He is right. And why stop at 220 mph?
...during a test run on November 12, 2003, a Maglev vehicle achieved a record speed of 501 km/h (311 mph).
Shanghai maglev
Posted on 04/21/2010 5:09:37 PM PDT by KevinDavis
Critics rained turkeys and dogs on the Midwest high speed rail parade at a congressional hearing Tuesday.
The region received about $2.6 billion out of $8 billion in economic stimulus funding to create fast train corridors, including a Chicago to St. Louis route that would travel at speeds of up to 110 mph.
U.S. Rep. John Mica of Florida mocked the Chicago plan, saying true high-speed rail in Europe and Asia is 220 mph.
(Excerpt) Read more at dailyherald.com ...
Rained turkeys?
“As God is my witness, I thought trains could fly”.
He is right. And why stop at 220 mph?
...during a test run on November 12, 2003, a Maglev vehicle achieved a record speed of 501 km/h (311 mph).
Shanghai maglev
Well the point it is, it is going to be a bust of epic proportions..
I rode the Geneva to Paris High Speed at what was then around 180 MPH, There were some nice Blurs out the windows and that is slow by today’s standards. Amtrak’s Acela between NYC, PHILLY, BIDENTOWN(Wilm), and DC is running at 110 MPH today. The JAPS and Chinese are well up into the 220=250 MPH range for good runs. But AMERICA has so much distance between major Cities that we are Blessed with the Best Air System in the World!! You want to ride Trains, then go to Europe and they are fine, but everything is on top of everything there. Here, except for a small part of the NE and Cal, very City is 500 Miles from every other City or more! TRAINS STINK, Unless they are doing 200MPH Plus!! and imagine when One splats a Car or Truck at that Speed! The Human Outcry will be Horrendous!! If Trains were so Good, then Why do Birds Fly instead of Jumping the Next AMTRAK?
Like the episode of "WKRP in Cinncinati"???. ;-)
We dont have Stupid Idiots directing the Autopilots in the 747’s! but we do have them driving Buicks!
Why do we need a high speed rail; when no one has a job to ride the damn thing to?
The European trains have had some spectacular crashes, with many fatalities and maimings. Personally I think having trains running that fast is an invitation to terrorism — very very low-tech methods can be used to break or bend a little piece of rail, timed (even manually!) to blow right before the train hits, so no time for automated track monitoring system to alert the engineer to hit the emergency brake. Access to rails is hopelessly easy — hundreds of miles of sparsely inhabited land to choose from — it’s like crossing the border from Mexico to the U.S., and look how well we’ve been handling that.
AMEN! Thats a Socialist/Communist Government for You! China is going Capitalist, Russia is going Capitalist, while We are humoring these “PROGRESSIVE COMMUNIST HATE AMERICA TERRORISTS” that idolize STALIN and Mao and Hugo Chavez and Che and Castro and want to make AMERICA the next Communist Wasteland!!!!! The CHINESE LEADERSHIP are LTAO! and Cheering for OBOZO’S LUNATIC AGENDA for one Big Reason!
The Chinese Leadership always said: “WE WILL NOT TAKE OVER AMERICA MILITARILY, WE WILL TAKE OVER AMERICA ECONOMICALLY BECAUSE IT’S AMERICA’S LEADERSHIP IS SO CORRUPTED AND DECAYED!” Well, twenty years later, does anyone want to argue with this statement from the Chinese Leadership?
p.s.: For any Moonbat that admires Chairman Mao, go over and live there fore a couple of months and make sure you dont look crosseyed or say one bad word, Prison is pretty ugly over there.
Agree with your entire post. The Left insists upon pushing the rail, and most everything Liberal upon us as they so very much relate to European Liberalism, and the lifestyle of the European Liberal.
I say if that’s what they want, then fine head for Europe, and don’t let the screen door smack ya on the ass on the way out.
The problem is that most of these so-called “high speed corridors” are freight lines, a purpose they serve remarkably well, but most of those big freight trains top out around 70 or so, flat out, IF they are in an area where they can even come close to that speed.
A true high-speed “bullet train” has specially built and carefully constructed infrastructure, which is what enables it to attain such high speeds. Freight service could probably use those rails too, but why slow down the bullet train for a 70 MPH “slow mover”??
The trains that AMTRAK is currently running on commercial freight rails could probably go a bit faster, but much of the rail service is into areas where there are no straight runs to get up and maintain speed, and you are speed limited on the curves anyway. Besides, why have a “high speed” train that stops every 30 miles to take on and let off passengers?? It will never get anywhere near to top speed for any length of time.
There are improvements being made along specific corridors that will likely improve speeds 5-10 MPH and avoid lengthy siding delays to let other trains pass. The system we have is very complicated, and works well for hauling freight; but we nearly abandoned passenger rail service a long time ago, and now we are trying to retrofit relatively ancient infrastructure in a misguided attempt to develop an image of “High Speed Rail” like the French and Japanese have, when in fact there is no such thing here, nor can we easily afford the enormous investment it would require for minimal gain.
High speed rail makes sense in the Chunnel between Britain and France. It is ludicrous to even consider it in the US, especially when one of the corridors proposed is between Disneyland and Las Vegas.
They should use the Cleveland-Cincy high speed train for a model. It’s supposed to average 39 mph for the trip. Now that’s progress! Thank you Governor Strickland (D).
“U.S. Rep. John Mica of Florida mocked the Chicago plan, saying true high-speed rail in Europe and Asia is 220 mph.”
Hi, KD
Florida is certainly in no position to mock.
They have zip-zero-nada in the way of high speed trail - and forget the flies on the crap on the drawing board. The fantasy has always been to go a-a-a-a-llllllll the way from Tampa to Orlando (read that as Disneyworld) or a small distance of about 75 miles and then on to Miami.
Note, Tampa has one train station. In a metro area (Tampa-St Pete) of probably three million, parking downtown just might be a problem, not to mention the added excitement of wondering if your car will be vandalized upon return.
It’d be cheaper to build a real turnpike from Tampa to Orlando and leave I-4 to the hapless.
This is just shovel ready manure from the Obama administration.
Am not familiar with air ops, but couldn’t current regulations governing air commuter operations be eased to make it financially more attractive for them to operate?
It would beat taking a train.
Absolutely Yes!
Did any of these people pushing high speed rail ever consider just how easy it is to stop a train? The literature on how to do this has been out for decades http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PdSM789rlJk
the last thing we need is for Al-Qaeda to start studying the work of Butch Cassidy et al.
This just has boondoggle written all over it, IMHO. Aside from the pork barrel/political payoff angle, I don’t see much a of a point to this project. I almost get a sense of a “keeping up with the Joneses” sensibility - Europe and developed Asia are doing it, so we had better do it too.
I know there are “eco-friendly” arguments made for high-speed rail, but I just don’t buy it (assuming I bought the eco-arguments in the first place, which I don’t) For any great distance, flying would still be the fastest way to go. For short hops, I don’t see a significant advantage over standard commuter trains and/or personal vehicles. In neither case do I see a significant number of people giving up their current mode of transportation. The greenest train in the world doesn’t accomplish much if no one wants to ride it.
I also foresee massive (and endless) taxpayer subsidies needed to keep it afloat. Amtrak already loses money by the bucket, and a high-speed system is likely to cost more to operate than a traditional passenger train system.
Seems like everything they do can be reduced to a fanatical desire to control people. If they could get away with it, the marxist pinheads would love to dictate where we could live, what we could drive and where we could travel.
A car means freedom and liberals don’t like that. They’d have us driving golf carts and taking trains for travel forever if they could.
First, you have to leave home to drive to the station. Then you have to get transportation from the train station at the end of the line to your actual destination.
That's a minimum of 2 hours in prep and travel time.
That's 140 miles at 70 mph on our interstate road system.
It is 297 miles from St Louis to Chicago, so I'm half way there just with the amount of time going to the station takes. We haven't yet factored in the wait time at the station, because you'll have to arrive early to get herded to the proper place when the train is called.
In short, it's faster and more efficient to drive yourself than to take a 110 mph train from St Louis to Chicago.
Worse yet, 110 MPH is only the top speed. With Acela, they raised the maximum speeds to about 140 MPH IIRC, and boasted they’d cut the travel time from 12 hours to 8 hours.
Well, the travel time before the construction work was under 10 hours, and the Acela even cut out some stops. Turns out the Acela only travels anywhere near top speed for about 30 miles of the several-hundred-mile trip.
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