Posted on 08/11/2010 4:00:53 AM PDT by Willie Green
Rep. John Mica (R., Fla.), top Republican on the Transportation Committee, criticized the administration for giving little of $8 billion in high-speed money to the Northeast.
"They practically ignored the region of the country where high-speed makes the most sense - the Northeast Corridor," he said. The corridor received $485 million, or 6 percent, of the stimulus funding.
And Mica, who wants to give private companies a chance to build and operate high-speed service in the Northeast, blamed Amtrak for doing too little to speed trains between Washington and Boston.
OpenSecrets.org reveals that John Mica is funded by the Airline Industry, and his real agenda is to obstruct development of any competitive passenger rail service.
However, it would require entirely new, straight-line ROW from Newark to DC and from New Rochelle-Providence, and probably also from Providence to Back Bay.
Apart from costing trillions, this would require the displacement of the wealthiest and most influential people in this country, perhaps in the world.
Which means it will never happen.
Spending mere billions on the existing ROW is putting lipstick on a pig.
Has a cost/benefit analysis been done.
52 billion? In what, 1945 dollars?
LMAO!
Saraland, AL Train Wreck, Sept 1993, An Amtrak train jumped the tracks and plunged into a foggy bayou before daybreak today, trapping passengers in a submerged car and killing at least 26 people.
When the search was suspended because of darkness Wednesday night, 44 bodies had been pulled from the water and three crewmen who had been in the lead locomotive were counted among the dead. Six passengers were missing.
Currently, a SINGLE BRIDGE is being rebuilt on the line between New Haven and Providence that the contractor bid about 74 million to build (a “stimulus” job). The design sucks, so costs will easily run ovr a hundred million. It’s one of 5 simple bridges in that town, too. That’s a half a billion to cross ONE TOWN on the line. And these are just simple bridges over town roads, not any of the lift/bascule bridges that would be required over water.
Also, if it were to go a new route, it would not service the ridership that would be needed to justify such a massive pricetag. And the massive pricetag is far lower than what a realistic estimate would be.
As an engineer, and one who has worked on substantial AMTRAK projects on this corridor many times, this cost estimate is insanely low for construction costs alone, never mind design and oversight, as well as property acquisition that would drag out for decades.
Do people actually think this stuff through, or just print it and/or post it to make themselves look foolish?
With a little knowledge about how track operations are done, someone who wantd to derail a high speed train could sneak onto the track (very easy just about anywhere, and especially easy where the trains go the fastest) and clamp on a simple apparatus, run back to their vehicle, smoke a cigarette and be done with the whole thing in about 5 minutes.
High speed rail line between Philadelphia and New York City?
Why does the phrase “out of the frying pan, into the fire” come to mind?
Cost/benefit analysis or even paying for something isn’t necessary in Willie’s socialist utopia.
People have to remember that the railways here were built in the 1800’s and the cities and towns grew up around them.So they're pretty hemmed in.
Spending $52 billion to save 4 minutes! are they nuts, yes of course they are.
So just like every person who is a climate change skeptic is funded by "Big Oil," every person who is a high-speed rail skeptic is funded by "Big Airlines?"
Who wants to go to Philly anymore anyway?
Question for someone that knows,, in this time of terrorism, how hard is it to loosen and move a RR track at night?
The technology to incorporate track continuity sensors into the train signal system has been around for a long time. But as with most safety related technology, there is industry resistance to spend the funds on such devices unless mandated. Freight railroads in particular would prefer to simply suffer occasional derailments rather than put forth the effort to maintain their track in mint condition.
Unfortunately, it is the unwary public who falls victim to such irresponsible and myopic corporate cost cutting.
Bring back the Eastern Air Shuttle. and get rid of the muzzies who want to hijack planes so one can arrive at the airport minutes before departure and buy a one way ticket on the plane after it takes off.
When people travel from Philadelphia to New York, do they ever come back?
Just to run another line from Detroit to Chicago would require eliminating 3 or 4 dozen small towns, maybe more. In almost all of those towns, the bulk of the downtown area is within a couple hundred feet of the existing line.
The groundbreaking service emphasized convenience and simplicity—revolutionary in an era when air travel was both considered and expected to be a luxury. Not only were seat reservations not required, seat assignments were not given, and initially no check-in was required and no boarding passes were issued. Eastern guaranteed availability, however, and planes flew hourly whether empty or full. In the event of a full flight, Eastern simply added another aircraft. Jet airliners were added in 1967 and the shuttle became all-jet in 1978 with a fleet of dedicated Boeing 727s.[citation needed]
The shuttle proved one of Eastern's most successful ventures. Other airlines, including Pan American World Airways, eventually set up competing services.[citation needed]
So just like every person who is a climate change skeptic is funded by "Big Oil," every person who is a high-speed rail skeptic is funded by "Big Airlines?"
Well yes, I suppose that's technically true.
Climate change is real and always has been since the dawn of time.
If it weren't for global climate change, the Great Lakes would still be buried under the polar ice cap.
The fallacy in the Left Wing partisan rhetoric is that they ignore the fact that this is a natural trend, and blame it all on Man's activities.
However the American People need to wake up and understand... just because the Left Wing practices junk science, it doesn't mean that the Global Oil Parasites are telling the truth.
The Two Party System is broken.
They are flip sides of the same coin.
Both kowtow to special interests and neither represents the best interests of the American People.
Throw the bums out, no matter what party label they wear.
“This lack of designation shuts states along the NEC out of competing for . . . grant money available to other rail lines, and has already resulted in the NEC missing out on adequate funding for badly needed infrastructure upgrades and rail-expansion projects,” Castle, Sestak, Pascrell, and four other representatives said in a recent letter to House leaders. They asked for congressional hearings on high-speed rail development in the Northeast Corridor.
There you have it folks. “Grant money” spelled your money to be use for HSR in the northeast corridor. Great for the folks in the other 40 states, who will be paying and paying and paying, at the very time when we see why governments should NOT be involved in private enterprise. When the nation is broke, and cannot pay for present obligations, much less HSR, the morons in Congress press on, full speed ahead and damn the folks who will do the paying.
SEPTA not running on Trenton line today. AMTRACK signalling problem.
Bottom line; GOOD LUCK GETTING TO WORK WITHOUT A CAR
This is reality; not a dream
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