Why Do Conservatives oppose High Speed Rail?

Discussion in 'Political Opinions & Beliefs' started by ErikBEggs, Dec 18, 2013.

  1. Alaska Slim

    Alaska Slim Active Member

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    We're stuck because we are less dense, and came up with an answer of our own: roads and airways. The lament that we don't have more passenger rail is like planners in car-oriented Los Angeles lamenting they aren't like New York. It's simply "the grass is always greener" mentality at work,

    Further, it's notable that the U.S. general aviation market is larger than any other nation's on Earth, perhaps the only one we can in fact call "mature". If your company sells jets for private or charter operators, you're likely planning on selling them to the U.S., and are consulting FAA-trained inspectors as to how just to build your product.

    It's because we have that focus and experience, that if any nation is to adopt flying cars, it'll likely be us.

    Not likely, United has merged to give itself answer to the LCC airlines that are undercutting them, those like Jet Blue and Southwest, whom are working around delay problems through offering city pairs instead of the Hub and spoke model most of the legacy carriers operate on.

    Anything else can be chocked up to how the FAA is the one who manages ATC, who is most in part to blame for delays, along with equal FAA control of approving Airport Capital improvements (e.g., building more or longer runways.).

    Since it would never be a private entity that would run a high-speed rail service, but yet another DoT entity like the FAA, it's likely it would succumb to the same pressures, with none of the benefits commercially competing businesses offer.

    I've seen the future of air travel, it's far more execiting than your Flying Scotsman.

    The future is not infrastructure-heavy, it's nimble, and information based. And new information is going to do wonders in the realm of ATC, it'll be like the 1930s all over again, with aircraft simply coming and going as they please, no one to answer to but the great guidance terminal in the sky.
     
  2. TomFitz

    TomFitz Well-Known Member

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    No, you're missing the point.

    High speed rail is another way to offer people the option of living conveniently in places that the could have not lived in before. I live in just such a community. It would be possible for people to commute from New York to my home town in an hour if we had high speed rail (by changing trains to an already existing commutor at a hub). It takes three hours to get there now by train, and even longer on the Turmpike, except in midday traffic.

    This has been the history of transportation since the invention of the steam locomotive, a technology which enabled the first suburbs.

    Instead of asking "why would they do that?", you should be asking, "what would the world look like if they could?"

    THAT is the point.
     
  3. garyd

    garyd Well-Known Member

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    A lot of those containers are trailers for Semis. Why is that? Because it would be prohibitively expensive to lay and maintain a rail road bed to every wide spot in the road in America. Add in the cost of the additional rolling stock and that vaunted efficiency disappears over night. That's why trucks aren't going away anytime soon.
     
  4. TomFitz

    TomFitz Well-Known Member

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    I've been on the Flying Scotsman, albeit the one of old, and it's not my vision for the future.

    Eurostar is.

    We're a long way from flying cars.

    Certainly, technology will give us the opportunity to manage discreet movement in personal vehicles.

    In fact, I fully expect that to be happening on interstates within the next ten years.

    Your BBC blurb didn't explain how these flying cars are going to be propelled, how fuel effecient they will be, or how flexible they will be. These are all unanswered questions.

    And if you don't think flying cars require infrastructure, you've never tried to park one!

    - - - Updated - - -

    Of course they are! That's why it's called intermodal!

    I don't expect railroads to reappear in their 19th century guise to move container freight.

    But container traffic is straining the capacity of our existing rail systems, which is why most of them are being rebuilt, even though most Americans are barely aware that this is happening!
     
  5. Alaska Slim

    Alaska Slim Active Member

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    And you missed mine. Advances in aviation are not through Government but through the private sector.

    They don't have to wait for Congress or administrators to get on board, they don't have to wait for Government funds each time they want to build something or add an extension

    Aviation, simply put, doesn't have to battle through politics and budgetary conflicts to see its next iteration take shape, it's happening even without the FAA.

    It can simply try new ideas as they come along, and see if they work or not. That's a a degree of freedom you only wish rapid transit had.
     
  6. snakestretcher

    snakestretcher Banned

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    Throughout history railways have never shown much in the way of profits. The whole point is that they exist to provide a service.
    Personally I much prefer to travel in comfort on a train than deal with the interminable hassles of air travel-getting to the airport 3 hours before departure, body searches, hanging around, crammed into a metal tube etc. If you're not a business traveler speed shouldn't be the catalyst for your journey. For me the train trip to wherever is a part of the enjoyment. I really don't need the stress of airports.

    Concorde was shut down because of low passenger numbers following the crash at Paris, the slump in air travel following 9-11, escalating maintenance costs and because it had technologically reached the end of its life.
    Yes, it was expensive, but it was prestige air travel at twice the speed of sound. Prestige and luxury are never cheap-and Britain and France did it first, in 1969. Nothing since, apart from the short-lived and technologically defective Russian Tupolev Tu-144, has come close.
     
  7. garyd

    garyd Well-Known Member

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    Freight lines have always made money. Once airlines arrived on the scene passenger trains were slowly rendered obsolecent except in contiguous areas of high population densities over relatively short distances.
     
  8. Taxcutter

    Taxcutter New Member

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    Re: Post # 161

    The dominance of containerized freight blurs the line between rail and truck transportation.

    Ultimately, rail's fuel efficiency confers an advantage for long-haul work. At an intermodal hub the container goes onto a truck trailer for door-to-door service.
     
  9. snakestretcher

    snakestretcher Banned

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    Yes, I acknowledge that in America's case this is very much true. However in Europe high speed rail is very much embraced, and France's TGV does show profits of around £900 million annually. In Britain the proposed new HS2 high speed rail link is being aggressively promoted by our Conservative government.
     
  10. Alaska Slim

    Alaska Slim Active Member

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    That's a false dichotomy.

    If it's providing a service, people will be willing to pay for it. If they're not, it's clearly a waste.

    Rail travel can turn a profit when its right-sized to demand. The NYC subway and other subterranean systems made profits before they were collectivized, there are profitable Intercity rail passenger routes operated by Amtrak, just the same as there are profitable intercity routes worldwide. The problem for us, as Stephen Smith tells here, was making privatized operation the end-goal rather than the starting point.

    Just as with Airlines before it, we simply need to get over this "hump" that we require the Government acting as the paternal protector of an industry, and let it develop (or shrink) on its own. If we do this, we may just see a bump similar to what Cross country-busing is getting, itself equally working out of a long-period of Government-enforced stagnation.
     
  11. Pollycy

    Pollycy Well-Known Member

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    I agree with the sentiment you express about flying (yuck!). But I think there's a fundamental difference between public highways and private airlines or private passenger/freight trains. Highways carry traffic, whether private cars or trucks throughout a transportation infrastructure. Private airlines and private passenger trains are "all-inclusive". On a public highway, you pay separately for your conveyance, car, truck, etc. On a train, you literally are transported by the train company, from Point "A" to Point "B". Therefore, there's a justification for the public taxes to pay for public highways, where everyone can travel in their own vehicles. Airline companies and train companies should be privately financed in their entirety.
     
  12. snakestretcher

    snakestretcher Banned

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    But why? SNCF, the French railway system, is government owned and run, yet turns in good profits (just under £1 billion in 2012). It's also worth noting that SNCF is ranked #219 in the global Fortune 500. Not bad for a government-run concern.
    http://www.trainorders.com/discussion/read.php?17,3041181
     
  13. Gatewood

    Gatewood Well-Known Member

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    In addition to all the reasons offered up by previous posters -- and this may also have been covered -- but could you imagine being the sitting governor of your state and then some terrorist recruit has a 'vision' of what a well made and carefully planted device might end up doing to human bodies if exploded during a high speed run? Not saying that it necessarily is a part of the calculations in the heart of their objections . . . but just maybe it is a background, nagging thought.
     
  14. snakestretcher

    snakestretcher Banned

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    You can apply that objection to any mode of transport. We had terrorist bombing attacks attack on the London Underground (subway), and London buses. You can't, unfortunately, account for all possibilities or you'd end up doing nothing.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/7_July_2005_London_bombings
     
  15. Windigo

    Windigo Banned

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    That is a crock of (*)(*)(*)(*).

    You might want to check what yhr actual travel time for European high speed rail routes is.

    Hamburg to Munich is 5 and a half hours on the ICE. Thats 379 miles. New York to Atlanta is 881 miles.
     
  16. Gatewood

    Gatewood Well-Known Member

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    But you can take into account what happens to spectacularly high speeds and say, "Um . . . politically speaking I'd just as soon not risk having that sort of thing happen inside my state." (Shrug) I'm just spit-balling here. It's probably not part of the general consideration.
     
  17. Windigo

    Windigo Banned

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    Why dont we just focus on teleporters instead because your travel times are a joke. Like I said you have no clue what actual travel times are. Reality isnt even close to your fantasy.
     
  18. snakestretcher

    snakestretcher Banned

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    You end up just as dead either stationary or travelling at 150mph. I take your (political) point though.
     
  19. Pollycy

    Pollycy Well-Known Member

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    I've got to be honest enough to admit that its different in Europe. In Germany it's brain damage to try to get around in your own car (and park the damn thing) unless you're wealthy (and have a lot of time on your hands). I listen to the Germans themselves ***** about this and I chide them by reminding them, jokingly, that this is what they deserve for losing two world wars in a row in less than fifty years! Anyone who has ever tried to park a car in Cologne or Munich knows exactly what I mean, and I expect it's also true there in London. So, yes, public transportation, like Die Bahn in Germany is absolutely essential! I'm completely unfamiliar with the French system but I'm sure it must work the same way.

    Here in the States, it's quite different, due to population distribution and distance -- and the fact that so much of our land is privately owned. But some parts of our country could definitely use high-speed rail -- like the East Coast corridor. Some parts of the country that could use high-speed rail should NOT do so, especially the West Coast. All the population centers, from Seattle down to San Diego sit on top of earthquake faults whose potential for destruction is only now beginning to be fully realized. Also, the cost of building a high-speed rail system through the Rocky Mountains would be beyond staggering.

    But I must confess, the idea of being able to get on board one of those things in Denver and zip on over to Chicago in a little over two hours is very, very appealing! You could leave Denver in the afternoon and be half-drunk out on the Navy Pier over Lake Michigan in time to see the sun set on a summer evening....
     
  20. snakestretcher

    snakestretcher Banned

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    London to Exeter by train, 200 miles, 2 hours; and that includes accelerating to, and decelerating from a maximum of 125mph. I do it regularly. I could of course fly but it would take considerably longer, and would be far less comfortable. Driving to London, and trying to find somewhere to leave your car is absolutely unthinkable.
     
  21. TomFitz

    TomFitz Well-Known Member

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    At 200 MPH, those are the travel times.

    And since European trains have been doing this for over a decade, and Chinese trains are catching up rapidly, this isn't some pie in the sky notion.

    Of course, Europeans businessmen were carrying mobiles long before Americans knew what a cell phone was too!
     
  22. Marine1

    Marine1 Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    It would be like AM Track. It wouldn't come close to paying for it's self and another thing government would have to subsidize. Hell we can't pay for what we have now.
     
  23. TomFitz

    TomFitz Well-Known Member

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    At 200 MPH, the travel time non stop would be just a little over four hours. Given stops in Washington, Philadephia, and Charlotte, you could stretch that out by another hour.

    That's still not much longer than the parking lot to parking lot time it would take you to go by air.
     
  24. snakestretcher

    snakestretcher Banned

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    The French TGV frequently exceeds 200mph. It also holds the speed record at 357mph. That is seriously impressive. Watch: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8skXT5NQzCg
    Watch from 3.00!
     
  25. TomFitz

    TomFitz Well-Known Member

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    That's the point.

    Think of that in terms of business travel. You could leave Denver, have a lunch meeting in Chicago (or LA) and be home for dinner.

    No long ride out to the airport and back on either end. Comfortable seatings, etc.

    From reading these posts, I suspect that few of our posters actually travel very much, and even fewer do it on business.
     

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