When all else fails, assert class warfare.
Look, I’d rather pay you union guys to dig holes in the desert or to insulate houses. At least we wouldn’t be burdened with a never-ending subsidy when you’re done.
Oppressed people are the reason the unions were formed, The middle class is in the danger of being oppressed, you disrespect the working class.
John Dough; we basically do not disagree that much. Long distance travel (over 500 mies) because of the “time is money fact” is best done by air. Those that have more time an take the bus or drive. Distances up to 500 miles in densely populated areas are ideally served by fast trains. Shorter distances ,like up to 200 miles, are suitable for either train or busses.
Our fundamental difference of opinion seem to be that every service has to show a profitr or at least break even. Other posters have stated that virtually every form of transportation in the US is subsidized to some extent. How much I don’t really know. The $1 billion deficit the Japanese Bullet trains run per year is peanuts compared to all the benefits they provide.
Coal mining in Apalachia is profitable because of the easy access to the seams and the lack of complete environmental restoration.
It costs about $3000-$4000 per year to own and operate a decent car. There are many areas of the world where you can get by without owning a car, and just rent one if you want to go on a long vacation. That’s a considerable saving. My brother curently lives 30 miles outside of London England, and to him a car would be more of a nuisance. There are taxis, busses and train with regular service and an airport (Heathrow) only 20 miles away.
Many New Yorkers don’t own cars.
Okay, let’s start with the percentage of all person-trips that are between 200 and 500 miles. It would be useful to know what that is but let’s estimate, for discussion purposes. I remember reading somewhere that 40% of all trips are less than 2 miles long. That would suggest that maybe 90% are less than 20 miles and 95% are less than 100 miles. I’m going to suggest that 98% are less than 200 miles and that 99% are less than 500 miles. If you have some real data, feel free to substitute them but, for the sake of argument, let’s assume the market for rail is in the 200-500 mile range and that that represents 1% of all personal travel.
If high speed rail could serve 100% of the 200-500 mile niche, nationwide, would you say it’s worth a half trillion dollars of taxpayer money? How much revenue do you think it would generate? Do you think a totally separate system like HSR, serving that market, would make any appreciable difference in pollution or nationwide foreign oil imports or highway congestion? I ask because these are the benefits often touted for HSR.
Now, no matter how you answered these questions, here’s the kicker. I saved the best part for last.
Think for a moment how dispersed those nationwide trips between 200 and 500 miles are. Think about your city and your travel patterns and those of your neighbors. How many of the 200-500-mile trips taken by all the people in your city were from Point A to Point B. Now imagine trying to plan and build a network of trains to serve all those trips. Are you beginning to see how futile that would be? Hint: It would be impossible.
So, now let’s return to Obama-Biden-LaHood version of reality. If you look at the map on the DOT Web site that passes for a “network”, you’ll see just how few corridors would be served by a half trillion dollar investment. Next, imagine what percentage of that 1% of total trips would be made by rail.
Fir example, let’s say you live in Sacramento, CA and that 1% of all trips made by Sacramentans are between 200 and 500 mikes in length. And, let’s say that 30% of those go east to Lake Tahoe and Carson City, 30% of them go south and 30% of them go west to SF and the rest go north. Can you see how a high speed train going south from Sacto would not serve the other 70% of the 1% of trips made by Sacramentans?
You can change the numbers but you’re going to have a hard time justifying HSR on any kind if benefit to cost ratio.
I’m telling you, it’s a futile exercise to try to serve such a tiny fraction of diverse trips with any kind of fixed service, let alone the most costly mode of them all: high speed rail.
Ha! I AM the working class. I thrive on hard work. I don’t depend on a corrupt union to feather my bed.
By that logic anything is a soft target. Malls, preschools, sport events. It’s nonsense to say trains must be avoided because of terrorism.
Where do you live Mr Dough? And in what industry do you work? Until the leadership of this country looks to the wellbeing of the average working family as the barometer of success instead of the gyrations of speculated markets we will continue to decline.
To the question of why the supposedly 'richest country in the world" “can’t pay for what we do now”, the answer is simple: we’ve squandered our riches on special-interest entitlements, “bailouts”, and porkbarrel projects. Were we to spend billions building a rail system that nobody wants, along a corridor where a rail system used to exist but failed due to lack of ridership, simply because an environmental group or individual thought it was a good idea, that would be simply another huge amount of money spent to appease a special interest. And we’d dig our fiscal hole even deeper. And we’d have to sell even more bonds to China to finance the deficit. At interest,.
In short, you’ve asked why the “richest country in the world” “can’t pay for what we do now”, while at the same time promoting another deficit-inducing unnecessary initiative in the same category as those that got us into this mess.
It’s time to end this foolishness. “Obama’s vision”, which you so avidly support, is bankrupting our country. As you pointed out, California is the closest to Obama’s vision…and they’re beyond bankrupt!
Agree; the Granola State (nuts, fruits & flakes) indulges in fantasy and wishful thinking. Years ago they froze electricity rates to teach those capitalists a lesson. You know what happened.
The current and previous governors did little to address the fact that you can’t spend more than you bring in, except in the very short term.
Although rail transport is suitable for a few routes in California, getting its financial house in order should be the first consideration.
Jimeny Cricket could “wish upon a star”, but that’s entertainment for children. Running an efficient government is something else entirely.
Good points; in California the only routes that make sense to be served by electric trains are the Bay Area-Los Angeles and LA-SanDiego. None of the others have the population density to justify it. Sacramento is way too small, but no doubt attracts attention because the governor lives there.
Where I live there are 2 metropolitan areas with each over 1 million 200 miles apart. They used to be served by a Budliner train service travelling slowly on freight train tracks. The service was too slow with too many stops and was dropped 25 years ago and supplemented by luxury and ordinary busses, as well as 20 minute interval commuter planes. The connecting highway is 2x3 lanes with limited access and no trafic lights.
The current task force is STUDYING if an electric or diesel train on a dedicated fast track makes sense. Since both cities will double in size in the next 30 years, the future looks good.
The existing tracks will have to be upgraded, and could be shared by freight trains to pay for part of the cost. The train would only stop at the terminal cities, their airports, and one stop in the middle. Travel time would be 2.5 hours, less than by air if you count all the time loss checking in and out, etc.
A friend of mine is in the task force and an initial subsidy would be needed to upgrade the track. After that most air travellers and many that now drive would take the train. The severe winter weather (5 months of the year) would encourage train travel over driving.
Bus service will expected to be retained, since it provides dirt cheap (if slow) travel for kids, students, soldiers (normally without cars), seniors and handicapped people who can’t drive.
In other words, only if the demographics are right, we can then work on the economics. If airplanes did not exist, the train would have enjoyed a much extended life for all areas and distances.
You do a good job in summarizing the right wing propaganda version of the economic problems. No mention of the historically low tax rates on the wealthiest 10% of the population who control 90% of the money which is the real reason for lack of tax revenue, no mention of a trillion tax dollars flushed down the toilet (or also transferred to the wealthy via the military corporations) for the war in Iraq, etc etc. And you blame the deficits on Obama.
Obviously in the richest country in the world the money does exist to pay for a good infrastructure. The reason less rich countries are leaving US in the dust in so many ways is because they have common sense progressive tax rates and wage scales that provide the revenue for these things that benefit everyone (or as the Constitution says “promote for the general welfare”).
You do a good job in summarizing the right wing propaganda version of the economic problems.
It isn’t “right wing propaganda.” I am a registered Democrat who voted for Obama twice (in the primary and the general election), and I agree with what mountainbike is saying because, like Candidate Obama (and unlike President Obama), I am a fiscal conservative.
Obama promised us he would balance the budget and pay down the deficit. If people like you get your way, that will never happen. I blame Obama for the fact that the deficit is still growing. It should be shrinking, at least if the President were to deliver on his campaign promise.
The money does not exist to pay for new infrastructure, and proving it is easy. Just look at the deficit. In order to build new infrastructure, we would have to borrow the money. That would mean (A) we would have to pay interest on the borrowed money, driving up the cost of the project, and (B) we would damage our own economy by flooding the bond market with even more treasury bills. Economists call this the “crowding out effect” because flooding the bond market hinders corporations’ abilities to raise money through issuing bonds for investment in new equipment and hiring.
I swear, some extreme liberals aren’t capable of adding and subtracting. If you have no money, and you keep buying things on your credit card, are things going to get any better, or worse?
Counterterrorism in this country amounts to reaction to bona fide threat. Some HSR advocates say there will be a travel time savings advantage for trains over planes because you can just walk onto a train without going throug security. That advantage will last only until the brain trust known as TSA figures out that trains are targets too. Shortly thereafter, there will be frisking at train stations and, poof, there go the time savings that were used to rationalize the spending of hundreds of millions of dollars.
I’m a registered independent…and while I don’t believe that our current economic problem is Obama’s problem…he inherited a MAJOR mess from Bush. I do believe the Obama is NOT correctly addressing the problem.
But I do 100% agree with Mountainbike that spending BILLIONS (probably HUNDREDS OF BILLIONS) on a rail system that no-one wants and will further put our country into deep deep debt is just FOOLISH. And you’ve yet to address this concern. You just keep jabbering about something else and NOT addressing HOW we come up with HUNDREDS OF BILLIONS of dollars and how it’s going to help. Nor have you addressed the basic problem Mountainbike has pointed out several times…NO ONE WANTS IT…NO ONE WILL USE IT…But you still want us to spend BILLIONS UPON BILLIONS supporting this…I can only come to ONE conclusion - “You have a invested interest in the Railroad system.” So how many shares of railroad stock do you own???
Sounds like a plan. Hopefully, you’re prepared to fund it on your own because I think the high speed funding landscape is about to change in Washington.
The questions your friend should be asking are (1) is it honestly viable (no film flam BS and number cooking like they’re doing in CA) and (2) do the public benefits outweigh the public costs? If he can’t answer “yes” to both of those questions, he ought to vote “no” on the project.
If he follows that intellectual honesty, he will deserve high praise, win, lose or draw!
Good luck…
Your party affiliations and voting record don’t make you immune to right wing propaganda. Obama could not have simultaneously stabilized an economy on the brink of collapse, which he did, while balancing the budget. For you to think he could accomplish both things - within two years!-- shows some real disconnect from reality, the kind of wrongheadedness encouraged by AM talk radio and FOX brainwashing.
About the actual issues, you copied and pasted the first line of my message; did you bother reading the rest?
You write a post praising “Obama’s vision”, you have to be willing to take some debate. You also praised California for being prepared to “take up Obama’s vision”…and California is bankrupt beyond precedent.
Bush started digging us into a hole with a shovel. Then along came Obama with an excavator.
Hey, if you can’t stand the heat…don’t light the fire.
Gov. Christie in NJ has made more progress in a year than Obama has made it two. For that matter, Obama has made negative progress and shows no signs of making any positive progress anytime soon.
Spend spend spend!
“Obama could not have simultaneously stabilized an economy on the brink of collapse, which he did…”
Yes, and he continued to work of President Bush in that respect.
“Bush started digging us into a hole with a shovel. Then along came Obama with an excavator.”
No, it started earlier than that; at least the Clinton administration. The government encouraged people that should not have gotten loans to take them because the decision makers foolishly believed that housing prices could go up forever. BTW, that includes all national elected officials of both parties. Let’s stop picking on just one or two men and include all the elected officials that made the mess possible. And don’t forget those of us who elected the scoundrels and then didn’t pay close enough attention to what they did. It’s all your fault, too. And mine as well. So, put your hair shirts on - you earned them.