U.S. Plays Catch-Up on High-Speed Rail

The New York Times ^ | Sunday, September 5, 2010 | KATE GALBRAITH

[BfloGuy]

Going into high gear on this idea would put lots of people back to work

Putting people to work on projects that consumers don't want is not only a waste of money, it is also a diversion of raw materials and capital from products that consumers do want.

Spending billions on rail will cause prices on those items to rise just as surely as building too many houses caused building materials to rocket in price. It will cause profitable businesses to have to compete with the unneeded rail for the capital goods that keep them in business.

There are a lot of knock-on consequences to the economy that the administration and the train-bugs don't realize, don't understand and probably don't care about.

[Extremely Extreme Extremist]

They are stupid inefficient and don’t come from where people are and don’t go to where want to go

Yep, exactly. Who is going to transport the people from their home to the rail station? Another train?

[mazda77]

Beat me to the point that it seemed like a good idea in 1869. http://www.sfmuseum.org/hist1/rail.html

[Snickering Hound]

[1rudeboy]

Going into high gear on this idea would put lots of people back to work, that is, if that is what you really want to do.

Not really. Watch this. Pretty damn impressive . . . those Germans.

[mazda77]

Hopefully, Scott will win the Governor race in Florida and immediately deep 6 the stupid train between the Tampa area to Orlando. Time/motion studies have already determined at best, the time savings would be only 5 minutes but the cost would be far more considering having to rent a car or find other transportation to where exactly it was you were leaving from and where it was you were going.

[ari-freedom]

we could use high speed freight trains to move goods around the US faster but high speed passenger rail doesn’t have bang for the buck.

[goodwithagun]

How much private property will need to be seized by obamy in order for this to be built? How much private money will need to be seized by obamy in order for this to be built?

[cicero2k]

Soon, the U.S. government will publish its first-ever national rail plan, laying out a vision for the future of freight and passenger rail. It is supposed to be released by Sept. 15, but a spokesman for the Federal Railroad Administration, Warren Flatau, said in an e-mail that Congress had recently requested an “additional level of specificity in the document,” and the agency is studying how to proceed to provide a thorough and timely report.

We'll all be better off if the Feds converts the money that would be spent into $100 bills and start a big bonfire on the Capital Mall.

It would be a spectacle. Bread and circus style. But the landscape would not be disrupted, and we would not be importing rolling stock from outside the US and when the fire burns out it's over. There's no maintenance costs, with USPO like service and costs to operate.

Sure trains whisk people around Europe at high speed. Take for example the Paris to Strasburg run. It's 120e per person each way, or 480e for two per round trip. We rented a car for the same trip for 100e, including fuel and way more versatile.

Now in Italy, with large population centers within 150 miles of each other the trains work well, but they are cheap.

Same logic applies here, large population centers within close proximity, cheap fares. Come up a proposal that includes all this, then we'll listen.

[mazda77]

Pure porn for machine design engineers like me. It really displays the difference in rail maintenance there than here as I have seen on lots of CSX lines.

[Wolfie]

It will of course be built by Big Brother with tax dollars confiscated from unwilling “donors.” The only winners will be labor unions, already drooling at the prospect of cost overruns, work delays and every other trick in the book.

You say that like you think you're going to convince him its a bad thing. If there's one thing I know about people it's this: If it's their pet project, they don't care how much others have to be forced to pay for it.

[HospiceNurse]

Boondoggle

[PugetSoundSoldier]

The myth of high speed rail in the US.

How much will it cost, Willie? How many trillions of dollars do we have to spend? Give a number - something you have NEVER done.

[GOP_Lady]

My husband works for our local human cattle car authority here.

We don’t use it.

[Willie Green]

Same logic applies here, large population centers within close proximity, cheap fares. Come up a proposal that includes all this, then we'll listen.

Dallas/Fort Worth - Oklahoma City - Wichita

Charlotte - Raleigh

Chicago - Milwaukee - Madison

NYC - Montreal

Portland - Seattle - Vancouver

Baton Rouge - New Orleans

St Louis - Kansas City

Atlanta - Chattanooga - Nashville - Chicago

Chicago - St. Louis

Cincinnati, Cleveland, Dayton and Columbus

There's some others in Florida and California.

[FrankR]

We are not “behind” in the development of high-speed rail; to be “behind” infers that you are in the race, but if you don’t care to be in the race, you can’t be “behind”.

[GOP_Lady]

I work for a law firm in Cleveland, Ohio.

We also have offices in Cincinnati, Columbus and Dayton.

I guarantee you that our lawyers would not use high-speed rail to go from office to office because of their tight schedules.

Waste of money.

As far as public transit in Cleveland, people have been riding for too cheap for too long.

[GOP_Lady]

I don’t enjoy public transportation for multiple reasons.

I want to be on my schedule.

I also don’t want to sit next or near anyone else for hours. I like my private space/time in my car where I can do want I want without having to worry about disturbing others.

[LostInBayport]

It would take ten dollar a gallon gas to pry Americans out of their cars and on to intercity trains. Not going to happen.

Bingo!

And even at $10/gallon gas, I would guess that Americans would negotiate with employers to reduce commuting days or cut back on spending in other areas in order to keep driving their cars. I know I would. I did the bus thing for a while in college, and after a few weeks I decided that being master of my own schedule was preferable. I also found that I enjoyed my coffee better during my commute without its aroma being mixed with the body odor and urine smells of strangers who looked like they would knife me if the voices in their head told them to (the bus brought me from the suburbs into a large city).

[Willie Green]

I guarantee you that our lawyers would not use high-speed rail to go from office to office because of their tight schedules.

While riding the train, the lawyers could do whatever it is they do on their laptops.
It would be a more productive use of their time than driving a car and having to focus all of their attention on traffic.