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| Re: Amtrak curviest streches (1358033) | |||
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Re: Amtrak curviest streches |
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Posted by Jersey Mike on Tue Jun 30 14:01:18 2015, in response to Re: Amtrak curviest streches, posted by WillD on Sat Jun 27 01:26:06 2015. But they do. They have cap and trade funds which will provide for the construction of the first two phases beyond the ARRA funding they've received to this point.Yeah, and when the State has another budget shortfall then they won't have cap and trade funds. Why not? We've carved plenty of transportation ROWs out of the rural parts of the country and those areas have not seen inhabitation significantly increase in the last 40 years. Plenty of space to run a ROW for 220mph trains through once you clear the suburbs. Hell, they manage to find room in Europe and Japan, so we should have an easy time making dedicated high speed rail lines. The age of new rights of way ended with Eisenhower. Construction costs are just too high to build hundreds of miles of brand new stuff. For the same money you could fix the potholes that are much more salient to the average taxpayer. Which is the very last thing any of the freight railroads want to hear of and thus the absolute worst prospect for any rail service improvement. Look at Illinois backing off the UP corridor improvements in favor of 220mph service between St Louis and Chicago. Freight railroads get upgraded lines at public expense. They only whine and moan to sweeten the deal. If that new Governor in IL is talking about 220mph HSR its because he knows its a pipe dream that will let him cancel the more achievable service. Sort of like Gov Hogan in MD floating the idea of a MagLev to avoid talk of other services or upgrades. But they don't. Airline trips shorter than 350 miles result in inconvenient trips for passengers and a disproportionate amount of time spent in crowded terminal airspace. That is the exact market where true high speed rail works best, delivering door-to-door times equal to or faster than air travel. Ha! Have you flown recently? I can get to BWI in 20 minutes and then be at Pittsburgh, Albany or Boston in under 3 hours curb to curb. The only reason I take the train is so I can get pictures. My friend flies and makes fun of me. If that's the case then one could only come to the conclusion you favor a 220mph true high speed rail line. Anything with an average speed below 125mph is a recipe for endless operating subsidies. At least a true high speed rail line stands a change at attracting a large enough market share to repay its construction costs. Come on dude, you're WAY smarter than that. The entire French LGV system has never generated enough profit to pay for its costs and requires billions of subsidies every year. Government will always have to pay for transportation because user fees can never effectively capture all the social gain. |
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