[Willie Green]

I went back to Ohio
But my city was gone
There was no train station
There was no downtown
South Howard had disappeared
All my favorite places
My city had been pulled down
Reduced to parking spaces
A, o, way to go Ohio

Well I went back to Ohio
But my family was gone
I stood on the back porch
There was nobody home
I was stunned and amazed
My childhood memories
Slowly swirled past
Like the wind through the trees
A, o, oh way to go Ohio

I went back to Ohio
But my pretty countryside
Had been paved down the middle
By a government that had no pride
The farms of Ohio
Had been replaced by shopping malls
And muzak filled the air
From Seneca to Cuyahoga Falls
Said, a, o, oh way to go Ohio

[Grut]

Connecting to the regional dirigible port for longer trips, I presume.

[Cagey]

Amtrak can't keep their wheels on the tracks at 60MPH. Imagine the government running a railroad at twice that speed?

[Cobra64]

Swiss rail is fantastic. I spent 6 months travelling between Zurich and Luzerne. Their cars are so clean, and quiet. The tracks are smooth as silk. No jerky clitty-clack at all.

[ndkos]

If this is such a great thing, then why not let private investors build a high speed train?

Answer: Because while the train may be fast and quiet it is not economically feasable.

Imagine any private company in the world with a negative 50 percent profit margin!! That's horrible and the thought that Congress wants more of our $$$$ to "fix" this problem is disgraceful.

[clee1]

Another mass-transit boondoggle that people won't use; after all the money spent to build it, it will continue to operate in the red to provide jobs for goobermint workers.

Just damn.

[Ben Mugged]

Mixing ground and rail transportation in the same plane invariably produces major problems. San Jose Calif put in a light rail system and I recommended they use an elevated rail system rather than a ground-based one. They didn't listen and now they have several collisions with cars and buses every week as well as slowdowns associated with concession. Elevated systems offer much in the way of land use and safety and high speed monorail service is quiet and fast. Some trains are approaching 300 MPH and are used as alternatives to air travel in short-haul regions. Government simply does not have the investment capital to install a major Maglev system at a cost of $50M per mile. Several companies have offered a public-prive partnership with states and the federal Government to fund these projects with the majority of the money coming from venture capital.

[Logophile]

Train ridership has steadily increased between Milwaukee and Chicago, as it has for trains in California, such as a popular run between Sacramento and the Bay Area. In those cases, the states are paying about half the operating costs, with fares covering the rest. . . . The Ohio Rail Development Commission, which has studied and refined the Ohio plan, believes fares could pay 100 percent of the operating cost in Ohio. That could mean around $50 each way from Cleveland to Columbus. . . . To build the $3.5 billion system, largely by upgrading existing track, Ohio needs federal help. No state money is budgeted for construction.

I have always loved traveling by train. That is, until my last trip on Amtrak. Never have I experienced such miserable service. That convinced me that the government should not be in the transportation business. (Or any other kind of business, for that matter.)

It bothers me that even on the most popular routes, tax money still pays half the operating costs. The Ohio Rail Development Commission may say they believe that fares can pay all of the costs, but I doubt that their calculations will stand up to scrutiny.

As for construction costs, not even the Ohio Rail Development Commission is proposing that they be paid out of fares. Instead, Ohio is looking to the Federal Government—which is another way of saying, they are looking to soak the taxpayers again.

If passenger rail were economical, it should not need such massive subsidies.

[DTogo]

High-speed rail travel in Japan is a huge success. But the demographics and economics are 180 degrees from here: you have half the population of America crammed into the space of California.

[babyface00]

You'd be in Columbus, for example, in one hour and 38 minutes.

I travel back and forth between Cleveland and Columbus once or twice a month. It takes about 2 hours, although granted I only go to the northernmost edge of the city (coming from cleveland).

My question is, what do you do when you get there? Columbus (and Cleveland, for that matter) are hardly composed of dense urban areas - most of the businesses are located in the outskirts and, at least in Cleveland, are often not serviced by public transportation.

That means you end up renting a car at your destination (which is probably going to be the city center - so you have to fight traffic out and then back in to get back to the terminal), which, for me, would eat up all the time savings, and increase the expense.

True, you could get a couple of hours' work done on the train, if your job lends itself to that, but frankly, the commute between Cleveland and Columbus isn't all that bad - if ODOT would ever finish construction on I-71, it would be even better.

Even at today's gas prices, the $50/each way is significantly higher than the gas cost driving my FS 4wd pickup truck.