Argentina builds high speed rail

[oltmannd]

Show me any successful HSR operation that doesn't have and serve decent sized population centers along it's route

Sweden's X2000. The country has an average population density of 52 people per square mile, yet the X2000 is very successful, even when its endpoints have a mere 14,000 inhabitants (Arvika in particular).

(Here's a map of France's population distribution. Overlay a map of the LGV network, and you'd be hard-pressed to find "decent" population centers along the routes.)

I will agree that the 2002 bill that McCain co-sponsored was goofy. Sometimes doing anything different, goofy or not, is better than the status quo

The bill thereof was not goofy, but hypocritical (but typical of such politicians' lip service to less bureaucracy while trying to implement more of it), and also bespoke a lack of research (thus ignorance) into how modern intercity rail works (speed sells).

As for "anything different", then different it was not; it was a copy (and a bad one) of the failed British privatization model (which was not privatization when all was said and done). Within McCain's proposal was "backdoor open-access", which US private railroads would be dead-against, and the problems withal that he leaves completely unaddressed.

And, yes, I CAN imagine Veloia (Connex was purchased by the French a couple of years ago) or Herzog operating Acelas. Just arrange the game so that the better job they do, the more money they make and stand back

You're imagining something very unrealistic and bizarre, then. Veolia Transport, f.k.a. Connex, does not operate high speed trains anywhere; they're all about urban/suburban transit (light rail, subway, commuter rail, buses). They are very fond of their pork diet. MBTA's commuter rail has suffered under their ministrations; and we all know what happened in Britain.

You cannot put the cart before the horse. Has any business come to be without investment, especially in infrastructure? If the USA is going to remain socialistic in regards to its transportation infrastructure, then let them be honest about it and no more be selective and discriminatory against any mode.

I think Amtrak could do a much better job with their LD train's, too, if they had a reason to

Yup; they're making no attempt to upgrade the speeds of railroads that they actually own. Porter IN-Kalamazoo MI has had no money spent on it and is not being upgraded to 110 mph. (I can't speak as to what's going on with the Inland Route; but what with Amtrak being a political animal, state politics would have a great deal to do with that, especially with Connecticut.)

You do realize that investing in more rapid operation on the freight railroads involves all of such railroad's locomotives being upgraded to these signaling capabilities as well, right? This is the legacy of the Chase MD accident. That's the only way that you'd be able to get average speeds for Amtrak's LD trains to improve (but people are riding those trains in droves in spite of that).

Embarrassment and/or pride is never a good reason to spend billions of dollars, is it?

One might say that hypocrisy is not a good reason either. However, trillions per year are spent on it in the USA.

Consider how deep we are in the hole and countries with HSR are not so. Coincidence? If so, perhaps a strange one; but it's telling, insofar as how these countries exercise control over the scruples of their business (no executive compensation of 500 times the average employee salary or anything like that) and how serious they are about making their transportation energy-efficient.

No, of course it isn't. It has to be trillions. Plus a whole new bureaucracy. We could call it the Department of High-speed Spending (DHS), and administer the day-to-day operations through the Trains Splurging Agency (TSA)

That's exactly what McCain was proposing, in his Amtrak-killing bill. The link to it is still in the thread. Care to re-read it? For all its troubles, Amtrak is not so liberally and process-impedingly structured.

And yes; the USA ought to be embarrassed that such countries are building HSR and we're doing it for them, while we have not a mile of it on our soil.

Hmm.....I'll take that kind of "embarrassment", of securing a multi-million dollar govt. gravy train contract, anytime

Sounds more like smart business instead.

Does it? In that case, there's no excuse not to do it on our own soil, especially if the same returns that other countries are getting on HSR can be gotten here, correct?

Not at all. In one case, you're making money. In the other, you're spending it.

Nice short-term thinking, there. Ever heard the term "you gotta spend money to make money"? So it's OK to keep blowing money on commercial aviation, where even the airlines are losing bucketfuls of money, rather than switch funding to a mode that has already proven profitable where it's been implemented? (What did you not understand about the word "returns", sir...?)

Smart business hasn't existed in the USA

-Don (Random stuff, mostly about trains - what else? http://blerfblog.blogspot.com/) 

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