Don--
I enjoyed the coach lounge on a 747 from Honolulu to Boston in 1974. And of course you are aware that 14 hours is a century-old time for New York to Chicago.
Every time I have been on a train with a lounge car, the tables are used by passengers for socializing and enjoying their trip. I have not been on an airplane for a few years, but I hope congregating is still not allowed because I also know a lot about details of airplane construction...
As for travel times, anyone who needs to go from New York to Chicago and back in a day needs the ability to take a plane in the absence of futuristic trains. But look at the New York to Pittsburgh section. How about the friend or relative, who is not in a hurry, and wants to go from Trenton, NJ, to Greeensburg, PA? Orbitz shows me flights taking two hours for $200, round trip. But it takes hours to get to the airports, and what if the traveler sweats a lot and needs more than three ounces of deodorant?
"Make no little plans; they have no magic to stir men's blood." Daniel Burnham
Paul Milenkovic I have not heard of an electric, non-polluting airplane. I have not heard of an electric, non-polluting electric power generating plant either (cue drummer in band for rim shot).
I have not heard of an electric, non-polluting airplane.
I have not heard of an electric, non-polluting electric power generating plant either (cue drummer in band for rim shot).
Hydro!
(cue him again).
Dave
Lackawanna Route of the Phoebe Snow
As per today's News Wire, add Kansas City and Fort Worth to the isolated "corridors" we are going to develop while somehow neglecting a national network. Only hogs are allowed to cross our nation without changing trains in Chicago.
Maglev I have not heard of an electric, non-polluting airplane. I suppose some type of "beam" might work, but there might be adverse health effects. Indeed, we barely have data on long term exposure effects for mag-lev drivers. One of the many benefits of surface transportation is that you meet people who live in the places through which you travel. However, there is a safety problem with lounges on airplanes. 705 miles from Washington, D. C., to Chicago could easily be done in ten hours on existing rail infrastructure. Chicago to Detroit in an hour? Not quite yet, but possible. New York to Boston or Washington in two hours will indeed be difficult.
I have not heard of an electric, non-polluting airplane. I suppose some type of "beam" might work, but there might be adverse health effects. Indeed, we barely have data on long term exposure effects for mag-lev drivers.
One of the many benefits of surface transportation is that you meet people who live in the places through which you travel. However, there is a safety problem with lounges on airplanes.
705 miles from Washington, D. C., to Chicago could easily be done in ten hours on existing rail infrastructure. Chicago to Detroit in an hour? Not quite yet, but possible. New York to Boston or Washington in two hours will indeed be difficult.
In the near to mid-term, there will be no new electric, non-polluting trains, either. Any new corridor service will be diesel-electric, or perhaps, gas turbine-electric. Current fuel efficiency of Amtrak is not much better than airlines, so why would HSR be much different?
Maybe you didn't know, but 747s were built with lounges. Airlines filled them with revenue seats because the airlines that resisted doing so lost their passengers to those who did and offered lower fares.
Chicago to Detroit in an hour? They're 280 miles apart!
NY to Chicago CANNOT be done with any kind of equipment on any of the existing rail routes in 10 hours unless you're willing to straighten hundreds of miles of curves. 14 hours, maybe. 10 hours would require a brand new route. The PRR route is just about all curves from Harrisburg to Alliance and The Water Level Route may be level, but it's not very straight between NYC and Rochester. BTW, the rail routes from NY to Chicago are 900 for the old PRR, 960 for the old NYC - plus or minus a few.
I don't think you'd get many end-point to end-point takers, even at 10 hours trip time. After all, the 16 hr Broadway and 20th Century got beaten by prop-driven, low & slow flying aircraft. Can't make an out and back one-day business trip by train - even at 10 hrs, but you can by air.
I like the mingling-effect of the lounge car and diner on the LD trains, but on the NEC, Empire trains and particularly the Metroliners that I've ridden, it's really more of an airliner atmosphere - you sit in your seat and mind your own business.
Though, I gotta admit, this is a new arguement to me. I've never heard an advocate of tax-subsidized social mingling before!
-Don (Random stuff, mostly about trains - what else? http://blerfblog.blogspot.com/)
I have traveled on subways in Boston, Montreal, New York, Washington, Chicago, San Francisco, and London; and used MBTA, Metro North, New Orleans streetcars, Cal Train, and MAX (spelling on the latter?).
My allusion to using deep-sea minerals off Hawaii to pay for this was certainly unrealistic; it was meant to illustrate that there are resources being ignored for political reasons (in this case, the reason being the UN Law of the Sea, which was designed to stabilize global trade patterns in metals). For mineral quantities and an explanation of the UN Law of the Sea, read J. Schneider and H. Thiel, "Environmental Problems of Deep-Sea Mining," Manganese Nodule Belt of the Pacific Ocean, Stuttgart: Ferdinand Enke Verlag, 1988, pp. 223-228.
I will never forget the first time I was riding a high-speed train and it passed another train. It was on the Edinburgh - London line, on an Intercity 225 (is this currently known as the 221 series?). The experience of zipping across an ancient viaduct at high-speed is an unique connection of history and modern technology. (On Acela, this is ironically one of the few high-speed sections). America really needs to promote our surface connections. Poem edited to correct meter:
Whummmppp?
What was that?
Chug a lug
Or clickety clack?
Whummmpp? What's that? Don't trains go glickety clack?
Whummmpp?
What's that?
Don't trains go glickety clack?
I don't know of trains on CWR that go clickety-clack, and the New Tokaido Line was among the pioneering applications of concrete ties, spring clips in place of spikes, and welded rail.
The Bullet Train enters and exits numerous tunnels at 150 MPH+ -- it also has a 300 MPH+ closing speed with opposing trains on the next track.
I read a long time ago in Railway Age or some such place that the train cars have pressurization valves that close to mitigate the ear popping from these events, but train meets along with tunnel ingress and egress still gets your attention.
In terms of the urgency and the matter of "being left behind", whatever technology is developed will be developed. Most of the cost is in civil engineering and not in the trainsets anyway. Voters in Texas, I believe, and in Florida were hesitant of spending public monies on something for which they judged there would not be the ridership to justify the amount of money. Why can't we accept the decisions of voters that these markets weren't quite "ripe" for HSR and continue to make the case for trains?
We are mad at "the politicians", "the Highway Lobby", "Americans with their love affair with the car." Yes, democracy has been imperfect, and a less-than-smart electorate has put in office less-than-smart leaders leaving us with problems, no worse than many faced in the past. What do people in the advocacy community want, Plato's philosopher kings?
If GM "killed the electric car", what am I doing standing next to an EV-1, a half a block from the WSOR tracks?
Seriously, folks, I see a brand new electric power plant on my drive to work -- it is, in fact, part of a heating plant for where I work. What drives the generators and provides heat to raise steam for the heat in my office . . . is a pair of airplane-type jet engines! (cue another rim shot).
OK, there are wind generators, but owing to the mismatch between when the wind blows and when the trains and other electric loads run, those are probably only good for 20 percent of total generating capacity if there is an all-out effort to install wind generators.
I suppose the California HSR will be electric, but electric wires add to the cost, look ugly as all heck (yeah, but so do overhead transmission wires, and with a major windpower program, we will need more of those to wheel power to different places to better match wind with demand).
NARP snarked on its Web page upon noting the passing of TurboTrain designer Alan Cripe, that shortly before his death, he was trying to block the extension of catenary north of New Haven for the Acela project, arguing that gas turbine trains were more cost effective. Alan Cripe was probably right on that one. Even with the high cost of fuel, turbines, especially using accessories like regenerators or switching them on and off with demand, may be a lot cheaper than new catenary.
On the question of nuclear power, John Rowe, CEO of Exelon, gave a speech where I work and explained that getting nuclear plants will take some time. There are restrictions on where you can have them (people don't like to be neighbors to them, perhaps for a combination of rational and irrational reasons), and these sites also need access to the large amount of cooling water required for a powerplant running a saturated steam cycle (for you steam locomotive fans, nuclear plants are temperature limited owing to materials limitations of containing the nuclear fuel, and they use water separators instead of superheat).
Don't know much about fusion power apart from the people where I work who study this kind of thing, but one person tells me that an economically-feasible fusion plant would be at least 10 times the size of a fission plant. That might make the siting even more challenging in terms of cooling water supply and transmission line capacity to connect a concentrated source of electric power.
I am trying to remember where I read this, might have been AvWeek but American Airlines a while back put a small lounge in one of their types of jet. Given that space on a jet is at a premium, they calculated exactly how many seats they were willing to give up and they put in a tiny lounge, and it was immensely popular. I think the story was that they had to take it out -- it was back in the days of airline fare regulation, and other airlines complained to the regulators that it was an unfair provision of extra service for the same ticket price. But that was before price competition came to the airlines.
"Make no little plans, they have no magic to stir men's blood and will probably not themselves be realized." (Daniel Burnham, architect of Washington Union Station).
Unless we make some leaps forward, we will always be in catch-up mode; there will never be a public transportation network. So few Americans know how far we are behind other nations. I remember my grandmother's telling me that she didn't like trains because of all the smoke and cinders. It was not senility but the reality of modern transportation that prompted this. If she had ridden the Sunset from Florida to LA and then flown (or taken a ship!) to Hawaii to visit us, I am sure that she would have told me she enjoyed the ride.
It is actually illegal for me to take a ship to Hawaii to visit my mother. It has been rightly deemed "unsafe" for me to get out of my seat and talk to a group of other pasengers while on an airplane. We have definitely suffered a reduction in mobility. By the way, I will provide complete references on request; I think I posted copies of letters on another forum.
Paul Milenkovic Japan may have given greater priority to public infrastructure projects such as this, and I understand they have ratios of public debt to GNP that make ours look good to show for it.
Japan may have given greater priority to public infrastructure projects such as this, and I understand they have ratios of public debt to GNP that make ours look good to show for it.
Indeed, Japan's national debt was 150 per cent of GDP as of March 2007. It has fallen somewhat since then. By comparison the U.S. national debt is approximately 77 per cent of GDP. With the anticipated increases in the federal deficit for FY 2009, it will be approximately 87 per cent of GDP. When state and local debt is added to the mix, government debt in the U.S. will be approximately 101 per cent of GDP at the end of FY 2009.
The Japanese have one of the highest income tax rates in the world. Their top marginal tax rate is 50 per cent whereas the U.S. rate is 35 per cent. When local taxes, which are embedded in the Japanese rates, are added to the U.S. rate, the top marginal rate is over 40 per cent but well below 50 per cent. A one for one comparison is difficult because of different tax structures in Japan and the U. S., but the Japanese, like most European countries, pay considerably higher taxes than the U.S. This is how they pay for their vaunted passenger rail systems.
Japan has been in an economic slump since 1990, in part due to a banking failure, high savings rates, and high taxes. Its GDP grew only slightly from 1990 to 1999, with no growth from 1999 to 2006. I don't want to see the U.S. economy emulate the Japanese economy.
America can build all the HSR that its advocates desire as long as its citizens, including the advocates, are willing to pay considerably higher taxes. HSR cannot be built or operated without massive infusions of government monies. I don't believe most people want to go that route.
Maglev I ulitimately propose a massive public works expenditure on magnetic levitation, but here limit my comments to the interim subject of high-speed rail. See last paragraph for funding source. Paul -- you said that costs of high speed rail would be far more than the benefits because high-speed rail is a narrowly-defined, focused project. That is why I am proposing a far-reaching vision of the future. This includes recognizing the importance of chatting in the lounge car. Cars are great for shopping and a source of important freedoms, and airplanes are the only feasible tool for some long distance travel. But Americans have completely lost sight of the social importance of travelling by high-speed surface transportation. We are not even aware of how much our freedom is being restricted.
I ulitimately propose a massive public works expenditure on magnetic levitation, but here limit my comments to the interim subject of high-speed rail. See last paragraph for funding source.
Paul -- you said that costs of high speed rail would be far more than the benefits because high-speed rail is a narrowly-defined, focused project. That is why I am proposing a far-reaching vision of the future.
This includes recognizing the importance of chatting in the lounge car. Cars are great for shopping and a source of important freedoms, and airplanes are the only feasible tool for some long distance travel. But Americans have completely lost sight of the social importance of travelling by high-speed surface transportation. We are not even aware of how much our freedom is being restricted.
OK, put a lounge on an airliner and get the same social benefit.
What is intrinsic about a train that makes lounge cars more feasible than the lounge that used to be in 747s? Why should a train coach seat on a high speed train be more spacious than that in an airplane?
People vote with their dollars everyday for small, cramped airline seats. There is almost always a come-on to get people to upgrade from coach for something like $40-80. The airline push it when you book, when you check in, but hardly anybody bites. I don't think most people all that dumb or naive not to know exactly what they are getting for their money.
As to the intangible benefits of trains and HSR, I have been to Japan twice and rode on the New Tokaido Line HSR one round trip.
The first time I needed to get to Kyoto, I went to Tokyo and took the HSR. It was a fun ride on account of the novelty of it and the sense of speed that close to the ground.
Did you know that the New Tokaido Line is a mountain railroad? The coastal land is very precious for agricultural use, and the line bores straight through the rugged volcanic mountains inland. The part that is not on viaduct is in tunnels. Japan may have given greater priority to public infrastructure projects such as this, and I understand they have ratios of public debt to GNP that make ours look good to show for it.
Don't know how much of the countryside of Japan I got to see because half the time we were underground. The thing is the world's fastest subway, don't you know it. Lounge car, what lounge car? The whole the time I stayed in my seat, five across with about the same elbow room as a jet liner, only perhaps a tad more leg room. Someone in our party walked the train and got us box lunches of eel. Not much different than a jet airliner, including pressure changes, not from the altitude but from popping in an out of tunnels and passing opposing trains. Whhuummmp!
The second time I went I also needed to go to Kyoto. This time there was a non-stop Chicago-Osaka flight. Direct air transport and a regional airport substituted for the Bullet Train ride. I did have to take an intercity bus. It was a pleasant enough ride, and riding on largely elevated highways, I got to see more of the countryside. The coolest thing was seeing the many golf driving ranges -- one could look down from the elevated highway and see golf balls shooting out from underneath. Many people in Japan take their golf game seriously and practice on driving ranges it seems.
It sure would be nice to have such a train here, when the case can be made that the economic benefit justifies the cost. Not yet having such a thing, I hardly feel that my freedom is infringed.
" New York to Washington, Chicago to Milwaukee, Los Angeles to San Diego, Dallas to Fort Worth, Austin to San Antonio, etc., make sense." Add in the three C's in Ohio; Boston and Portland, ME; St. Louis; Detroit; Toronto; Vancouver: Seattle and Portland, etc (all the existing "corridors") and you practically have a national rail network. These corridors will and are being developed. But why try so hard to leave out the links of a true national system? Why must it be impossible to go by train from Cleveland to Buffalo, or Chicago to Miami? Even at a modest speed, Chicago to Washington should only take ten hours. Believe me, spending a night on a train going to Florida is great!
The environmental crisis to which I refer involves becoming completely out-of-touch with the greatness of our land. This is the essence of climate change, species extinction, and (all too often) death from natural disaster.
I propose a nationwide, electrified rail track network maintained by taxes. (Ultimately, magnetic levitation should be developed). This would be powered by a nuclear fusion energy system. The use of a non-polluting power source would provide greenhouse benefits by almost eliminating use of coal and drastically reducing need for petroleum. (References: please see USGS Report 95-4213; then ask me where I have a stash of 20% of the world's pennies (copper), 80% of the world's nickel, and manganese and cobalt exceeding known land resources; then read "International control of tritium to foster nuclear disarmament," Science and Global Security 5; pp. 131-203 (1995); then I'll tell you about the letters I have from DOE and Congress. Yes, I am not stupid, this is feasible.)
Phoebe Vet The military occupation of Iraq gets "special consideration" because it is ongoing and because it has been immoral from the start, and it was not the only thing I mentioned. Nor did I place the blame solely on this sad excuse for a president. Congress, both sides of the aisle, shares the blame.
The military occupation of Iraq gets "special consideration" because it is ongoing and because it has been immoral from the start, and it was not the only thing I mentioned. Nor did I place the blame solely on this sad excuse for a president. Congress, both sides of the aisle, shares the blame.
Phoebe,
Opinions are like a-- holes, we all have one. However I think most of us would be more interesed in your thoughts about HSR or just plain passenger rail than in you off topic political biases.
Mark
My only reason for bringing it up was to illustrate our horribly misplaced priorities. Notice that I used the term infrastructure, not high speed trains. The railroads, roads, waterways, and bridges are all being neglected while the transportation trust fund is used for things like a walking trail in the Great Smokey Mountains, a bus stop in front of the Anchorage Museum of History and Art -- with electronic signs and a heated sidewalk... for $1.5 million, a Packard Museum in Michigan, and an Erie Canal Museum in New York, etc.
Now, regardless of any future posts, I am done with this subject.
.Building our infrastucture instead of giving huge tax breaks to the richest 1% of the population, building our infrastructure instead of invading and occupying a country on the other side of the world, building our infrastructure instead of angering Russia by building missles on their border, building our infrastructure instead of maintaining military bases all over the world, continuing the 3 consecutive years of balanced budgets he inherited instead of running the deepest deficit budgets in history every year he has been in office, might have prevented this economic mess.
I want to talk about the Iraq War head on. There are many in the passenger advocacy community who are angry about the Iraq War, not only do many see the Iraq War as wrong, and not only has President Bush waged war on Iraq, his administration has also waged war on Amtrak, and I see people in both the virtual and bricks-and-morter advocacy communities who keep coming back to that theme time and again. This form may be moderated to keep a lid on this, but it is really hard to keep passenger train advocacy people from talking about it because many feel this way.
Iraq is not the only country that the U.S. has "invaded and occupied" in recent times. Iraq gets special consideration because the cost to the U.S., not the cost to the invaded "other" or the rest of the world, but specifically, the cost to us has been large. It also has been correlated with an effort to do away with Amtrak.
My uncle, who sheltered my father during WW-II when he fled his native Croatia after the occupying German authorities executed my grandfather, that uncle died in recent years of the complications of circulatory disease, in pain, without medicine on account of U.S. sanctions, and without heat, on account of NATO bombardment of power plants. I finally sent some money to my uncle, not knowing if it was enough to help, but also first checking with the expatriate community to see whether I was violating U.S. sanctions to do this and would end up "helping the FBI with their investigations." That military action is "off the radar screen" on account that it didn't have anything to do with the current administration trying to cancel Amtrak, and the costs to U.S. citizens in blood and treasure were much less.
While one man died in pain without medicine or heat for his apartment as a consequence of U.S. policies, his second cousin resides in a nursing home in his final years, able to pay for his care and medicines without having to go on Medicaid, owing to U.S. policies -- it is not just the richest 1 percent who benefited from tax breaks on sales of assets but also seniors who need to pay for their care. He also benefits from the Senior Prescription Drug Benefit, something that could pay for HSR many times over. I guess we could raise taxes, have more people not able to afford their care in old age, and pay more out in Medicaid, but the government gives and the government takes and it all works out to the same purposes in the end.
I hope some may see why I have a different perspective when the cost or the "wrongness" of the Iraq War is casually brought up when the agenda is about passenger trains. If one thinks it is simply a matter of being "for" or "against" the war, well, American society with its broad arms welcoming refugees from all over the world (my parents, among many others), make matters more complex than that.
I deeply regret the cost to American soldiers and to the American taxpayer of the Iraq War, but the effort of the Iraq War has been to maintain a unitary Iraqi state. Maybe intervening in Kosovo and intervening in Iraq were both wrong, but the Iraq War has been so much more expensive in American blood and treasure on account of the effort to maintain a unified Iraqi state; I had hoped against hope that we would have supported the same for Yugoslavia. If we followed the same policy of break-up into many countries in Iraq, we could have walked away from that situation years ago.
It is my hope that we can get back to trains and discussing the cost-benefits of HSR instead of just being mad at everyone that we don't have it.
Sam:
Actually, I was responding to:
"The current economic crisis should convince all but the most Pollyannaish that the U.S. does not have the money to build and support a third national transport system, i.e. a full blown national passenger rail system in addition to its excellent highway and airways".
But I apologise to you and everyone else in here. I said I wasn't going to go off on that tangent. You caught me in a moment of weakness.
Phoebe Vet Building our infrastucture instead of giving huge tax breaks to the richest 1% of the population, building our infrastructure instead of invading and occupying a country on the other side of the world, building our infrastructure instead of angering Russia by building missles on their border, building our infrastructure instead of maintaining military bases all over the world, continuing the 3 consecutive years of balanced budgets he inherited instead of running the deepest deficit budgets in history every year he has been in office, might have prevented this economic mess. A new rail project would be a much better investment than a new aircraft carrier. Think about how many miles of rail we could lay with the money we are paying to maintain Bush's private army, Blackwater Security. How will writing huge checks to banks, investment houses, and car companies alter the fact that people cannot make their mortgage payments or afford to buy cars?
Building our infrastucture instead of giving huge tax breaks to the richest 1% of the population, building our infrastructure instead of invading and occupying a country on the other side of the world, building our infrastructure instead of angering Russia by building missles on their border, building our infrastructure instead of maintaining military bases all over the world, continuing the 3 consecutive years of balanced budgets he inherited instead of running the deepest deficit budgets in history every year he has been in office, might have prevented this economic mess.
A new rail project would be a much better investment than a new aircraft carrier. Think about how many miles of rail we could lay with the money we are paying to maintain Bush's private army, Blackwater Security.
How will writing huge checks to banks, investment houses, and car companies alter the fact that people cannot make their mortgage payments or afford to buy cars?
The question was what type of passenger rail system should the U.S. maintain and possibly expand, i.e. more corridors, high speed rail, implementation of the Vision Report, etc. I don't see anything in your comments that even remotely begins to address the issue.
Paul Milenkovic Our transportation policy should be, "What is the next best step?" So tell me, what is that next best step? How much do you want to spend on Amtrak/HSR over what period of time, and what do you propose to get from that in terms of route miles? What contribution will this make in terms of reduction of imported oil or reduction of greenhouse gases? What is your projected traffic level. How many freeway lanes will this replace? We may not be able to afford it, but the incoming President has pledged from 150 billion on up to be spent on "green energy", "green infrastructure", and the like. What piece of this do you think should go to trains, and how much "green" (environmental benefit) do you expect to get from that amount of "green" (money). I am not debating anything about the economics. What plan do you support and why? The Vision Report? More than the Vision Report?
Our transportation policy should be, "What is the next best step?"
So tell me, what is that next best step? How much do you want to spend on Amtrak/HSR over what period of time, and what do you propose to get from that in terms of route miles? What contribution will this make in terms of reduction of imported oil or reduction of greenhouse gases? What is your projected traffic level. How many freeway lanes will this replace?
We may not be able to afford it, but the incoming President has pledged from 150 billion on up to be spent on "green energy", "green infrastructure", and the like. What piece of this do you think should go to trains, and how much "green" (environmental benefit) do you expect to get from that amount of "green" (money).
I am not debating anything about the economics. What plan do you support and why? The Vision Report? More than the Vision Report?
Quick, frequent, convenient, safe, and economical passenger trains in relatively short, high density corridors, e.g. New York to Washington, Chicago to Milwaukee, Los Angeles to San Diego, Dallas to Fort Worth, Austin to San Antonio, etc., make sense. Long distance trains do not.
Does the U.S. need high speed rail? No! At least not the models that have been put together in many other countries and favored by some U.S. proponents! Unless the U.S. taxpayer is willing to pay much higher taxes, which is the case in all the countries that some of the people who post to these forums think we should emulate.
The U.S. does not have unlimited resources. Rightly or wrongly, the nation decided on a transport system built around the airplane and the car. It made the right decision.
The current economic crisis should convince all but the most Pollyannaish that the U.S. does not have the money to build and support a third national transport system, i.e. a full blown national passenger rail system in addition to its excellent highway and airways.
If Amtrak eliminated the long distance trains, it would save approximately $515 million per year. By 2050 the future value of this saving could be worth between $54 and $59 billion. Clearly, these amounts could go a long way toward upgrading America's existing passenger rail corridors and implementing new ones where they are justified. The improvements could be achieved with little if any incremental financing.
In October I took the Acela from Philadelphia to New York. The train was quick, comfortable, convenient, and safe. It is an example of where trains make sense. Taking a train from New York to San Francisco makes no sense.
We need a Constitutional Ammendment guaranteeing the availability of public transportation. This would require a paradigm shift in economic, social, and environmental policy. I honestly believe transportation, health care, and energy are so badly neglected in this country that only a major commitment can asure our future survival.
Cost estimates and funding sources would need to be determined using resources not available to me here on Orcas Island. I have not read the Vision Report, but as I have mentioned earlier two good first steps are repairing and replacing Amtrak's damaged cars and rebuilding Penn Station.
With that grandiose plan, I better try to get some credibility here. I am familiar with transportation, at least from the consumer standpoint. My great-grandfather was an L & N Vice President, grandfather was a railroad electrician, and one of my father's many interesting jobs was helping to plan the Bay Area Rapid Transit system. I have traveled on most of the Amtrak system, and ridden train cars ranging from Penn Central "roach coaches" in 1974 to first-class on the Acela in 2007; taken the CN Super Continental from Montreal to Vancouver in 1975; spent five weeks touring England and Scotland by rail around 1990, and took one rather miserable trip on New Zealand Railways from Napier to Wellington. I have read Trains magazine since 1973.
For almost twenty years, I had free travel priviliges on United Airlines, so I am familiar with air travel also; usually flying first class. I have taken a few long-distance bus trips, and one four-day cruise from Long Beach to Ensenada. Here on Orcas Island, we depend on Washington State Ferries. I have driven on Interstate and other highways all over the country, including the urban Northeast and the desert Southwest...
The time and resources I have dedicated to scientific research are mostly on the topic of natural nuclear fusion. With the assistance of the late Hon. U. S. Rep. Patsy Mink, Hawaii, I was able to determine that vast energy resources are being ignored for political reasons. There is ample reason to believe that transportation decisions are also not made for logical reasons. Technological advances and future progress can only be achieved with a paradigm shift.
I appreciate your time and consideration, sincerely,
Phillip Bose
Sam --
I agree with Phoebe Vet. The economic debate would go on forever. Our nation did not rise to greatness by asking, "How will we pay for this?" Our transportation policy should be, "What is the next best step?"
We need to realize that two-century-old ideals are be out of context in our modern world. Things like international futures trading and sub-prime mortgages were not significant then. But now, our economic system is failing to provide jobs, homes, health care, and public transportation. Economic arguments over high-speed rail don't make sense because our economy doesn't make sense.
I agree with everything you said about the debt, but to answer your question would spin this thread off on a VERY political path. Nothing usefull would result.
Maglev "Even South Korea has faster trains than we do." Their government does not need to "justify" the economic rationality of spending billions on public infrastructure. Here in the United States, we are too stubborn to admit that the "invisible hand of the free market" is actually just (to use a polite term) "self-stimulating" industries that are eating away at our society and environment.
"Even South Korea has faster trains than we do."
Their government does not need to "justify" the economic rationality of spending billions on public infrastructure. Here in the United States, we are too stubborn to admit that the "invisible hand of the free market" is actually just (to use a polite term) "self-stimulating" industries that are eating away at our society and environment.
The U.S. National Debt is $10.7 trillion or approximately 76 per cent of the Gross National Product. Approximately $2.2 trillion is held by overseas investors. In addition, the deficits being incurred to save the financial markets, as well as those anticipated to recover from the economic recession, will add another $1.4 trillion to the national debt. This will take it to $11.9 trillion or approximately 87 per cent of GNP, and it will be the highest it has been since the end of WWII. Most of the large debt racked up by the end of WWII, of course, was incurred to help defeat Germany and Japan.
The annual interest on the debt in FY 2009 will be approximately $476 billion. State and local government debt tacks on another $1.85 trillion to the government debt load and pushes the annual combined debt service requirement above $500 billion per year. This is one of the reasons, although not the only one, why taxes represent the largest single outlay for a typical American family.
In addition to government debt, i.e. federal, state, and local, Americans are on the hook for approximately $11.5 trillion in mortgage debt, $10.1 trillion in corporate debt, $950 billion of credit card debt, and $2.6 trillion of consumer debt. This brings the total debt load to approximately $37.6 trillion or an average of $311,000 per household. The country is awash in debt.
Many economists believe that America's unbridled appetite for debt is the major cause of the recession, in large part because Americans have run out of the ability to incur any further debt or in many instances service their debt load.
These dismal numbers beg a central question. How do you suggest the U.S. should pay for high speed trains
Here in the United States, we are too stubborn to admit that the "invisible hand of the free market" is actually just (to use a polite term) "self-stimulating" industries that are eating away at our society and environment.
To suggest that the Federal government does not spend any money on any social needs and leaves everything to the free market, in my opinion, reflects a misunderstanding of what the government is doing.
The major social welfare initiative of the outgoing administration is Medicare Part D or the Senior Prescription Drug Benefit. Before that administration took office, there was a wide bipartisan consensus that many seniors rely on drug therapies for their well-being that weren't even imagined back when Medicare was enacted, but to afford those medicines, many seniors had to decide whether they wanted to eat or fill their prescriptions.
I have heard liberal critics of the adminstration complain that Medicare Part D is tilted towards "drug company profits," but even if there were price controls placed on drugs, I don't see how an alternative would have been a major saving of public money.
Governing and government is about making choices and setting priorities, much as it is for personal finances, only on a larger dollar scale. The outgoing administration had given priority to the Senior Drug Benefit over the kind of infrastructure spending you favor. Would you have preferred giving priority to infrastructure spending in exchange for delaying consideration of the Senior Drug Benefit to a following administration?
I know you will say we should have spent money on both instead of spending money on yet other things. But sometimes in politics and public life one doesn't have those choices. Do you believe it to be a national disgrace that the Federal government budgets very large amounts of money for medicine for old people and very little for trains?
I dream that our new Administration will make changes that will correct our economic crisis, environmental disaster, and social decay.
What is the amount that you anticipate to be spent on intercity rail (Amtrak) over what period, what percentage of passenger miles will be converted from other modes to intercity rail, and what benefit do you anticipate from that expenditure in terms of a percent reduction in CO2 emissions, imported oil, or any quantitative relating to the environmental disaster of which you speak?
In other words, if you could have a hand in policy, how much money do you want to spend on trains, and what quantifiable contribution will that level of expenditure have towards protecting the environment? The Vision Report gives a spending level along with passenger train traffic and fuel saving projections, I imagine you can still find it on the Web, and we can use that as a starting point for making the case for expenditure on trains.
You speak of making changes to correct the economic crisis, environmental disaster, and social decay. Yes, a construction program of HSR would help with jobs and the economy, but it would be fairly narrowly focused in certain construction trades for which it is not clear there is a surplus of workers without jobs, and as for fighting social decay, we are talking about early childhood education, schools, crime-safe neighborhoods, drug treatment, job training, affordable housing and health care, i.e. a lot of things that are only tangentially related to intercity trains. I am also singling out the impact of trains on global warming because it should be straight forward to quantify. I don't know how to quantify the merits of strangers chatting in lounge cars of LD trains in comparisons with the other social interventions I have listed.
This Web site is about trains. How much do you want to spend on trains, and what percentage savings in oil or carbon emissions do you plan to get? Keep in mind that absolute savings are meaningless -- if we save 200,000 barrels of oil per day and we consume 20 million barrels per day, that would be only 1 percent. A 25-50 percent reduction in oil or CO2 or some other measure would be meaningful in terms of protecting the environment.
My aren't we cynical.
I dream that our new Administration will make changes that will correct our economic crisis, environmental disaster, and social decay. Unfortunately, the policies that almost every other nation has adopted are in the United States portrayed as "un-American." Soon, we will live in a land where only bankers can afford to own homes and only the wealthy will be able to buy clean drinking water. But never fear -- the rest of us will be allowed all the pleasures we need in the form of internet pornography.
I just watched a program about South Korea'a new 360 KPH high speed rail.
Even South Korea has faster trains than we do.
Our community is FREE to join. To participate you must either login or register for an account.