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[quote]QUOTE: Originally posted by donclark The reason why Amtrak doesn't serve Dayton or Cedar City is because its routes have been drastically reduced from the early 1970s, to a bare bones structure. There used to be a train running from LA to Salt Lake City and a train running from Cleveland to Cincinnati....Basically Amtrak operates most of its long distance trains outside the NEC from Chicago, except for the Sunset Limited and and Coast Starlight. Even the Lake Shore Limited, Three Rivers, and the Capitol are based from Chicago. Why? To reduce operating costs...... But that air flight from Cedar City to Dayton took 9 hours. Add the additional two hours before leaving, and the hour waiting for luggage and grabbing a rental car, the flight actually took 12 hours..... Notice with a proper high speed rail network, the parralegram I have proposed, two legs could be traveled in that time.... some 1800 miles......not the 200-400 miles someone posted above...... We already have a high speed rail line in America that is 450 miles, it is called the NEC..... Here is a map I drew using a federal map showing population density. The four legs of my parralegram would include Philladelphia to Chicago, Chicago to Texas, Texas to Florida or Georgia, and DC to Florida/Georgia. There are more than four lines on my map, showing different possible routes. I am not very choosy, either would be a great start, eventually I would like to see the others completed at a later time..... The four legs is less than 4,000 miles, adding branches to Minneapolis, Toronto, to Miami, crossing the parallegram from Chicago to Atlanta, and adding the west coast lines would bring the total to 7,000 miles......Adding aa second line through the east, south, and midwest, and to Denver would bring the total to 11,000 miles. Add another 1,000 miles and one transcontinental line could be built, preferrably LA to Denver..... I am sure many of the forum members can find other lines that they would liked to be built.... But 12,000 miles is plenty.... Costs vary, but the average would probably run close to the Tampa to Orlando HSR in Florida, which is an average of $12 million per mile. Times 4,000 miles, the price of HSR is $48 billion, times 8,000 miles, the price of HSR is $96 billion, times 12,000 miles the price is $144 billion. The US DOT spends nearly $80 billion per year. I support a moratorium on federal airport and highway spending two years to build a HSR network the envy of the world. Afterwards, we won't need to spend so much on highways and airports..... http://homepage.mac.com/donclark/.Public/DonHSR.jpg [/quote] That is a nice map, K? And I agree with you that Amtrak has been crippled by faulty thinking coming out of Washinton. Based upon the reading I've done, I've concluded it is intentional, part of the master plan to make Amtrak as undesireable as possible to pollute public sentiment from the moment the "fuse" to the mandated profitability a started burning when the fed took the headache off the private railroads. All that 20 or 25 year period to "build profitability" was, is a conveniant time delay in which to sway public sentiment against something they would have killed on the spot if they thought they coulda gotten away with it. (congress, that is) Bugt still Don,using these stilted, demeaning summations of those of opinion not like your own, as when you postulated why Anti Amtrak people only use large cities in their compairisons of AIR to RAIL is little more than hyperbole, as I've illustrated not even "little city to little city" is something amtrak can even do, let alone being "advantageous" compared to Air travel,. all little towns taken into consideration. it's just something about guys living in glass houses that I don't particularly care for in your attempt to argue you side. I understand your point, it's just the way you present it as an absolute right awash in a sea of wrongs, and it just don't stand up. Nor does expecting every tax payer to bankroll a new private entity into a profit seeking enterprise(HSR)just cause it sounds "cool". None of these aspiring beneficiaries of public investment has been even willing to let themselves be known on a concrete basis, let alone make known what kind of financial commitment they themselves might be willing to put on the table, in feathering their own capitalistic good fortunes. Boiled down to bare essance, the only HSR proposals I've seen floated out look like "any suckers out there yet?" prospectus' from blue sky entities. Let the folks hoping to hold the key to the farebox put some meat on the table, and then tell me what they expect in matching commitment, before asking me how deep my pocket might happen to be for a pipe dream. The prospectus is being floated back axwards
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