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Those programs Cixxel mentioned are interesting on Nat Geo or the history or Discovery channels. It's too bad they aren't more accessible to people within the US, it could teach Americans about their own country moreso.
Regarding the rail, of course it is prohibitivley expensive and would never work without the government subsidies. But, NO infrastructure pays for itself or turns a profit. Not even the interstates or the subways in New York. Rail provides a cleaner and faster option. Can you imagine a high speed rail from Miami to NYC in 7 hours? Rail will become the new interstate someday when gas prices double. The states who will now get the reallocated funding will just be able to get their systems up and going before Florida.
Miami to Orlando would have been the best route, but as CLT said, the Tapa loine was shorter and cheaper and there was actually a study and planning commission ready up there...here in SoFla we can't get our act together on Metrorail so now throw in a high speed regional train and well we all know that would be very difficult for our leaders to step up and push that through without bowing to special interest along the way.
The time for rail will come, but we are just in a very miopic period of time in out nation with part of the gornerment hell bent on stopping any progress, kind of like cutting off their nose to spite their face.
High-speed rail DOESN'T work in Florida. High-speed rail does not equal advancement in the transportation sector because NO ONE will use it.
The U.S. is NOT like Europe, the geography and politics are not the same. High-speed rail would not work here.
When was the last time you were on a high speed train in FL? Let me answer it for you, never.
It doesn't work because it's not here.
The same people that were screaming from the rafters over the interstate highway systems are the same people, plus their off springs, that complain about high speed rail today. These people don't understand future benefits.
Would local trains have been better? Yes. However, the line was paid for, ready to go and the money will be spent anyway. Grandstanding and poopooing the money doesn't make it go away, it simply puts it in another state's pocket.
I can now see why it was Orlando-Tampa and not Orlando-Miami. We already have a few choices for rail transit out of the city (Amtrak, Tri-Rail to an extent). Perhaps this doesn't exist in the Tampa-Orlando corridor. It may have been good for struggling Tampa folk to have access to Orlandos better economy and more job opps?
I'm not surprised. Where else will you actually meet people who support off-shore drilling AFTER the BP incident? FLORIDA! We are just as closeminded as your average landlocked state in a third world country.
1) The money doesn't really exist--it is borrowed money with an interest charge on top of it--it never should have been offered in the first place
2) No project (much less a government project) ever comes in at the projected price and Florida would have had to make up the difference and Florida doesn't have the money either
3) It is a nice-sounding but ridiculously useless idea despite an anecdotal suggestion that someone would have used it once or twice themselves. I don't live in Tampa and neither do most Floridians. Yet proponents would have every US taxpayer and every Floridian pay for a largely useless project? Well, thanks but we already have plenty of useless government programs and projects right now. Most Florida tourists don't go to Tampa as a destination and I doubt that most of the ones who go to Orlando really want to come to Tampa. Plus, for the miniscule number of people who will use the train, they still need to rely on buses or cars to get to/from either terminal. Scheduling will be an issue and it will be less convenient. It's just a stupid idea.
4) Even if there is some limited use of the train, it will never be financially self-sustaining. See #1 and #2.
5) Even if you think the Orlando to Miami line makes more sense, you are not arguing for that project, you are arguing for Tampa/Orlando only. This wouldn't have even begun to deal with the line you want yet you are arguing for a horrendous waste of money that you have to borrow money for and pay interest on for a project you neither want or need. And you call this decision backwards?
6) Read a paper or watch TV once in a while. States can't afford the current number of state employees and their pensions now but you want to create hundreds of new state employees? Create jobs by making it easier for companies to startup and flourish. State job creation just makes things worse for everyone.
7) Even the Washington Post (not exactly a Conservative Republican rag) thinks HSR is a dumb "investment". Robert J. Samuelson - Calif. rail project is high-speed pork
8) See #1
9) See #1
10) See #1
1) The money doesn't really exist--it is borrowed money with an interest charge on top of it--it never should have been offered in the first place
2) No project (much less a government project) ever comes in at the projected price and Florida would have had to make up the difference and Florida doesn't have the money either
3) It is a nice-sounding but ridiculously useless idea despite an anecdotal suggestion that someone would have used it once or twice themselves. I don't live in Tampa and neither do most Floridians. Yet proponents would have every US taxpayer and every Floridian pay for a largely useless project? Well, thanks but we already have plenty of useless government programs and projects right now. Most Florida tourists don't go to Tampa as a destination and I doubt that most of the ones who go to Orlando really want to come to Tampa. Plus, for the miniscule number of people who will use the train, they still need to rely on buses or cars to get to/from either terminal. Scheduling will be an issue and it will be less convenient. It's just a stupid idea.
4) Even if there is some limited use of the train, it will never be financially self-sustaining. See #1 and #2.
5) Even if you think the Orlando to Miami line makes more sense, you are not arguing for that project, you are arguing for Tampa/Orlando only. This wouldn't have even begun to deal with the line you want yet you are arguing for a horrendous waste of money that you have to borrow money for and pay interest on for a project you neither want or need. And you call this decision backwards?
6) Read a paper or watch TV once in a while. States can't afford the current number of state employees and their pensions now but you want to create hundreds of new state employees? Create jobs by making it easier for companies to startup and flourish. State job creation just makes things worse for everyone.
7) Even the Washington Post (not exactly a Conservative Republican rag) thinks HSR is a dumb "investment". Robert J. Samuelson - Calif. rail project is high-speed pork
8) See #1
9) See #1
10) See #1
A. The money has already been appropriated. It WILL be spent no matter what.
B. Note the private developer initiatives of the project.
C. And the majority of people don't live in North Florida but most of their road money comes from South Florida.
D. Neither are highways or petroleum.
E. Note previous posts about this line. Note A again.
F. The majority of the jobs are temporary construction jobs supplied by private companies.
G. One Op Ed piece from one paper. Need I say more?
Playing point counterpoint doesn't change the fact that our country is speeding headlong into insurmountable debt that Obama's own debt commissioner characterized as a national nightmare. You just don't seem to get it. You make these arguments as though they were valid no matter what. If times were good, I might agree with you but our national deficit each year is shameful and the debt is reaching a frightening level. These used to be numbers that were meaningless (and apparently for some who have no clue, they still are) but we will all have to face the music soon with leaders like Obama and Reid in charge. I'm not talking about political ideology, I'm talking fiscal responsibility. We are beginning to see the consequences of poor fiscal policy in a number of states even today. This is just the beginning.
Just because there is a line item in a budget (which spends money that isn't really there) doesn't mean that the states should turn a blind eye to what is happening. Certainly you cannot be advocating increasing an already smothering national debt on a stupid, doomed to fail, redundant, unneeded project that will eventually also lead to more state debt...or do you simply believe that the end justifies the means, however bad they might be?
Sorry but it is time for the children to return to the kid's table because the adults need to talk. Go on....off with you...
You poor thing, you just really don't understand how the world works, do you?
Let me try and put it in understandable terms for you.
The year is 2011. You want to start a t-shirt shop. You have equipment from 1930. You open your shop and quickly realize you're spending far more than your competitors because of the resources your equipment needs. You can't raise prices, the market doesn't allow that. So what do you do? You can either A) close up shop or B) borrow money to upgrade your equipment so you can stay competitive.
This is what high speed rail does; it allows the United States to remain competitive. Our infrastructure is crumbling, it's outdated and it's reaching max or over max capacity. You kill your own productivity when you can no longer keep up with demand. It takes money to make money.
Nobody enjoys more debt. Can spending be cut places? I'm sure. Do taxes need to be raised? Absolutely. It's illogical that you pay less today than in the past. That's not how currency is designed to work.
Projects vital to future economic success cannot be put on hold. It's like having a giant hole in your roof, saying you simply can't fix it so you let water come in when it rains, then are confused when things begin rotting and falling apart.
You hurt future generations when you don't give them the tools to survive.
I also don't think a lot of the people complaining about the HSR project have ever driven, with any sort of regularity, Interstate 4. That is one of the most crowded, backed-up thoroughfares in the nation. The HSR would have relieved a lot of that pain.
Also lol @ high speed rail "never working" in the US. In addition to the great comment made above about when we get back up to ridiculous gas prices, I'd like to add that you must have never been to the northeast where Americans regularly take light/passenger rail in and between cities. If it works for them, it can work for Florida and others.
LOL...brilliant analogy...if the roof is leaking, you find a way to fix it because failing to do so means a total loss. Wanting a new pavered walkway from the driveway to the front door, however, doesn't really justify going to a loan shark to borrow the money for the project. I know you are blind to this so I'll put this out there for those who can understand it...high speed rail is not a new roof. It is a new pavered walkway. We have a perfectly good highway between Tampa and Orlando. We have cars and buses that can actually make it that far and on our schedules, not an arbitrary train schedule. And those cars can actually take us from our homes to our destinations rather than from an arbitrary starting point to an arbitrary end point. And please, spare me the traffic jam argument. I spent my twenties on the NY rail commuter system. It was as bad as often as it was good.
I don't know if you just don't want to admit it or if you just can't understand it but this project and this expenditure, at this time, is a mistake. The argument that it is needed to keep up with the world is a myth. The argument that if we don't use the money someone else will misses the point...public leaders should be stepping up, telling the truth, and doing what is right for the country, not their constituents.
The US fears that Saudi Arabia, the world's largest crude oil exporter, may not have enough reserves to prevent oil prices escalating, confidential cables from its embassy in Riyadh show.
The cables, released by WikiLeaks, urge Washington to take seriously a warning from a senior Saudi government oil executive that the kingdom's crude oil reserves may have been overstated by as much as 300bn barrels – nearly 40%.
The revelation comes as the oil price has soared in recent weeks to more than $100 a barrel on global demand and tensions in the Middle East. Many analysts expect that the Saudis and their Opec cartel partners would pump more oil if rising prices threatened to choke off demand.
However, Sadad al-Husseini, a geologist and former head of exploration at the Saudi oil monopoly Aramco, met the US consul general in Riyadh in November 2007 and told the US diplomat that Aramco's 12.5m barrel-a-day capacity needed to keep a lid on prices could not be reached.
HOUSTON—Exxon Mobil Corp., the world's largest publicly traded oil company, is struggling to find more oil.
In its closely watched annual financial report released Tuesday, the company said that for every 100 barrels it has pumped out of the earth over the past decade, it has replaced only 95.
Exxon now has more natural gas in reserve for future production than oil.
It's a conundrum shared by most of the other large Western oil-producing companies, which are finding most accessible oil fields were tapped long ago, while promising new regions are proving technologically and politically challenging.
Exxon said in the report that it more than made up for the shortfall in oil by stocking up on natural gas, mostly through its acquisition of XTO Energy Inc. last year.
But the shift toward gas is troubling some investors, because gas sells for less than the equivalent amount of oil. Many observers feel the move toward gas—a trend across the oil industry—is dictated more by shrinking access to oil fields than by a strong desire to emphasize gas production.
"The good old days are gone and not to be repeated," says Fadel Gheit, an analyst with Oppenheimer and Co. Bringing additional reserves from gas "is not going to give you the same punch" that oil would, he said.
Finding the equivalent, in either oil or natural gas, of a barrel in the earth for every one the company produces—a 100% reserve replacement rate—has become extraordinarily tough. Exxon boasted this was the 17th consecutive year of hitting this mark, but analysts agree that without the XTO deal, Exxon would have fallen far short this year.
Investors look at these reserve figures as an important gauge of future profitability and business strength.
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