$53 Billion for High Speed Rail?

[finnbow]

Originally Posted by piece-itpete

Agreed. I remember going downtown at Christmas, to see Mr Jingaling, window displays, and slide the slide on 'The Christmas Story'. Seems like a different planet now.

Of course, there were already many very bad neighborhoods in those days too.

Busing killed what was left of the good neighborhoods. Anyone who can gets out of there for their kids sake.

A few weeks ago the Plain Dealer ran a story - 'what if Pittsburgh and Cleveland joined into a single municipality?' I thought, yeah, right lol.

Pete

Why on Earth would Pittsburgh want that? It's been ranked the country's most livable city twice recently and is a very nice city indeed.

You might laugh, Pete, but I took my family to Cleveland for a long 3-4 day weekend a couple of years back and we had a very nice time. We liked the art museum, an Indians game at the Jake, the R&R Hall of Fame, Cedar Point, and Canton's football HOF. Other than the R&R HOF and the Jake, downtown is a bit uninspiring, however.

[piece-itpete]

Anybody listening? : para:

OK. We're actually a great place to live. We don't want it to get out, it'll drive prices up. Although once global warming turns Cleveland into a surfing paradise it won't really matter anyway.



Pittsburgh? Bunch of hacks. They can keep their yellow seats.



Pete

[Fast_Eddie]

I grew up in Ohio. You can keep Cleveland. Pittsburgh, on the other hand, is a pretty nice little town.

As for rail, man. Has America ever lost her way. There was a time, when presented with any challenge, America would roll up her sleeves and say "we can do this". Now there are a million reasons why we can't. We can't educate our kids. We can't provide health care. Hell, can't even build a damn train. Pretty good a killing people though. Seems like the only thing we can do. Glad we have our priorities in order.

[piece-itpete]

Eddie, you can tell you didn't grow up in Cleveland

And how could you slam such a Dem stronghold? lol

Pete

[Combwork]

Originally Posted by finnbow

To whom? Roads are already paid for by excise taxes on motor fuels. Trains, OTOH, are just a money pit for public subsidies.

One of the big problems with passenger rail in the US is the sprawling nature of our cities. If you live in a typical suburb of a big American city, you may well be an hour or more from the rail station and the rail station where you're headed may be an hour from your ultimate destination - and there may not be good public transport connecting the rail stations to anything else.

High speed rail in the US is a big, costly solution looking for a problem. If we want to spend money on rail, why not build world-class light rail/subways in our major cities? There are only a handful of big cities in this country that have light rail/subways that compete in terms of quality and coverage with major cities in other parts of the industrialized world. Even DC, with its Metro, doesn't yet have train service to its major gateway airport (Dulles). This is true of most major airports in the country.

We need to learn to walk before we run.

Fair points all. Even though you guys are unhappy about rising fuel prices, they are still about half the UK price. Railways will never be as local as they once were; flexibility of personal transport has seen to that but remember, a car is just a mobile power station that carries people. However much fuel costs rise, unit for unit large static power stations are much more efficient. High speed comfortable transport city to city makes sense but 300+ mph? That's what the Japanese are aiming for. Imagine looking through the window and seeing the country flash by that quickly. Scary..............

On another note, no matter how good the wheel breaks are, steel wheels on steel rails can't slow things down as fast as rubber on tarmac. Reversing polarity on a MagLev train could stop it very quickly, but the fear for me is if it's lifted by magnetic repulsion, what happens if the power fails? The theory is the train would drop down to flanged wheels, but at 300 MPH?

OOOPS. I should have done my research. Apparently the idea is that in a full emergency stop, the train would drop down on skids, the train weight would do the rest.

[finnbow]

Originally Posted by Combwork

Fair points all. Even though you guys are unhappy about rising fuel prices, they are still about half the UK price. Railways will never be as local as they once were; flexibility of personal transport has seen to that but remember, a car is just a mobile power station that carries people. However much fuel costs rise, unit for unit large static power stations are much more efficient. High speed comfortable transport city to city makes sense but 300+ mph? That's what the Japanese are aiming for. Imagine looking through the window and seeing the country flash by that quickly. Scary..............

Having lived in Germany for 11 years, I'm a big fan of passenger rail service (over there anyway). The scale of things here is much different, as is land use planning in urban areas and the prevalence/quality of public transport vs. Europe.

What America does have is a world-class freight rail system. But corn, soybean, and coal don't care if it takes a couple of days of round-the-clock travel to get somewhere.

I think the desire for high-speed rail is some sort of penis-envy with respect to the Chinese. This up-and-coming economy can do it. Why can't we?

[piece-itpete]

The US freight railroad system is part of the backbone of US transport. Over 142K miles of track (yes I looked that up ).

Here in a greater metropolitan area, I'm never much more than a couple of miles from tracks. My 6 mile commute takes me over or under 3 sets.

Pete

[Combwork]

Originally Posted by piece-itpete

The US freight railroad system is part of the backbone of US transport. Over 142K miles of track (yes I looked that up ).

Here in a greater metropolitan area, I'm never much more than a couple of miles from tracks. My 6 mile commute takes me over or under 3 sets.

Pete

I remember visiting a friend in Muncie a few years back. No rail station that I know of, but freight trains came through. You'd hear the two tone siren as they slowed down to go through the town so one day, having heard about giant US freight trains I went out early to see for myself. Four power units on the front pulling over 200 wagons, all double bogie, each wagon about the same length as a UK passenger coach. I don't know the exact number as the engines having passed the town limits were speeding up and I lost count. Incredible sight though. Not just sight; despite concrete sleepers the ground shook as the train came through.

[merrylander]

I suppose for business travel speed is important, but when we took a two day Superliner Amtrak it was not only relaxing but we also had the opportunity to simply talk. I was still working then and it surprised me how little time we had to just sit and talk.

It was also very iteresting to get a ground level view of the country, things you do not see from 20,000 feet. It really is a beautiful land despite our best efforts. We occasionally went to the dome car to really take in the view from all ssides although our bedroom had windows across the aisle. That was another thing, during the day you left the door open and fellow passengers would say hello as they passed by. No train travel has it over air travel like a tent. Great meals served at a real table among pleasnat company beats the hell out of a bag of peanuts any day.

[d-ray657]

Originally Posted by finnbow

To whom? Roads are already paid for by excise taxes on motor fuels. Trains, OTOH, are just a money pit for public subsidies.

One of the big problems with passenger rail in the US is the sprawling nature of our cities. If you live in a typical suburb of a big American city, you may well be an hour or more from the rail station and the rail station where you're headed may be an hour from your ultimate destination - and there may not be good public transport connecting the rail stations to anything else.

High speed rail in the US is a big, costly solution looking for a problem. If we want to spend money on rail, why not build world-class light rail/subways in our major cities? There are only a handful of big cities in this country that have light rail/subways that compete in terms of quality and coverage with major cities in other parts of the industrialized world. Even DC, with its Metro, doesn't yet have train service to its major gateway airport (Dulles). This is true of most major airports in the country.

We need to learn to walk before we run.

I'll concede this point to you Finn. I could get behind light rail big time. I spent a lot of time in St. Louis a few years back. The Stl. light rail system starts at the airport. I was able to catch the train at the airport and take it to within a block of my client's downtown office. There are stops at the ballpark, at the tourist areas and all over the downtown area. It even goes across to Illinois. Kansas City's local dreamer kept petitioning to put light rail on the ballot, and it finally won, but for some reason it was never financed.

I have always thought that we missed a great opportunity in the 70's, when we had a gas crisis. (The price of gas got up close to $1.00) Instead of focusing on improving mass transit in response, the oil companies were given incentive to drill baby drill. Cities continued to sprawl and we became more dependent on oil.

Regards,

D-Ray