[null and void]

_@_//

Fail Snail

[neodad]

Shhhhh. Willie Green will be here soon...

[glorgau]

High speed rail is the Concorde of ground transportation.

I think I’ll trademark that phrase.

[PugetSoundSoldier]

A direct look at the economics of high speed rail in China as compared to the US. It MAY work in some incredibly high-density situations with low car ownership populations, and very low costs of implementation, but outside of that it's a loser.

[HiTech RedNeck]

OH WILLLLLLLLEEEEEEEEEEE

[Carley]

There is a lite rail station in Weehawken, NJ right across from the Ferry. The geniuses in their infinite wisdom provided NO parking.

The entrance to the lite rail station is barely marked and easy to miss with no chance for a turnaround to get back to the station.

[OrangeHoof]

At issue is this nagging little thing liberals hate. It’s called “freedom”. In a car, you can drive practically anywhere there is a public road and you can stop whenever you wish for side trips, rest stops and meals.

With a train, even if it runs smoothly and on time, leaves you with a headache once you arrive. If your destination is not close enough to walk to, you must pay for a taxi or a subway or hope someone is meeting you with an automobile to take you the rest of the way.

But if you drive to your destination, you are the master of your own travel plans and pace. And if you need to run an errand or attend some local attraction, your chariot is right there with you, often parked at no additional charge to take you directly where you want to go when you want to go leave.

Unless you rent a car or borrow the car of your host, you have no such luxury when you take a train or fly.

Freedom. It’s a wonderful thing. That’s why liberals want to force you into having less of it.

[snowsislander]

Japan and France have both spent about as much on high-speed rail as they have on their intercity freeway systems, yet the average residents of those countries travel by car 10 to 20 times as much as they travel by high-speed rail. They also fly domestically more than they take high-speed rail.

Mr. O'Toole is wildly off if he thinks that 20 times as Japanese travel intercity via car than via rail. In fact, I would dare say that he has never traveled intercity in Japan. There are only 450 national non-expressway highways in a nation of 120+ million people (with nine more currently under construction). The average length of a national highway is only 81 miles.

Japan also has 5,400 miles of national expressways; however, these have been quite expensive to use --- toll charges are based on distances, and until recently, averaged about 40 cents per mile for a standard passenger car. (Tolls are coming down, both because some of the most important highways have already recouped their construction costs, and it is politically popular to lower these tolls especially since the excess moneys generated were going straight into the general revenue.)

Furthermore, in Hokkaido and other places in Japan that get heavy snowfall, train travel during the winter is far more convenient than trying to drive. Hokkaido alone makes up about 30% of Japan's land surface. (It is true that there are towns in Hokkaido that are accessible only by road, having no rail or airport, but winter travel among these towns is a vanishingly small percentage of all travel in Hokkaido. It is also true that driving all over Hokkaido is quite popular in the summer months with tourists.)

If you count traffic in the Kanto megalopolis as "intercity" when traveling between, say, Setagaya and Bunkyo, then you might be able to bloat the "intercity" travel figures for automobiles quite a bit. If there is a source for Mr. O'Toole's Japanese numbers (he doesn't cite one), then my guess is that it must include such bloat.

Going to Mr. O'Toole's point about air travel versus rail, in Japan, if the rail travel time between two Japanese cities is less than 3 hours, then as a strong general rule rail proves to be the winner. If rail travel time between two cities much exceeds 4 hours, then air travel between those cities does win hands-down.

[JerseyHighlander]

Highways in France absolutely do not “pay for themselves” as so casually posited by this Cato article, I’m amazed the CATO people let this slip in to the article, because it was from the CATO Institute I learned about the failures of the European highway and gas tax systems(back when Italy tried to forcefully require all commercial vehicles to use an EZPass equivalent).

So color me confused.

[cookcounty]

High Speed Rail gets close to break-even in high population density areas. The US, relative to Europe or Japan, is VERY low density. The math isn’t there, the number of passengers per mile run (and maintained) just aren’t there.

[Grizzled Bear]

The rail advocates go ballistic whenever anyone questions their fantasies, mostly engaging in ad hominem attacks (“you must be paid by the oil companies!”) or accusing skeptics of lying about rail...

There's something oddly familiar about this statement. Now where have I seen such an agrument...? There also seemed to be something about antirail and antiurban racism...

I'm at a loss! Can any of you folks help me out?