Why is High Speed Rail such a bad idea? I realize most of the country is not suited to it, but here in the northeast we have a bunch of large cities too close to each other to make flying efficient, and the highways between them are choked. If high speed rail is only appropriate between Boston and Washington, so what? Who wants to spend a day on I-95?
This country had high-speed rail once upon a time. It was in the 19th and 20th centuries. In 1900, rail was the only high-speed option, and remained so until something better came along - interstate highways and commercial flight.
Those railways weren't built by the government, federal or state. They were built by men who were willing to risk their capital in hopes of getting rich - Charles Crocker, Henry Morrison Flagler, Jay Gould, Edward Henry Harriman, Mark Hopkins, Henry B. Plant, Leland Stanford, Cornelius Vanderbilt.
They helped build a country, and history has rewarded them by calling them "the robber barons."
If nationwide high-speed rail service is a good idea, why do we need the government to build it? And if it's a bad idea, why do we even WANT the government to build it?
Bernie Gilbert, private railroads did help "build this country." That's exactly why private railroads were ideal - they helped tame unsettled land better than a government could. But the New York to D.C. corridor doesn't need to be built, it is built. Building a high speed train in a densely populated metropolitan area is different than laying tracks in a wilderness and it's more suited to government than private industry.
Jason: "Building a high speed train in a densely populated metropolitan area is different than laying tracks in a wilderness and it's more suited to government than private industry."
=====================================
Really?
How so?
Will government build the railroads more cheaply?
Build them better?
Build them faster?
(If you answer "yes" to any of the above, it's obvious you value hope over experience...)
BTW, there already IS a high-speed rail between DC and Boston - it's Amtrak's Acela. It runs at a loss and doesn't carry nearly the number of passengers that the Delta and USAirways shuttles carry. Heckuva business model you're advocating there, Jason.
Bernie Gilbert, government is better for building trains in highly populated areas because people live there, and their lives are disrupted to build the rail. It's completely different than building a rail in an unpopulated area. Watch Blazing Saddles a few times to get what I'm talking about.
Who cares if Acela "runs at a loss." Does I-95 make a profit? Does the TSA make a profit? Infrastructure costs money, but it creates the conditions that allow other people to make a profit.
Also, Acela is high speed compared to normal Amtrak but it's not really high speed when compared to what's happening in other countries. It's slow.
Even subsidized, the Acela from PHL TO BOS is more expensive than flying.
And adding truly HS service would require either removing the other standard, commuter and freight service from those routes of taking more property to add additional rail lines since it would need a clear run between stops. One reason the Acela doesn't do better is it is constrained by the other traffic on the lines and the frequent station stops.
And what benefits do you see from adding HS rail here? You mentioned that the cities were too close to make flying reasonable. Well that same thing make HS rail less useful. If all your time is spend getting up to speed and slowing down, you don't gain as much in average velocity.
State and Local Governments build our airport terminals and runways, and the highways that lead to them. The federal government built the interstate highway system. Heck, even when the railroads were built, they received substantial government help (land grants, etc.) For instance, the Pennsylvania RR was chartered by the commonwealth of Pennsylvania. No transportation system is fully profitable, and our country would not be where it is without these transportation infrastructure investments. And high-speed rail is relevant, for the United States today, for improving transportation between medium and large cities.
Bernie Gilbert and Jason: You are both looking at different sides of the same coin. Yes private industry did build the railroad of the 19th century, BUT and this is a big but, it was done with a great deal of government "assistance" in the form of confiscating vast ammounts of land, moving Native Americans, etc (some of the things for which the "robber barons" are vilified and government is never, and I mean never mentioned). Government-corporate collusion. I am not saying that it was not a boon to the growth of the country, just that there is more to the story. Government should not be involved and industry should play by true free market rules.
This is exactly the sort of hard-hitting intelligent commentary that has made American conservatism the powerhouse of political thought that it is today.
Yeah, talk about whacky: clean, fast, cheap transportation in the 21st Century - what a CRAZY idea! That kind of thing is only for clueless socialst losers, like Japan or Germany! Do you know those lefty freaks get free health-care PLUS 12 weeks of paid vacation per year?! Heck, I hear they don't even serve Freedom Fries!
Please ignore the fact that electric rail - clean, dirt-cheap & reliable as the sunrise - was the urban transportation mode that made America become an industrial giant at the start of the 20th Century ... or that GM, Firestone, Phillips Oil, Mack Truck & Standard Oil systematically destroyed it in the 1940s (a crime for which they were convicted & made to pay the astronomical sum of $5000 each). Remember, citizens: ONE consumer per car at all times! Anything else will make the Baby Exxon cry!
Jason: "'Who cares if Acela 'runs at a loss.'"
==============================================
I do. I'm a taxpayer and when Amtrak runs at a loss, I have to pay for it. In case you hadn't noticed, there are a hell of a lot of us who are tired of having to pay for something we don't use because some ivory-tower intellectual who managed to worm his way into a position of power has decided it's good for us. If it's good for us, it can pay its own way.
And if you're going to give us that nonsense about how "infrastructure creates the conditions that allow other people to make a profit," then you'd better be able to show with facts and figures how much that infrastructure is going to cost, how much of a profit it will return, and how long it will take to return that profit. That's called return on investment - borrow an accounting 101 book and look it up - and if the result is a negative number, that's why nobody except for our elite government betters wants to build it. That's what REAL investment is - a calculation that you will spend X dollars and get X + Y dollars back over Z period of time. If you can't plug actual numbers into X, Y, and Z, then you have no idea what the return on your investment is, and you're in the Alice-in-Wonderland world where investment is defined as spending other people's money just because you can.
Which is exactly what President Obama means when he says, "invest." Whenever you hear a politician say "invest," hold on to your wallet, because he wants whats in it.
"And I come before you good people tonight with an idea. Probably the greatest... Aw, it's not for you. It's more of a *Shelbyville* idea...."
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuse"I call the big one Bitey."
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseBoy Jonah,
You have an uncanny (and warped) way to hit the nail on the head.
I love it !
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseWhy is High Speed Rail such a bad idea? I realize most of the country is not suited to it, but here in the northeast we have a bunch of large cities too close to each other to make flying efficient, and the highways between them are choked. If high speed rail is only appropriate between Boston and Washington, so what? Who wants to spend a day on I-95?
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseThis country had high-speed rail once upon a time. It was in the 19th and 20th centuries. In 1900, rail was the only high-speed option, and remained so until something better came along - interstate highways and commercial flight.
Those railways weren't built by the government, federal or state. They were built by men who were willing to risk their capital in hopes of getting rich - Charles Crocker, Henry Morrison Flagler, Jay Gould, Edward Henry Harriman, Mark Hopkins, Henry B. Plant, Leland Stanford, Cornelius Vanderbilt.
They helped build a country, and history has rewarded them by calling them "the robber barons."
If nationwide high-speed rail service is a good idea, why do we need the government to build it? And if it's a bad idea, why do we even WANT the government to build it?
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseMarge: Homer I have someone who can help you.
Homer: Is it Batman?
Marge: No, it's a scientist.
Homer: Batman's a scientist.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseBernie Gilbert, private railroads did help "build this country." That's exactly why private railroads were ideal - they helped tame unsettled land better than a government could. But the New York to D.C. corridor doesn't need to be built, it is built. Building a high speed train in a densely populated metropolitan area is different than laying tracks in a wilderness and it's more suited to government than private industry.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseJason: "Building a high speed train in a densely populated metropolitan area is different than laying tracks in a wilderness and it's more suited to government than private industry."
=====================================
Really?
How so?
Will government build the railroads more cheaply?
Build them better?
Build them faster?
(If you answer "yes" to any of the above, it's obvious you value hope over experience...)
BTW, there already IS a high-speed rail between DC and Boston - it's Amtrak's Acela. It runs at a loss and doesn't carry nearly the number of passengers that the Delta and USAirways shuttles carry. Heckuva business model you're advocating there, Jason.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseEverytime some lib starts romanticizing about high speed rail I always think of this episode.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseBernie Gilbert, government is better for building trains in highly populated areas because people live there, and their lives are disrupted to build the rail. It's completely different than building a rail in an unpopulated area. Watch Blazing Saddles a few times to get what I'm talking about.
Who cares if Acela "runs at a loss." Does I-95 make a profit? Does the TSA make a profit? Infrastructure costs money, but it creates the conditions that allow other people to make a profit.
Also, Acela is high speed compared to normal Amtrak but it's not really high speed when compared to what's happening in other countries. It's slow.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseHigh speed rail - is there anything it *can't* do?
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseJason,
Even subsidized, the Acela from PHL TO BOS is more expensive than flying.
And adding truly HS service would require either removing the other standard, commuter and freight service from those routes of taking more property to add additional rail lines since it would need a clear run between stops. One reason the Acela doesn't do better is it is constrained by the other traffic on the lines and the frequent station stops.
And what benefits do you see from adding HS rail here? You mentioned that the cities were too close to make flying reasonable. Well that same thing make HS rail less useful. If all your time is spend getting up to speed and slowing down, you don't gain as much in average velocity.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseMan, I was hoping someone would post this today. Perfect.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseState and Local Governments build our airport terminals and runways, and the highways that lead to them. The federal government built the interstate highway system. Heck, even when the railroads were built, they received substantial government help (land grants, etc.) For instance, the Pennsylvania RR was chartered by the commonwealth of Pennsylvania. No transportation system is fully profitable, and our country would not be where it is without these transportation infrastructure investments. And high-speed rail is relevant, for the United States today, for improving transportation between medium and large cities.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseBernie Gilbert and Jason: You are both looking at different sides of the same coin. Yes private industry did build the railroad of the 19th century, BUT and this is a big but, it was done with a great deal of government "assistance" in the form of confiscating vast ammounts of land, moving Native Americans, etc (some of the things for which the "robber barons" are vilified and government is never, and I mean never mentioned). Government-corporate collusion. I am not saying that it was not a boon to the growth of the country, just that there is more to the story. Government should not be involved and industry should play by true free market rules.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseThis is exactly the sort of hard-hitting intelligent commentary that has made American conservatism the powerhouse of political thought that it is today.
Yeah, talk about whacky: clean, fast, cheap transportation in the 21st Century - what a CRAZY idea! That kind of thing is only for clueless socialst losers, like Japan or Germany! Do you know those lefty freaks get free health-care PLUS 12 weeks of paid vacation per year?! Heck, I hear they don't even serve Freedom Fries!
Please ignore the fact that electric rail - clean, dirt-cheap & reliable as the sunrise - was the urban transportation mode that made America become an industrial giant at the start of the 20th Century ... or that GM, Firestone, Phillips Oil, Mack Truck & Standard Oil systematically destroyed it in the 1940s (a crime for which they were convicted & made to pay the astronomical sum of $5000 each). Remember, citizens: ONE consumer per car at all times! Anything else will make the Baby Exxon cry!
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseJason: "'Who cares if Acela 'runs at a loss.'"
==============================================
I do. I'm a taxpayer and when Amtrak runs at a loss, I have to pay for it. In case you hadn't noticed, there are a hell of a lot of us who are tired of having to pay for something we don't use because some ivory-tower intellectual who managed to worm his way into a position of power has decided it's good for us. If it's good for us, it can pay its own way.
And if you're going to give us that nonsense about how "infrastructure creates the conditions that allow other people to make a profit," then you'd better be able to show with facts and figures how much that infrastructure is going to cost, how much of a profit it will return, and how long it will take to return that profit. That's called return on investment - borrow an accounting 101 book and look it up - and if the result is a negative number, that's why nobody except for our elite government betters wants to build it. That's what REAL investment is - a calculation that you will spend X dollars and get X + Y dollars back over Z period of time. If you can't plug actual numbers into X, Y, and Z, then you have no idea what the return on your investment is, and you're in the Alice-in-Wonderland world where investment is defined as spending other people's money just because you can.
Which is exactly what President Obama means when he says, "invest." Whenever you hear a politician say "invest," hold on to your wallet, because he wants whats in it.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbusePlanes and cars are for manly men - trains are for euro-weenies.
Jonah: please write about the lefts infatuation with trains
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuse