Why Can’t America have High-Speed Bullet Trains?

Metallicman ^ | 25MAY19 | Editorial staff

[GOPJ]

If high speed rail made financial sense the private sector would be doing it or behind it - they'd have skin in the game. They would NOT be building it based on white guilt, 'elites' ego, or as a monument to current politicians.

Have you noticed all the huge buses driving around your community with TWO passengers or LESS?

No?

That's because buses have been covered with ‘art work’ so the public can't see what a failure they are... And the reason they're failures is because the people on government committees designed to support public transportation don't use public transportation... and no one has to profit from it so it's done badly, ... It's how socialism works - or more accurately, how socialism fails.

[ProtectOurFreedom]

What’s worse, rubbing salt in the wound, comes President Trump. He rightfully questioned the decision to kill the project. As a businessman, you do not casually start of kill things without study, and an analysis of the consequences. Obviously, there were concerns that the decision to kill the project were not carefully thought out.

Grammar! Punctuation! Coherence! Strike three.

[Captain Peter Blood]

The reason we don’t have passenger trains and high speed rail is that after W.W. II air travel took over and passenger trains were phased out in favor of moving freight.

In Europe, Japan, etc. the government runs the train systems and they are subsidized and that is how they have high speed rail.

To covert and build a high speed passenger rail service would cost untold Trillions of Dollars which the railroads could not afford to do, even with the government helping we could not afford it.

[antidemoncrat]

That is true but I wouldn’t want to get on either one.

[mowowie]

Check out China’s highway system...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4-XDxCb92X4

Jeremy say’s Britain is doomed..

[mowowie]

give it a break

[Truthoverpower]

Back to the 1800s we go !

[JimRed]

We could, but the costs would be worse than air travel without significant subsidies (OUR money to support those who use them).

[conservatism_IS_compassion]

Europe is very compact compared to the US. A lot of people in a small area. The US is over 2,000 miles across

3,000 miles, more like.

The problem high speed rail has is that it’s slow compared to jet airliners, and jet airline travel costs are getting more cost-competitive with the advance of gas turbine technology and airframe construction technology. So even if you think you might be able to break even on a “high speed” railroad in today’s market, you have to reckon with the possibility that competition from jets will be even tougher by the time your railroad gets built.

[dearolddad]

Because choo-choos are inefficient and too much infrastructure.

Don't you dare let the late great Willie choo-choo Green hear you say that!

[GaryCrow]

I’m in europe and japan quite a bit for work and take the bullet trains frequently. It’s usually Paris to Cologne or Frankfurt and Tokyo to Osaka. I like them and they fit the niche but they’d be totally impractical in the U.S. First, the distances are short unlike the U.S. They do about 200 mph but nobody takes them if the ride is going to be over four hours, they go by air then. That rules out most major city pairs in the U.S. except the northeast corridor. They don’t stop at every podunk town in between, they usually only make a couple of stops between the major cities and the doors open for about 30 seconds before they’re off again. Putting a stop at every small town would defeat the purpose and people would quit using them. They also don’t have road crossings, they go over or under all roads.

Cars and fuel are also prohibitively expensive in europe and japan. It’s not that people necessarily want to take the train, it’s that driving is so expensive that it makes the train more attractive. Most would rather drive I’m sure. The high price of driving is one thing that makes their quality of life less than ours in the U.S. I don’t want to be priced out of the freedom that vehicles give to our lifestyle in the U.S. and be forced onto trains, that’ll decrease my quality of life. That same decreased access to affordable automobiles is what drives them to be more city centric which makes train travel more viable. It’s much more common for a european or japanese to live in a big city in a small apartment than it is for americans. They might enjoy living in a high rise in a 800 sq ft apartment but I wouldn’t enjoy that. I’ll take my 2700 sq ft house on my 160 acres with a pond in the country. I’m just a middle class pogue but to live like I do Germany or Japan I’d have to be rich.

The fact that train travel is more prevalent in those countries is a sign that their living standard is lower than ours, it’s not something that we necessarily want to emulate.

[vannrox]

same reason they don’t have ‘em in Canada and Australia but have ‘em in Japan: it takes a compact country with a high population density to have any chance that they’re economically feasible ...

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You should read the article.

They have them in Australia. As well as Russia, and China where the distances are quite enormous between cities.

[vannrox]

1) America is large. There’s no HSR from Moscow to Paris, is there?

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Yes there is HSR between Moscow to Paris.

[Jim Noble]

“Yes there is HSR between Moscow to Paris”

Reference?

[vannrox]

HSR in 2015.



You should read the article. It goes into great lengths to describe the state of HSR in the rest of the world. Even tiny Java has HSR. Enormous nations have them, and small nations have them.

The map clearly shows a HSR line from Paris to Moscow, though there are numerous stops along the way. This map is four years old. Who knows what the HSR line looks like today.

[vannrox]

From the article to a fellow train lover...

[vannrox]

I've read all the the comments. It seems like the general consensus is that most FReepers (with one or two exceptions) have never rode in a HSR, do not care to ride in one, and associate it with progressive liberalism and communism. They would rather follow the dictated of whomever is flying the conservative banner rather than question why things are so, and what is wrong with our society.

I for one, have a background in aviation, and I love trains. So am I conflicted? Not in the least. Each method serves a purpose and a role. For cheap costs, easy comfort, and a leisurely experience, nothing beats HSR. This is hands-down the preferred way of travel.

Air travel in the USA is like going into a slaughterhouse with TSA groping, and NSA screening, not to mention DHS military watching your every move. Then you are jam packed in seats too small for you, with cramp inducing leg room.

As the videos clearly show, that HSR in China doesn't resemble the USA nightmare. And the point of the article is a good one...
Americans need... NEED to slap their collective faces and look around them. The rest of the world is moving on, and America is being left in the dust. Or to put it another way....

I met a IT specialist who did ten years at hard labor. He told me that all he could think of while he was in prison was all the different ways that "dial-up" modems could be improved. he must have worked out twenty really ingenious ways to improve them. Then when he exited prison he looked around and everyone was using wireless and dial-up modems were obsolete. He was totally out of his element, and went into a kind of mind numbing shock. It is difficult when all your plans and beliefs come crashing down.

Most of the comments here, and read them for yourself if you don't believe me, are rationalizations as to why there isn't any HSR in the USA. Rationalizations. Not one person is willing to look at the problems and the obstacles and say.."Here's the problem! and we, as Americans can easily over come that minor hurtle." Instead, we rationalize.

Like the overweight person that sits in front of the television and watches a show on how to exercise. Instead of turning off the TV and exercising themselves.

[elbook]

WHY???

Cuz they are HORRIBLY expensive, and in America we have a ‘Johnny Canal’ type problem (we’d need a network of them or you’d just have to fly a plane again anyway to get to/from the FEW endpoint places the system would have.

They never would be able to pay for themselves.

Government is hardly able to do the job right on anything.

Airplanes are far more versatile (scalable for the traffic)

[Cincinnatus.45-70]

So then,why don’t we have high speed rail, or even successful light rail projects? All of those are money losers, too. Light rail steals resources from better forms of transit, like buses, that poor people need, to cater to a hobby of the wealthy elite. Maybe not on the scale of high speed rail, but steals nonetheless.

Since this speed rail is so great, someone should easily be able to convince investors to build one with private money. Like light rail all over the country, it will never be a commercial success. The only way it can be built and operated is by stealing from taxpayers at gunpoint. That’s how they do it in China the way.

But if this idea is so great, it will be privately built and be successful any day now.

But it has no economic value.

Sadly, for all the moon-eyed rail enthusiast out there. I’m all for them, as long as they use their own money.

[vannrox]

Sadly that is also the reason why we have cities like Detroit, and hell-holes like LA and Baltimore.

The Constitution defines the role of government to be very limited. All these other "projects" that are "for the public good" are supposed to be at the State level. If the State cannot be able to improve (or at least) maintain the standard of living for it's citizens, the the State governments have failed.

You cite concerns about cost and pricing. This is a laughable argument. Look at all the money Obama threw away. look at all the money that is going on to wars all over the globe. hey bub! YOU are the one paying for this.

My argument is simple;

1. Government has as their very first duty to their citizens. If they are unable to do so, then they have FAILED, and a new government must be put in it's place.

2. You can compare governments all over the world and all over history. Once you can compare, you can see the good, and the bad in each one.

What the article says, and as I promote, is the idea that America is UNABLE to build HSR because it no longer has that ABILITY. Further, the crime, and corruption has reached a level that the American government barely functions at all.

I argue that instead of saying "nah, we don't need that, we don't want that" as justification and rationalization of our sloth and inability, we should say...

"You know what, we can do that. We can make that. We will build that, and we can do so quickly." But, you know, and I know that the government as it functions today does not have that ability.