massively on an excellent road network and fix the kind of horrendous bottlenecks we get around the Bay Area. A second problem with transportation in the Bay Area is the refusal of many cities to allow high density housing, making it impossible for many people to actually move close to transportation hubs. Finally, the low speed limits in California compared to Germany probably also contribute to congestion and make rail travel appear more attractive than it really is.
And ultimately there may still be people who vote against mass transit, but they are shooting themselves in the foot.
As I was saying, HSR does nothing for me: even living fairly close, it wouldn't shorten my trip time to LA (not that I have much interest in going, and if I did, I'd want to take my surf board and lots of luggage). My experience in Europe has been that trains are a fun gimmick for tourists and a nice gift for people lucky enough to live in the right places, but for most people, they are expensive and tedious modes of transportation, which is probably why car ownership is so high in Europe. Only about 10% of all miles are traveled by rail in Germany and only a minority of people take the train every year. And even those numbers are only achieved because the German train used to have a monopoly on long distance ground transportation. Now that long distance buses are legal, train travel is bleeding passengers to cheaper and more convenient private buses on many lines. (Private long distance bus lines are also an excellent way of traveling around the West Coast; give it a try.)
Upper middle class people and the businesses around them pay for their trains with their taxes.
So you at least acknowledge that trains are for the upper middle class. As a member of that privileged class, you simply are saying that you want HSR in return for the high taxes you pay.
Germany has 253 ICE trains with about 400 seats each. Multiply that by $50000 and you end up with $5 billion in subsidies per year for HSR. Given that the Bundesbahn receives at least $20 billion per year in subsidies, that's in the ballpark. For more info, you need to look at the original studies.
You are obsessed with cars and planes. So you simply don't grasp how mass transit works.
Having grown up and lived in Europe for many years, I know exactly how public transport works.
Your fucking brain dead retarded idea that you need an hour to the railway station comes from your brain dead habit to take a car, when you just walk a bit,
Not at all. I usually bike, take local trains, and take buses.
First of all, to hammer the fact that you are an idiot into you: HRS don't exist. There are rail stations. From most stations high speed trains do depart, and they stop there.
High speed rail stations are rail stations where high speed trains actually stop. Those are a small subset of all stations. There are about 5600 train stations in Germany and less than 100 are ICE (high speed rail) stops.
center of the city implies that you can walk there or use a tram, or a cab. I need 10 mins by bike
No, it means that you can walk there.
I can't walk to the proposed HSR station in SF or bike there; it takes me an hour and a half to get there by public transit, and that's actually pretty good compared to other locations.
You are absolutely right that you also need a feeder to the airport. But the argument for HSR has been that the much longer trip times don't matter because they are right in the city center. I'm pointing out that for most people, getting to the city center takes at least as long as getting to the airport, so the trip time by train ends up being substantially longer than by plane.
That doesn't particularly say anything meaningful about rail vs. automobiles.
Your argument has been that more spending on public transportation will result in fewer people having to buy a car, like you believe has happened in Europe. Yet, European car ownership is actually substantially higher than in the US, despite their public transportation policies and their generally much lower disposable incomes.
Stating these facts is just a sanity check on your arguments. Really, if you want the federal and state governments to spend $100 billion dollars on HSR, proponents of that kind of spending need to provide much more substantive arguments.
The studies you cited really say one thing: The U.S. has a lot more poor people than those other places.
Not at all. It says that the US has greater inequality, not more poor people (the article points that out).
You have provided not a shred of evidence that more investment in HSR, or even public transportation in general, will drive down the cost of car ownership or get people to abandon their cars altogether. In fact, your assertion is contradicted by the actual data from Europe that I gave you (in addition to personal experience I can relate to you). Your continued obsession about the cost of car ownership are a red herring.
The simple fact is that you like trains because they are a nice way to travel. I do too, in fact. But in the end, the HSR ridership will consist largely of people like you and me, and to keep costs competitive with commuter planes, it will require massive, ongoing subsidies, just like the rail systems in Europe. Those subsidies will primarily come from people less well off than you or me. I consider that wrong. And I'm glad that American voters are smart enough to figure that out.
If we really want to spend more money on public transit and help people get off cars, the money should be spent on greatly increasing local bus routes. Even BART, Caltrain, and Lightrail, inefficient as they are, would be far better options to spend the money on that HSR.
No, it is what I said it is: insurance+gas+repairs.
The price of a car makes that somewhat higher, but that depends on your choice of car. If you're pressed for money, you can buy a high quality low-end car, like a Toyota Yaris, and drive that for 20 years. That will set you back about $750/month extra.
We need to subsidize an improved form of transport so that it can compete with the heavily-subsidized ones today (you're not going to tell me roads are privatized)
When you look at all the taxes and user fees, it turns out that users of roads and highways pay about as much overall as their construction and maintenance costs.
Once place where I was near Zurich, admittedly an expensive area, wanted $2000/year for a commuter rail pass. I calculated that it was actually a very large savings over automobile ownership or even automobile use.
Those passes (I used to have one) are a luxury item that people buy in addition to cars, not instead of them. They simply are not a substitute for cars.
As I was saying, the idea of a car-less European society is a fiction. The US is actually more urbanized and has a lower car ownership rate than much of Europe. I gave you the links, look it up.
We've really had a century-long economic distortion as far as automobiles are concerned, we are now starting to pay the price as energy costs increase and we see the ecological impact, etc. Let's help people get away from that.
Sorry, but that's pure economic fantasy. Average annual car ownership costs in the US (repairs+insurance+gasoline) are around $2500, and for that you get transportation that gets you from anywhere to anywhere at any time, including carrying large amounts of luggage. That's a really good deal and public transit just can't beat it.
And if you really want to help poor people through subsidizing transportation, start with the most effective and flexible public transportation infrastructure, the bus. Doubling or tripling the bus fleet in low income neighborhoods would do much more for people than HSR from SF to LA and cost much less.
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Actually, if European governments stopped "doing something about it", Europe could be lowering their CO2 emissions as well.
The problem with the global warming activists isn't so much what they advocate (lowering carbon emissions), but their idiotic belief that the best way of accomplishing that is through government action.
Would you like to send us to reeducation camps, subject us to electroshock therapy and sterilization, or just shoot or gas us right away? I mean all of those are methods that have been employed by the "science is settled" crowd over the past 100 years to rid themselves of people who disagree.
So? We're talking about HSR in California. Serviscope_minor was using his own experiences in Britain as an argument for how wonderful HSR is. I'm just pointing out that he is in a privileged position relative to other Brits and that his experiences fail to be a good argument for HSR in California. The fact that the rest of Britain's infrastructure may also be deficient doesn't make HSR any more attractive for California.
No, they are saying how wonderful train service is, and I agree: it's a great way to travel, provided you are in the lucky situation that you can afford the tickets and live close to train stations.
If you have a home in central Paris and central Karlsruhe (Angelosphere), or in downtown SF and LA, HSR is a great deal for you. But most people just pay higher taxes and don't see any benefit from HSR.
Well, good point, except for one little detail: I was educated in Europe.
You can easily find out for yourself by going on Google Maps and checking the same routes by car and public transit. Worms to Wittenberg 4:30h vs 7h, Trier to Gotha, 3:40h vs 5:50h, Poole to Cardigan, 4:10h vs 7:30h. Even on direct routes, isn't much of a win: Munich to Berlin is 5h vs 6h (train still being slower). Note that with trains, you still need even more time to get from your home to/from the train station, while the car travel times apply pretty much from anywhere around a city.
There are, of course, other factors, like rush hour, traffic, and train scheduling constraints. Those add travel times to both modes of transportation, but in my experience, cars come out ahead in terms of trip time even with the worst traffic congestion.
Read the bottom note on the article: Carnegie study uses "passenger vehicles, which means cars, pickup trucks, SUVs, and minibuses". The Carnegie study actually uses those vehicles relevant to this discussion, namely vehicles used for personal transport that cause congestion.
The methodology behind the OECD numbers is unclear, but they don't seem to attempt to make data consistent; they just seem to compile numbers reported by national governments, which can differ widely in their definitions.
Not at all. In many societies, women have wielded enormous power, just power that's different from the kind of power men have. It's quite ironic that in the US, feminism has actually served to diminish this power greatly.
As a man, I don't speak out against people like you out of fear of losing privileges or "eating shit sandwiches", it's simply because I object to your sexism and bigotry. And make no mistake: what passes for feminists these days isn't hurting men, they are hurting women.
Humans are a fairly diverse species and you can't make such blanket statements. Some women may prefer sharing a high-ranking male, others may prefer a stable pair bond. Which they prefer is determined by a mix of circumstance, genetics, and culture. And, of course, often, polygamy wasn't the result of choice on the part of women, it was the result of force or environment.
Of course it is known to be hereditary, in the sense that there are already thousands of common mutations that can prevent porn and/or video game addiction. Extreme examples are blindness to attention deficits and problems with motor control, but there are likely much more subtle ones that aren't otherwise very harmful. If such "addictions" are harmful to reproductive success, then one or more of these mutations will be selected for, balancing out the harm caused by the mutation against the benefit from not suffering from those "addictions".
So, yes, nature will breed these behaviors out fairly quickly if, in fact, they are harmful, even if there is no obvious gene associated with them right now.
Not according to this article, based on studies by the Carnegie Endowment:
http://www.theatlantic.com/int...
I trust the Carnegie study more than the OECD, since the OECD data appears to be a simple compilation of national sources without harmonization of methodology.
Even if you take the OECD data at face value, it also disproves the relationship between availability of public transportation and car ownership that Bruce postulated. Instead, in the OECD data, car ownership simply correlates roughly with wealth.
Well, Bismarck or Hitler would certainly have completed Stuttgart 21 much faster than Merkel. I guess that is progress of sorts for Germany.
You said "Infrastructure leads to a functional country which improves the GDP." Now you say you don't really care about GDP.
So what is your explanation that people move to London or stay in London if they can live much better elsewhere (unemployment is lower elsewhere too)? My explanation is simple: they receive lots of unaccounted benefits from living in London. Your explanation is...?
But long distance rail travel is unrelated to commuting. If people commute by public transport at all, they commute primarily by bus, both in the US and Germany.
The US actually spends slightly more per capita than Germany on primary education relative to per capita GDP, and a lot more in absolute terms, so that's simply not true.
http://data.worldbank.org/indi...
Railroads in Europe are a legacy of imperialism, nationalism, crony capitalism, and pleasant transportation for the upper classes. Given that they are only responsible for 10% of passenger miles even in places like Germany, they are not a big part of the "general well being". They made some sense pre-automobile, now they are an expensive anachronism. Once self-driving and electric cars are widespread (likely long before HSR's completion date), they will be completely obsolete.
Even if that were a good way of looking at it, buying luxury transportation for the well off would defeat the ostensible purpose of progressive taxation.
More importantly, "well off" is only part of the equation. I pay above average taxes, and I don't see why I should subsidize HSR. I enjoy rail travel, but HSR isn't practical for me. Why should I subsidize your HSR travel?
Even if all of that were true, buses actually travel the routes people need to travel. No rail system ever achieves the flexibility or coverage. And buses are an essential part of the European public transport system, far more important than rail for most people.
Your problems with them are mostly easy to address (and are addressed that way in Europe): special bus lanes and rights-of-way for buses, and LNG and battery operation. It's labor intensive because people actually need to travel lots of different routes; a labor-efficient train that carries lots of passengers between places they don't want to go doesn't help. The safety profile of buses is much better: they have professional operators and a huge mass. They may crush cars, but they themselves are extremely safe for riders.
And the main problem with bus service in California compared to Europe is the same problem you want public transit in the first place: the road and highway system in California is poorly planned and inefficient. Countries like Germany spend massively on an excellent road network and fix the kind of horrendous bottlenecks we get around the Bay Area. A second problem with transportation in the Bay Area is the refusal of many cities to allow high density housing, making it impossible for many people to actually move close to transportation hubs. Finally, the low speed limits in California compared to Germany probably also contribute to congestion and make rail travel appear more attractive than it really is.
As I was saying, HSR does nothing for me: even living fairly close, it wouldn't shorten my trip time to LA (not that I have much interest in going, and if I did, I'd want to take my surf board and lots of luggage). My experience in Europe has been that trains are a fun gimmick for tourists and a nice gift for people lucky enough to live in the right places, but for most people, they are expensive and tedious modes of transportation, which is probably why car ownership is so high in Europe. Only about 10% of all miles are traveled by rail in Germany and only a minority of people take the train every year. And even those numbers are only achieved because the German train used to have a monopoly on long distance ground transportation. Now that long distance buses are legal, train travel is bleeding passengers to cheaper and more convenient private buses on many lines. (Private long distance bus lines are also an excellent way of traveling around the West Coast; give it a try.)
So you at least acknowledge that trains are for the upper middle class. As a member of that privileged class, you simply are saying that you want HSR in return for the high taxes you pay.
Germany has 253 ICE trains with about 400 seats each. Multiply that by $50000 and you end up with $5 billion in subsidies per year for HSR. Given that the Bundesbahn receives at least $20 billion per year in subsidies, that's in the ballpark. For more info, you need to look at the original studies.
Having grown up and lived in Europe for many years, I know exactly how public transport works.
Not at all. I usually bike, take local trains, and take buses.
If you live within 30 minutes by train to London, you live "close to the center of London", yes.
High speed rail stations are rail stations where high speed trains actually stop. Those are a small subset of all stations. There are about 5600 train stations in Germany and less than 100 are ICE (high speed rail) stops.
No, it means that you can walk there.
I can't walk to the proposed HSR station in SF or bike there; it takes me an hour and a half to get there by public transit, and that's actually pretty good compared to other locations.
You are absolutely right that you also need a feeder to the airport. But the argument for HSR has been that the much longer trip times don't matter because they are right in the city center. I'm pointing out that for most people, getting to the city center takes at least as long as getting to the airport, so the trip time by train ends up being substantially longer than by plane.
Your argument has been that more spending on public transportation will result in fewer people having to buy a car, like you believe has happened in Europe. Yet, European car ownership is actually substantially higher than in the US, despite their public transportation policies and their generally much lower disposable incomes.
Stating these facts is just a sanity check on your arguments. Really, if you want the federal and state governments to spend $100 billion dollars on HSR, proponents of that kind of spending need to provide much more substantive arguments.
Not at all. It says that the US has greater inequality, not more poor people (the article points that out).
You have provided not a shred of evidence that more investment in HSR, or even public transportation in general, will drive down the cost of car ownership or get people to abandon their cars altogether. In fact, your assertion is contradicted by the actual data from Europe that I gave you (in addition to personal experience I can relate to you). Your continued obsession about the cost of car ownership are a red herring.
The simple fact is that you like trains because they are a nice way to travel. I do too, in fact. But in the end, the HSR ridership will consist largely of people like you and me, and to keep costs competitive with commuter planes, it will require massive, ongoing subsidies, just like the rail systems in Europe. Those subsidies will primarily come from people less well off than you or me. I consider that wrong. And I'm glad that American voters are smart enough to figure that out.
If we really want to spend more money on public transit and help people get off cars, the money should be spent on greatly increasing local bus routes. Even BART, Caltrain, and Lightrail, inefficient as they are, would be far better options to spend the money on that HSR.
No, it is what I said it is: insurance+gas+repairs.
The price of a car makes that somewhat higher, but that depends on your choice of car. If you're pressed for money, you can buy a high quality low-end car, like a Toyota Yaris, and drive that for 20 years. That will set you back about $750/month extra.
When you look at all the taxes and user fees, it turns out that users of roads and highways pay about as much overall as their construction and maintenance costs.
Those passes (I used to have one) are a luxury item that people buy in addition to cars, not instead of them. They simply are not a substitute for cars.
As I was saying, the idea of a car-less European society is a fiction. The US is actually more urbanized and has a lower car ownership rate than much of Europe. I gave you the links, look it up.
Sorry, but that's pure economic fantasy. Average annual car ownership costs in the US (repairs+insurance+gasoline) are around $2500, and for that you get transportation that gets you from anywhere to anywhere at any time, including carrying large amounts of luggage. That's a really good deal and public transit just can't beat it.
http://www.bankrate.com/financ...
And if you really want to help poor people through subsidizing transportation, start with the most effective and flexible public transportation infrastructure, the bus. Doubling or tripling the bus fleet in low income neighborhoods would do much more for people than HSR from SF to LA and cost much less.