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[quote user="Paul Milenkovic"] [quote user="ontheBNSF"] High speed rail can work over longer distances a trip from Chicago to NY would be about 3-4 hours by high speed rail, it would be longer than flying yes but you save time by going to a city center directly and avoiding baggage check. [/quote] The rail routes do not go city center to city center by the way the crow flies.  The 16 hour Twentieth Century and Broadway Limited schedules averaged 60 MPH.  4 hours by rail would require 240 MPH average.  Not 200 MPH peak speeds but 240 MPH average -- how would you do that, with the France 350 MPH World Speed Record, with a specially hot-wired electric locomotive pulling 4 cars, with continuous electric arc warming up the contact shoe on the pantograph? Yes people expressed a preference for cars and suburban houses because of distorted government policies rather than individual and social preferences, wind and solar would make it on their own if the government stopped oil, gas, and coal subsidies outright, 3-4 hour HSR from Chicago to NYC is practical in everyday service, and there are dead space aliens kept in a deep freeze by the Federal government in Nevada. [/quote] Human behavior is a complex subject. Most of it is driven by multiple variables. Whilst government policies can facilitate or retard certain behaviors, saying that people opted for cars and suburban housing because of them is an over simplification. I suspect most people opted for cars because they are more flexible (comfort, convenience, etc.) than public transit and commercial transport. Equally important, they are generally more economical for carrying the family around town and across country. Based on my readings, people flocked to the suburbs after WWII for better housing, schools, and quality of life. It happened in all developed countries. The tax code facilitated the buying of houses, although the benefits of being able to deduct mortgage interest and property taxes on Schedule A are not as great as it appears. The depth of the benefit depends on one's tax shield. Equally important, one can deduct these items on an urban house as well as one in the suburbs.  Most of the so-called subsidies for oil, gas, and coal are tax code deductions that are available to all business organizations.  According to the Tax Foundation, 85 per cent of the deductions available to the aforementioned businesses are available for all businesses.   There are several industry specific deductions, i.e. immediate expensing of equipment and accelerated depreciation for high risk activities that are unique to the extractive industries, but they are pennies on the outputs.  I don't know of anyone in the electric energy business who believes that wind and solar are ready for prime time without significant subsidies.  They could be more competitive, however, if the government placed a carbon tax on fossil fuels.  Wind and solar require back-up generation unless people are willing to have their electricity shut-off for extended periods of time when the wind stops blowing and the sun does not shine. It is not likely to happen; most people get upset if the power is cutoff for an hour. If the cost of the back-up generation is included in the cost of wind and solar, which it should be, the true cost of these sources of energy go up significantly.
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