

Why the U.S. Will Not Get China's High Speed Rail - sasvari
http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2010/11/why-the-us-will-not-get-chinas-high-speed-rail/66863/

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underdown
In the age of terrorism I'm not sure why anyone would invest in insecure
infrastructure. Thousands of miles of unguarded rail is a pretty soft target.

~~~
Semiapies
The 1990s were an "age of terrorism". So were the 1980s, the 1970s, and the
1960s.

The existence of occasional destructive acts does not require us to base our
society around a half-assed fortress paradigm where we pretend every single
thing we value or might create is being targeted by scary, dark-skinned people
_right this minute_.

~~~
9oliYQjP
Not to mention that for all the money the US spends on anti-terrorism, the
real threats lie in a lifestyle that is unhealthy and exacerbated (at an
accelerating rate) by suburban sprawl, increasing sedentary work and play, and
poor nutritional choices. The more the US embraces this lifestyle, the more
that they put themselves at high risk of early death due to car travel.

One day everybody will wake up and see insane anti-terrorism spending for what
it really is: corporate welfare.

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ilkhd2
When I read "because USA is democratic", "large infrastructure" (yeah, that
does not function anymore) I wanted to weep. This article seems to be very,
very biased. Yes, perhaps you do need Chinese high speed rail, it does not
mean that you do not need medium speed city/county light rails like NY has. If
you look at congested I-5, I-95 or any other major interstate you'll see why -
hundreds of cars moving 20m/h, burning enormous of fuel, producing tons of
co2. Even riding a bus, a diesel thingy without regenerative braking gives you
fuel efficiency ~100 mpg per person (if it has only 15 passengers). To have
parity with a car (25 mpg) it is enough to have _only 4_ passenger on board.
If you make a good working electric light rail system, it will be way, way
more efficient than cars.

Airplanes can be efficient in fact, but in case of full load, but there is a
MAJOR problem with planes - it is hassle, intrusive TSA and generally horrible
service.

Also oil prices keep going up...

