Posted on 06/11/2010 7:43:40 AM PDT by Willie Green
If you are convinced they are a good idea, can we see the data?You're the one who lives in Florida, Mr. "ecologist".
Go out and count all the BP tarballs on the beach yourself.
Who do you think is behind this traindoggle? The unions make out real well on trains.
Pray for America
Willie, you're being ignorant. The reason for trains is social control. Witness the newest rail transit system in the US - the Seattle light rail line. A 14 mile line from downtown Seattle, through the Rainier valley communities, and to the Seatac airport. Thirteen stops.
Exactly ONE has a park-and-ride. None of the others have a park-and-ride. And you'll get ticketed if you park for more than 4 hours in any of the neighborhoods around the train. And if you park overnight at the park-and-ride? Car gets towed.
This isn't about offering an alternative to cars; this is about eliminating cars altogether. You cannot use your car to get to the park-and-ride. It's walk or use the bus only.
“Let the market place decide.
I do that every time I put gas in my truck.”
I like driving on the backroads too. The interstates today are jammed with long haul freight trucks. Besides I don’t have to ride on that socialist federally controlled pork project.
Great. Then the fare box on the train should cover at least 70% of the operational costs. Raise the prices of tickets by 200-300% and you'll get close to what happens with the highways.
And you'll see what few sales you have now simply go away.
“Well Amtrak trains riding rails in the Northeast make money.”
True, but the majority of the people in the northeast live and reside in a close environment. And that is fine; however, not all of us want, nor NEED to live in this type surrounding.
I live in a town where the closest convenience store is about two miles away. My grocery store is six miles - one way.
I live about an hour driving time from my house to my city office. I have land to farm and I don’t hear the road noise from my backyard - that’s the way I like it and want it.
There are things in which the government needs to be involved - public roads is one of them - IMO.
LOL you’re a clown.
Yeah lets get rid of those trucks so we can all do our shopping at the train station.
This is the problem you refuse to address, Willie: getting to/from the train takes about as long as just driving to the destination!I consider it to be a disingenous objection.
For instance, I live in a NW suburb of Houston.
It is much more convenient for me to drive to my local grocery store than to drive all the way downtown to hop on the Houston Metrorail, ride it back and forth for a while, then drive all the way back home, stopping in at the grocery store on my way back.
So what if I refuse to address your example?
I find it silly and intellectually dishonest...
and not very "clever" to boot...
Willie, someone is posting under your name. That is the only reason I can find for the irrelivant post putatively from you.
On the off chance that you are typing while sleepwalking, you switched from the alleged virtues of high speed rail to tar balls.
Is their some nexus I missed?
The train wins.
Unless there's a mudslide over the track. Then you stop the train, herd everyone on to buses, and send them the rest of the way. Like we do here in the Seattle area 3-4 times a year when a mudslide closes the Sounder commuter train.
The bus just takes a short detour around the block. A train stops altogether.
The train wins.
- - - - -
Only in your fantasy world.
When the tracks need repair, the train stops. The bus will detour around road repair.
When the travel demand changes, the bus route is easily modified.
Add cost and the bus clearly wins to everyone but you, train manufacturers and government.
Is this a commercial?
Rails are roads too.
My opinion is that the Federal government should not be in the intestate highway business only because I think a private company can build and maintain them cheaper and more efficiently.
I don’t care which mode of transportation is used.
If you support a federally controlled interstate highway system your argument against a federally controlled rail system is weak. They are both roads.
Yeah, we saw how "accurate" that Congressional research was, when passing Obamacare!
Seattle's Sound Transit spent $179 million per mile for light rail, and that was predominantly at-grade light-rail as well. Elevating or building dedicated heavy-rail rights-of-way is considerably more expensive.
My guess is we'll spend over $200 million per mile for any high speed rail systems installed. That $2 trillion estimate for a high speed rail network in the US will most likely be closer to $8 trillion, and the financing will go from $7.5 billion a month in interest to $30 billion a month.
Raise the prices of tickets by 200-300% and you'll get close to what happens with the highways.Only if you place toll booths on all the highways.
THEN you'll be much closer to an apples-to-apples comparison.
Although most of the country is too spread-out for passenger rail, there are certainly some high-density corridors where this would work.
Now it’s time for liberals to admit that if they want to run high-speed trains, we would need to go nuclear.
“According to the United States Department of Transportation’s Bureau of Transportation Statistics, rail and mass transit are considerably more subsidized on a per passenger-mile basis by the federal government than other forms of transportation; the subsidy varies year to year, but exceeds $100 dollars (in 2000 dollars) per thousand passenger-miles, compared to subsidies around $10 per thousand passenger-miles for aviation (with general aviation subsidized considerably more per passenger-mile than commercial aviation), subsidies around $4 per thousand passenger-miles for intercity buses, and automobiles being a small net contributor through the gas tax and other user fees rather than being subsidized.[74”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amtrak#Public_funding
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