Apparently they don’t want to answer your question on what they use to get around town in either
No matter how good you are, you can’t make everybody happy. Especially now.
Why? Opposing opinions. Hate. The fact that some people need change while others can’t stand it. We don’t like change. OK?
That can’t be fixed. We like life and we like having kids to raise.
Thank you, MB.
John,
I think the idea is that if we discover demand isn’t there, buses in express lanes are less expensive to undo than just-built rail lines. You can minimize the initial investment until the demand builds, and then convert to rail.
If you look at places like NYC and Chicago, the rail systems there work so well because the neighborhoods were designed and built to utilize the rail lines. When you add rail lines to existing neighborhoods that were designed for commuters who drive their own cars, people don’t use them, and they have to be subsidized by taxpayers. This becomes a “chicken and the egg” problem. You have to install the mass transit systems, and give the community time to adjust to them. Sometimes new developments are built to utilize the rail lines, and sometimes they aren’t. With express buses and express lanes, you could adjust them based on where developers decide to build new neighborhoods. Put in rail lines, and it’s hit or miss.
Anyone see 60 Minutes tonight? Great story about how many/most states are, in effect, BANKRUPT. Companies not doing business with them for fear of being paid, financial types forecasting major bond defaults, etc, etc, etc…
California was one of the states with the biggest problems - who knows how they’ll pay for that train.
Where would the hundreds of billions of dollars come from for trains? We can’t pay for what we do now!
You could not be more wrong. Cars are not subsidized. Nor do they cause cancer but I’ll leave it up to others to straighten that out.
No matter how many times you people repeat the mantra, cars and highways aren’t subsidized.
I refer you to a study done by the US DOT called “Federal Subsidies to Transportation”. (http://www.bts.gov/programs/federal_subsidies_to_passenger_transportation/pdf/entire.pdf) The report was done by the order of Congress.
If you take the time to read just the Executive Summary, you will learn that drivers pay a net amount of $1.91 per thousand passenger-miles into the highway trust fund. That is a negative subsidy.
For reference, you will note that passenger rail is subsidized (by the general public) to the tune of $186.35 per passenger-mile. It is the highest subsidy of any mode of transportation. In case you miss this, I will point out that it’s for “ordinary speed” rail. High speed rail is bound to be higher … much higher.
If you want to apologize, I will forgive you.
One more thing: If I was a European and my government proposed building a $300 million ROAD that carried 600 round trip cars per day, I would be dead set against it. It’s not the concept of rail or high speed rail I’m against. It’s the concept of high speed fleecing of the hard working, tax paying public that I’m against!
Oh, I also wanted to debunk another one if your myths. You say, “the cost of air pollution … is absorbed by society”.
Poppycock.
Cars and highway travel is getting cleaner by the year. And the bill for doing so has been and is being paid by the people who buy cars and use highways. And that is more than can be said for trains. There have been vast improvements to auto emissions but, to my knowledge, not so for trains. If I’m wrong about that (and I might be) post your sources.
But, don’t claim society at large pays the cost of air pollution caused by cars.
I think one can get an idea of just how subidized current public transportation is by comparing the price of a one day bus pass in any large city to the price of a lift ticket at a ski resort. Yea, I know, that lift ticket also pays for the ski patrol and the trail grooming but even a sightseeing ride up the mountain during the summer months costs a lot more than a bus ride.
That “perfect paradise” known as Europe is rapidly going bankrupt.
I’m a servicemember here in Germany. My fellow Americans stationed here rely mostly on their cars even though Deutsche Bahn is cheaper, faster, unaffected by traffic and largely unaffected by weather. Even where there is a choice, such as here in Germany, Americans largely choose the ‘independence’ of a car.
America is bigger. Americans are different than Europeans. I’m an American in Europe. I’ve lived here for seven years. What works for Europe won’t work in America. That’s just the way of the world. Flawed? Yes. Undeniable? Yes. Will Europeans ride a train from London to Rome? Yes. Will an American ride a train from Denver to San Francisco? A few do. Most won’t.
13 Trillion dollar debt and rising. When you’re out of money, stop spending.
Europe is different from America. Vive la difference. If you love it so much, I’ll be returning to the states in March 2012. You can move into my old apartment in Freihung, Germany. It’s half a kilometer from the train station.
You’re being idealistic. Germany is a socialist country. The rights of the individual take a back seat to the needs of the community. If Deutsche Bahn wants to put a railroad in your back yard, there’s not much you can do about it. In America, we celebrate individual rights and private property rights. Here in Germany, not so much. But then nobody turns to Germany during a world crisis. In communist China, they build railroads with slave labor at slave wages with little regard to safety or environmental impact. If you want to live with socialists and communists, be my guest. I’ve done both and I much prefer capitalists.
Excellent post. Thank you and welcome home!
The same thing happened to a courthouse project in Jacksonville, FL. The actual cost of the courthouse is going to be about $400 of the taxpayer approved (by referendum) estimate. I can see it happening with high speed rail too. Here in Florida, we passed (by referendum) a high speed rail amendment. Several years later, when we saw how much is was really going to cost, the voters repealed the amendment. Don’t you love democracy in action?
How do you know that they won’t be used? Especially in the era of having to get naked photos of yourself taken in order to fly, I bet if you had a high speed rail system people would opt for that instead of domestic flights.
You can’t say that Amtrak proves they won’t ride. People avoid Amtrak because it’s slow. Its trains are limited to around 80mph, and the times they actually go that fast are few and far between. Plus since it doesn’t have its own rails in most places, Amtrak trains have to pull over and let freight trains pass, which slows them down more. And even with all those problems, its ridership has been trending upward since its inception.
Meanwhile, adding lanes to highways just doesn’t work. Ask Atlanta. They have 16 lane superhighways and some of the worst traffic in the country. If you add lanes, people will fill them to capacity almost overnight and then you’ll have the same problem you started out with. Trains pull cars off the road, which is what we need when we’re transporting as many people as we do.
Personally, I see both sides of the economy. One friend of mine thinks the s### it going to hit the fan, and we will devolve into a barter economy. He is stockpiling fuel, food, firearms, and ammunition. Meanwhile, another friend of mine is on tour with a Broadway musical, and every show is selling out. Another friend works with special needs children. She just increased her rates, and people are willing to pay.
All this say to me that (A) there really are two Americas, one where people are unemployed and hurting, and another where people are spending money like there is no recession, and (B) state governments are afraid to tax people for the money the governments need. The anti-tax fervor in this country has become so virulent we are hurting ourselves. We don’t want big government, but then a hurricane hits us or a bridge collapses, and then we suddenly blame government for failing to give us what we want on a shoestring budget. You can’t have it both ways.
We need to find some fiscal discipline and learn to sacrifice for the things we want. We need to say “enough of the tax breaks, and enough with the out of control spending.” This latest tax package compromise that the Democrats and Republicans just passed is just contributing to the problem. Let the Bush tax cuts expire (ALL OF THEM!). My income taxes will go up a percentage point (to what they were during the Clinton era). I can take it, and I am willing to sacrifice it to see us pay for the things we want instead of passing the costs on to future generations. Paying taxes for things like a strong national defense, safe roads, and police and fire protection is my patriotic duty. Passing those costs on to future generations is unconscionable, immoral, and in my opinion, unpatriotic.
Cars Cause Cancer, unless you can find the money to pay for your high speed rail project, you are not part of the solution, you are part of the problem.
Handing terrorists many soft easy targets could potentially give them more of a victory than taking prudent measures to protect our security.
Sorry but you have some real blinders on and bringing “communists” into the discussion is a bit wacky. Funny about Germany being socialist, since they have a ton of major capitalistic, successful profit-making industry there.
About your claim against Deutsche Bahn, do you think the situation in the USA is any different if the government wants to put a freeway through your backyard? Your points don’t hold up. The lack of high speed trains in the USA has nothing to do with communists, individual rights or who gets turned to in a world crisis. That’s just all-too-common fuzzy, self-sabotaging bad logic, the kind of thing we hear on AM radio talk shows.
Well it’s a tangent, but it leads to the question of why are the government(s) supposedly bankrupt in the richest country in the world? Why, in the richest country in the world, can we supposedly “not pay for what we do now”?
Again with the anti-European nonsense. Let’s rephrase this in another way, then. Why is that in the richest country in the world “can’t afford” the things that less rich countries can?