Posted on 05/26/2019 5:46:26 AM PDT by vannrox
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Why can’t America have High Speed Bullet Trains?
Democrats are Anti Bullet.
+1
Because choo-choos are inefficient and too much infrastructure.
I love the part where Trump should have studied it more. He can small a crap project from a hundred miles away.
Why pay for railroad ROW, redoing tracks at millions (yes, millions) a mile, when you can jump on a Southwest Airlines flight and get there faster, with existing infrastructure, already paid for.
A gift to the Democrat dominated high density population centers?
No thanks.
I’d rather cut the roads and put fences around the Left so they’re trapped than do high speed rail.
What’s wrong with going regular train speeds? Everybody is such a freakin’ hurry to get work. I never understood that. Leave home at a reasonable time and if traffic is snarled you are late. Work later if necessary to make up the difference.
I used to work for this company that had a contract with a large corporation and I used to have to go in to the large Corporate Offices occasionally and I would go in early to grab a little breakfast in their cafeteria. That’s what I noticed that everybody who was on the “early work schedule” would get there early and then leisurely eat a breakfast and be up with their desks just before the normal 8 to 5 people showed up. Pretty sneaky, because the early workers left early... but didn’t put in a full day...that’s when I learned that having an early staff is probably inviting a little cheating into the workplace.
A high speed train between Richmond and DC make total sense but the yokels voted it down. They would have to expand the rail corridor a little to add new tracks. This way too much for them.
Illegal aliens and very stupid people who will put their vehicles in the paths of these trains.
Crookery at work.
There are three issues tied to this.
1. You need to have a Metro situation that works in city ‘A’ and as you exit in city ‘B’....the same type of structure exists where you don’t need a car. As far as I can see...only NYC and Washington DC qualify in this case. I can’t think of another location that offers city-wide Metro like you’d find in Paris, Berlin, or the Hague.
2. Even if you built a bullet train....it needs to go from city to city, with no stops in between. So you build it from LA to San Francisco....then you inform everyone along the way that they can’t hop on board. Why use it then?
3. Costs and environmental push-back. To suggest building a bullet-train between Chicago and Atlanta, to watch for the twelve-year court battle by environmentalists to prevent it. Why bother? Just build airports and launch planes.
As a Ferroequinologist (railroad fan), I’m going to say, we can but let private companies do it. Virgin Trains is expanding Brightline from West Palm to Orlando...and onto Tampa...
Interesting observation, and so clear in the photo.
I spent a few years in DC helping to facilitate the idea of high speed train systems. There are many areas of the US that could greatly benefit from them. The problem isn’t the idea, it’s the implementation. We just can’t build anything cheaply, quickly, and efficiently any longer — and the bigger it is, the more difficult it becomes.
Take a look at any highway project as an example. Consider how quickly Eisenhower was able to get the interstate road system built, then consider how long it now takes to add a couple of simple lanes to an existing road today. It’s become ridiculous. Consider, even, how long it took to rebuild the World Trade Center site. Think, as an example, how quickly we could return to the moon — after having already been there.
We will never be able to construct big things like we did in the past. There’s too many hands in the pot to allow it to happen.
I think the question should be, why should America have high speed bullet trains.
But the reasons why we can’t have them are tied into why we don’t have passenger trains now.
1. America is not laid out like Europe. Essential businesses and population areas are spread out all over.
2. America is much bigger than Europe or Japan.
3. Americans don’t ride passenger trains or buses if they have a choice. As my daughter said, returning to Texas after a year in New York City, I don’t want to ride to work in a subway with all those creepy people. I want to drive my own pickup.
4. American rail lines are currently in the wrong places for bullet trains or the best routes are already occupied by freight lines. And they are terribly maintained because it doesn’t pay to maintain them better.
5. As shown in California, the “environmental studies” and environmental litigation encouraged by American law cost as much or more than the physical cost of construction. That doesn’t even include the vast time delays this causes, and time delays in a construction project are gigantic costs. We would not be able to build the existing Interstate highway system if we started today, either.
Nobody here wants to ride a train if they don’t have to. Bullet trains do fit the soviet-style planned economy and living conditions the progressive are so eager to force upon us, though.
“I’d rather cut the roads and put fences around the Left so they’re trapped than do high speed rail.”
Thanks for the morning laugh!!
The bigger question is, Why should we have high speed trains? What is the purpose, economic value, and value to the community. Just because it’s cool and everyone else has one doesn’t make it a good idea.
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