Why Do Conservatives oppose High Speed Rail?

So how quick do you think that rail from Buffalo to Ft. Lauderdale. Will be? Consider that there wouldn't be a direct train. You would have to take a train to New York than one to Ft. Lauderdale. 293 + 1,273 = 1566 miles.

BTW fond you a $259 round trip on united next week. Want to keep making (*)(*)(*)(*) up.

 

There is no reason why someone should take an airplane from Washington DC to New York. Thats an economical imperative.

 

False!

I factored in drive times to both the airport and the railroad station. You either didn't pay attention, or the fact that the travel times and costs in my comparison scenarios don't fit your prejudices, so you pointed out a hole that doesn't exist.

Moreover, my scenario is based on standard rail travel, NOT high speed.

Bring the speed of rail transport up to first world standards and the rail travel times between many popular business destination cities become very competative.

Were high speed available on the East Coast now, I'd be able to beat the airlines by more than an hour easily.

You also decided to completely ignore the fact that I would be able to work in confort the entire time I'm on the train too.

That isn't a small thing. You ignored it because you don't travel on business, and that demonstrates how little you really understand what I'm talking about. Travelling for pleasure or as a student is nothing like travelling for business.

 

Maybe not, but about half the business travel between the two cities is by air. Back in the regulated days, Eastern Airlines used to have a monopoly on the service, and flew ever hour on the half hour.

Now, about half the traffic is by rail, and that is growing very steadily (over 40% in the last ten years),. Rail service like the kind you have would make the trip by rail all the more desirable.

In fact, high speed rail would make it possible for people to live in Baltimore (around the Inner Harbor), FRedericksburg or Richmond and commute to DC to work, People already live in Baltimore and commute to DC, and the drive commute from DC to Fredericksburg is backed up the full length of 38 miles of I-95 every day. High speed rail would change living patterns and bring economic boosts to outlying communities, just as train travel did in its time. This isn't a revolutionary idea. In the US, the railroad made the suburb possible.

 

You'd also have to change in New York, and go from Grand Central to Penn Station, too.

I'm not sure that Buffalo to Ft Lauderdale is the best comparison, but there are plenty of destinations that are. Nearly every city along the Water Level Route could be reached by high speed rail in less net travel time than flying. I'm thinking of Buffalo to Cleveland, Detroit, Chicago, Albany or New York City.

 

We talked about that at University. In the old days USA and Germany as well as the UK were worldwide leading in railway transport. Then in USA the car corporations took over and bought the railways to let them rot away and push the car. A sad development.

 

You factored in your own situation where you are closer to the train station and than the airport by 1/2 hour. That is not the case for all people. You keep mentioning that the airports are frequently in the suburbs but forget that over 50% of our population lives in the suburbs.

So I correctly pointed out that the factors you are adding onto air traffic also apply to trains. The only big difference being security. Of course there is a big push right now to tighten train security.
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/201...ts-call-for-increased-security-at-land-based/

 

As long as you and others approach all problems with the stigma that 'the other party' is the problem, you will never open your minds to see the real problems.

Air travel from SF to LA: You can do the math.

Leave 1:25 PM
San Francisco SFO

Arrive 2:40PM
Los Angeles LAX

Regarding your 'Not the hell of getting to and from the airport, security, and bags', this identical problem will exist with high speed rail.

Air flights transport many more passengers than train. Does any current train service make a profit in the USA?

I'm always serious...why do you ask?

They would close down the service because there's only one set of tracks, and it's Homeland Security, and if it crashes when doing 200mph it's going to be a huge mess to deal with.

You obviously do not understand high speed rail? Use some logic; it's impossible to have high speed rail if the train stops every 10 miles!

 

In bold...exactly! IMO the entire length of track of all areas in which it will actually reach 'high speed' will be 24/7 security...

 

You cannot compare a reservoir dam and a choo-choo train...

 

it is conceivably for the common Defense and founding wanting for the Confederacy which helped them lose the war.

 

Get back to me when you've driven the I-12 between Los Angeles and San Bernardino at rush hour or any time of the day for that matter.

 

You do realize that none of the major airlines in the US, except Southwest have made profits or profits on a consistant level over the past few years. Instead, airlines have made easy fodder for specuators and leveraged buyout types. The machinations of the financiers who have dominated the airline industry over the last twenty years rival the worst of the robber barons of the 19th century railroad wars.

 

The density argument still applies. Look at that traffic from above and it looks a lot different from the way it looks through your windshield. Besides, the I-12 between La and San Bernadino is not representative of the national interstate highway system as a whole, and has no bearing on the discussion over high speed rail.

 

You keep repeating that high speed rail is obsolete technology.

Yet the thirty year old TGV trains that are moving people rapidly across central Europe are far newer technology than most of the commercial airliners in service today, most of which are based on 1960's technology.

 

First off the interstate makes a lot of sense; it moves people and goods all over the US. Without such a system interstate road travel would likely be difficult at best and good would not be able to move as efficently. Highspeed rail on the other hand seems to have the following uses from the arguments I've seen:

1) It's a status symbol that will "catch us up to the rest of the industrialized world"
2) It's necessary for business travel
3) It's necessary for tourism

The first point is meaningless and the other two are already handled very well by multiple forms of transport including rail. The arguments are not worth the expense since it is clearly about convenience and status rather than necessity.

 

One need only look at what sort of website the Federal government gets for $200 million or more to see that it building a high speed rail system would be a monumental boondoggle.

 

I'll remember your narrow minded view the next time I'm marooned in a crowded airport because the airline cancelled my flight at the last minute.

Simply repeating yourself does not make a case.

Your claim about the interstate highway system making sense is true, but the conservative mindset we have today would certainly have opposed its construction. Anything built with public funds that anyone can use is routinely dismissed by the hard right, even here on this thread.

Any one who even begins to claim that business travel and commerce are handled "very well" by our creaky air transporation system, interstates and exising rail never travels, or only does so for pleasure.

That's an absurd claim for anyone who travels on any regular basis to make. Status has nothing to do with making people more productive as they travel, and getting them there sooner, and with less of the hassle that is now an integral part of air travel. And it has nothing to do with offering them a choice instead of having to rely on the airline industry with its creaky crowded planes, indifferent, and often hostile service, and it's "charge what the market will bear" business model.

You obviously rarely travel. You would know better than to make the claims you're making.

 

Yes, and you've never had a flight cancelled five minutes before boarding. You've never paid three times as much as the guy next to you for the same seat because you had to travel at the last minute. You've never been marooned in an airport because thunderstorms a thousand miles away caused delays into New York, Chicago, Boston, Philadelphia or Atlanta, and backed the entire air traffic system up in its wake. You don't seem to be aware that many of the aircraft flying every day in teh US are thirty or forty years old.

 

I do not understand why anyone would stubbornly defend being second rate. Yet conservatives do it all the time.

Business travel is a key componant of any modern economy. It's the network that the people who run industry use regularly. Our system has hardly changed at all since the late 1960's. except to increase in volume. The fact that theusers of this system are totally unproductive during the entire 5 or 6 hour time frame that it takes to get from portal to portal for a relatively short flight does not seem to even be recognized by people who don't travel.

It isn't a matter of prestige, as you so narrowly describe it.

It's a matter of productivity.

The airline industry passes the seat mile cost of its operations on to its customers. Airlines routinely cancel flights they don't have enough people signed up for. They frequently do it right at the gate. This happens to tens of thousands of people every day. Every single on of those people will have to be rebooked, will have to alter travel plans, rearrange appointments, rent cars and or hotel rooms that they would not have to otherwise. All of this is business expense. All of it reflects lost productivity and increased expense.

And all of it you described as "working well".

 

Have you driven that stretch of Freeway or are you simply guessing?

 

Not recently. Nor do I contest your point about the level of congestion.

I merely pointed out that you do not seem to be aware of the fact that even at this level, less than half of the roadway's surface is actually used (actually, the volume of empty space is between 70 and 90%). Even if you only allowed 1 car length between you and the car in front of you, or behind, that only means that 50% of the surface is used. (if you can see any part of the roadway behind the car in front of you, you're ususally allowing more than that). You don't seem to get that. Every traffic engineer knows it.

Besides, your one, and only example is not representative of the interstate highway system as a whole, even though you continue to insist that it is.

 

Please PM me in a few years after the massive cost overruns and let me know if Central Florida's light rail is actually doing anything for either tourism or commuting workers. The proposed route doesn't go anywhere near the theme parks and if you think that secretaries in high heels are going to hoof it 2 or 3 miles from the station to their office building in summer humidity you've got another thing coming.

 

Opposition is not to the "giving" of money by government it's to the taking of it in the first place.
The opposition to HSR is that it is not a voluntary venture.

The only legitimate use of force, governmental or otherwise, is to enforce a proscribed set of less-than-best intentions from being imposed upon others, e.g., murder, theft, fraud.
The use of force, even the force of law, is illegitimate when it is used to impose a prescribed set of best intentions upon others.

HSR is a benevolent arrogance. The benevolently arrogant do not see the imposition of their best intentions upon others as a usurpation of other people's best intentions for themselves; they see it as an alternative to that which is substandard.

HSR may well be a great idea, but it's not worth one shread of liberty. If it can't be done on a voluntary basis, it should not be done ate all.

 

I have been stuck at trai n stations for hours while they investigate some minor track issue. In those cases, there are no other options and traj stations are rarely as comfortable as airports.