Sweet Pants Gettin? Speaker Nancy?s Panties in a Bunch!

[Michchamp]

sorry, had to delete and repost this. I know there's no requirement to go coast to coast, but if you pick the 3 biggest cities in just about any region in the US, you're talking about a much bigger project than linking those entire countries and if you're not talking about going coast to coast, you can forget about making air travel obsolete.

I'm not arguing against high speed rail - just the notion that it's big oil and "irrational" fears of socialism that are the impediment. Is the big oil to blame for the doubling (so far) of the cost of the rail project in California?

Tell us then why it's prohibitively expensive to build high speed rail in the US, but not in France, Germany, Japan, or China? Or South Korea, Taiwan, Spain...
fuck even Ukraine has two high speed lines they built in 2014.

passenger rail in the US is bad because of policies decisions to make it bad so people have to drive or fly.

If you think that's not because of the oil companies, I have a bridge in Brooklyn with your name on it.

 

[TheVictors]

The US is unique in that the vast times of expansion happened with and/or after the automobile. It's a US thing.

 

[Michchamp]

The US is unique in that the vast times of expansion happened with and/or after the automobile. It's a US thing.

it's stupid. it's horrible for our quality of life, the kind of communities we live in, and the environment.

and it's far from natural; it's the result if special interest groups that exist to promote petroleum/car use (but mostly petroleum) getting control over transportation planning & financing.

 

[Gulo Blue]

sorry, had to delete and repost this. I know there's no requirement to go coast to coast, but if you pick the 3 biggest cities in just about any region in the US, you're talking about a much bigger project than linking those entire countries and if you're not talking about going coast to coast, you can forget about making air travel obsolete.

I'm not arguing against high speed rail - just the notion that it's big oil and "irrational" fears of socialism that are the impediment. Is the big oil to blame for the doubling (so far) of the cost of the rail project in California?

Well, I made it clear that I'm not arguing that air travel would be made obsolete and I think it's a crazy idea. I'm arguing against the lack of population density suggestion. I'm sure we have regions that are more dense than 1950's Japan.

 

[Gulo Blue]

???

It?s allowed. It?s been allowed since the beginning of the country.

That's what I'm saying. It doesn't matter that there are big empty places where high speed rail would be impractical. There's no rule that requires us to operate in those parts of the country. So talking about the national area is irrelevant.

 

[tomdalton22]

Huh.

It's surprising someone so fond of always accusing others of misreading his posts would misread mine like that...

i said the initial Japanese high speed line - built 50 years ago - was only 250
miles. Since then, like I said, they've connected their whole country with high speed lines, for over 2,000 miles of high speed rail. NYC-PHI-DC is only ~200 miles and we can't even do that right. wonder why?

guess our country is just that stupid?

oh, and China only started building high speed rail in the last 20 years, and now has over 18,000 miles of high speed rail. Damn.

We could build a whole national network with that kind of mileage.

While China and the US have a similar land mass, China has about 1B more people. They have 662 cities that have a population of over 1M, compared to 10 in the US. China has 200 public airports, the US has over 5000. Lastly, in the US private property rights are protected. My guess is in China they just take any land they want without much compensation.

 

[Michchamp]

While China and the US have a similar land mass, China has about 1B more people. They have 662 cities that have a population of over 1M, compared to 10 in the US. China has 200 public airports, the US has over 5000. Lastly, in the US private property rights are protected. My guess is in China they just take any land they want without much compensation.

Oh okay. So we need to have as many people as china, or alternatively be a smaller country like Japan or France, and even then, while we do have some very dense areas of population, we cannot build high speed rail correctly there because... ? And we don't have enough money to do anything right, even though we're the richest country in the world, with an economy vastly larger than any of those.

Got it.

 

[tomdalton22]

Well, I made it clear that I'm not arguing that air travel would be made obsolete and I think it's a crazy idea. I'm arguing against the lack of population density suggestion. I'm sure we have regions that are more dense than 1950's Japan.

I doubt it. In 1950 Japan had about 85M people. The total land mass of Japan is only 146,000 sq miles. That's about 582 people per sq.mi. Today, they have 129M people which = 883 people per sq mile.

The US by comparison.

1950 there were 0.4 person per sq.mi
2017 0.86 person per sq.mi.

Maybe on the east cost there are some cities that could be connected, but I don't see how it would be cost effective.

 

[tomdalton22]

Oh okay. So we need to have as many people as china, or alternatively be a smaller country like Japan or France, and even then, while we do have some very dense areas of population, we cannot build high speed rail correctly there because... ? And we don't have enough money to do anything right, even though we're the richest country in the world, with an economy vastly larger than any of those.

Got it.

In those cases, maybe there is a need or demand for high speed rail. I don't see either in the US.

 

[tinselwolverine]

I doubt it. In 1950 Japan had about 85M people. The total land mass of Japan is only 146,000 sq miles. That's about 582 people per sq.mi. Today, they have 129M people which = 883 people per sq mile.

The US by comparison.

1950 there were 0.4 person per sq.mi
2017 0.86 person per sq.mi.

Maybe on the east cost there are some cities that could be connected, but I don't see how it would be cost effective.

Maybe instead high speed the could just build an interconnecting railway system using just using conventional railway technology instead.

Since Manhattan would seem to be the most primary location where they would all interconnect, they could build one or even two hubs there.

Maybe they could build one hub down by Madison Square Garden and call it a Penn Station, and then they could build another hub closer to Midtowne and call it Grand Central Station or Grand Terminal.

 

[Spartanmack]

Huh.

It's surprising someone so fond of always accusing others of misreading his posts would misread mine like that...

i said the initial Japanese high speed line - built 50 years ago - was only 250
miles. Since then, like I said, they've connected their whole country with high speed lines, for over 2,000 miles of high speed rail. NYC-PHI-DC is only ~200 miles and we can't even do that right. wonder why?

guess our country is just that stupid?

oh, and China only started building high speed rail in the last 20 years, and now has over 18,000 miles of high speed rail. Damn.

We could build a whole national network with that kind of mileage.

I don't think it's a misreading - you said you much prefer trains to driving and flying. you live in Houston so in order to go anywhere other than Dallas or San Antonio, you're talking about a much larger project than those countries have undertaken. You're talking about spending billions upon billions vs. fixing/updating a highway system that's more advanced than what those countries had in place.

China also doesn't have the highway infrastructure we have and they like to build stuff that doesn't get used to anywhere near capacity. They have entire cities nobody lives in, I'm not surprised they've also have high speed trains to take nobody to those cities nobody lives in.

 

[Spartanmack]

Tell us then why it's prohibitively expensive to build high speed rail in the US, but not in France, Germany, Japan, or China? Or South Korea, Taiwan, Spain...
fuck even Ukraine has two high speed lines they built in 2014.

passenger rail in the US is bad because of policies decisions to make it bad so people have to drive or fly.

If you think that's not because of the oil companies, I have a bridge in Brooklyn with your name on it.

don't ask me, ask the people trying to get it done in California. I suspect it has to do with the same reasons welfare, medicare and Medicaid are all effectively bankrupt - because the government sucks at pretty much everything and these programs end up rife w/ related party deals, scams, graft, fraud and general mismanagement.

 

[Spartanmack]

Well, I made it clear that I'm not arguing that air travel would be made obsolete and I think it's a crazy idea. I'm arguing against the lack of population density suggestion. I'm sure we have regions that are more dense than 1950's Japan.

it's not a lack of population density - it's the challenges that the population and the existing infrastructure present. it's practically solid city from Boston to Washington DC (that's hyperbole) and limited space to due the infrastructure already in place to support that population. It's not so easy to come in and say we're gonna put in a high speed rail system when the existing system we have is already stretched beyond capacity. Penn Station is INSANE w/ NJ Transit, LIRR and Amtrak - they've been trying to add a tunnel for like 20 years and they can't get that done, meanwhile service interruptions are happening left and right. I think present challenges - finding space in places like NY, Boston and DC, finding land to put the rails on, etc, etc.

 

[Gulo Blue]

it's not a lack of population density - it's the challenges that the population and the existing infrastructure present. it's practically solid city from Boston to Washington DC (that's hyperbole) and limited space to due the infrastructure already in place to support that population. It's not so easy to come in and say we're gonna put in a high speed rail system when the existing system we have is already stretched beyond capacity. Penn Station is INSANE w/ NJ Transit, LIRR and Amtrak - they've been trying to add a tunnel for like 20 years and they can't get that done, meanwhile service interruptions are happening left and right. I think present challenges - finding space in places like NY, Boston and DC, finding land to put the rails on, etc, etc.

We don't have problems everywhere that they don't have in other places. If the argument switches from populations too spread out to not enough open spaces, head west. We have dense places, empty places, places where the cities are growing and the rural area are getting more empty, it's a big nation with lots of different conditions. Somewhere fits.



I just don't buy into pansy-ass excuses that others can do it and we can't.

 

[Gulo Blue]

I doubt it. In 1950 Japan had about 85M people. The total land mass of Japan is only 146,000 sq miles. That's about 582 people per sq.mi. Today, they have 129M people which = 883 people per sq mile.

The US by comparison.

1950 there were 0.4 person per sq.mi
2017 0.86 person per sq.mi.

Maybe on the east cost there are some cities that could be connected, but I don't see how it would be cost effective.

I only mean specific places. If it's just the population around the 3 biggest cities of 1950's Japan over 250 miles, I bet we've got that somewhere. Probably not even a huge outlier these days.

 

[Spartanmack]

We don't have problems everywhere that they don't have in other places. If the argument switches from populations too spread out to not enough open spaces, head west. We have dense places, empty places, places where the cities are growing and the rural area are getting more empty, it's a big nation with lots of different conditions. Somewhere fits.



I just don't buy into pansy-ass excuses that others can do it and we can't.

I'm talking specifically about problems on the eastern seaboard between those three cities and making the point that it's not a layup that you could just go and build high speed rail there. There are other significant challenges - it's not just big oil conspiring to keep it from happening. It's not a one factor model. It doesn't make sense to link large spans or places with low population density, but that doesn't mean you can just go to plop it in and link New England with the Mid Atlantic region.

 

[Michchamp]

I don't think it's a misreading - you said you much prefer trains to driving and flying. you live in Houston so in order to go anywhere other than Dallas or San Antonio, you're talking about a much larger project than those countries have undertaken. You're talking about spending billions upon billions vs. fixing/updating a highway system that's more advanced than what those countries had in place.

China also doesn't have the highway infrastructure we have and they like to build stuff that doesn't get used to anywhere near capacity. They have entire cities nobody lives in, I'm not surprised they've also have high speed trains to take nobody to those cities nobody lives in.

I like taking trains vs. driving/flying doesn't mean I think we need high speed rail everywhere in the country.

and in regards to your second paragraph, you really think China builds high speed trains to cities where no one lives?

You better check with TomDalton on that, because he said we can't have high speed rail because we don't have the population density they do.


hey... where are you taking those goalposts? come back.

 

[Michchamp]

.


hey... where are you taking those goalposts? come back.

 

[sggatecl]

I wonder what the cost difference is in maintaining a high speed rail vs our current highway system.

 

[tigermud]

The libtard wrecking ball just chased Amazon out of NY no jobs are better than shit jobs gumbit will pay you a poverty wage if your not willing or wanting to work