

The Bottom Line on Top-Speed Trains - cwan
http://freakonomics.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/08/21/the-bottom-line-on-top-speed-trains/

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po
"To dig holes in the ground," paid for out of savings, will increase, not only
employment, but the real national dividend of useful goods and services. It is
not reasonable, however, that a sensible community should be content to remain
dependent on such fortuitous and often wasteful mitigations when once we
understand the influences upon which effective demand depends. -Alan Keynes

[http://www.businessweek.com/blogs/money_politics/archives/20...](http://www.businessweek.com/blogs/money_politics/archives/2009/02/stimulus_keynes.html)

Still, I'd like to have some decent public transportation in this country.
Driving sucks.

Actually, I worry about the "paid for out of savings" part.

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newacc
Few reason's why i will vote for HSR:

1\. It's safer than car, very few or no accidents compare to highway accidents
- so you can't put value to human life.

2\. Compare to air and car drive, weather conditions doesn't impact HSR.

3\. Peace of mind: Compare to driving car, its a peace of mind as you may
relax rather than stressing out due to driving itself or weather or traffic
jams etc.

4\. Compare to air travel, there is no hijack like situation possible. i.e.
peace of mind to government.

5\. No matter how fast you drive a car or bus, you just can't beat HSR's speed
and time saved due to speed. Plus no speeding ticket :)

~~~
potatolicious
I'm not a huge support of HSR, but I am a huge supporter of rail.

The main problem with rail is not necessarily speed. Current Amtrak trains are
slow and painful because:

\- They stop everywhere. There are hardly any express trains that run between
major cities. This punishes the majority of inter-city travelers by forcing
them to stop at every little village along the way, making the whole trip
unbearably long compared to air, or even car.

\- They share track with freight. I cannot count the number of times the train
would stop just to wait for some 100-car freight train to pass. Passenger rail
needs its own capacity, not piggy-backing on top of industrial rail.

You fix these two problems and instantly the majority of inter-city rail
travel will suddenly _already_ be competitive with air travel - and completely
destroy car travel in terms of convenience and cost, for short to mid haul
routes anyway. All of this without laying a single mile of special-gauge
track, ludicrously expensive trains, and all using off-the-shelf, mature
technologies that don't cost a quarter as much.

The solution to America's transportation woes IMHO is not sci-fi level
technology. Yes, HSR may be justified in a few places, but for everywhere
else, I think good old fashioned overhauling the existing rail system would do
wonders.

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newacc
i second with you - upgrading existing infrastructure or implementing small
creative fixes will solve most of the problems and will also create huge
amount of direct and indirect jobs ... huge benefit of infrastructure spending
is you require people right at the site so no outsourcing (not that i'm aginst
but still it helps local economy)

~~~
potatolicious
And imagine if I can get on a train in Seattle, and travel consistently at the
train's top speed of, say, 80mph (pretty conservative), with no freight train
stops along the way, and definitely no stops along every little town along the
way...

I will be there in Portland in about 2 hours. This beats the _pants_ off
driving, and if you include the hassle of checking in early, security time,
etc, will also beat the time for air travel.

And all of this with existing trains, no bullet trains, no mag lev, nothing
fancy.

For this you get to enjoy:

\- not having to drive \- HUUUUUGE comfortable seats (take that, regional
jets!) \- relaxed security, no draconian rules \- 1/4 to 1/3 the cost of
flying, can probably beat the cost of driving if you were traveling alone \-
board at train station which is neatly downtown in most American cities \-
takes you right downtown at your destination in most American cities

What's not to love? Trains are by far my favorite way to travel, and IMHO the
majority of problems preventing trains from being _the_ choice for mid-range
routes is purely systematic and organizational, and has relatively little to
do with technology.

~~~
mmt
Just you wait.. one terrorist scare in a downtown city, and we'll be doing the
shoes-off hokey-pokey to board trains, too :(

~~~
stse
The fear of a terrorist attack isn't really a reason not to do things. And
it's not like it hasn't happened before, remember the madrid (commuter train)
and london (subway) bombings?

~~~
anamax
It hasn't happened before in the US....

