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Government has no money of its own to invest, but it will take money from people in Kansas and put a high speed rail line from NY to Cleveland or some such route dictated by political muscle.
Tell me where is the return on investment for those who will never use such a system?
Such selfish dreaming can no longer be tolerated.
Quote:
Originally Posted by JazzyTallGuy
One of the reason they chose the car was the interstate highway system BUILT BY THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT.
It's those highways that made living in the suburbs feasible.
No one argues today about the economic benefits of the interstate highway system. If given a choice between traveling in a cramped regional jet and then using addtional ground transportation to reach your destination and using a high speed rail system that could take you to the central business district of major American cities there are plenty of Americans that would opt for high speed rail.
Another one who things there would be no roads without the federal government
Tell me, there was rail travel before AMTRAK, what happened there?
Government has no money of its own to invest, but it will take money from people in Kansas and put a high speed rail line from NY to Cleveland or some such route dictated by political muscle....Such selfish dreaming can no longer be tolerated.
Amen! Don't tolerate it - protest! Organize your friends and neighbors and revolt!
The thought of trains going 200 or more MPH should scare the hell outta people. The wreck into cars and trucks all the time going only 40 MPH. If a train hit a diesel tractor trailor going 200 MPH, it would kill everybody instantly.
Somehow they do it all the time in France, Italy, Germany, Belgium, Japan, China, and South Korea.
They may be a lot of GOOD reasons not to build high speed rail, sorry this isn't one of them. By your standard folks would still be riding around in horse driven buggys.
Sad really, conservatives stating the USA does not have the ability to do what China and Europe have done.
A conservative is a man with two perfectly good legs who, however, has never learned to walk forward.
Franklin D. Roosevelt, radio address, Oct. 26, 1939
We should have built it a long time ago. For routes under 300 miles it is much more efficient than plane travel. On a plane you can only put a couple hundred people on it but you can probably put several times that.
Yes let's have a government run transportation system so they can decide where we can go and when. Who wants the individual freedom that an automobile give you. Where can I go now Obama? Take as much tax money from me as you want too.
What a bunch of idiots liberals are!
Where has anybody here suggest TAKING your car from you or banning automobiles?
Yes let's have a government run transportation system so they can decide where we can go and when. Who wants the individual freedom that an automobile give you. Where can I go now Obama? Take as much tax money from me as you want too.
What a bunch of idiots liberals are!
Never drive on Interstate Highway and never take any flight from any airport becoz they were all built by government to take away your freedom. You need a horse and a dirt-road.
Which is why the 19th century rail systems in the US and Russia were such failures The more space one needs to cover, the more useless transportation is.
Really, the railways in the 1800's did pretty well in spite of the robber barons of the era. Rockefeller did more to hurt R's than almost anything else. Once cars took off after WWII, rails begain to die off. There will be a day when we all travel long distances on railways of some type. It is a much more efficient means to move cargo and ppl.
Just so you know, railways use less land than interstate. I forget the formula but it is something like; one high speed railway equal 8 lanes and intermediate speed railway equals 5 lanes. So there you go, wants save land install railway. And I think the construction and upkeep is very favorable, too.
Base on a person's income it could become feasible to live in a city 100 to 200 mile and work in another city in that radius. All of sudden certain employment and business opportunities that weren't practical before become very realistic.
Nope. Because unless there are express trains with point-to-point service, 200 miles could take a few hours even with high-speed service and the fare would be too high. Look at the Caltrain schedule - a trip from SJ to SF is 90 minutes - and that's only 50 miles.
As a guy who has used BART and Caltrain extensively, I'm an advocate of public transport in the right setting. It doesn't have to be high speed - it has to be accessible, convenient, affordable, and speedier than driving. The average speed of a commute from Palo Alto to the city might be 40mph. If a train averaged 80mph it would be high-speed.
Trains will never replace air. All the liberal tree-hugger types who took the Eurostar on their Senior class trip are out of touch with reality.
The new security screen process in France takes nearly as much time as an airport. The Chunnel is problematic, and the tracks on the English side are as crooked as their teeth. It's a great system comparatively speaking, but has its own problems.
Air travel has district advantages from a time standpoint. The routes are usually a line between two points. Trains deal with not only geological barriers but also geopolitical barriers. Airlines ascend, fly at a given altitude and generally at the same speed (fast) the entire route. They slow to descend and land. The average big jet lands at 155kts and stops in 6000 feet. The route between Paris and London, which I've taken, only goes fast on the French side. It slows down on the English side to less than 90mph.
Regional train service makes sense with the right density. Long distance HSR not so much.
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The more space one needs to cover, the more useless transportation is. 