Posted on 03/17/2020 6:50:48 AM PDT by karpov
In the midst of Sunday's presidential debate between Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders, Biden blurted out that his campaign's high-speed rail plan would take "millions of automobiles off the road."
This is the second debate in which the former vice president brought up the belief that bullet trains will get people out of their cars. This is, to put it mildly, extremely unlikely.
Biden's campaign site calls for "the construction of an end-to-end high speed rail system that will connect the coasts, unlocking new, affordable access for every American." Would bullet trains passing through major cities scattered across the U.S. actually get people out of their cars?
"The answer is no," explains Baruch Feigenbaum, assistant director of transportation policy at the Reason Foundation. (Full disclosure: The Reason Foundation publishes this website.) "High-speed rail primarily takes customers from aviation. Car travel might be substitutable with inner city buses, but we don't really see it in rail. That's not why other countries have built high-speed rail."
Feigenbaum notes that countries that have built high-speed rail have typically done so to reduce crowding on existing rail lines, not as a substitute for roads. The sole exception was China, which used it as an economic development project during a time when its highway system was much less robust than America's.
"Basically, Biden loves rail," Feigenbaum says, noting the vice president's roots in the northeastern Acela corridor. Indeed, the first high-speed rail project Biden says he'll focus on is increasing the speed of trains traveling from New York City to D.C. That region is the only part of America where rail travel has been shown to be efficient and profitable. Taking that mentality and trying to stretch it across the U.S. is absurd.
(Excerpt) Read more at reason.com ...
Employers are looking at this lockdown as a template to re-tool their operations. If BigGov doesn’t think business operations will be forever changed, they are insane. I anticipate a big new segment will arise to facilitate the evolution of many offices toward remote operations. Unfortunately, the move to offsite means the ability to offshore becomes affordable to smaller companies.
Rail is mostly good for long distance commuting. It doesn’t work for cross country vacations or destination exploration or a non-traditional job. But what would someone stuck in the northeast of the country know? His ancestors got to the east coast and were to afraid to go any further.
“You know, like Amtrak has been such a success.”
Might work...if we let the Japanese, Germans or Swiss run it. If it is run by filthy democrats it would be the most colossal bloody boondoggle in history.
Just imagine the sparkle of delight in those little beady eyes when Joe gets to put on an engineer's cap and operate his brand new, taxpayer-funded, Chinese-made bullet train.
"That was fun! Now I'll make it go to the North Pole!"
You’re not on the Nut-Job Conspiracy ping list because why?
...You’re not on the Nut-Job Conspiracy ping list because why?
Mostly I stay in the box
occasionally stray out into the weird
Paging Willie “Choo-Choo” Green. Pick up the wind-powered courtesy phone.
In the 1930’s, coal-fired locomotives traveled faster than any present day locomotives on rails that were joined with plates and bolts and the joints of which gave a clickety-clack when the wheels rolled over the joints.
Present day rails are welded and have no clickety-clack joints and are designed for heavy freight traffic.
Train travel was last profitable in the mid 1940’s. Air travel doomed passenger trains.
High speed rail will barely approach what coal-fired locomotives used to achieve. Most Amtrak passengers are paying the same for train travel as others do for plane travel.
Most Amtrak passengers going coast-to-coast are doing so for the scenery and enjoy a relaxed, no time frame journey as the train is their journey.
A business traveler would never hop a “high-speed” rail train to get coast to coast quickly and return home for the weekend after conducting business.
All railroads were extremely pleased to have the burden of unprofitable passenger trains taken over by Amtrak.
That’s also a metaphor for the US economy heading into Eastwood Gulch.
If the railroad companies want to build track and buy high speed trains, let them do it. No government money, please.
Any American that votes for this moron, fool, buffoon, Democrat, Joe Biden deserves exactly what they will get..period.
OK, I won’t add you.
Took a train from Los Angeles to Chicago a while back, and dealt with the management of a rail system that has a heavy use by freight and other things. We stopped at a lot of small town along the way and the trip took days not hours like a flight. It was different and had it’s moments but overall it would not be effective in moving massive traffic.
Second is the system is not designed to handle the speed of the proposed trans and would require a whole new rail bed to be laid down to accommodate it. There are “choke points” like the tunnel in Colorado where you pass through the mountains, not gonna blast through as other trains need to wait while the “Express” flies by. Last the sheer volume of passengers that it would require to recoup the investment, if I am on business the last thing I could count on was having to vector in 2 day travel to a city let alone having to sit in a virtual airline seat or 2 days.
Union jobs and a lot of graft, land acquisition and much more.
The train to no where in California is a joke, no one wants it but the folks who want to take land from the Central Valley farms and “Eminent Domain” them out of existence
Boondoggles that will never make a change, just feed the coffers of people in the “right” position to profit.
Actually it will be run by unions so that makes it much, much worse than dims!
The Left has been trying to ‘European-ize’ us for decades. Trains work in small countries. It will be another black hole for our taxpayer monies, but that may be the ultimate reason for this. Destroy the Government you have and you can implement a different type of Government (sshh SOCIALISM).
“Biden says”. Eh, same as in Water Boy where Sandler keeps parroting “momma says”.....
The closest proposed HSR station is a half hour drive from my house. the furthest drive I occasionally have is 25 minutes away. How will this boondoggle save me anything? Will it help Corn Pop?
It sells to the Democrat left. This is an attempt to get the Bernie Bros to vote for him (instead of staying home).
Had lunch with a couple of California transplant co-workers after the California Governor cancelled their high speed rail.
They are not dumb guys. We had a long (good) conversation about investments and the impact Trump’s tax changes would make on how we invested (real estate in particular). Then the subject of high speed rail came up.
They were gung ho that Georgia should try it. I pointed out that they couldn’t make it work California. It was a financial black hole that produced nothing. How the heck could GA make it work?
They didn’t counter my arguments, but insisted it was a good idea. All I can figure is they were so brainwashed for so long that they couldn’t look at the issue rationally.
100American wrote: “The train to no where in California is a joke, no one wants it but the folks who want to take land from the Central Valley farms and “Eminent Domain” them out of existence.”
It’s very popular with the construction unions who donate huge amounts to the democrats.
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