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Our road network is robust. Most homes and businesses in the country are linked to it.
Compared to other forms of transportation (like rail), roads are cheap, flexible, and sustainable.
Why lie about roads? If your toy antique trains were such a good deal, they would be built. The problem is fixed line rail is an expensive, inflexible relic of the past. Your train is stuck to the track built for it while a bus for example can easily change its route.
The future of transit is self driving buses, not trains.
Our roads, freeways, and bridges are crumbling apart. Most people are on horribly designed dead end road networks. Rail transit doesn't need to be continuously upgraded and expanded like roads, is safer than roads, and is certainly not sustainable. HSR doesn't need to change its route, there is no traffic congestion to worry about. If you are naive enough to believe that auto companies and oil companies don't lobby against it, then I will stop here.
Our roads, freeways, and bridges are crumbling apart.
If that's the case, then why is anyone proposing HSR? The money would be better spent fixing roads and bridges that millions of people use daily than an inflexible $100,000,000,000+ system that will only link two cities and serve just thousands.
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If you are naive enough to believe that auto companies and oil companies don't lobby against it, then I will stop here.
You have not done the math on HSR. Oil and auto companies do not have to lobby against HSR because the math does not add up.
If that's the case, then why is anyone proposing HSR? The money would be better spent fixing roads and bridges that millions of people use daily than an inflexible $100,000,000,000+ system that will only link two cities and serve just thousands.
You have not done the math on HSR. Oil and auto companies do not have to lobby against HSR because the math does not add up.
What's next, blaming math for HSR's failure?
Because you don't have to upgrade rail every 10 years. The money is better spent fixing all of our transportation woes, and that includes roads and rail.
You keep talking about this math. What math have you done? You can't predict the cost or ridership.
Because you don't have to upgrade rail every 10 years. The money is better spent fixing all of our transportation woes, and that includes roads and rail.
You keep talking about this math. What math have you done? You can't predict the cost or ridership.
Dude, the LA-SF "HSR" line is already budgeted at $70,000,000,000, and even proponents of it admit it will probably top $100,000,000,000 if it were to be built, which it won't, because it costs so much money.
The costs of the self driving car are paid for by the user. Plus that self driving car will be able to travel nationwide, not just make two stops; one in central Dallas and the other in central Houston like inflexible relic rail.
Meanwhile the costs of HSR will be paid for primarily by folks NOT using HSR. The HSR will only serve TWO stations, not potentially millions of destinations like the self driving car.
There are a lot of people that do not use cars that pay taxes used to subsidize roads way out in the suburbs. I'm not 100% versed on the usually urbanist talking points, but I'm pretty sure that part of the reason suburbs are cheaper and inner cities are more expensive is because the money is being used to subsidize the guy driving into the city from 20 miles out by building new subdivisions, roads, and freeways way out from the city center. I have nothing against that, but we need to recognize that people are already "paying" for things that they don't use.
If that's the case, then why is anyone proposing HSR? The money would be better spent fixing roads and bridges that millions of people use daily than an inflexible $100,000,000,000+ system that will only link two cities and serve just thousands.
You have not done the math on HSR. Oil and auto companies do not have to lobby against HSR because the math does not add up.
What's next, blaming math for HSR's failure?
Currently happening actually, not a easy job though.... everyone expects us to snap our fingers and all the roads will magically be fixed.
People who do not use cars buy gas? For what, their weedwackers? And if they are, it can't be a huge sum of gas and therefore gas tax money for roads.
For the most part, roads are paid for by the users. Secondly, non car users benefit from the roads system as bus transit and freight also use them.
You act as though gas taxes pay for all the roads and highways. They pay for half of it... maybe. Gas would have to be like $8 a gallon for that to be the case. And this is just counting direct repair cost to highway and bridge infrastructure, and not counting indirect costs such as propping up dictatorships in Saudi Arabia or starting wars in Iraq, building gas delivery infrastructure such as pipelines, or environmental damage like Deepwater Horizon.
You act as though gas taxes pay for all the roads and highways. They pay for half of it... maybe.
Take a look at your state's road funding and get back to me. In my home state the gas tax not only pays for roads, it also pays for some of the idiotic transit boondoggles. Car tabs & weight fees also pay for roads.
Haha, I literally selected a dozen quotes to reply to, but it's gotten out of hand. I'm just gonna speak to the entire topic generally with two statistics:
1) Recent study by the Tax Foundation reports that just 50.7% of road spending is covered by drivers.
2) The Federal Highway Administration believes it would take $100 Billion annually to maintain all our roads at their existing levels of quality. $100 Billion. Each year. For maintenance. That doesn't take into account building new roads, which is more costly than maintaining.
I'm not well versed in HSR, but I do like the benefits that it could bring. Still trying to understand where it would work and why, though it seems like the same areas in the US are brought up (with seemingly good reason). I always hear California and the Northeast for sure; would it not work in Florida?
Hard to guarantee anything. But the elements are there for it to be successful in FL. One important thing to watch over the next decade is how the major cities in FL develop their respective urban areas and mass transit. This is a key to the success of HSR...it works if you can get to where you want to be quickly. (Instead of driving to an airport, flying to the destination airport, then renting a car to go downtown) But you obviously have to have a busy CBD and a good transit network.
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