Daily Willie Green Choo-Choo thread.
Promoting 19th Century technology for the 21st Century.
Posted on 08/15/2010 5:34:39 AM PDT by Willie Green
Conventional wisdom may say otherwise, but the recession is a good time to start spending the billions of dollars it will take to make high-speed rail travel a reality in this country. The benefits of that economic stimulus could not be denied.
Don't we already have high-speed rail lines, you might ask. And the answer is no, not really, as staff writer Paul Nussbaum pointed out in a four-part series of articles that ran last week in The Inquirer.
While Amtrak's fastest train, the Acela Express, chugs along at about 70 miles per hour, Spain's AVE Train cruises at 186 m.p.h.
Think about it: Trains traveling that fast would slice in half the five hours it now takes the Acela to get to Boston from Philadelphia. A New York-to-Washington trek becomes a 90-minute jaunt. Visiting or working in one Northeast Corridor city while living in another one suddenly becomes a much easier feat to accomplish.
A growing movement to take America where Europe and Asia have been for years with high-speed rail now includes President Obama, who recently committed $8 billion in stimulus money to new rail projects, including $1.2 billion toward the cost of a Tampa-to-Orlando high-speed line that may become the nation's first.
But Obama is just sticking his toe in the water. To get fully immersed, a much bigger financial commitment has to be made. A national network of high-speed lines will cost up to a $1 trillion, spread out over several decades. But the investment would pay huge dividends, including tens of thousands of new construction and manufacturing jobs.
The investment needed would be comparable to the effort that began the interstate highway system. It will require careful analysis of where it would make sense to put high-speed lines.
That's actually a conversation that needs to be had about all rail travel in this country. Government subsidies for lightly used Amtrak routes aren't justified.
Transportation and other government officials at all levels, as well as consumers and other stakeholders, must be fully involved in these discussions. They can get a good head start by considering an excellent proposal for a Northeastern high-speed line developed by the University of Pennsylvania School of Design.
The PennDesign plan includes new tracks for two rail lines dedicated to high-speed trains traveling from Boston to Washington. High-speed stations would also be built in Baltimore, Philadelphia, Hartford, Conn., and Long Island, N.Y. The new tracks would free existing tracks for commuter and freight service.
The popularity of these high-speed lines could triple Amtrak ridership in the Northeast Corridor to 55 million annual riders by 2040. The amenities needed to serve riders at new stations will benefit the surrounding communities. Increased train travel will also reduce the need for new roads, and the environment will benefit from reduced carbon emissions from cars.
It makes sense to integrate a new high-speed rail system with commuter lines and air carriers to build a transportation network better than anything in Europe. The cost will be great, but so will the benefits. Obama should emulate Eisenhower on highways, and make a defining investment in the needed infrastructure.
I have no way of telling but government market price destortions are so much, for so long. I suspect that even in the US, the price of oil has, fixed for inflation, come down over the years. That domestic oil is cheaper now then it has ever been. It is just that forign oil has dropped in price even more, than it has declined with in the US.
All over the world, governments and people open their arms and assist as much as possible and inter as little as possible to have a oil industry ( Hugo “Willie Green” Chavez, excepted ). Here in the US, like our manufacturing, oil, coal, timber and soon farming, we have chased away or producers.
First they came for the large corporations.
Then the Willie Greens came for the family companies.
Then Willie came for us.
Why not bring back the streetcar and electric bus.
Dating myself, I remember seeing electric buses in Atlanta.
WOW!! Amtrak MIGHT consume less fuel if the trains actually had anyone riding them.
Amtrak is well on their way to surpassing the 28.7 million passengers they served in 2008.
Amtrak heads for ridership record in 2010
That's an awful lot of fuel that's being saved!
Trains are a stupid idea in this country.
There's no doubt that's what the "convenience" store owners must think,
But I want other choices to be available besides getting gouged at their damn gas pumps.
Daily Willie Green Choo-Choo thread.
Promoting 19th Century technology for the 21st Century.
Just set aside your Populist/Socialist rhetoric for a moment and look at the World from a Capitalist, private sector, free market standpoint
Your perspective is an oligopolistic attempt to manipulate government policies to restrain market competition from passsenger rail systems. The American People would be better served by having MORE transportation options available, not fewer as dictated by the currently dominant industries.
Why not bring back the streetcar and electric bus.
Yes, we should be doing that as well for local commuters.
I watch the Kalifornia Zephyr pass throw my town once or twice a week. 30% full on a good day.
Gee, I'm impressed...
You must be blessed with x-ray vision or something...
Those of us who are mere mortals normally can't see how many
passengers are on a passenger train as they go whizzing by.
/sarc
Hey a$$hole the train stops across from my favorite restaurant. Get a grip. NOT s.
“Windows” refers to more than just an operating system.
“Windows” refers to more than just an operating system.
Just like high-speed rail and Maglev, Linux is faster, more efficient and less expensive.
Hey a$$hole the train stops across from my favorite restaurant. Get a grip. NOT s.
I'm sure that the restaurant manager is thankful for the customers who come over from the Amtrak station.
They are usually much more relaxed and civil than the road rage lunatics who come in through the drive thru window
go and learn what return on investment is.
go and learn what return on investment is.
Americans earn a return on their Amtrak investment from the money saved by importing less foreign oil.
You truly are a Kool-aid drinker.
You truly are a Kool-aid drinker.
No... I first thumbed my nose at the Kool-Aid when I voted for Perot back in '92.
Back in '08, I was sufficiently impressed with Sarah Palin to hold my nose and vote for the lesser of two evils; but in the overall scheme of things, the Global Oil Pimps are no longer a credible conservative alternative to the left-wing agenda. Their just a bunch of libertarian shills for the various industries that pay their way into political office and really have no long term vision worthy of leading America's future. They're just parasites fighting for their own flavor of pork.
Hi Willie,
Always enjoy the threads. Here’s what I see on the train thing.
Most people have access to a vehicle. The motor vehicle is a jack of all trades. Also, most of the costs of a motor vehicle are fixed at the point of purchase. Driving a car costs a lot less than owning a car. If you have a car, you already have car payments and insurance payments, plus maintenance. Driving a car is relatively inexpensive once you figure that most of the costs are fixed and won’t go down if you use public transportation.
Any form of mass transit has significant downside. The downsides are:
1. Moving stuff. Something as simple as bringing groceries from the store becomes very complicated using mass transit.
2. Safety. In a vehicle, you are far less likely to be mugged than you are walking from a subway, train or bus. You can go from point to point. There are also risks from being mugged on the subway.
3. Time. Except for a few large cities where there is no parking, it’s always quicker to drive. When I was working for Austin Fire, the city issued a directive that city employees should use public transportation. A firefighter was sent to travel at another station. It would have been a half hour drive. He didn’t have his car (wife dropped him off) so he took the city buses. Took him over three hours. Cities have gone to putting sun screens on the windows of buses so citizens won’t be able to tell that most city buses (at least here in Texas) practically never have more than three people on them, including the driver.
4. Weather. Show up for work soaked a few times. Employers don’t like it.
5. Politics. A few years ago, a San Antonio mall got raked over the coals by the press because they revoked the city’s permission to pick up and drop off passengers at the mall. The mall’s reason was that all the buses were dropping off and picking up were gang bangers. These gang bangers were driving off the regular mall customers. When Austin started their big public transit push, the first planned lines were from the heart of welfare country. Like it or not, as long as public transportation is perceived as the transportation of the welfare class, people who pay the freight won’t use it.
If, instead, they ran light rail from the international airport in a big loop, with stops at major hotels, the convention center, the Frank Erwin Center, the downtown restaurant area and one or two of the malls (the destinations picking up the tab for covered stops in these areas), plus a couple of stops at exterior parking spots, it’s probably full all day long. They won’t do that though. It’s one stop at the projects, one stop downtown.
This is the same reason vehicles like Smart Cars have so much trouble getting traction. A Smart Car gets 40 mpg. However, it only carries two and practically no cargo. It’s unsafe on the highway. At $16K, payments would be about $300 per month. I currently have a Chevy Silverado that transports four comfortably, six in a pinch, plus a cargo bed. It gets around 18 mpg. Driving 1,000 miles per month, I’d save around $80 using the Smart Car (gas at $2.75.) Even discounting the extra insurance, it would take about twelve years to break even, assuming I needed pickup functionality enough to also own a pickup.
Long post, but trains don’t become popular until owning a private vehicle becomes too painful. Until then, a private vehicle provides people with far more flexibility and functionality.
Oh and I bet you own an hybrid vehicle and actually think you are saving money.
Wrong... '02 Taurus that I carefully maintain so maybe I can get another 8 years out of it.
Those hybrids are way too expensive and underpowered.
Yet I'm also very happy that I don't own a gas guzzling SUV.
That's why we need to build passenger rail systems NOW... BEFORE the next gasoline "crisis" leaves us with few alternatives.
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