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Obama's Vision for High Speed Rail in America

post #1 of 9
4/17/09 at 12:44pm
Thread Starter 

 

 

Details here.

 

Quote:

The report formalizes the identification of ten high-speed rail corridors as potential recipients of federal funding. Those lines are: California, Pacific Northwest, South Central, Gulf Coast, Chicago Hub Network, Florida, Southeast, Keystone, Empire and Northern New England. Also, opportunities exist for the Northeast Corridor from Washington to Boston to compete for funds to improve the nation’s only existing high-speed rail service.

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post #2 of 9
4/17/09 at 5:02pm

What's the pulse on the site about the High Speed rail? I'm not certain that it will be possible to get the pricing low enough to get adoption, but adoption is necessary for these things to ever be sustainably profitable.

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post #3 of 9
4/17/09 at 9:31pm
Thread Starter 

I'm a high speed rail fan.  Yeah, it's expensive to build up-front.  I'm not sure about the economics of it, but it seems to work well in Europe and Asia.

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post #4 of 9
4/17/09 at 10:14pm

I too like hi speed rail - it has one drawback in regards to the senate though - something like 17 states it does not touch and outside of a few states only a small part of the total area (area not population) would receive direct benefit.

 

Someone would have convince the general population to push it through congress. I remember Dana's post about the 89 senators being against anything which would raise the price of gas or electricity. They would have to have to do better than that to get this through.    

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post #5 of 9
4/18/09 at 7:47am

Needless to say, high speed train sysem works only in high density population area where also infrastructure cost is very high. There may be many people in the USA who has never been used train, including politicians. For those who grew up with individual vehicles, a bit touch moification would be required to bring in train system as a part of daily living. I am rather pesimistic about high speed train in the USA.

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post #6 of 9
4/18/09 at 9:07am
Thread Starter 

Well the good part about this plan is that it's concentrated mainly on the east and west coast, where there is a high population density and where a lot of people are familiar with trains.  In fact, we just passed a proposition in California to build a high speed rail in the past election.

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post #7 of 9
4/18/09 at 10:32am

It is concentrated in highly populated areas but that will cause problems in getting it past the senate.

 

State by state, such as CA did, it may be possible.

 

Also if it linked anything North to South or East to West it might be an easier sell.

 

Good ideas are a dime a dozen - good ideas that get implemented are somewhat rare.

 

Eisenhower and his freeway system are a historical reference I guess. 

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post #8 of 9
4/18/09 at 1:54pm

Okay, I will show you a reality. This is what I think high density.....

 

http://usjoke.frutadetiempo.com/train.wmv

 

Believe me, this is a real everyday life and not a joke.....

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post #9 of 9
4/20/09 at 3:09pm

"Back to the future".  We may eventually return to the day of the electric interurban cars! ROTFL at the irony, but I think it is a good move.

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