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As you've no doubt NOT seen from the video I posted, every single "project" like this, when the final tally is complete on cost, is nowhere near what the cost estimates said it would be.
Yes like the CBO did when the overestimated the cost of the bank bailout and overestimated the 2009 budget deficit.
No one likes a wise guy. Keep you stupid irrelevant comments to yourself.
The trucking industry is fast adapting to high fuel prices through fuel surcharges which are currently at .40 cents per loaded mile. Whether YOU know it or not, every time you go to buy something it is likely delivered by truck. So it is YOU that is paying for higher fuel prices, not the truckers smart guy.
You may want to do a little research into the alternative fuels that trucks are already using today and plan to use for the future. LNG and biodielsel are two. LNG holds the largest promise since all we have to do is divert gas from the pipelines into fueling stations at truck stops.
But YOUR corrupt politicians which YOU support keep subsidizing oil, farmers, ethanol, and other stupid tax susbsidides. It is the same people you vote for who are the root of the problem and you stand around critizing everyone else. I yi yi
Of course there is a market for this. It's designed to appease everyone who sits in heavy traffic everyday. It's not intended for people that sit at home in front of a computer all day.
I agree that putting in HSR seems like a large amount of money, and to be honest, I think that Washington is using it as an election point. Some will be on-board with it, some won't. However, everyone knows energy is a growing concern, and HSR is a shiny word that sounds wonderful (you know, trains whipping at 200+ mph all across the US within 25 years).
My opinion is that we need some sort of national (or multiple regional) project roadmaps with ROIs that show where the US will ultimately be in the future. If we invest in alternative transportation aggressively, what happens to our existing infrastructure? What's the payback and strategy for getting off of oil (or at least lower)? We can never agree with a strategy when we throw shiny words around with no roadmap for where we're ultimately trying to go and how it will affect us.
Throwing HSR out there before we deal with the transport in our metro areas (e.g. commuter rail), falling bridges on our critical interstates (they're built and people use them) and poor PT service for the existing services is going to divide political parties and people across the US.
EDIT: Oh, and to tie this back into how it will affect the economy, I will say it will hurt the economy in the short run. Modifying nationalized transportation infrastructure is an expense to the people. Whether it's rail, roads or planes, we're going to have HUGE public investments into our infrastructure that will suck money from all of our pockets (businesses included). I say the short-run, because I don't think a few HSR lines are going to change that much for many of us. Even if you use it to travel from rural Iowa to Chicago, the tickets won't be cheap if you're buying them everyday. Even if it does help that portion of the population, it won't be significant enough to help us in the short-term.
There are very few places that it we have the population density and commuters to do it. CA could pull it off, but it should come from 100% CA tax revenue. And there's one final thing that people seem to forget......
There would need to be ~$2/gallon tax on gasoline to subsidize the rail and encourage divers to use it.
Everyone neglects the tax, but it's what makes rail effective in other countries. Singapore and Japan both use that method and it's highly effective.
Building high-speed trains will obviously create jobs. But they have potential to do even more. Say a high speed train gets built in rural Iowa. These folks would be able to commute to Chicago or St. Louis to work for a fraction of the time it would take to drive.
During previous recessions, people would pack up and move to cities with job growth. Now, due to the dismal housing market, people are less likely to move away.
These high-speed trains can change the way we think about commuting. They can let people in rural areas compete for jobs in the city.
U.S. unveils $53 billion in high-speed rail plan - Yahoo! News (http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20110208/pl_nm/us_usa_transport_rail - broken link)
That $8 billion won't build enough high speed track to do any good. The whole $53 billion each year wouldn't do enough good to ever amount to anything. It appears to me that some people think that building whole right of ways, and it will take just that since the old ones won't hold the high speed rails, will work and it just won't. Obama's talk about shovel ready jobs for the Stimulus plan was talking about building infrastructure with hand labor just as in the 1930s and they just don't do that anymore.
Harry Reid had more than $8 billion in the plan to spend on those things by stimulus money for a high speed rail line from LA to Las Vegas. I guess he had no idea how tough building those things in hills and mountains really is.
This will be the biggest waste of money I can imagine, and thankfully, we have Republicans in control of the House to stop this kind of crap.
It amazes me to hear that people just don't realize that road beds built in the 1800s just won't stand up to high speed trains. You have to begin from the ground up, like the Chinese are doing where they don't have rail travel already in use.
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