Giltric: Wouldn't it be easier for you guys to move to the countires that give you a 30 hour work week with 8 months vacation, HSR from where you are to where you want to go, and free health care?

Sort of like how teatards are told to move to Somalia?

Doing the right thing is rarely the easy thing.

I'm not really interested in what is easier.

That's how we got in this boat to begin with, we let rich farkwads sell our nation out from under us because it was easier to hand over all control and responsibility for our nation's future than to tend it responsibly ourselves.

Not that I expect much better out of our morbidly obese nation.

Constantly looking for the easiest way to duck out of our problems. As long as our fat asses are comfortable, consequences can be damned, right?

DamnYankees: Who did the mayor of Cheyenne pay off to get not just a stop, but an out of the way stop?

Not like theres any important defense sites in the area that the DoD might want alternative transportation to and from in case of something...

MurphyMurphy: Constantly looking for the easiest way to duck out of our problems. As long as our fat asses are comfortable, consequences can be damned, right?

LOL we're talking about HSR, not energy independence.

HSR will never be as fast or faster than flying, and when people have a limited amount of time for vacation I doubt they would pick the 20 hour rail trip over the 6 hour flight.

The TSA does not add extra time only to flying, the TSA will be involved in HSR security. You will have the same hassle, you will not avoid the hassle.

mjones73: gas giant: Butbutbut profitable! Socialism! My tax dollars!
And then you point to airlines as a model of what you would prefer? What in the actual f*ck.

I think people are trying to point out that it would cost the same and be quicker to fly to most areas. Train travel in this country right now isn't much cheaper then flying, you think it's going to go down after all the money needed to build out and maintain this HSR infrastructure is spent?

Do you know why it's cheaper to fly?
Do you understand the concept of an investment?

We get what they are trying to point out.

I just try not to get my directions from people that can't see 2ft past their own noses.

Giltric: MurphyMurphy: Constantly looking for the easiest way to duck out of our problems. As long as our fat asses are comfortable, consequences can be damned, right?

LOL we're talking about HSR, not energy independence.

HSR will never be as fast or faster than flying, and when people have a limited amount of time for vacation I doubt they would pick the 20 hour rail trip over the 6 hour flight.

The TSA does not add extra time only to flying, the TSA will be involved in HSR security. You will have the same hassle, you will not avoid the hassle.

Did you mean to respond to someone else?

When did I say anything about the TSA? Did I say trains are faster than planes somewhere? What the flying fark are you on about?

MurphyMurphy: Giltric: MurphyMurphy: Constantly looking for the easiest way to duck out of our problems. As long as our fat asses are comfortable, consequences can be damned, right?

LOL we're talking about HSR, not energy independence.


HSR will never be as fast or faster than flying, and when people have a limited amount of time for vacation I doubt they would pick the 20 hour rail trip over the 6 hour flight.

The TSA does not add extra time only to flying, the TSA will be involved in HSR security. You will have the same hassle, you will not avoid the hassle.

Did you mean to respond to someone else?

When did I say anything about the TSA? Did I say trains are faster than planes somewhere? What the flying fark are you on about?


The bolded part is what you said and my response. The rest is a response to the rest of the posters in case you didn't have time to read the thread in your fury to show everyone, while using the doll, where Haliburton touched you.

HSR is a convienence to a very small number of people. It is a pipe dream in the US.

Giltric: The bolded part is what you said and my response. The rest is a response to the rest of the posters in case you didn't have time to read the thread in your fury to show everyone, while using the doll, where Haliburton touched you.

HSR is a convienence to a very small number of people. It is a pipe dream in the US.

Just because it's convenient for you to separate the HSR issue from it's obvious realm of infrastructure investments doesn't make it so.

And this is ultimately what this discussion is about, not energy independence or just the HSR, but the entire logic behind the b.s. argument of why this along with every other proposed domestic spending project, isn't possible. Keep repeating it's a pipe dream over and over, your only convincing yourself.

The only fury I have is aimed at people so miserably stupid they can't even realize they aren't discussing the issue, they are obfuscating it.

Case in point: The HSR is a convenience to only a very small number of people?
Huh, who knew?
Wow, that changes everything entirely!
Except for it being a completely made-up pile of steaming shiat.


The planes vs trains discussion is repeated in this thread several times. We all know the status quo is the preferred and easier travel option. It's why they call it the status quo. But no one wants to have a substantial discussion about the whys behind that being the case.

If we'd spent the last 50 years focusing on rail travel the way we have automobile and air you could replicate this discussion switching every instance of plane with train (and vice versa).. it's pointless. Your not discussing why HSR is a bad idea, your just repeating the obvious regarding our current culture and status quo. It's not even an argument, in either direction.

mjones73: Do you know why it's cheaper to fly? Pretty much the same reason Amtrak is only $1 billion in the hole every year, government money.
Do you understand the concept of an investment? Yep, given my previous point that Amtrak can't turn a profit even with government backing now, how do you expect them to do the same once this HSR is built? The investment is only going to pay off if enough people use HSR once it's built. Short of giving away train tickets, grounding airlines or taxing airfare to the point it's undesirable, I don't see that happening anytime soon.

And this is the discussion worth having.

It's hard to even produce solid numbers regarding how much (and in how many ways) the various elements of both industries are subsidized by the Federal Government.

You say it wouldn't be used enough to pay off long term. It may very well be the case. I think, as has been mentioned many times, that the coastal portions of a HSR system would be used greatly but it's hard for either of us to know 100%, either way unless we give it a fair shot somewhere.

I would go so far as to say it's nearly impossible to write a comprehensive cost/benefit analysis comparing HSR to the current air and road, nationwide.

What we do know is that at the basics, rail as a mode of transportation is less resource intensive and has proved much more economically viable (provided consumer demand/use) when compared dollar to dollar against other forms of travel. This has been proven to be true internationally (and historically) especially for areas with populations and distances that we see in coastal US and European nations.

Can the same be said of HSR as traditional rail? I don't have the numbers but I'd love to see them from nations that have been using HSR for years.

The yea's saying to do it because we believe it to be a good idea, and the nays saying not because it's impossible or unrealistic can talk past each other (as we have). I support the former because I think we won't know until we try and there is a lot worse we can do (we DO do) with our money than try new infrastructure projects that if they pay off at all could pay off in a really really big way for our economy.

rugman11: Our interstate highway system is amazing at moving people around cities and through the less populated areas and remains an incredibly cheap method of transportation (show me another means of travel that can move 7 people from NYC to St. Louis for $100).

again, that's the tricky part of this is identifying true cost. The analysis is almost impossibly complex.

The cost to move those 7 people from NYC to St Louis is so much more than $100 (even if that were all the gas it cost). Everything from DMVs to the highway system maintenance to State Police/Highway Patrol must be factored in.

And I won't even try to argue which is, short term, cheaper for the nation. I don't think that's a question here. But sometimes spending more today can save us magnitudes more in the future.

And if we move away from economics for a second and into more subjective fields we might ask "what is better?" in many other respects. Safety comes to mind, as we love to turn a blind eye in this nation to just how hazardous our auto and highway culture has become. And speaking of the incredible number of auto accidents in our nation... viola... in these subjective discussions we can find even more costs we probably didn't include in our original equation.

MurphyMurphy: The planes vs trains discussion is repeated in this thread several times. We all know the status quo is the preferred and easier travel option. It's why they call it the status quo. But no one wants to have a substantial discussion about the whys behind that being the case.

If we'd spent the last 50 years focusing on rail travel the way we have automobile and air you could replicate this discussion switching every instance of plane with train (and vice versa).. it's pointless. Your not discussing why HSR is a bad idea, your just repeating the obvious regarding our current culture and status quo. It's not even an argument, in either direction.


True...given enough times trains will be able to travel as fast as planes do currently, but by that time planes will be crossing the continent in under an hour.

Because, you know, we've never ever subsidized airline travel or its infrastructure in any way, ever, period, full stop, end, fin.

irving47: $200 Billion? So... One fiscal quarter's worth of Obama deficit spending? Go for it.

well, it's not like it's at george w. bush levels, so why not?

irving47: $200 Billion? So... One fiscal quarter's worth of Obama deficit spending? Go for it.

People will use fast trains to travel to nearby cities but when the train ride starts getting upwards of six hours or so, mostly only the puslilanimous cowards who won't fly will still ride the trains for longer trips than that.  Plus the occasional adventurer and some people who want to save a little money.

Given the expense of high speed rail, and the fact that I don't care to set policy based on a few pusilanimous cowards who don't want to fly, I'd say just build them between close cities and forget about cross-country.

You know, most people who live in England are probably still going to fly down to Greece even though Europe has a good rail infrastructure.

The CA to FL rail is just I-10. That's farking lazy.

The Texas routes look stupid. No one's going to take a train from Dallas to Houston via Austin. Ya think maybe the most populous cities in the state might be connected directly?

Also I would totally be on board with this shiat. There's not much reason in connecting the major lines, but yanno how you can fly into Newark and take a train to NYC? It'd be nice if the rest of the country worked like that instead of this hub/spoke multiple feelup nonsense. Overseas travel from a spoke city plain old sucks.

aerojockey: pusilanimous cowards

Ok, first off: http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/pusilanimous and secondly, you know you're saying COWARDLY COWARDS, right?

poot_rootbeer: So, that's not the transportation option that high-speed rail is going to replace. Think regional instead.

A flight from NYC to Savannah, GA might take five hours, including all the airport bullshiat. If a high-speed train route can get me there in six, for about the same price, it's well worth considering.

Ok either you win the thread or you just pointed out subby's strawman, I don't care which. And this is what DoT's across the country are considering.

Lsherm: FlashHarry: in before some conservatard divides the cost by the number of jobs created to come up with: "IT COSTS $300,000 PER JERB!!!!" forgetting, of course, that we also receive a shiny new piece of infrastructure that will generate revenue, facilitate commerce and make life easier for the public for a century afterwards.

There isn't a single passenger rail system in the world that generates enough revenue to cover the costs.  They are all subsidized.  Europe, Japan, and China all have to funnel money each year into their passenger rail systems above and beyond what they take in via tickets.

I believe it's a worthy subsidy, but liberals need to stop pretending that passenger rail isn't a money loser long-term.  Be honest about it: it's going to cost way more than it will ever bring in, but we do it for the same reason we keep the interstate system up and running - it's a public benefit.

So I'm in after a libtard tries to lie about the economics of passenger rail systems.

When it comes to public spending, "generating revenue" isn't solely limited to money taken in by the program itself. Otherwise, you could say that public schools, the defense advanced research department, NASA, etc. etc. etc. never "generated revenue". Most public programs are public specifically because commercially, it may not be viable but that having such a system greatly benefits the economy as a whole. Think of how much commerce has been created because of the interstate highway or educated adults or the goddamn internet (another "non-revenue-generating" waste of public money?).

A national high-speed railway system would have the same benefit; it provides a link between giant economic hubs that is, in the long run, less costly than flight and has far greater capacity.

muck4doo: cameroncrazy1984: muck4doo: My question is how much would tickets cost after spending 200 billion to make it happen? Like others said, this isn't a high speed railway through France or Belgium.

Like others have said, why not? Why CAN'T it be like that? Nobody says you have to use the whole system all at once.

I'd like it to be like that. I have already said so. Next trip to NY or San Jose I would love to take the train. But face it, 200 billion is a lot of money to make it happen. You can bring up our interstate highways, fact is, they are already there. People can drive or fly as it is. Amtrack is too damn expensive for the time and travel. I would like to see high speed rail, but I just don't see how it will be cost efficient compared to what we have now. This isn't Europe or Japan with a bunch of large population centers close to each other.

As others have mentioned, Europe's population centers aren't *that* close to each other. That being said, high-speed rail will, in the long term, be more economical than flying as a means for travel. The initial 200B is a large investment and I'm on the fence as to whether this is the right time to spend that. But we will have to eventually move towards it.

That being said, we don't have to wait for the government to pass a bill. There's nothing stopping private companies from forming railway systems. Elon Musk (founder of Tesla, Solar City, Paypal, etc.) said that'd be his next big company.

doyner: DamnYankees: doyner: DamnYankees: muck4doo: Money doesn't grow on trees.

Money is paper. It literally does grow on trees. I've never understood this expression.

Actually, US currency is made from cotton and linen....or electrons really.

So plants, not paper. I stand corrected.

Meh.  Most of our money is imaginary anyway.

*all* of money is imaginary; it only has value in that people believe it has value.

moothemagiccow: aerojockey: pusilanimous cowards

Ok, first off: http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/pusilanimous and secondly, you know you're saying COWARDLY COWARDS, right?



Sometimes people write more than one word in a row with the same meaning for emphasis.

Giltric: MurphyMurphy: The planes vs trains discussion is repeated in this thread several times. We all know the status quo is the preferred and easier travel option. It's why they call it the status quo. But no one wants to have a substantial discussion about the whys behind that being the case.

If we'd spent the last 50 years focusing on rail travel the way we have automobile and air you could replicate this discussion switching every instance of plane with train (and vice versa).. it's pointless. Your not discussing why HSR is a bad idea, your just repeating the obvious regarding our current culture and status quo. It's not even an argument, in either direction.


True...given enough times trains will be able to travel as fast as planes do currently, but by that time planes will be crossing the continent in under an hour.

Judging by how much faster planes are today than they were 50 years ago, I'd doubt that. You can improve high-speed rails far more easily than you can a jet.