Good post Mike. Whenever I run into environmentalists or political idealists I hear the same undoable stuff, without any hard scientific explanation or ECONOMIC rationale.
I tolerate this “Mommy, I want the elephant!” stuff from children, but from adults it is just kneejerk repetition of whatever the Sierra Club or Green Peace spouts, with David Suzuki and Al Gore adding emphasis.
I am personally in favor of the low cost, low risk option of running diesel powered dedicated intercity busses to test the water. Here we have such a service and it gets good ridership and is selfsupporting. It mainly competes with commuter aircraft, which leave every 20 minutes daily. The standard Greyhound bus still serves seniors, kids, military personnnel and adults who have lost their driver’s license or never had one.
Intercity busses with fuel cells or some other exotic power source is missing the application-focus which is a trademark of those who do not understand the situation.
Doc: In my experience, the childish “Mommy I want the elephant” impulse more often translates into fetishistic car ownership. Desire for a Corvette Stingray or the new “Venom” being the typical examples of this overcompensation for deficiencies from childhood and otherwise.
The President just announced his proposal for high speed rail access for 80% of Americans within 25 years. You’re not slamming him as being childish or engaging in kneejerk repetition, are you?
Shadow, you’re right, we’ve had enough of this ruinous game of adding more lanes to more highways for more traffic jams and more pollution. But by the way more and more people are riding Amtrak (it’s usually full when I take it lately, unlike ten years ago) even with disadvantages imposed from the outside – the lack of track maintenance and upgrades which makes the trains go slower and have to pull over for freight trains. Once we get the new investment in our infrastructure going, that problem will be solved and we’ll have to get more trains.
No, we are generally accusing YOU of being naive and unrealistic, and unwilling or unable to use site-specific facts and costs to determine whether something makes sense. I grew up in Europe which has a great high speed rail system; anything else would choke this densely populated continent. That does not make it a shoe-in for the US, except for certain areas.
Agree that fetish car owners often try to compensate for inadequacies in the looks, intelligence and romantic areas.
Obama is a nice man, but, like any politician he says what people like to hear, not what is really feasible for the debt-ridden USA of today. Very different from JFK stating that “we will put a man on the moon” in 9 years. That was feasible and it did inspire people.
I support high speed rail only of it can be self-supporting
Maybe you are not old enough to remember, but Ike pushed for federal funding of the Interstate system. He used the military value to get it through congress. I remember the difference before and after the interstate system.
Personally I believe that a good high speed rail would be well worth the investment in our country. But it certainly will not be a cure all nor would it be used by everyone.
Once you have experienced the difference of private auto, air and rail, I think you can understand the advantages and disadvantages of each. I really hate modern air travel.
Modern air travel is expensive, very uncomfortable and not civilized. There are times it is the best choice, but if you give it a chance, I believe high speed rail will be the choice of many travelers.
But don’t force us to spend our money on one here in NH that nobody will ride
Maybe you will be wrong about nobody ridding. I certainly would choose high speed rail over air, in fact I choose current rail over air whenever I have the choice. I totally hate being stuck is a seat sized for a child stuck there for hours next to a crankily child kicking me all the way. How about adding a generously sized person in the seat on the other side Then there is the hassle of getting to the plane and security. There there are those lovely meals that are available.
CCC…Do you have any idea how easy it is to derail a train??
Furthermore, do you have any idea how hard it is to shoot down an airplane?
My father in law used to joke that the whole point of practicing on target drones with .50 caliber machine guns was to demonstrate just what a waste of ammo shooting at airplanes was.
It’s very very difficult to bring down an airplane from outside the plane. You can plant a bomb or bring paper cutters and take over the plane…Try to bring one down from outside the plane. You either have to physically be in the plane or you have to somehow bring a bomb on board. It’s NOT going to be easy to bring down a plane from some outside means. If it were easy the terrorists would have tried that first.
HOWEVER a Train…just the opposite…Much easier to derail a train from the outside then from inside…A terrorist wants to cause havoc and kill THOUSANDS of people and possibly totally disrupt a city(s)…all they have to do is derail a train (or 2 or 3 or 4) with cars carrying toxic chemicals…You can find trains all over the country with cars with extremely toxic chemicals traveling all over the US…through LARGE metropolitan areas every day of the year.
CCC…You’re the one who brought up trains and how SECURE they are. Now tell me how do you stop a terrorist from derailing a train that’s carrying toxic chemicals???
Mike, the subject is pat downs, screening at airports. You can very easily scroll up and see the post and what it was in response to (the thread, per se, re Obama’s SOTU address). If it was not clear to you that I was referring to passengers as threats, then I make that clear now. Now if you want to continue fantasizing on a sidetrack about how to derail a train, about anti-aircraft fire, biological weapons, cow collision vs bird collision or whatever, go right ahead and have fun.
Incidents at train stations are the same as any other place where large numbers congregate like shopping malls and parades, where modern societies enforce security in other ways than trying to pat down every single individual.
The whole discussion was about TERRORIST AND SAFETY. The only reason Obama talked about the no pat-downs for trains was because the terrorists CAN’T derail a train from the inside. He was TRYING to make the point that it would be safer…IT’S NOT. In fact it would be UNSAFE. WWII is a great example of that…we proved that during the war.
If it was not clear to you that I was referring to passengers as threats
SO WHAT…how dense can a person get. So according to YOUR LOGIC…If you eliminate passenger threats…then everything is safe??? Critical thinking is NOT your strongest suit.
Even if one ignores the safety issues, Obama’s statements are no more meaningful than those of EVERY past President (both Republican and Democrat) regarding making promises that they can’t keep, and that make no real sense when studied in detail.
Tex and Mike, I have already tried to show the poor reasoning of this thinking. Briefly, it’s absurd to try to argue against high speed rail on the grounds of terrorism/safety, unless you want to argue against any and all public gatherings and transit that might pose safety issues (ban parades, close all shopping malls, etc.) It seems that because you are against high speed rail for other reasons, you try to come up with any and all things you can think of against it whether it makes sense or not. So if you want to idly speculate about safety issues and derailments, go right ahead but don’t confuse it with real reasons to stop progress in our country.
Please read my re-worded post: “Even if one ignores the safety issues…” means that, even if I do not consider any safety issues, massive investment in country wide trillion dollar high speed rail system does not make economic sense.
The goals of the system (reduced pollution and oil use) could be much more efficiently reached by spending much less than the costs required by such a system. I doubt that a high speed rail system would make any significant dent in either pollution or oil use.
This is very different than commuter rail systems, which can be effective in certain situations.
NO FAIR, MIKE!!! You are not allowed to cloud the issue with FACTS!
American Presidents have been promising to end the USA’s addiction to oil since the Nixon administration. Presidents make countless promises at State of the Union speeches. If you take them too seriously, you are bound to be disappointed.
?Within 25 years, our goal is to give 80 percent of Americans access to high-speed rail. This could allow you go places in half the time it takes to travel by car,
C^3, has it occurred to you that halving the time of intra-city commuting would likely greatly expand suburban sprawl?
Case in point: as a youngster, I lived in the North Hills of Pittsburgh (pre I-279), and frequently come back to see my dad (post I-279). The difference is astounding: where McCandless twp used to be the “frontier” of suburbia, now the developments push out another 12mi. to just north of Allegheny County (where all the “tax exiles” live). Apparently a 90-minute (round trip) commute is “worth it” whereas it wasn’t back when it was 120 minutes.
Remember that this is in a metro area with (effectively) zero population growth, so it’s a clear case of “If you build it (transportation infrastructure), they (developers) will come.” Once you halve the commute time (keeping it cheap via subsidies you’re clamoring for), what do you suppose will happen to the 'burbs?
What you’re proposing is the gov’t taking the money of its citizenry, passing it through railway construction co’s, to ultimately enrich land speculators. And that’s rather offensive to my (modestly) left-leaning heart.
Yes, fetish car owners are trying to compensate for deficiencies from childhood. But they’re usually smiling all during the trip instead of whining about how everyone else is ruining their earth. Except for aome movie stars, of course.
Hey, I didn’t get great looks, superior brains, atheletic ability, a great singing voice, or inherited wealth. Why shouldn’t I compensate with a fast car?
I wish I had a cavalcade of huge gas-guzzling SUVs to take me to my private jet…like Al Gore does.