But I think it's pretty incontrovertible that, at 40,000 deaths/year, if terrorists were killing people as fast as the cars, the President would be impeached. As his predecessor would have, and his, all the way back to Ike.
Amtrak as gotten subsidies over its entire lifetime (since 1971) equal to what the roads get every year. It's simply not the same magnitude. Anyone trying to sell cutting Amtrak in the name of budget discipline is being dishonest.
The point is that the right-of-ways exist, and can be upgraded without major eminent domain action (a/k/a political suicide, thanks to the hard lessons of the Interstates). That takes care of your first two objections; your third is only partly correct in that freight will be able to coexist with American HSR for a while yet, especially if reactivation of disused right-of-ways is in the cards, which is a possibility in many areas. Also, freight rail lines aren't really bottlenecked at any point where HSR is being discussed, with the dealwithable exception of the Chicago Terminal District (which is just on very strong crack to begin with).
Sure, you *could* move tanks on the Interstates across the country, but you would never want to, given that tanks make Hummers look fuel efficient. The Army has always deployed on rails; even the Germans moved divisions by rail through the end of World War II, despite having already built the Autobahns.
As much as I agree with your sentiment, after half a century of BANANA (Build Absolutely Nothing Anywhere Near Anything) zoning laws, it is very probable that the parent poster can't live within 5 biking miles of his workplace, if he lives in a large segment of the United States. Remember, virtually everywhere where it hasn't been done already, building anything like a small town Main Street is now illegal, despite the massive pent-up demand in the market for development in that style.
Using the cost of building a new runway at Hartsfield from scratch for estimating the cost of upgrading an existing railroad as you did is way off. As an *actual* comparison, building the proposed high speed rail line from Los Angeles to San Francisco (~380 miles, as compared to Atlanta-Savannah's 250 miles) is only estimated to cost $9 billion, a cost per mile 3.2 times lower than the number you pulled out of your ass. Interestingly enough, I read in one of the "Interstates turn 50" articles (sorry, can't find the link) that the current cost of construction of the Interstates in 2006 dollars would be $1 trillion, about the sum I just calculated it would require to duplicate it with high speed rail. Easy money, no it's not, but more so over 50 years, especially since no large city will permit another route-mile of interstate to be built within its limits ever again, except at Big Dig-rate tunneling expense. The railroads we've already had for 100+ years.
The "we're more sprawled than Europe" argument is bogus. I grew up in Cincinnati, and now live in Philadelphia, and both of those cities have sizeable neighbors which are or could easily be supporting a rail connection (Dayton-Columbus-Cleveland, Indy-Chicago, Louisville, Lexington; and New York City, Baltimore-Washington, Harrisburg, Atlantic City; respectively). Our cities are no less populous, no less dense at the urban core, and no farther apart from their close neighbors, at least on the coasts and in the Midwest.
If you never hear about how great Russia's mass transit system is, you obviously have never met someone who has been to Russia. My then-girlfriend raved about how nice the tram system was to use where she was doing study abroad, and the Moscow Metro is famous for being opulently decorated with lots of marble and running a very high quality service. The Moscow-St Petersburg trains are fast and comfortable, and the only bad stories I've heard about their train network involve long-distance runs like the Trans-Sib (which Amtrak beats the pants off on all points except punctuality, which is not in Amtrak's control on the long distance routes anyway). In any event, look up the Moscow Metro on Wikipedia before you bring Russian trains into things again.
She even told us she did so because criticism that "goes through channels" usually isn't publicly seen.
Criticism that goes through the Front Office usually isn't publicly seen.
I don't work for the WMF. So I can't actually say how many complaints go that route. But considering as how there are maybe half a dozen to a dozen people who are authorized to handle such calls and e-mails, and that they all get handled somehow, I'd say that it's a miniscule number compared to the objections people raise on the wiki and on wikiEN-l. Those are all handled in full view of everyone.
So why shouldn't she reply here, to those you've called the "Slashdot hordes"?
She can if she wants, but is under no obligation to, and I say that as a member of those selfsame hordes. That she chooses to speaks well of her. It would just be polite if people didn't treat her as though she must answer our inquisition.
mindspillage is not responsible to the Slashdot hordes. She is responsible to the Wikimedia Foundation and the English Wikipedia community. If you have a question in either of those capacities, go through the channels available to you on Wikipedia talk pages or the mailing list. If you have a question as a Slashdotter, she is under no obligation to answer you on Slashdot.
AirTrain JFK isn't a monorail, it's advanced light rapid transit. In fact, it's about as far from a monorail as you can get while still being on rails, having a total of four.
AirTrain Newark, OTOH, is a monorail, having been extended from a terminal-to-terminal (and parking and car rental lots) shuttle to the Amtrak/NJT station on the Northeast Corridor.
You're mistaken in that Cubic is the lead contractor for the NYC Metrocard system. You sure you don't have things reversed? (I don't know who CTA's contractor is and am too lazy to look it up, but I know their fare cards are printed on the same stock as the Metrocard.)
Just a suggestion: might it not be wise to create a topic and icon for matters pertaining to EU law, in parallel to the Stars and Stripes icon often seen on YRO stories pertaining to US law? I for one am finding the many "earlier Slashdot stories" referenced in the text of every EU software patent story one reads nowadays to be a tedious method of threading.
And before I get modded down by the Europe bashers, let me disclose that I'm an American who finds it edifying to keep up with events across the pond, and have no interest in the "Is Slashdot too Americentric" debate.
For hydrogen to explode, it needs to be in the presence of oxygen.
This is much less a concern in the Martian atmosphere, which is 95% corbon dioxide, as opposed to Earth's 80%-20% nitrogen-oxygen mix.
As for storage and transport, hydrogen can either be well contained (rocket fuel rarely explodes prematurely these days), or generated by a chemical reaction upon arrival (anyone remember what you get from adding a metal to acid from middle school chemistry? Though I'd imagine the medium of choice would likely be something like hydrogen peroxide. IANA Chemical Engineer.)
Then again, nobody has any clue who invented rail transit.
This may be due in large part to the vague definition of "rail transit", but it still sounds like the name should have survived the last 200 years in the public conciousness.
Similarly, a lot of the names of early computer pioneers change around in importance depending on what advances you consider to be the most groundbreaking. Sure, Eckert and Mauchly were important and should be venerated, but if you think ENIAC is overhyped and EDSAC/Z1/COLOSSUS/Mark I should be the one remembered as the first computer, then the identity, and even the nationality, of the people you want the public to venerate most changes. And there are cases to be made in support of each of these machines, some stronger than others.
Let's give you a nice starter figure. The highway system was funded by Uncle Sam to the tune of $30 billion last year. That's one year; wanna try multiplying by 30? How about tacking on what states and municipalities spend?
It shouldn't surprise you at all that people follow the "free" infrastructure. ("Free" as in marginal cost == 0, of course TANSTAAFL.)
Someone elsewhere was suggesting a Vegas to San Diego route. Well, the problem is, you'd have about 10 people get on or off at each stop in between, and then the train would totally empty out at the end.
Right, because there's just desert and wasteland between Las Vegas and San Diego, nowhere anyone might want to go or live in, like, say, Los Angeles, the second largest city in the entire country. Nope, nothing like that there at all.
The more valid example is of people that compose off-line then send messages in a big burst. Except that local phone calls are a fixed price in Australia, so who still does this?
People with dialup who want to keep their only phone line free for incoming calls.
Yes, it's easy for those of us who have broadband (or, I suppose, those of us who don't get [m]any incoming calls,) to forget about the common hazards of dialup internet access. This isn't stone knives and bearskins; it's a legitimate choice being made by many people around the world who just want to get online and sample what the internet has to offer. A policy that has the potential to discriminate against legitimate customers like this needs to be used carefully, or maybe reworked.
Slashdot Mirror
Sure. GP was clearly wrong.
But I think it's pretty incontrovertible that, at 40,000 deaths/year, if terrorists were killing people as fast as the cars, the President would be impeached. As his predecessor would have, and his, all the way back to Ike.
Amtrak as gotten subsidies over its entire lifetime (since 1971) equal to what the roads get every year. It's simply not the same magnitude. Anyone trying to sell cutting Amtrak in the name of budget discipline is being dishonest.
The point is that the right-of-ways exist, and can be upgraded without major eminent domain action (a/k/a political suicide, thanks to the hard lessons of the Interstates). That takes care of your first two objections; your third is only partly correct in that freight will be able to coexist with American HSR for a while yet, especially if reactivation of disused right-of-ways is in the cards, which is a possibility in many areas. Also, freight rail lines aren't really bottlenecked at any point where HSR is being discussed, with the dealwithable exception of the Chicago Terminal District (which is just on very strong crack to begin with).
Now they know how many holes it takes to fill the Albert Hall... :-)
Sure, you *could* move tanks on the Interstates across the country, but you would never want to, given that tanks make Hummers look fuel efficient. The Army has always deployed on rails; even the Germans moved divisions by rail through the end of World War II, despite having already built the Autobahns.
As much as I agree with your sentiment, after half a century of BANANA (Build Absolutely Nothing Anywhere Near Anything) zoning laws, it is very probable that the parent poster can't live within 5 biking miles of his workplace, if he lives in a large segment of the United States. Remember, virtually everywhere where it hasn't been done already, building anything like a small town Main Street is now illegal, despite the massive pent-up demand in the market for development in that style.
Using the cost of building a new runway at Hartsfield from scratch for estimating the cost of upgrading an existing railroad as you did is way off. As an *actual* comparison, building the proposed high speed rail line from Los Angeles to San Francisco (~380 miles, as compared to Atlanta-Savannah's 250 miles) is only estimated to cost $9 billion, a cost per mile 3.2 times lower than the number you pulled out of your ass. Interestingly enough, I read in one of the "Interstates turn 50" articles (sorry, can't find the link) that the current cost of construction of the Interstates in 2006 dollars would be $1 trillion, about the sum I just calculated it would require to duplicate it with high speed rail. Easy money, no it's not, but more so over 50 years, especially since no large city will permit another route-mile of interstate to be built within its limits ever again, except at Big Dig-rate tunneling expense. The railroads we've already had for 100+ years.
The "we're more sprawled than Europe" argument is bogus. I grew up in Cincinnati, and now live in Philadelphia, and both of those cities have sizeable neighbors which are or could easily be supporting a rail connection (Dayton-Columbus-Cleveland, Indy-Chicago, Louisville, Lexington; and New York City, Baltimore-Washington, Harrisburg, Atlantic City; respectively). Our cities are no less populous, no less dense at the urban core, and no farther apart from their close neighbors, at least on the coasts and in the Midwest.
If you never hear about how great Russia's mass transit system is, you obviously have never met someone who has been to Russia. My then-girlfriend raved about how nice the tram system was to use where she was doing study abroad, and the Moscow Metro is famous for being opulently decorated with lots of marble and running a very high quality service. The Moscow-St Petersburg trains are fast and comfortable, and the only bad stories I've heard about their train network involve long-distance runs like the Trans-Sib (which Amtrak beats the pants off on all points except punctuality, which is not in Amtrak's control on the long distance routes anyway). In any event, look up the Moscow Metro on Wikipedia before you bring Russian trains into things again.
The Civilized World vs. Red Sox Nation
Yeah, I've got karma to burn, why do you ask?
She posted here.
So she did.
She even told us she did so because criticism that "goes through channels" usually isn't publicly seen.
Criticism that goes through the Front Office usually isn't publicly seen.
I don't work for the WMF. So I can't actually say how many complaints go that route. But considering as how there are maybe half a dozen to a dozen people who are authorized to handle such calls and e-mails, and that they all get handled somehow, I'd say that it's a miniscule number compared to the objections people raise on the wiki and on wikiEN-l. Those are all handled in full view of everyone.
So why shouldn't she reply here, to those you've called the "Slashdot hordes"?
She can if she wants, but is under no obligation to, and I say that as a member of those selfsame hordes. That she chooses to speaks well of her. It would just be polite if people didn't treat her as though she must answer our inquisition.
mindspillage is not responsible to the Slashdot hordes. She is responsible to the Wikimedia Foundation and the English Wikipedia community. If you have a question in either of those capacities, go through the channels available to you on Wikipedia talk pages or the mailing list. If you have a question as a Slashdotter, she is under no obligation to answer you on Slashdot.
s/IJN/JMSDF/ in your second paragraph, there.
As for who else is using Aegis, I refer you to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aegis_combat_system
AirTrain JFK isn't a monorail, it's advanced light rapid transit. In fact, it's about as far from a monorail as you can get while still being on rails, having a total of four.
AirTrain Newark, OTOH, is a monorail, having been extended from a terminal-to-terminal (and parking and car rental lots) shuttle to the Amtrak/NJT station on the Northeast Corridor.
FasTracks will be your friend, it sounds like.
You're mistaken in that Cubic is the lead contractor for the NYC Metrocard system. You sure you don't have things reversed? (I don't know who CTA's contractor is and am too lazy to look it up, but I know their fare cards are printed on the same stock as the Metrocard.)
I believe t---$ is claimed already by William Fucking Shatner.
Just a suggestion: might it not be wise to create a topic and icon for matters pertaining to EU law, in parallel to the Stars and Stripes icon often seen on YRO stories pertaining to US law? I for one am finding the many "earlier Slashdot stories" referenced in the text of every EU software patent story one reads nowadays to be a tedious method of threading.
And before I get modded down by the Europe bashers, let me disclose that I'm an American who finds it edifying to keep up with events across the pond, and have no interest in the "Is Slashdot too Americentric" debate.
Yeah, that sounds like a Minnesota gang fight all right.
For hydrogen to explode, it needs to be in the presence of oxygen.
This is much less a concern in the Martian atmosphere, which is 95% corbon dioxide, as opposed to Earth's 80%-20% nitrogen-oxygen mix.
As for storage and transport, hydrogen can either be well contained (rocket fuel rarely explodes prematurely these days), or generated by a chemical reaction upon arrival (anyone remember what you get from adding a metal to acid from middle school chemistry? Though I'd imagine the medium of choice would likely be something like hydrogen peroxide. IANA Chemical Engineer.)
...you insensitive clod!
And yes, I've just fed the troll. Ah well, I wasn't accumulating karma anyway...
This may be due in large part to the vague definition of "rail transit", but it still sounds like the name should have survived the last 200 years in the public conciousness.
Similarly, a lot of the names of early computer pioneers change around in importance depending on what advances you consider to be the most groundbreaking. Sure, Eckert and Mauchly were important and should be venerated, but if you think ENIAC is overhyped and EDSAC/Z1/COLOSSUS/Mark I should be the one remembered as the first computer, then the identity, and even the nationality, of the people you want the public to venerate most changes. And there are cases to be made in support of each of these machines, some stronger than others.
There is a similar pass offered by Amtrak and VIA Rail Canada that allows (nearly) unlimited rail travel in both countries for a month.
Let's give you a nice starter figure. The highway system was funded by Uncle Sam to the tune of $30 billion last year. That's one year; wanna try multiplying by 30? How about tacking on what states and municipalities spend?
It shouldn't surprise you at all that people follow the "free" infrastructure. ("Free" as in marginal cost == 0, of course TANSTAAFL.)
Someone elsewhere was suggesting a Vegas to San Diego route. Well, the problem is, you'd have about 10 people get on or off at each stop in between, and then the train would totally empty out at the end.
Right, because there's just desert and wasteland between Las Vegas and San Diego, nowhere anyone might want to go or live in, like, say, Los Angeles, the second largest city in the entire country. Nope, nothing like that there at all.
The more valid example is of people that compose off-line then send messages in a big burst. Except that local phone calls are a fixed price in Australia, so who still does this?
People with dialup who want to keep their only phone line free for incoming calls.
Yes, it's easy for those of us who have broadband (or, I suppose, those of us who don't get [m]any incoming calls,) to forget about the common hazards of dialup internet access. This isn't stone knives and bearskins; it's a legitimate choice being made by many people around the world who just want to get online and sample what the internet has to offer. A policy that has the potential to discriminate against legitimate customers like this needs to be used carefully, or maybe reworked.