Obama's Expensive Train Set

Human Events ^ | 2/10/10 | Donald Lambro

[End Times Sentinel]

Borrow money from China to buy trains from Japan and have them installed by the French and Americans won’t ride them.

BRILLIANT!!!

[jonrick46]

A super fast bullet train is possible when government lets the free market system do what it does best: build new things.

[BenKenobi]

All roads I see lead to Illinois. What a useless system.

Notice, how nothing goes north/south. Only the coasts, and East/West, and everything goes through Chicago.

‘High speed’ is such a boondoggle. I use ‘High speed’ to refer to trains slightly faster then the current system most of the time, but slower then cars.

[shorty_harris]

I wonder who does these “studies”? The government, I suppose. if not, it looks like a good time to get into that business!

[Publius]

Only the coasts, and East/West, and everything goes through Chicago.

It's called the "hub concept", the place where people change trains.

It's exactly what Delta, United and American do at Atlanta, Chicago and Dallas respectively.

[SoCal Pubbie]

I believe there is one route that true high speed trains could work. That's between Southern California and Las Vegas. It's a pain to fly and the traffic can be murder if you want to drive it. That being said, let a private company do it. If it can't turn a profit, forget it.

[OldMissileer]

When this whole boondoggle is built I vote we have Daphne Taggart run the whole thing.

It may then make money.

[Nepeta]

We live in interesting times and we have to ensure our transportation capability remains robust.

In some places, I would think a high speed roadbed could be constructed parallel to the interstate highways in places where there is plenty of land around them. Tying these routes to both the air and automobile systems makes sense. Corridors of unconnected rail that only slightly reduce travel time makes no sense at all, which is what Fearless Leader is proposing.

[Hegewisch Dupa]

nah - she run the wood-burners on it with a token schedule, and put her efforts into something real.

Once she's done submitting to Hank, that is...

"I'll REALLY tell you what..."

[Nepeta]

A super fast bullet train is possible when government lets the free market system do what it does best: build new things.

Exactly so.

[Apparatchik]

Quoting Dear Reader from his SOTU address:
There's no reason Europe or China should have the fastest trains, or the new factories that manufacture clean energy products.

This is an asinine argument for blowing billions on a white elephant that
a. won't be faster than Europe, China or Japan (and who cares if it isn't)
b. won't be used, and
c. won't get paid for in our lifetimes.
jingoism and train envy are poor reasons to divert taxpayer money.

[DannyTN]

[Son House]

These lines are monstrously expensive to build, costing an estimated $1 trillion dollars after full completion, maintenance, operational and subsidy costs are factored in (something Obama never mentions).

^
Another low estimate;

^
The Hiawatha Light-Rail Disaster

http://ti.org/antiplanner/?p=20

This one 11.6-mile light-rail line costs more than $20 million a year to operate. Farebox revenues cover only about a third of that. Half the rest is paid by the state of Minnesota and most of the other half comes from Hennepin County property taxes.

Minnesota residents, who had to pay most of the construction costs, were in for a series of shocks after the legislature approved the project following rancorous debate. First, construction costs quickly escalated: the project ended up costing $715 million.

[wally_bert]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3VTobWJlKlQ

[wally_bert]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gUERtAe73NI