# High speed rail ... how well will it fly?//Obama unveils high-speed rail plan **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [April 16, 2009, 10:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/high-speed-rail-how-well-will-it-fly-obama-unveils-high-speed-rail-plan/493347 "2009-04-16T22:33:05Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 7
**Author:** ![MichaelQReilly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/df705f/32.png) [@MichaelQReilly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MichaelQReilly)\ **Post date:** [April 19, 2009, 3:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/high-speed-rail-how-well-will-it-fly-obama-unveils-high-speed-rail-plan/493347/121 "2009-04-19T15:07:28Z")
> [@Sam\_Stone](#): > > The claim was NOT false. The cite I posted was direct from ICAO. That’s about as authoritative as it gets. > > The ‘subsidies’ airports get are mostly the federal maintenance of the Air Traffic Control system. That’s not a subsidy to local airports, it’s the cost of maintenance of the entire system. And it’s mostly not even a subsidy, because most of the FAA’s budget is paid for from the Aviation Trust Fund. The trust fund gets money from excise taxes (ticket taxes, fuel taxes, etc). The FAA then draws from the trust fund to pay for programs such as upgrading weather radars, paying for Air Traffic Control, etc. > > For example, in 2007 the Aviation Trust Fund took in about 12 billion dollars in income from taxes. Out of that, 5.5 billion went to pay for ATC, 3.7 billion went to airports, another 2.8 billion went to facilities and equipment (weather stations, safety equipment, etc). This is not a ‘subsidy’. Or to be more clear, it’s a subsidy to some airports and a tax on others. It’s more like social welfare for aviation - everyone pays in, and then the FAA doles it out based on need. That’s why there’s the direct subsidy to smaller airports that I mentioned above. The system as a whole is largely self-funding, and in that system, the majority of airports run at a profit. > > The same was true of that 30 billion dollars a year for highways that **brickbacon** mentioned. That’s the budget for highway administration, but what you don’t see is that most of that budget is paid for by various road travel related taxes. > > You could at least try reading the cites I linked to before making comments like that. Well, again, that doesn’t include the capital costs of building the airports, which I imagine, were it accounted for, would undermine any showing of profitability. Second, I don’t think you can separate the cost of maintaining the airline system from the airports because the airports couldn’t work without it. ---
**Author:** ![DSeid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dseid/32/20194_2.png) [@DSeid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DSeid)\ **Post date:** [April 19, 2009, 3:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/high-speed-rail-how-well-will-it-fly-obama-unveils-high-speed-rail-plan/493347/122 "2009-04-19T15:33:36Z")
> [@Markxxx](#): > > … You have to really examine WHY things don’t work well. … > > … The fact is a car is always better if you can afford it. For instance… Well the first part is true. It is critical to understand what has made HSR successful where it has been successful and what has contributed to its failures as well. The current set of monies is really just paying for basic improvements for our current rail system and for investigating some HSR options for the future, but we have to really understand why it didn’t work in some places and not make those mistakes. But your going from one instance to a general rule is faulty and illustrates something different than you think it does in any case. Chicago has a pretty good highway system. (Although 25 minutes in rush hour to the Hancock? Mind my asking where you live that you can do that? From Oak Park, the closest 'burb, it is 25 minutes non-rush hour, 45+ during the crunch. From the train station it is about 10 minutes and trains come regularly during the rush. And stops near the Hancock center.) From where you live to where you work the Chicago public transit system is poor choice compared to a car. In fact from Oak Park many downtown commuters own cars but take the train because it is faster and cheaper than parking the car in the city. Same for many other 'burbs including people I know in places from Glencoe to Elmhurst. And many other cities have most people getting around by public transit within the city even when they own cars, just because it is faster and a lot cheaper than paying for parking. Choice of commute will depend on balancing several factors:[ul] [li]Total door to door transit time.[/li][li]Total cost.[/li][li]Perceived quality of the experience.[/li][li]Potential need for more flexibility that the public transit system offers.[/li][/ul] So why did Canada’s system fail and others’ systems succeed? From a previous poster’s comment it seems that it wasn’t the time of the travel or the cost - cheap and regularly scheduled flights failed too. Hell, as far as time goes all you really need is being significantly faster than driving and averaging 110+ will do that, no need for bullets; you can’t get in and out of an airport destination door to door without wasting a large part of your day. The flight is short but the security, the getting there at least an hour before, the common delayed departure time, etc … Oy. It was that once there you needed a car and the distance was close enough that it was easier and cheaper to drive your own there than to rent one once there. So one criteria for American HSR corridors has to be that the train either gets people to exactly where they want to go or that they at least do not feel that they need a car on the other side (unless it is far enough that driving isn’t an option under consideration) . And in America that does limit the choices significantly. ---
**Author:** ![Spoons](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/spoons/32/3141_2.png) [@Spoons](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spoons)\ **Post date:** [April 19, 2009, 4:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/high-speed-rail-how-well-will-it-fly-obama-unveils-high-speed-rail-plan/493347/123 "2009-04-19T16:10:46Z")
> [@DSeid](#): > > So why did Canada’s system fail and others’ systems succeed? I hope I’m understanding the background to this question–it was stated upthread somewhere that Canada’s high-speed rail experiment failed, and you want to know why. If that’s the question, the answer is simple: the technology was poor, and in the end, the time savings weren’t great. See [the Wikipedia page on Canada’s Turbo train](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UAC_TurboTrain) for an overview. Note especially that “…technical problems including brake systems freezing up because of cold Canadian winters, resulted in a suspension of service in early January 1969 which questioned the train’s reliability.” It should be noted that passenger train service in Canada is still an option (if a little slower than the ill-fated Turbo train). But Canada’s high-speed experiment of 30 or 40 years ago didn’t fail because it wasn’t popular; it failed because the technology wasn’t reliable. I don’t know and I’m unwilling to say whether it might have succeeded with proven cold-climate technology, but nobody wanted to ride a train that had a reputation for frequent breakdowns. They would, however, ride more reliable trains for a number of reasons in certain regions of the country; and they still do. ---
**Author:** ![DSeid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dseid/32/20194_2.png) [@DSeid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DSeid)\ **Post date:** [April 19, 2009, 5:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/high-speed-rail-how-well-will-it-fly-obama-unveils-high-speed-rail-plan/493347/124 "2009-04-19T17:08:37Z")
Well, I am sure that you are right and that reliability was a big factor but I’m thinking of **Sam** ’s post#35 that said > [@](#): > > For a while, we had an express air shuttle between the two cities - even better than high speed rail. And we have an airport right in the center of our city, and the air shuttle ran on the hour. I could walk into the airport without a ticket, buy one at a kiosk, and be in Calgary in about an hour. Round trip price: $90. Average speed: over 300 mph. > > The service was shut down from lack of use. And **Sam** ’s point in that post seemed valid. If the time savings isn’t dramatic and you need a car on the other side, you’ll just drive. Even if the service is reliable and comfortable. OTOH once in one Japanese city or another you don’t need a car. Once in Paris or London you can get by fine using public transportation. New York? Cab it if you need to but few drive their own cars place to place. Boston, Washington D.C.? Same. (Driving in Boston? Not if you can avoid it!) Chicago on business? You’ll cab it or use the El. Other Midwest cities that would be part of that hub? I don’t know what is there. The proposed Florida HSR lines, the West Coast ones, the Southeast ones? I defer to others as well. ---
**Author:** ![Sam\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)\ **Post date:** [April 19, 2009, 6:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/high-speed-rail-how-well-will-it-fly-obama-unveils-high-speed-rail-plan/493347/125 "2009-04-19T18:37:20Z")
> [@MichaelQReilly](#): > > Well, again, that doesn’t include the capital costs of building the airports, which I imagine, were it accounted for, would undermine any showing of profitability. \\ Hello? Is this thing on? I just finished posting a long post explaining exactly how airports get their capital funding. It is most assuredly part of their profitability picture. They raise their startup funds through bond issues, they raise upgrade capital from bond issues, airport improvement surcharges, and general revenue. This is no different than how other companies raise capital. Why you think this somehow invalidates the profitability of airports is beyond me. ---
**Author:** ![brazil84](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/8491ac/32.png) [@brazil84](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/brazil84)\ **Post date:** [April 19, 2009, 6:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/high-speed-rail-how-well-will-it-fly-obama-unveils-high-speed-rail-plan/493347/126 "2009-04-19T18:49:12Z")
> [@Sam\_Stone](#): > > \\ Hello? Is this thing on? I just finished posting a long post explaining exactly how airports get their capital funding. It is most assuredly part of their profitability picture. They raise their startup funds through bond issues, they raise upgrade capital from bond issues, airport improvement surcharges, and general revenue. > > This is no different than how other companies raise capital. Why you think this somehow invalidates the profitability of airports is beyond me. Anyway, who paid for America’s train stations and train tracks? My recollection from my US History class is that the railroads were given a percentage of the best land near the tracks they built. ---
**Author:** ![DSeid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dseid/32/20194_2.png) [@DSeid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DSeid)\ **Post date:** [April 19, 2009, 7:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/high-speed-rail-how-well-will-it-fly-obama-unveils-high-speed-rail-plan/493347/127 "2009-04-19T19:32:46Z")
In support of the East Coast corridor is [this ranking of cities by public transit level.](http://www.sustainlane.com/us-city-rankings/categories/city-commuting) And [this one too.](http://www.publictransportation.org/reports/consumer/forecast_070628.asp)Washington, Boston, NYC, and Philly all in the top 5. Chicago not far behind. (Although I have no information on the public transportation coverage in the other hub components.) On the West Coast San Fran, Seattle, LA, heck even Las Vegas are up there. I still don’t know how cities in the other possible HSR networks proposed fare though. And oh, **Sam** , you had asked for evidence that more people are choosing to commute by means other than driving? [Here.](http://www.thedailygreen.com/environmental-news/latest/public-transportation-47120803) > [@](#): > > In fact, in the third quarter of 2008, Americans took a 2.8 billion trips, a record 6.5% increase over the same period in 2007, according to a new American Public Transportation Association report. Vehicle miles driven declined 4.6%. > > “The record increase in public transportation trips demonstrates the exceptional value of public transportation in today’s economy,” said APTA President William W. Millar. “The fact that public transit ridership surged while gas prices and highway travel declined, shows a growing demand for more bus and rail services.” > > Public transportation has been increasingly popular, with 2007 ranking as the most heavily trafficked year in the last half century. Shifting some of the DOT’s budget from cars to public transportation options is only following America’s lead. ---
**Author:** ![Sam\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)\ **Post date:** [April 19, 2009, 7:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/high-speed-rail-how-well-will-it-fly-obama-unveils-high-speed-rail-plan/493347/128 "2009-04-19T19:46:10Z")
I have no problem with increasing funding to public transit if it’s clear that it’s what the public desires. If bus routes are becoming congested, by all means add more. If there’s evidence that a light-rail system would benefit from an extension, that’s fine. And I’m not about to second-guess local planners and the people who pay property taxes in cities. If they want more public transit, that’s fine. My specific objection in this thread has to do with the notion that government should be replacing networks of roads with fixed high speed rail links between cities. I think it’s only a reasonable thing to do in a couple of very special cases, and that high speed rail in general tends to not live up to its promise and makes the transportation system inflexible and costly. ---
**Author:** ![DSeid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dseid/32/20194_2.png) [@DSeid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DSeid)\ **Post date:** [April 19, 2009, 7:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/high-speed-rail-how-well-will-it-fly-obama-unveils-high-speed-rail-plan/493347/129 "2009-04-19T19:59:52Z")
And I really do not disagree with that statement so far as it goes. And again nothing of what is actually being done is building HSR. Basic upgrades for efficiency of what is already there and some planning studies is all for now. But the question to you is: what do you think are the features that make a particular “special case” a “reasonable” choice? And which of the potential systems mentioned in the DOT proposal do you think may meet those requirements? ---
**Author:** ![Robot\_Arm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/robot_arm/32/18280_2.png) [@Robot\_Arm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Robot_Arm)\ **Post date:** [April 19, 2009, 8:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/high-speed-rail-how-well-will-it-fly-obama-unveils-high-speed-rail-plan/493347/130 "2009-04-19T20:35:32Z")
> [@Sam\_Stone](#): > > My specific objection in this thread has to do with the notion that government should be replacing networks of roads with fixed high speed rail links between cities. Who said anything about replacing roads? ---
**Author:** ![Sam\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)\ **Post date:** [April 19, 2009, 9:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/high-speed-rail-how-well-will-it-fly-obama-unveils-high-speed-rail-plan/493347/131 "2009-04-19T21:13:52Z")
To me, a ‘reasonable case’ would include: - profitability - little potential for economic distortions and dislocations - affordability - demonstrated need Ultimately, by big objection is that governments are simply lousy at figuring this stuff out. Look at all the airline failures there have been. But that’s in a free market, where failure means you go out of business, people learn new things about the market, and then business tries again. It’s very much a bottom-up, iterative approach to infrastructure. But if government had chosen the routes (as it used to), you’d find them inefficient, costs would be much higher, and subsidies would keep the whole rickety structure alive. That’s a good description of the air travel network back when government ‘planned’ it. Let me give you a simple analogy from path-planning on campuses, which I learned in a usability text a few years ago: The top down approach to designing the walking paths on a campus is that the architect lays out the buildings, then decides how people want to move between the buildings, then designs the pathways and landscaping to match his vision of how foot traffic will travel. This approach is almost always wrong, and if you walk onto most campuses you’ll find that either the students are forced to walk on the paths provided through the use of fences or natural barriers like hedges, or there will be paths cut into the lawn all over the place as students choose their own way to get to class. But an order definitely emerges. By looking at the wear patterns in the grass you can see a sort of ad-hoc ‘infrastructure’ of packed-down paths created by the students. So the alternative approach is to build the campus buildings, sod the landscape without any barriers or walkways, and just let students free to walk however they want. Then next year, you find the most heavily traversed paths and pave them. The order emerges from the student’s needs, and not from the vision of the the central authority. This is bound to be far more efficient. But it still suffers from the flaw that over time, as the nature of the student body changes, new classes are added, and new buildings are constructed, the optimal paths will change. Your perfectly efficient walkway system is only efficient for a snapshot in time. So maybe a better approach would be to lay down a material without paths at all - make the whole quad concrete, use astro-turf, or build a series of sidewalks with some large circular ‘interchanges’ so that the are enough paths to always give someone something close to an optimal path. High speed rail is like the first approach. Smart guys in government analyze traffic patterns, then decide what the best way is for everyone to travel. They build very expensive, very inflexible links to match their vision. The road system is more like the second approach. Roads can be cheaper to build, and we’re constantly mutating the road network to meet current demonstrated needs. And like the campus that has many pathways with interchanges, the road system is more like a network than a fixed corridor - as needs change, there are enough different paths from one place to another that there is still room to find an optimal path. Now let’s go back to the campus analogy and see where an equivalent of HSR might fit in. Let’s say there are two very large buildings, and there’s heavy student flow between them. Maybe one has the cafeteria, and another has 2,000 students in it who need to eat in the cafeteria. Here’s a case where you can say that traffic flows will be heavy, and constant, and utterly predictable. So you build a large connecting courtyard, maybe covered, and you put in more doors and wider hallways to allow for lots of traffic. This makes sense. So I don’t want to see high speed rail lines criss-crossing the country or connecting up 50 different cities or anything like that. But I could be convinced that a run between two major population centers with stable economies might make sense, if you could demonstrate that there’s currently a major bottleneck and can point to reputable studies estimating costs and benefits - and not one produced by an advocacy group, but by a respected engineering consulting firm. I did a literature search a couple of years ago for such studies, and found a couple that met my standard for what I’d consider a reasonable positive feasibility report. Most did not. There are so many rent-seekers in large infrastructure plans like this who issue ‘studies’ supporting the proposition from a self-interested standpoint that it’s important to hear the voices of people who do not have vested interests in the outcome. Any high speed rail ‘study’ put out by a chamber of commerce or by a city planning board angling for state funds will be highly suspect, yet many of the most-publicized studies come from just such sources. Here’s an interesting feasibility study done by the Reason Foundation and others, calling into question the assumptions behind the California HSR plan - one of the ones the Obama administration wants to fund. It’s well worth reading: [The California High Speed Rail Proposal: A Due Diligence Report](http://www.reason.org/files/1b544eba6f1d5f9e8012a8c36676ea7e.pdf) (PDF). It’s certainly a critical report, but I think it’s important to hear all sides on such an important issue. ---
**Author:** ![ElvisL1ves](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/5daacb/32.png) [@ElvisL1ves](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ElvisL1ves)\ **Post date:** [April 19, 2009, 9:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/high-speed-rail-how-well-will-it-fly-obama-unveils-high-speed-rail-plan/493347/132 "2009-04-19T21:46:54Z")
> [@MichaelQReilly](#): > > I’m pretty sure one of the reasons that California voters approved the high speed rail system they are currently working on is because the cost of acquiring land to expand the airports in SoCal in order to meet projected demand was astronomical. Looks more like NIMBYism, when you consider that no land at all needed to be bought to turn El Toro into a commercial airport. If SNA could then have been sold off, there’d have been a net \*decrease \*in land use. ---
**Author:** ![Sam\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)\ **Post date:** [April 19, 2009, 10:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/high-speed-rail-how-well-will-it-fly-obama-unveils-high-speed-rail-plan/493347/133 "2009-04-19T22:10:11Z")
> [@Robot\_Arm](#): > > Who said anything about replacing roads? Well, it really depends on who you talk to. High Speed Rail is one of those ‘Rorschach Test’ things, where people see benefits they want to see. That’s why I always try to ask people, “Why do you support high speed rail? What advantage do you think it will have?” The answers are illuminating. Most of the time, I hear that it will improve the environment by getting cars off the road. Sometimes it’s claimed that it will replace dirty, expensive air travel. Some people just like it because it fits within their vision of everyone traveling with mass transit, it’s a blow against the hated automobile, it will force cities to create more public transit, it will punish the suburbs and reward city dwellers, etc. It’s the this last aspect that really bothers me. Because when you refute the other, more specific claims, it seems that there is a whole group of people who want high speed rail simply because it fits their vision of what they want society to be. It’s communal, it rewards high density cities and punishes suburban life, it’s ‘planned’ and ‘scientific’, it’s futuristic, etc. They would simply rather live in a country where people live in dense cities and travel around together in high speed trains. It’s really a form of social planning and cultural manipulation, rather than a good-faith effort to solve current problems from a cost-benefit standpoint. I’ve heard exactly these arguments from the people pushing the California high speed rail project. They claim that ridership will go way up over time, because once the train is in place they can start taxing other modes of transportation (or simply cease to expand them, as in opposing the airport upgrade problem ElvisL1ves just mentioned), and that the existence of the train will lead to infrastructure changes like increased adoption of mass transit and make living near the train stations more desirable, which will help prevent flight to the suburbs or bedroom communities. This is a ‘push’ technology - forcing an infrastructure on people that in turn forces them to live in a way that social planners approve. ---
**Author:** ![DSeid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dseid/32/20194_2.png) [@DSeid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DSeid)\ **Post date:** [April 19, 2009, 10:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/high-speed-rail-how-well-will-it-fly-obama-unveils-high-speed-rail-plan/493347/134 "2009-04-19T22:42:07Z")
**Sam** , I have a hard time not responding to your, honestly, odd, portrayal of new (or expanded) highways as “cheaper to build” or inherently more adaptable of an approach than rail, but it really is not pertinent to the question I asked so I will ignore it and focus on that which does answer my question. The issue remains predicting what features will predict, if not future profitability, at least little chance for much loss. So far your answer is that you’d support ones that had positive cost benefit analyses that were done by non-partisan groups. I am hoping that you’d trust the DOT to be in charge of those analyses and deciding which ones are believable (and not, say Cato :)). Well if so then you must be a big supporter of the current plan! Because again, as far as actual money for HSR what is to be funded for now are exactly those sorts of studies. The rest, and most of the money, is really just for the more mundane rail upgrades and a small slice of the pie compared to highways slice. As to your next post … well early on I responded to that question with what I was hearing as the reasons to possibly support HSR. Punishing suburbanites was not on that list and no one in this thread has made that argument. No one here (or anywhere else that I’ve read) is proposing getting rid of roads, or airports. But both of those forms have in many areas under discussion maxxed out with their current infrastructure. If some capacity in a few of those selected corridors is handled by another mode, then those other two, especially overcapacity roads, can actually function better. I’ve read more of trains as being in support of suburban and exurban growth than a means to diminish it. Does a transportation infrastructure stimulate growth according to its path? Of course. Have from the time of river travel and on to the Appian Way. Convention centers spring up around airports. Chicago owes its original heyday to trains and ships. It would be silly to not anticipate that to some degree. That is different than “If we build it they will come.” ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [April 20, 2009, 12:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/high-speed-rail-how-well-will-it-fly-obama-unveils-high-speed-rail-plan/493347/135 "2009-04-20T00:26:52Z")
> [@](#): > > The road system is more like the second approach. Roads can be cheaper to build, and we’re constantly mutating the road network to meet current demonstrated needs. And like the campus that has many pathways with interchanges, the road system is more like a network than a fixed corridor - as needs change, there are enough different paths from one place to another that there is still room to find an optimal path. I’m not seeing it… On a campus, the students are going off the standard paths, and making trails across what was previously just landscape. But almost nobody takes their car off-road on the route they prefer, and even those few that do don’t guide where the new roads are built. With roads, all you can do is build them where you think there will be traffic, and figure out which of the existing roads get the most use and improve them. And you can do both of those things with rail, too. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [April 20, 2009, 7:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/high-speed-rail-how-well-will-it-fly-obama-unveils-high-speed-rail-plan/493347/136 "2009-04-20T19:42:24Z")
No one is more zealous about the need to end America’s auto-dependency than [James Howard Kunstler,](http://www.kunstler.com/) yet here’s what he says in this weeks “Clusterfuck Nation Chronicle”: > [@](#): > > So, what people of good intention and progressive predilection want to know is how come Mr. Obama doesn’t just lay out the truth, undertake the hard job of cutting the nation’s losses, and get on with setting this society on a new course. The truth is that we’re comprehensively bankrupt, and no amount of shuffling certificates around will avail to alter that. The bad debt has to be “worked out” – i.e. written off, subjected to liquidation of remaining assets and collateral, reorganized under the bankruptcy statutes, and put behind us. We have to work very hard to reconfigure the physical arrangement of life in the USA, moving away from the losses of our suburbs, reactivating our towns, downscaling our biggest cities, re-scaling our farms and food production, switching out our Happy Motoring system for public transit and walkable neighborhoods, rebuilding local networks of commerce, and figuring out a way to make a few things of value again. > > ``` > What's happened instead is what I most feared: that our politicians would mount a massive campaign to sustain the unsustainable. That's what all the TARP and TARF and PPIT and bailouts are about. It will all amount to an exercise in futility and could easily end up wrecking the USA in every sense of the term. If Mr. Obama doesn't get with a better program, then we are going to face a Long Emergency as grueling as the French Revolution. One very plain and straightforward example at hand is the announcement last week of a plan to build a high speed rail network. To be blunt about it, this is perfectly fucking stupid. It will require a whole new track network, because high speed trains can't run on the old rights of way with their less forgiving curve ratios and grades. We would be so much better off simply fixing up and reactivating the normal-speed track system that is sitting out there rusting in the rain -- and save our more grandiose visions for a later time. > > I don't like to be misunderstood. With the airlines in a business death spiral, and mass motoring doomed, we need a national passenger rail system desperately. But we already have one that used to be the envy of the world before we abandoned it. And we don't have either the time or the resources to build a new parallel network. > > But grandiosity is just another way that we lie to ourselves about where we're at and what is really possible. Surely Mr. Obama knows that hope fades where the light of truth doesn't shine. He is a charming fellow. I don't especially want to see Newt Gingrich chop his head off. > > ``` ---
**Author:** ![Mr.Moto](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/9de0a6/32.png) [@Mr.Moto](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mr.Moto)\ **Post date:** [April 20, 2009, 8:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/high-speed-rail-how-well-will-it-fly-obama-unveils-high-speed-rail-plan/493347/137 "2009-04-20T20:00:42Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > I’m not seeing it… On a campus, the students are going off the standard paths, and making trails across what was previously just landscape. But almost nobody takes their car off-road on the route they prefer, and even those few that do don’t guide where the new roads are built. With roads, all you can do is build them where you think there will be traffic, and figure out which of the existing roads get the most use and improve them. And you can do both of those things with rail, too. Really? Because I can get around a lot of traffic on my commute by using certain bailout routes - and having a GPS opens up even more. Now, I support lots of things with transportation - including opening up motorcoach travel and taking air travel to the next level by improving air control and reducing the big airport bottlenecks - there are a lot of East Coast airports that can take the stress off of LaGuardia, JFK, the DC airports and others. Improving transportation to these airports is crucial, though, for this to happen. Now I certainly think trains have their role to play - but they aren’t as flexible as buses or planes, and I wonder whether we would sacrifice future development if we singlemindedly focus on rail. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [April 20, 2009, 8:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/high-speed-rail-how-well-will-it-fly-obama-unveils-high-speed-rail-plan/493347/138 "2009-04-20T20:22:07Z")
> [@Sam\_Stone](#): > > Well, it really depends on who you talk to. High Speed Rail is one of those ‘Rorschach Test’ things, where people see benefits they want to see. That’s why I always try to ask people, “Why do you support high speed rail? What advantage do you think it will have?” The answers are illuminating. Most of the time, I hear that it will improve the environment by getting cars off the road. Sometimes it’s claimed that it will replace dirty, expensive air travel. Some people just like it because it fits within their vision of everyone traveling with mass transit, it’s a blow against the hated automobile, it will force cities to create more public transit, it will punish the suburbs and reward city dwellers, etc. > > It’s the this last aspect that really bothers me. Because when you refute the other, more specific claims, it seems that there is a whole group of people who want high speed rail simply because it fits their vision of what they want society to be. It’s communal, it rewards high density cities and punishes suburban life, it’s ‘planned’ and ‘scientific’, it’s futuristic, etc. They would simply rather live in a country where people live in dense cities and travel around together in high speed trains. It’s really a form of social planning and cultural manipulation, rather than a good-faith effort to solve current problems from a cost-benefit standpoint. > > I’ve heard exactly these arguments from the people pushing the California high speed rail project. They claim that ridership will go way up over time, because once the train is in place they can start taxing other modes of transportation (or simply cease to expand them, as in opposing the airport upgrade problem ElvisL1ves just mentioned), and that the existence of the train will lead to infrastructure changes like increased adoption of mass transit and make living near the train stations more desirable, which will help prevent flight to the suburbs or bedroom communities. This is a ‘push’ technology - forcing an infrastructure on people that in turn forces them to live in a way that social planners approve. Well? What’s wrong with any of that? ---
**Author:** ![smiling\_bandit](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e9a140/32.png) [@smiling\_bandit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/smiling_bandit)\ **Post date:** [April 20, 2009, 8:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/high-speed-rail-how-well-will-it-fly-obama-unveils-high-speed-rail-plan/493347/139 "2009-04-20T20:29:32Z")
> [@MichaelQReilly](#): > > I’m pretty sure that the California system doesn’t need any right of way acquisition, although I may be wrong. [This](http://cahsr.blogspot.com/) cite is where I recall reading that from. Well, I am not going to search the whole site for a post you think might be somewhere on it. But I highly doubt any such already-obtained right of way exists or could exist. If so, this will cause considerable problems in the future. You can’t just let people drive over high-speed rail tracks. Even if you avoid any collisions, it is a BAD idea. The tracks must be maintained to a high level a precision, so expect a huge number of new bridges and overpasses. And that will have to hold true for every county road it crosses. Plus, if California can just take the land with no recourse… it’s basically theft. That doesn’t make it impossible. But iit’s not going to be easy, nice, or cheap, and possibly not worthwhile. Remember, it’s ultimately only going to be able to service two cities. With maybe a single stop en route, if it’s HSR. If not, there’s no gain. ---
**Author:** ![DSeid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dseid/32/20194_2.png) [@DSeid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DSeid)\ **Post date:** [April 20, 2009, 10:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/high-speed-rail-how-well-will-it-fly-obama-unveils-high-speed-rail-plan/493347/140 "2009-04-20T22:19:09Z")
FWIW [California’s governmental rail site](http://www.cahighspeedrail.ca.gov/faqs/route.htm) states > [@](#): > > To minimize potential environmental impacts from the high-speed train system, the Authority’s objective has been to maximize the use of existing transportation corridors and rights-of-way for the high-speed train system.. Which sounds like they will need at least some right of way acquisition. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/high-speed-rail-how-well-will-it-fly-obama-unveils-high-speed-rail-plan/493347.md?page=6) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/high-speed-rail-how-well-will-it-fly-obama-unveils-high-speed-rail-plan/493347.md?page=8)