America needs High Speed Rail. Why does the right oppose it ?

South Florida is a tiny part of America. What doesn't work for you won't necessarily not work for others.

 

France is making £900 million annual profits with its record-breaking TGV service despite being nationalised. Secondly you again miss the point; there is no reason whatsoever to have a high speed rail service connecting nowhere to nowhere-you have aerolanes for that. However major centres of commerce do benefit, and business travellers enjoy being able to use time profitably sitting comfortably in a train, working, when they could alternatively have been spending that time getting to an airport, checking in, being searched, waiting for their flight and wasting time doing the same at their destination.
From my city London is about 200 miles. I can get their in a shade over 2 hours by train. By car? Forget it; about 3 hours if I'm lucky, and that's just to the outskirts. Then I'd have to deal with urban traffic, and trying to find somewhere to park in London is near impossible.
As for "death missiles" the French TGV has not had a single accident in over 17 years. See, there are things called 'fences'. You may have heard of them. They use road bridges to avoid level crossings.
As for cost you can travel from Paris to Nice (426 miles) for between £20-£25 if you shop around for the best ticket price.

 

Your awesome research paper says that HSR is only profitable at distances between 200-500 miles. Well, duh, that is exactly the point of HSR! Anything shorter than 200 miles is approaching commuter train territory. And again the paper short-sightedly focuses on profitability. Historically very few railways have made a profit because they exist to provide a service as their primary function, and not as a cash cow for shareholders. The author seems to be trying to equate HSR with something like Concorde, which was always going to be a luxury first and a convenience second, and for all kinds of reasons. It goes on to suggest that HSR is a luxury for the wealthy; I have already demonstrated that I can travel over 400 miles in France, in comfort at 200mph, for £25. Try that on an aeroplane or in a car.

 

I am not in anyway suggesting that regulation was the only culprit in the unhealthy bottom lines of the railroads, many factors contributed to the eventual breakup of railroads and the final consolidation. Deregulation though was and still is a main reason why they are extremely healthy today.

Do the freight railroads maintain monopolies, and is there room for improvement, absolutely. I would be a fool to think that total unregulated railroads would be god for America, but the government has already done enough to destroy capacity in America.

 

I notice that when I posted the fact that if liberals really want bullet trains, they should form a corporation, and build it. If it is such a wonderful idea, they should be able to reap millions.

But------------------------if you notice, they dont want to risk their money, oh hell no, they want the taxpayer to foot the bill.

Again I ask, can you say Solyndra??????

 

If you didn't have a problem taking liberal tax money for the wars under Bush, why do you care if conservative tax money is used for high speed rail ?

 

Conservatives: "Let's let every other rising country surpass us with better trains, roads, bridges, and infrastructure. We will just sit in traffic in our oversized SUV's and hope that the bridges don't fail."

 

I always find it interesting how libs who claim to be for the working class tend to dis them with trailer park slams. That is exactly where lower wage working people live.

 

Taxcutter says:
Wars always end sooner or later. Boondoggles like high speed rail go on forever. Viz: Amtrak. High speed rail will be Amtrak writ three or four orders of magnitude larger.

 

double standard, got it

 

Short term vs. long term.

World War Two has been over for almost seven decades but Social Security continues to dominate federal outlays.
Vietnam has been over for four decades but medicare and Medicaid continue to eat enormous quantities of taxpayer money.

 

On principal you are claiming it is ok to force liberals to pay for things they are against but upset when the same is done to conservatives - this is hypocritical of you. Your excuse of the longevity of wars v social programs is a moot point

 

if our interstates were such a good idea.. private industry would of built it...?

no company can build the infrastructure across the country any more then a company could build the interstate from coast to coast

some things should be done by gov.. .we should get something back for all the taxes we pay... these are good examples of something the gov could do and would create many jobs...

.

 

Agreed and well said !

 

I bet conservatives like you (*)(*)(*)(*)(*)ed about the Interstate Highway System.

 

Private companies don't build railroads, they are public-private partnerships.
Government supplies the right of way, or helps acquire it with eminent domain, and government provides the finance, that's how the transcontinental railroad got built, that's how most railroads got built.
But then Conservatives ignore reality in their desire to cling to dogma that has never ever really worked.......

 

Conservatives have never been right about anything.

 

so, in order to have people want to pick yours, we have to destroy our existing infrastructure?


Listen, I would love to have the option of highspeed transportation to places like Miam (9 hours away), atlanta (5 hours), New Olreas (6 hours) and even Jacksonville (4 hours).... but it shouldn't be govt financed. Either private industry does it, or noone

 

yet when private industry pulls a BP, republicans blame the gov for not fixing it fast enough...

 

negative... it was the tree huggers crying about BP and exxon.


I'm not against regulating a private business..... highspeed trains included.... but to completely subsidize it. It would be a beuarocratic clusterfawk of inefficiencies..... and would not be a viable option for people who could afford to drive anyways.

 

If you are going to claim that high speed rail is bad because it would require government subsidies and distort the market, then you also have to say that the Interstate is bad because it does the exact same thing.

If you really want the market to decide, then we should destroy the interstates. Then if the free market really wants car to be on top, the free market can rebuild them and run them profitably.

 

I don't want to cut our nose off to spite our face. We're invested in the interstates.... so I'm not going to say "destroy something we know works, and then rebuild them if that's what people want, or, we can try something new that may not work"


I'm understand subsidies..... I don't want the air industry under the govt control either.... but I know they do get subsidies. Same theory with highspeed.

 

Yup.

This thread evoloved exactly the way I expected it to.

We have right wingers who are reflexively opposed to anything that looks like progress or change, allied with other right wingers who clearly never travel, and who have probably never been on an airplane more than once or twice in their lives on vacation. They don't use the US transportation system, and they're too isolated and parochial to know that people in other modern nations have it a lot better.

Yet another example of a situation where the US is fast becoming second rate, and the people who fight investing in the future cheer for being second rate.

Health care, infrastructure, high speed internet access, energy policy. It's all the same.

They want to party like it's 1959.