
Obama Unveils Plan to Fund High-Speed Passenger Rail - ph0rque
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123989461947625407.html
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rjurney
Just to put this in perspective - we currently spend $12 billion a month in
Iraq. For roughly that amount, one month's Iraq budget, we can have high speed
rail.

Pretty mind boggling.

~~~
chadmalik
And just imagine the infrastructure we could have had for the cost of the Iraq
war + the bank bailouts!

Anyway one thing I'd like to mention that never gets highlighted is that buses
are BY FAR the cheapest public transportation solution. Its not sexy but the
good old fashioned bus is great since it can use the road infrastructure
already built whereas trains need right of way and a lot of construction
before they can be used.

~~~
Herring
" _And just imagine the infrastructure we could have had for the cost of the
Iraq war + the bank bailouts_ "

It's _impossible_ to sell such a huge plan without an imminent
threat/disaster. It makes no sense to think of other things we could do with
that money.

~~~
Retric
You can always make something up.

See: Sending a man to the moon.

Granted it might be hard to sell a rail project like the space race, but
looking back on just how much of our GDP we where spending to play golf on the
moon was insane.

~~~
Herring
I'd argue the USSR was the imminent threat. According to wiki, Khrushchev
openly & repeatedly threatened the West with nuclear annihilation. The space
race was a bid to regain technological supremacy after sputnik.

Also back then it wasn't clear that it would be just the one trip.

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wlievens
There were six trips:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moon_landings#Manned_landings>

~~~
Herring
yeah. Nothing new happened so i just lump them as one.

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yish
Like everything, its all about tradeoffs: upfront costs, ongoing costs vs
profit, time, environmental impact, convenience and capacity. All the
transportation systems we should invest in (and all of them are somewhat
subsidized by the government) should be the ideal balance of these tradeoffs
for that particular distance range.

I believe there is a sweet spot in travel distance where high speed trains are
the optimal solution over cars in the smaller distance range and planes in the
longer distance range. Few would think to travel from LA to NY on a train but
when you are talking about LA to SF, it makes a lot of sense. Time and
destination wise it's more convenient, the environmental impact is less, frees
up plane capacity at LAX and SFO for long distance flights, ongoing costs are
similar, and the only question remaining is do these benefits outweigh the
very large upfront cost? Would love to see how much these costs compare (a new
high speed train route vs a hypothetical new airport + enough planes to
service the route)

~~~
endtime
The sweet spot absolutely exists. When I went to school in DC, and wanted to
go home to north NJ, taking Amtrak was about the same cost as a flight, about
the same time (because of airport overhead, and because the airport was
further away than the train station), and more comfortable.

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donw
Is it bad that I was thinking that Obama had gotten into Ruby? I really need
to get out more...

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aswanson
Aye, I thought the Engine Yard was up for a TARP injection.

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tjake
... That better have High-Speed Wifi!

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systemtrigger
Map of today's Amtrak network:
[http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/33/Amtrak_ne...](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/33/Amtrak_network_2007.svg)

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psb217
This is the wrong way to go. I would guess that high-speed trains will only
reduce people's reliance on airplanes, which are themselves a form of mass-
transit. This particular change should be easy to effect, as many casual
travelers will be swayed by the (hopefully) greater convenience of train
travel versus the airport hassle.

However, many who are over-reliant on their cars will continue to be so, as
they are less likely to be the people traveling frequently by plane. Also,
people will have no incentive to reduce their car dependence so long as they
still have to drive everyday for work/groceries/practically everything, unless
they are lucky enough to already live in one of the rare (at least in the USA)
cities with public transportation that could be rationally argued as superior
to individual cars.

So, I would argue that massive investment in intra-city public transport
infrastructure would have a more significantly positive long-term effect, as
its availability would be relevant to more people, and has a the potential to
cause a significantly larger reduction in the number of miles driven per
person in the USA.

Unfortunately, the negative stigma that seems to linger over public transport
in many parts of this country would likely retard these benefits. The real
utility of the simple bus systems that would be a reasonable first step, as
opposed to metros/subways, would not become apparent until the use of mass-
transit reached a critical mass, at which the density of cars on the road
would be reduced to a point allowing buses to travel quickly. Though, the
importance of reaching this critical mass, which creates a sort of
chicken<->egg problem, could be reduced by dedicated bus lanes, as some others
have already mentioned.

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BerislavLopac
I just did a quick text search both on the article and here in the comments,
and I can't believe that no one has mentioned maglev? Please, Barack -- don't
build your plain old wheel-based trains, no matter how fast; skip directly
into 22nd century and mak a nationwide network of the fastest, most efficient
and safest trains known to man.

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qazwsxedc
Please don't jump on the bandwagon of the obsolete maglev technology - we need
to put this money toward research into teleporters

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jacoblyles
Since no discussion is complete if it is one-sided, I offer an alternative
perspective:

(PDF link) <http://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa-625.pdf>

"Close scrutiny of these plans reveals that they do not live up to the hype.
As attractive as 110- to 220-mile-per-hour trains might sound, even the most
optimistic forecasts predict they will take fewcars off the road. At best,
they will replace for profit private commuter airlines with heavily subsidized
public rail systems that are likely to require continued subsidies far into
the future.

Nor are high-speed rail lines particularly environmentally friendly. Planners
have predicted that a proposed line in Florida would use more energy and emit
more of some pollutants than all of the cars it would take off the road.
California planners forecast that high-speed rail would reduce pollution and
greenhouse gas emissions by a mere 0.7 to1.5 percent—but only if ridership
reached the high end of projected levels. Lower ridership would nullify energy
savings and pollution reductions.

These assessments are confirmed by the actual experience of high-speed rail
lines in Japan and Europe. Since Japan introduced high-speed bullet trains,
passenger rail has lost more than half its market share to the automobile.
Since Italy, France, and other European countries opened their high-speed rail
lines, rail’s market share in Europe has dwindled from 8.2 to 5.8 percent of
travel. If high-speed rail doesn’t work in Japan and Europe, how can it work
in the United States?

As megaprojects—the California high-speed rail is projected to cost $33 to $37
billion—high-speed rail plans pose serious risks for taxpayers. Costs of
recent rail projects in Denver and Seattle are running 60 to 100 percent above
projections. Once construction begins, politicians will feel obligated to
throw good taxpayers’ money after bad. Once projects are completed, most plans
call for them to be turned over to private companies that will keep any
operationalprofits, while taxpayerswill remain vulnerable if the trains lose
money.

In short, high-speed rail proposals are high cost, high-risk megaprojects that
promise little or no congestion relief, energy savings, or other environmental
benefits."

And with that, I'm going to get a pseudonym. Hacker News users aren't just
random people on the internet, they're people I'd like to work with someday.
And I usually avoid discussing contentious political issues with my colleagues
unless they bring it up first and seem thick-skinned. If there's going to be
politics on hacker news, then I, as me, must go.

~~~
sfk
"These assessments are confirmed by the actual experience of high-speed rail
lines in Japan and Europe. Since Japan introduced high-speed bullet trains,
passenger rail has lost more than half its market share to the automobile.
Since Italy, France, and other European countries opened their high-speed rail
lines, rail’s market share in Europe has dwindled from 8.2 to 5.8 percent of
travel. If high-speed rail doesn’t work in Japan and Europe, how can it work
in the United States?"

The author who wrote that has in all likelihood never traveled by train in
Europe. At least in Germany, high speed trains are a huge success and often
overcrowded when I use them.

~~~
jacoblyles
I usually assume that a statistic is more accurate than an anecdote, unless
you have done some research that shows his statistic to be wrong.

~~~
sfk
Have you done some research that shows this statistic to be correct? Perhaps
you might want to take a look at who is sponsoring this "statistic":

<http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/cato-institute>

~~~
DanielBMarkham
So facts from people we don't like are to be ignored?

I just _know_ that you're not making the case that there are special groups
that we can trust with statistics and special groups we can't. Because that's
an insult to our intelligence. Sources have bias. We multi-source to eliminate
them. No need to impeach the source. Argue the facts.

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asdf333
i am about as pro-green as it gets.

However, I am really uncertain about whether passenger trains are a good idea.
In most countries they are subsidized. the upkeep costs are high...the US is a
very geographically sparse place...

I'd much rather have them spend money on alternative energy, electric cars and
funding startups at an arms length by investing in VC firms. (or running an
independent VC arm)

~~~
briansmith
The best way to do it is to have regional train networks, and use planes for
inter-region travel. For example you would have train networks like L.A.-
S.F., Chicago-Minneapolis, Chicago-St. Louis, Austin-Houston-Dallas-San
Antonio, N.Y.C.-Boston-D.C., etc.

Unfortunately, that won't work politically. It basically treats red states
like oceans that should be flown over, and puts all the high-speed rail in
blue states (except the Texas network). It is probably more fiscally
responsible to finance these networks at the state level than at the federal
level.

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cschneid
The front range of Colorado & Wyoming is pretty decent a spot too. That's at
least a purple area....

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miked
What does this have to do with software development or startups?

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davidw
You're supposed to just flag it and move on. To another site that takes
banishing politics discussions seriously?

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DanielBMarkham
"Economics of the Laffer curve and how it relates to taxation" -> flagged

"Obama adminstration installs Apache servers" or some such -> not flagged

That's what I love so much about standards. Everybody has them.

~~~
davidw
I flag pretty much everything that even remotely smacks of politics, and most
economics, no matter which side it comes from or how much I agree with it.

~~~
DanielBMarkham
I know you do. I've been watching.

I just enjoy watching the double-standards people employ. For example, in this
discussion I'd love to see somebody bring up the point that passenger rail in
the U.S. is a political idea and not a practical business idea -- take a look
at Amtrak pricing. But by actually diving into the business side of the
article, they'd call the resulting discussion political!

I think "political" just means "stuff I don't agree with that has some sort of
tangential relation to politics"

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gills
Taste the Rainbow

