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Amtrak funding
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The journey is not a race. As long as one can leave in the morning and arrive at their destination in the afternoon or evening, the journey will be competitive. I have heard for so long the 250 mile scenario, yet, in America we already have a 440 mile Acela northeast corridor. The mileage I used were from a Rand McNally road map chart, which uses interstates as much as possible and not necessarily the shortest route, which by the way is as the crow flies. <br /> <br />The 4,000 miles of high speed rail I propose will build rails from Washington DC to Miami 1040 miles(the norttheast corridor already exists to Boston), Atlanta to Dallas 790 miles, Dallas to Chicago 920 miles, Chicago to Philadelphia 770 miles via Cleveland and Pittsburgh , plus the slash in the parrelegram from Chicago to Atlanta 710 miles. Total is 4230 miles times $20 million per mile equals $84 billion 600 million dollars. Florida expected to build its high speed rail for $20 million per mile, Texas TTC reports expects high speed rail to cost $20 million per mile, DART is building light rail in an urban area at $20 million per mile. The TTC report includes the trainsets, track, and real estate into this figure. More than 90 percent of everyone living east of the Mississippi would live within 2 or so hours of the high speed tracks. <br /> <br /> I used Memphis, a large city with a large airport as an example, but lets investigate another example of a small town without a large airport such as Jackson, Tennessee (the home of Casey Jones). The driving distance to Birmingham would be the same with the Memphis scenario except you would have to drive an hour to get to Memphis's airport to fly. Most citizens of Memphis would have to drive more than 15, even up to 30 minutes to get to the airport, while just about eveyone can get around Jackson, Tennessee in 5 minutes! Instead of finishing the journey in Washington DC lets end the journey in Charlotte, North Carolina. I doubt if there are any direct flights from Memphis to Charlotte, more than likely one would have to make flight connections in Atlanta. Surely, unless you owned your own aircraft, one cannot fly from Jackson, Tennessee to Charlotte, North Carolina directly. Keep in mind there is no more real estate at Memphis' airport to build another runway, nor much of any space to build another terminal either. FedEx selected Memphis for its hub in the first place because Memphis is not a hub of a lot of passenger traffic. Yet the FedEx flights clog its airspace.... <br /> <br />So living in Jackson, Tennessee, one would have to drive an hour to park at an overcrowded parking garage at the airport in Memphis, get there two hours early to get through security, fly close to two hours to Atlanta, airlines like 2 hours of leeway with connections at Atlanta, and fly close to another hour to get to Charlotte and more than likely wait 30 minutes for your baggage. So your journey from Jackson, Tennessee to Charlotte, North Carolina took 7 and a half hours. Less distance, why is this more than a 2 hour flight to Washington DC? What if your destination was Rockingham, North Carolina. Add another hour to this trip! <br /> <br />See, as long as one can leave in the morning and arrive at their destination in the afternoon or evening hours, the journey will be competitive! <br /> <br />Railroads are linear, as they have found in Europe, and people do not necessarily travel the entire length of a train route. For example, recently I rode the California Zephyr. Westbound from Chicago more than half of the passengers departed at Denver if not before, and the trained filled up considerably at Reno and Sacramento. Eastbound, the same occured, the train emptied at Reno, and started filling up again after Denver..... <br /> <br />Consider a local bus route. Out in the suburbs the buses roll empty, but ask anyone who rides the buses, the buses fill up as they approach downtown. Under your argument, we should only run buses one mile from downtown when they are full, yet, if the buses don't run out to the suburbs there wouldn't be anyone on the bus in the first place. Airlines hop, trains and buses don't.
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