High-Speed Rail? Over My Dead Body!

Well alright then.

In this instance and Lord willing into the future "regular Joes" will keep a tight hand on the reins from here on out.

This is something China is looking into and I thought it was cool. If I could I'd start a business running it up and down the Florida turnpike and I-95, I-75, I-4 and all the other big roads.

Of course since government can't keep its hands out of the transportation sector they'd probably be run by the governments which means low service and crap expenses.

Shh, don't give them ideas!

Rail does not compete with air, it competes with road. Had Henry Ford not made cars the desired mode of travel, and Eisenhower not pushed the interstate highway system (mostly as a Defense project, btw), then cars would not dominate the city-to-city transportation market, railways would. Early to mid 20th century, America very deliberately decided that cars were our preference, and passenger rail began to die.

That said, a huge volume of freight still moves by rail in the US because it's far cheaper and more efficient than truck or air. Air is usually reserved for priority freight and trucks take over from rail for local distribution or for a cheaper alternative to air for priority stuff.

I wouldn't say "America very deliberately decided". The decision was pretty much made for us.

Rail would never succeed vs car, because cars offer vastly more freedom of movement vs trains. If you drive you can go and do what you want. Take the train and the station in town is your limit.

The only way tus would have worked is for something like the Zip cars being a mainstay on the local level and rail being the inter-city standard. Human nature makes this unlikely.

Believe it or not, until relatively recently, people used to walk to and from public transportation.

If you ever believed that our elected representatives actually do that (represent us), especially over the long term, then America did decide that. The interstate highway system took decades and billions to build so it was a decision that America made, repeatedly.

That's all well and good--unless you happen to live in rural Wisconsin.

Because then you can walk to public transportation, but it will be 10 miles in -30 weather, through 2' of snow--one way.

People also used to not have indoor plumbing. I don't see anyone lobbying for fetching water from the pump and wiping your ass with the Sears catalog in the outhouse.

Anyway, before I got on that, I was going to mention one other thing about the Interstate Highway System. It could be apocryphal, but I'm pretty sure when it was designed, part of its value was that it could serve as an expedient landing strip for strategic bombers. If WWIII happened and the Soviets took out the airfields, you could land your B52s & such on the Interstates--[you really can't land a bomber on a railroad track].

With modern highways with concrete medians, I don't know how much of that still holds up, but that's what I'd heard.

Not in California.

When all of our politicians give up the vehicles and air travel that I pay for and start using buses and rail, I will too. Until then screw them and their ideas for telling me how I should travel.

So I'm taking it you think the last 50 years of Americans voting for politicians who gave us the interstate highway system was a sham?

We wanted someplace to let our big cars run and our Army run back and forth at high speed. We got it.

I don't know about bombers specifically, but the interstate system incorporates a prescribed number of long, straight, level stretches with no wires or whatever above them specifically to function as runways in the event of TEOTWAWKI.

*Googles*

Damn you, now I have that stupid song stuck in my head.

I hate to disagree with you in general, but in this case I must.

No section of Interstate freeway in the entire nation is in any way suitable for use as a runway for any kind of plane at all, neither by design nor by fortuitous accident.

It's simply 100% myth.

Huh. Wikipedia agrees with you. I have always heard the runway story, right from the first time I was old enough for my father to tell me about it. Learn sumpin' new every day, don'cha?

Sweden actually does have roads that their Saab fighters can use as runways.

We've had a couple of local incidents where small planes have landed on I-81 and US-23 in the last few months.

Monorail! Monorail!

We don't have a donut big enough for an emergency brake.

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Grandtheftcow agrees: Learned something new rep.

I'm not sure where you got that idea, but it's quite foolish.

Yep.

http://www.snopes.com/autos/law/airstrip.asp

I check WF to see how the far right is interpreting the news.

Interestingly enough it seems most message boards have been shifting further to one side or the other over the last couple of years and are losing the diversity of opinions they may have had.

Depends on what part of the state we're talking about.

No it doesn't.

I see lots of people who walk to the muni, ride the muni, then walk the couple of blocks to work. Still more take the BART to the muni. I imagine in the 20's and 30's and up to about the end of WW2 it was very common for people to walk to mass transit, get dropped off, and then walk to their final destination.

Even more people still use their cars, trucks and SUV's, in San Diego and San Francisco area. The reason is simple. It is still more convenient.

To try and compare today with the 20's and 30's is simplistic at best. Especially given the relative size of our communities in CA today versus 80 years ago.

Oerdin, if you think public transit is so wonderful you should probably be sure to use it. But, don't think you are either qualified, or empowered to try and dictate what others should be using for their mode of transportation.