General Discussion

The Butler:

oltmannd:

jeaton:

If the difference was only 25 cents per gallon, the savings to the driving public would more than offset the cost of building the railroads.

This is an excellent point, but local mobility is more important, and more miles are driven, than intercity mobility. (e.g. getting to work and the grocery store). We'd get more bang for the buck investing in urban/suburban transit than HSR. In fact, doing that first might actually pave the way for HSR later by providing first/last mile service. I think the current relatively modest investments in improved intercity rail are a more than reasonable - for now.

 

What market is HSR really going after?  In the less than 500 mile range, is it the automobile or the airplane?

I live an hour and a half South of St. Louis.  My family is in suburban Chicago.  I think it would be great to travel from here to there in three hours, but once I am there I will need a car.  That is why I will continue to drive to the Chicago metropolitan area even if HSR between those two cities happens.

I think that is why HSR will affect airlines more than Interstates.  Yes, no? 

   

About 4 to 6 times a year we make a 400 mile drive from here to Cincinnati to visit family.  Even though we would have to drive to get to a rail line-Fox Lake or perhaps Milwaukee to make a connection to a Chicago-Cincinnati high speed train, I have no doubt that a 2 hour Chicago-Cincinnati service would get me to leave my car behind.  Driving, we have little option but to go through Chicago and then deal with a very congested I-65 between Gary and Indianapolis.  It is a fairly stressful run and and even though we will drive at or little over the speed limit it still takes us at least six and a half hours to make the trip.  That would be the greater factor of my decision to take the train. 

Comparative cost might be a factor.  While the train fare is an unknown at this point, I do expect it will exceed the cost of the 40 gallons of gas I use to make the drive.  On the other hand, if I figure my total cost per mile for using the car at 50 cents, then I have $400 to work with.

Guess we could say that HSR might work for me, but maybe not for you. 

garr:

I love railroading. Always have.

Some of my earliest recollections are of walks as a four year old back in '66 with my great-grandfather to see the Georgia Railroad passenger train roll through Thomson. The first issue of Trains I purchased was back in the early '70s, the one with a night shot of an EL unit at Bison Yard on the cover. Since then I have collected every issue--Vol 1, No. 1 to present and plan on reading Trains till I no longer exist.

However, I must be one the "howling high-speed critics" Mr. Wrinn editorializes in the December issue. His criticisms fit me to a tee, except the anti-government part. I am more a anti-tax increase, anti-deficit spending type.

In an ideal world, I would love for America to have a high speed rail network. However, in the real world our governments have chosen to spend our tax dollars like a gambler with a fresh cashed paycheck(and an unlimited credit card) in a casino.

The 55% of working Americans who pay income taxes already have to work 4 months of the year just to pay their annual tax burden--not even considering the deficit spending of the past 12 months. How long will we be working in a decade or two to pay the current burden? Not to mention our children and their children.

What will our standard of living be when that tax burden becomes 6 months or more? To me, that is when we can really start batting the "uncivilized" word around.

I have been to Europe. I have ridden the TGV between Paris and Lyon. It is a wonderful experience to ride a train traveling smoothly along at 180+ mph but not wonderful enough to put my childrens' future at stake.

As far as less pollution, better land use, and less congestion, what load factor will the high speed trains have to attain to make these benefits true? What service level? What user fee(in today's term, operating subsidy)? What propulsion?

Safety? We already have a high speed passenger network with a better safety record than railroading--the commercial airlines.

Call me obtuse, but this "howling high-speed critic" wants to know when the "high-speed supporters" truly get it.

Jay 

BTW--How many of the Europeans calling us "uncivilized" know the geography of the US? $8 billion is not even a downhill roll toward creating a network in America. By the time a truly national network is completed, $8 trillion would probably be closer to the truth. It is always easier to be a critic when the critic has nothing at risk. 

This is the exact reason why I did not renew my subscription to Trains magazine and will not.  I got real sick of paying for a magazine that kept demanding that we pay even more taxes to fund an enormous investment in high speed rail for reasons that are just plain stupid.  I really think that the only reason people want high speed rail is because Europe does and the 'boy wouldn't that be neat' factor.  All this talk about being green and how it is better than flying long distances is just unbelievable.  Do you really think that people would rather take the train at 200 MPH when they can fly there at 600?  It's as if we are trying to invest in a really expensive version of the horse and carriage. 

I've got to laugh, though.  I remember reading Tom Murray's articles right before the election.  He was tickled pink over the fact that Joe Biden actually rode Amtrak.  To quote one of our unbiased news commentators Tom must have had that 'tingle up his leg' that everyone had when they saw the president elect on TV.  Oh things were going to change.  Amtrak was going to be funded.  The administration would push high speed rail.  All the bad nasty experiences of the last eight years would disappear and we could go back to the good old days where transportation policy was the number one crisis in this country.  Since then, these people have spent so much taxpayer money on useless make work and 'save government jobs' programs that they can't even afford to buy off the seniors with a 250 $ check to shut them up for their next gigantic expenditure - healthcare. 

Rest assured,  the articles from Trains will only get more bitter as they realize that high speed rail is going to be paid lip service while sucking hind teat for the next 4 -8 years.  High speed rail is not, and should not be, a priority.  We have 10 % unemplyment ( some argue the real number is around 16), and those who are employed are working reduced hours.  The LAST thing that I need is another tax to fund a project I will never use, and never will be employed by. 

Solzrules:

Did you get a bad teabag?

The fact is that where rail is relatively fast, frequent, and on time, people do use it.  In the Northeast corridor, trains move more people than the airlines.

If you look at NYC to DC you can say that airplanes are faster.  But the trains stop at all the smaller cities in between.  The airlines don't  If you want to go between two of those intermediate cities you have to drive to another city to arrive at the origin airport early enough to go through the prison visitor type security to fly to the destination city then drive to your actual destination.  Have that airliner stop at all the cities that the train stops at and see which one is faster.

Amtrak's problem is that they are spread too thin.  One train a day, or even less between two cities is not convenient to anyone's schedule.

jeaton:

How about maybe.

About 4 to 6 times a year we make a 400 mile drive from here to Cincinnati to visit family.  Even though we would have to drive to get to a rail line-Fox Lake or perhaps Milwaukee to make a connection to a Chicago-Cincinnati high speed train, I have no doubt that a 2 hour Chicago-Cincinnati service would get me to leave my car behind.  Driving, we have little option but to go through Chicago and then deal with a very congested I-65 between Gary and Indianapolis.  It is a fairly stressful run and and even though we will drive at or little over the speed limit it still takes us at least six and a half hours to make the trip.  That would be the greater factor of my decision to take the train. 

Comparative cost might be a factor.  While the train fare is an unknown at this point, I do expect it will exceed the cost of the 40 gallons of gas I use to make the drive.  On the other hand, if I figure my total cost per mile for using the car at 50 cents, then I have $400 to work with.

Guess we could say that HSR might work for me, but maybe not for you. 

Delta will fly you round trip Milwaukee-Cincinnati for $190/person. (Check Orbitz) And that's leaving Milwaukee on November 23 and returning on November 28.   So it's Thanksgiving travel when air fares are higher.

So just why do we need to spend $billions that we don't have to do what Delta does just fine right now?  Other than to make "Editor Grumpy" less grumpy.

greyhounds:

jeaton:

How about maybe.

About 4 to 6 times a year we make a 400 mile drive from here to Cincinnati to visit family.  Even though we would have to drive to get to a rail line-Fox Lake or perhaps Milwaukee to make a connection to a Chicago-Cincinnati high speed train, I have no doubt that a 2 hour Chicago-Cincinnati service would get me to leave my car behind.  Driving, we have little option but to go through Chicago and then deal with a very congested I-65 between Gary and Indianapolis.  It is a fairly stressful run and and even though we will drive at or little over the speed limit it still takes us at least six and a half hours to make the trip.  That would be the greater factor of my decision to take the train. 

Comparative cost might be a factor.  While the train fare is an unknown at this point, I do expect it will exceed the cost of the 40 gallons of gas I use to make the drive.  On the other hand, if I figure my total cost per mile for using the car at 50 cents, then I have $400 to work with.

Guess we could say that HSR might work for me, but maybe not for you. 

Delta will fly you round trip Milwaukee-Cincinnati for $190/person. (Check Orbitz) And that's leaving Milwaukee on November 23 and returning on November 28.   So it's Thanksgiving travel when air fares are higher.

So just why do we need to spend $billions that we don't have to do what Delta does just fine right now?  Other than to make "Editor Grumpy" less grumpy.

 

jeaton:

Don't forget to add $30 to check one bag each way.

Or wear what won't fit in the carry-on 

jeaton:

Don't forget to add $30 to check one bag each way.

It's $15 for one bag each way.

So two of you can fly round trip for $440 with one bag each.  Over Thanksgiving when air fares are higher.

So just why do we need that high speed rail network?

solzrules:

This is the exact reason why I did not renew my subscription to Trains magazine and will not.  I got real sick of paying for a magazine that kept demanding that we pay even more taxes to fund an enormous investment in high speed rail for reasons that are just plain stupid. 

Yeah.

Jim Wrinn has taken the magazine in a direction that I don't like.  It's been a part of my life for almost half a century.  I first subscribed when I was 12 (using my father's name.) with my paper route money.  I'll be 59 in November and I wonder if I'll renew.  My EX used to say that it was always a good day when the Trains Magazine arrived.  No more. 

Wrinn supports High Speed Rail in the US.  He's got a perfect platform to do the supporting.  But instead of publishing articles that present solid, reasoned arguments in favor of HSR, he chooses to basically denigrate those of his readers who think differently.  I'm "Howling"?

I believe Wrinn doesn't provide such articles because he can't.  1)  I don't believe a solid, reasoned argument in support of HSR is possible, and 2) he's not an analytical kind of guy.  In the November 2009 issue he tried to present an argument for forced, taxpayer funded, electrification of the US rail network.  The resultant article was an inane joke that claimed electrification would divert 83% of truck business to rail and add 175 million jobs in the US.  How he could possibly read that nonsense and publish it is beyond reason.  This leads him to lash out at those of us who disagree with him.  I respect people who disagree with me as long as they stick to facts and don't lie.  I don't respect those who can't deal with my disagreement and choose to denigrate me personally.  I'm "Howling"?

If he tried to do the same for HSR I think the result would be the same.  Another inane joke of an article. He simply doesn't focus on the "analytical aspect" of things.  He goes more with emotion and the artistic side of things.  If that's the way they want to go, that's fine.  It's their magazine.  But they might just wind up doing it without me sending them some money.

I think the December issue is decent.  But it's largely about taking pictures of trains rather than about the trains themselves.  Again, Wrinn is focused on the art, not the trains.

Check page 33.  The top photo.  There are two very interesting pieces of rail equipment in that consist.  That rotary snow plow was obviously fabricated by the BN (or a contract job shop) from a locomotive.  It would be nice to learn something about it.  But there's nothing written at all about the machine.  It's a nice photo.  And if you're interested in the photos instead of the trains I guess that will do. But I subscribe to Trains, not Photos.  (The other interesting piece of equipment is that Jordan on the rear of the train.  No mention of that either.)

The article on page 38 - well let's see, that's about taking pictures of trains instead of trains too.  We've got photos of the outside of a bar, the inside of a bar, a bed, some blured trains, a tale about getting stuck in a snow drift, etc.  The photo on pages 42-43 is nice.  But there's more information about the church than the train.  The train is incidental.  What train is it? Where is it going?  What is it hauling? What locomotives are powering it?  I want to know about the train.  That's why I subscribe to Trains Magazine.  (I did like the article, but it was only remotely about trains.)

The article on Page 46 is flat out about photography, not trains.

I could live with this artistic focus (if I must) if Wrinn and company would acknowledge legitimate opposing points of view.  His December editorial indicates he doesn't.  And I will not subscribe to a publication that prints outright lies such as forced electrification of the US rail net would add 175 million jobs. 

Phoebe Vet:

Solzrules:

Did you get a bad teabag?

And with this statement I will now disregard everything in your post.  If this is the best way you can get your point across, then go pound sand, brother.  You are more than welcome to jack the taxes of your grandkids through the roof so that you can have choo choo trains the no one can ride when we're out of work.  Keep the denegrating up.  It's gonna work miracles for me at the ballot box in 2010. 

solzrules:

Phoebe Vet:

Solzrules:

Did you get a bad teabag?

And with this statement I will now disregard everything in your post.  If this is the best way you can get your point across, then go pound sand, brother.  You are more than welcome to jack the taxes of your grandkids through the roof so that you can have choo choo trains the no one can ride when we're out of work.  Keep the denegrating up.  It's gonna work miracles for me at the ballot box in 2010. 

While perhaps he should not have made that jab, the rest of his post made reasoned comments  Don't be so thin-skinned. If you wish to close your eyes to reasoned debate that's your choice, but I tend to ignore folks displaying childish temper tantrums. But I do not fully agree completely with him either.

My belief is that High Speed Rail is premature for most corridors at the present time.  As Phoebe Vet states, at the moment Amtrak (and VIA in Canada) are spread too thin to provide the level of service that is actually convenient for most people to use.  There are, however, a few corridors where current use has risen very substantially, simply by providing more schedule options (more trains).  The trains run fast enough to provide competitive travel times while still servicing a number of on-line communities to permit very flexible use.  Finally you can get back home the same day, or catch the train at a more civilized hour than 5am. 

This is the service level Europe and elsewhere provided before building HSR.  You may find that HSR was, once all costs were factored in, the cheapest way to expand travel capacity.  Unfortunately for one part of PV's comments, HSR will probably not stop at many intermediate places since that defeats its speed mandate.

And I could take issue with lots of things the government "wastes" my tax money on.  If I don't have children, why do I have to pay those high education taxes? Or help build fancy stadiums for teams I never watch. Not to mention that real waste, the post 9/11 busywork to give the illusion that they can actually make our countries completely secure from terrorists.  Other threads in this forum have pointed out the stupidity of some of those measures.

John

greyhounds:

jeaton:

Don't forget to add $30 to check one bag each way.

It's $15 for one bag each way.

So two of you can fly round trip for $440 with one bag each.  Over Thanksgiving when air fares are higher.

So just why do we need that high speed rail network?

Sorry, I didn't spell it out correctly.

I guess that if we can count on an endless supply of cheap petroleum then we probably don't need high speed rail. 

What I personaly want is a service that provides speed and comfort, the latter being something that is certainly not provided with the air transport experience.

In so far as the $billions to be spent, I have suggested in previous posts that the cost may be offset by a reduction in personal expenditures, specifically, the cost of the gasoline we will still be buying when an automobile is required for our transportation needs.  I am not concerned about the billions of total cost mainly because I don't expect to get a bill for anything more than my share, even though my share would likely be a good bit more than that of the average taxpayer. 

cx500:

While perhaps he should not have made that jab, the rest of his post made reasoned comments  Don't be so thin-skinned. If you wish to close your eyes to reasoned debate that's your choice, but I tend to ignore folks displaying childish temper tantrums. But I do not fully agree completely with him either.

Thin-skinned?  I'm way past that point.  This attitude in general I am sick of.  What people are not getting is that a lot of people lost their jobs this last summer.  A lot.  The job market in the future is weak, actually deplorable.  Our economy is suffering terribly.  We need to focus on fixing the economy before anything else.  Raising billions of dollars in taxes to build a high speed rail network just because some people might ride it, it might be competitive in some strange scenario where airplanes are run by losers, Europe has it, and the fact that we just need to have it in general to show off to the world are not good reasons to increase taxes right now.  I would ask the question:  How is this going to help the economy when the government takes money out of the hands of taxpayers and invests it in technology that is not new? 

I can hear the chorus now:  It will create jobs you fool, just like the stimulus package did from February!  Wrong answer.  The money spent on that stimulus package was money taken from future taxes.  In essence, we took wealth from generations that aren't even born yet and spent it now to claim that we are creating jobs.  Our children will be paying for this now.  John McCain had it right when he called it 'generational theft'.

Not only that, but this isn't the 1930's folks.  We don't hire 4000 people to excavate out a freeway anymore.  How many people will be employed in the construction of this high speed rail network (assuming that it isn't held up for decades by environmental lawsuits)?  4 million?  3 million?  Dare I even ask how many jobs this will 'save'?  Honestly does anyone want to take a guess here?  I've seen plenty of numbers thrown around already but nothing that actually sounds serious.

To build our fast little choo choo, we would have to raise taxes.  Plain and simple.  The US government has no money, no surplus, no budget gimmick, that can produce the amount of money this will require.  Raising taxes when the unemployment rate is at 10% in an economy that gets most of its strength from consumer spending takes money away from the consumer and puts it in the pocket of government.  People can't afford this anymore.  You have to be blind deaf and dumb to think otherwise.  Governments cannot, and never have been able to, create wealth through taxes.   

So for being thin-skinned, I'm not.  I just completely write off these nuts who think that this all some sort of right wing conspiracy that is propogated by Rush Limbaugh and his ilk.  I don't try to reason with [term removed], and after seeing how this economy has affected honest people trying to make an honest wage for their families, I have no time for some [obscenity removed] that thinks we need to pay more for some cadillac railroad that takes people semi-quickly from one city with high unemplyment to another. 

It's the economy [term removed]. 

oltmannd:

jeaton:

If the difference was only 25 cents per gallon, the savings to the driving public would more than offset the cost of building the railroads.

This is an excellent point, but local mobility is more important, and more miles are driven, than intercity mobility. (e.g. getting to work and the grocery store). We'd get more bang for the buck investing in urban/suburban transit than HSR. In fact, doing that first might actually pave the way for HSR later by providing first/last mile service. I think the current relatively modest investments in improved intercity rail are a more than reasonable - for now.

We don't have good passenger service, let alone High Speed Rail, in this country because big business did not see a return on investment worth going after in the mid part of the 20th Century!  Unlike other countries which have figured out that a well planned, built and operated transportation network is good for the the overall economy of the country (i.e., private business as well as traveling public), we rely on stockholders needs to determine what we can and cannot have and do.  If you can't make a million for yourself, then it ain't worth the effort.  The public (and the economy and business prosperity[ current needs, and future existance]) be damned!   Even the Robber Barrons of Yore understood that a lot of what they were doing was aimed at the larger picture of industrial and social development of the Country as a whole.   Wait a minute, am I talking transportation or health care here?

henry6:

...we rely on stockholders needs to determine what we can and cannot have and do.

That usually works to separate the things worth doing from the things that are made up by central planners just to expand the empire of central planning.