Posted on 02/11/2011 3:08:04 PM PST by Pontiac
Ohio may yet get on track with President Obama's newly announced $53 billion initiative to build a nationwide high speed rail network.
A bipartisan group of northern Ohio Congress members met Thursday with Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood to discuss building a high speed rail line along Lake Erie that would link Cleveland with Chicago, Detroit, Toledo and Buffalo, and also include routes to Youngstown and Pittsburgh. Building a line along the lake is a top tier part of Obama's rail program.
Bainbridge Township GOP Rep. Steve LaTourette said he plans to work with Republicans and Democrats from Ohio, New York, Pennsylvania, Indiana, Illinois and Michigan "to see if there's a way we can help restore some of what the President's vision is on high speed rail in our part of the world."
"If we can go to him with a proposal that doesn't cripple Ohio's general fund and puts people to work and moves us into the 21st century when it comes to passenger rail, I'm sure he'll listen to us," LaTourette said of Kasich.
(Excerpt) Read more at cleveland.com ...
The high speed rail is not about speed or energy savings but about restricting freedom of choice in travel. Remember those movies where the Gestapo agents go down the train compartments asking for your papers?
Kasich realizes that if this was such a great investment then private business would be all over it.
Just think of the practical if this marvelous train existed.
I’d have to get up at five, get ready and drive to the terminal to find a parking space and be ready to board the train by 6am. If I’m late, tuff shiite. Wait another 4 hours or whatever.
The train, to achieve high speed, can’t stop at every wide space on the road. Has to bypass most cities to gain sufficient speed to be efficient, then slows and stops at major depots to pick up/discharge passengers who have to go through the same meet it or loose it scenario.
Then I arrive and take a taxi, bus, rental car with long lines, to get to my final destination.
How many passengers will do this day after day, to pay the cost of this marvel?
You know the answer, and our dumb-assed Reps need to know it, too.
I’d rather drive and have the convenience of doing it my way.
When ever they talk about high speed rails in other countries, one should remind the speaker of the lack of property rights in those countries.
China never had to worry about ‘purchasing’ the land they needed for railways.
NOpe not happening! Ohio does not nor can afford ths.Kasich already said no to the high speed railroad.
you used the key term ‘decentralized’. So much harder to socialize or ‘centralize’ a population.
The 3C was going to hit 79MPH but average about 40MPH.
The basic case against the 3C line: that the trains will be relatively slow (averaging 39 miles an hour, when you figure in stops)
It's a waste of money, all with taxes of course. I also would rather not see Detroit with easy rail access to Ann Arbor either.
I just love the idea of the Detroit to Ann Arbor train. Maybe it'll stop in Inkster and Ypsi on the way to add to the fun.
High speed rail seems like a prime terrorist target to me. Are they going to spend the money to watch every mile of track to make sure no one is messing with the rails? If so, it becomes even MORE cost inefficiant than it would normally be. Any Repub who associates him/herself with this crap ought to be primaried.
AMTRAK? Hello? No one wants to take a train.
The only advantage would be that you don’t have to drive/fly. Fact is, though, I know that driving gives a great deal of freedom.It is the parking in a city that is the pill.
Can't have Urban Sprawl.
Greetings Chugabrew:
As far as the first transcontinental line, yes, government subsidized the construction. And like all government funded projects, it was rife with cost overruns and corruption. The other transcontinental line, known as the Empire Builder route to Seattle, was built without government funding.
The way I see it, stagecoaches provided rust belt service too. If the current Washington mindset existed 150 years ago, government would buy and subsidize stagecoach service. Just because buggy rides are romantic, and rail rendered stage coach travel obsolete.
Beware, “high speed” is becoming another meaningless, Washington focus group tested buzzword, just like the infamous buzzword of “shovel ready” jobs. Because we’re talking about duplication for a route that is an underused, high speed rail line. Actual roadbed built as a high speed rail line, when through competition, the word “high speed” actually meant something. Where innovations of water replenished on the fly were used to beat the competition.
Two Amtrak trains, the Capitol Limited and Lake Shore Limited, both providing crappy service on this route, in some part, due to antiquated FRA rules.
Government needs to get out of the railway business. Period. Greyhound and Mega bus also serve the route, with greater frequency and boasting an actual on-time record versus Amtrak.
Cheers,
OLA
It has much more organic validity than the 3-C, which was born on the desk of some idiot college kid "urban planner" looking at a map of Ohio and daydreaming.
The Cleveland to Pittsburgh axis is much shorter geographically and there is much more current traffic and commercial activity, as the cities have shared an industrial history and manufacturing background.
There may be some deep buried nostalgia too, as the lakeshore had a thriving passenger rail system before WWII, along about the same stretch from Buffalo to Toledo. Like all passenger rail it was sunk by the twin torpedoes of heavily subsidized auto travel and stifling 19th century RR union rules.
None of this answers the objection however, that nobody needs such a passenger rail today, nor can one foresee such a need in the future.
I haven't seen a regular bus line vehicle full of ordinary folks since Hector was a pup.
The same maxim applies to high-speed (which WON'T be high-speed) trains. They are guaranteed tax-money gobblers. If they weren't, private enterprise would have built them long ago.
The automobile is king in America.....and will be until we're all forced under penalty into riding a network of public transportation which Obama is curiously pushing HARD to build against all sound reasoning.
Leni
“None of this answers the objection however, that nobody needs such a passenger rail today, nor can one foresee such a need in the future. “
If it’s needed, add a lane to a freeway. It can ALWAYS be shown to pay for itself, if there is heavy traffic. That can (almost) never be said for passenger rail.
Kasich already said no to the high speed railroad.
Don’t give Kasich credit he isn’t due.
Read the article he says he will consider other routes (meaning routes other than the one he has already rejected).
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