Posted on 05/17/2019 9:31:54 AM PDT by Olog-hai
Rep. John Garamendi, D-Calif., said the U.S. has another big problem on its hands when it comes to China: control of the rail system.
“The Chinese rail company CRRC is establishing itself in America. It’s already wiped out the Australian rail industry. They could very easily do it in America,” he told Fox Business’ Maria Bartiromo on Friday.
The Chinese state-owned corporation is also the world’s top passenger train maker, has very heavy subsidies to do competitive pricing, “way, way below any other price,” and is going to “take over the market” if the U.S. doesn’t act fast, Garamendi added. …
(Excerpt) Read more at foxbusiness.com ...
As long as the oil keeps coming out of the fracking fields...
EXACTLY!
Amtrak should be sold to FedEx or UPS or Southwest Airlines.
Just watch a few freight trains go by with hundreds of cars containing grain, crude oil, double-stacked containers, etc. and you'll see why this does not make sense.
I notice in my area that the railroads seems to be investing in upgrading the roadbed and signaling system.
Except the Chinese make light rail trains, not freight trains. The US has relatively little light rail.
I ran my own numbers and it came to 64
Why aren’t we getting railroad tech from Japan ?
Well, Amtrak shouldn’t have come to be in the first place. Nixon should have deregulated the railroads, and maybe we would have at least 50 Class 1 carriers today instead of five, who could have gotten back on their feet with private-sector passenger service and gotten back to building up privately-funded high-speed rail like they were trying to do in the 1950s.
If it’s that easy for the Chinese to take over our railroads it a good thing that President Trump clawed back the billions of dollars that California was going to waste building a line between Frisco and LA.
Oh, we are. Kawasaki rail cars are operating on commuter railroads and light rail in places like Los Angeles, Boston, Washington DC, Philadelphia, Chicago, New York and elsewhere, for example.
I never know or care what he says because I immediately switch to another station, as soon as he comes on.
MLW-Worthington-Studebaker (yes, that Studebaker) had a division in Canada that manufactured locomotives. The Canadian operation contracted to sell Cuba some engines.
The US govt jumped on the American headquarters to force the Canadian subsidiary to cancel the Canada/Cuba contracts because of the US embargo, to which Canada was not a party. Canadians howled, but the contracts were cancelled.
I’ve often wondered why the US was so anal retentive. Did the government really fear a locomotive invasion from Cuba? I could just see the behemoths roaring up onto Miami Beach, a rooster tail of sand in its wake, as Floridians ran in panic.
Amtrak is good it all on its own...
Only because politicians have sold out America.
There's a disused rail line very close to where I used to live in the area I grew up. Its the old Buffalo Pittsburgh Line coming from Northern PA into Buffalo NY. The last passenger train on it was 1973. Now its become a bike path https://www.ecattrail.org
My great uncle, who was born in this area about 1880 and died in 1975, was a farmer, timber man, entrepreneur, etc... who also write about his farm life in a regular column in his small town newspaper of the day.
As a boy, he used to milk his family cows, put the milk in large jugs, and take them by train for about 30-40 minutes into south Buffalo to a dairy. As I recall from his writings, the journey cost 5 cents.
His old farm is now outer-ring suburbs. It would take someone about 40 minutes in rush hour to make the same journey in their car.
I am always puzzled how our high-tech, modern society can't afford to operate a simple one-line train economically when our ancestors could do so easily.
Actually, they do make freight cars. The only thing they don’t export with much success is locomotives.
Relative population density does not support train usage in many cases.
Oddly, it did many years ago when population density was much lower.
And the Texas Central Railway project is an all-privately-funded attempt to bring Japanese shinkansen “bullet train” technology to Texas.
See: Relative.
The point is that urban sprawl and suburbanization make the train an impractical option for transport in many cases. If you have to drive 10 miles to get to the train, then get some other kind of transport to take you from the train to your actual destination 10 miles away when the entire journey would be 25 miles by car in a more or less straight line, well, the train isn’t going to be your primary choice of transport now is it?
Rail is, by far, the most efficient way of shipping bulk goods overland. Also, extremely ecologically correct. Easily the least expensive way of transporting bulk goods.
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