Obama to build high-speed rail network

Lord help me, he's doing something I like

A California highspeed rail alone would save millions of gallons of gasoline, and nationwide it would also be great for shipping. I really hope this one goes through.

Fuck you, Obama.

Fund your FailRail with someone else's goddamned money. Maybe the people who actually want and intend to use the fucking thing.

Boondoggle.

I can fly from the Bay Area to Southern California for less than $100 right now.

They're going to have to seize an enormous amount of land in some of the most heavily populated areas to make this thing work. $8 billion is a rather small downpayment. Don't think so? It cost over $1 billion for California to extend the BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit) system a few miles from Daly City to the San Francisco airport.

It's not my fault if you people persist in believing the people who bring you AMTRAK are going to provide fast, cheap, reliable service...

And we always get great service from those whose jobs are not at risk from competition, don't we?

Boondoggle... or something worse?

It won't compete with planes... but what could it enalbe to be done quickly...

I'd kill for a bullet train from NJ to Greenville, SC. I'm so fucking sick of spending $1k and dealing with airports every time mom wants us to visit.

And a highspeed rail from sacramento to San Francisco would absolutley KILL northern california highway traffic.

Then the New Jersians, South Carolinans, and Californians can fucking pay for it.

UA, can I infer from your statements here that you would support raising the gas tax by about $2/gallon so that roads are paid for only by those who use them, and not with general funds?

I like the idea of building high speed trains in the hope they could actually be somewhat reliable at getting people to where they need to go, but it should be left up to each state if they want any part of it. If the Federal government does anything it should be just to provide incentive to competing rail companies to build it on their own dime. Clincher is there aren't really that many competing railroads left.

Not really. A good many of the commuters would be going further south.

Also, a high-speed rail line isn't going to go everywhere; commuters would likely need to find yet another form of transportation to reach their final destinations.

Finally, it would have to be cost competitive with driving to get very many of those commuters out of their cars.

I would be all for that if the Federal and State governments would kindly return all the taxes it collects into the general fund that are currently used for highway projects.

Well, I hope they'll run more on-time than Amtrak does now. I had the occasion to travel by train from Iowa to Chicago. The train (California Zephyr) showed up 4 hours late.

Yup. I have no problem with expanding the passenger rail system, but if Amtrak is any indication, ObamaRail will be a first class failure- as most guvmint programs are.

Might as well post this now and beat the rush...

Having lived in Europe (where rail travel works) and having traveled + lived all over our great nation, I can see where the reasoning is coming from.

However, I see where UA is coming from. The great plains is one place where rail travel will not work....the population density is just too low (and distances between destinations) so great that it could never be profitable.

But if we implement this plan in the North East (which has a similiar population density as Western Europe) it could indeed work well.

You can't convince me that with America's work ethic we can't make this work (in limited areas) as well or better than Europe.

Personally, I would love to see vehicle traffic reduced or contained.
If I could live without a car, I would.

Unfortunately where I live it would not work on a large scale.
But if we had, for example, a high-speed rail link between Augusta + Atlanta I would be on that bitch tomorrow.

Right now we've got a silly situation where commuter rail, long distance passenger rail, and freight frequently run along the same lines. The net result, with so many different trains traveling at so many different speeds, is that any slight deviation in schedule results in disaster. High speed rail on dedicated lines should be vastly more reliable and allow for higher volume service.

One of the big reasons that Amtrak is often late is that most routes share rails with freight traffic, which is given priority over passenger traffic. In many areas there's no double tracking so traffic can only go in one direction at a time. Presumably this would be addressed on any newly built routes.

The catch with high-speed rail systems though is that when you build them, you have to redo a lot of the crossings in order to eliminate as many of them as possible. After all, as many fucktards try to beat a train going 75 and lose and cause derailments, can you imagine the same thing happening when someone tries to beat a train going around 300? Building new would be the best thing to do, but the issue with the crossings will be a bitch to work out.

There are other reasons for the delays- track maintenance that runs overtime, electrical problems, not to mention general incompetence.

2 questions:

1. Is this like the conveyor belt but without the airplane? and;

2. Are they going to harden this fucker against EMP strikes?

What Paladin said.

Let's also not discount the option of directly charging tolls on large, maintenance-heavy roadways.

I've taken Amtrack from the Bay Area to Sacremento on and off for a few years. I think I dealt with one 15 minute delay in that period.

I've driven that route hundreds of times. My departure is ALWAYS on time and stops are at my discretion.

I think it's a good idea.
Our infrastructure (and not just highways and railways) is getting bad. We've got bridges about to collapse. Hell, I live near the Brent Spence bridge in southwestern Ohio. For those unfamiliar with it, the bridge was build in 1963 and was designed to carry a maximum of 85,000 cars a day. As of 2007 it was carrying 155,000 cars a day. It's on the top 25 bridges in the U.S. that are in dire need of repair.

I posted a picture below:

J.

"Oh....I thought he said high-speed fail train!"

We're both railfans, so I feel ya.

This is AMTRAK. They've brought us nothing but fail and AIDS for almost six decades.

Not to mention that it'll go wayyyyy over budget.

Is there any way (not likely, but still) that private enterprise would undertake this?