Odd note: apparently some people are calling for huge gas taxes (as in, $1.25 a gallon) in order to pay for their shiny new HSR system. Of course, the taxes would be levelled on the entire country, whereas the HSR would only benefit … them! Yeah, thanks. :rolleyes: And then simply can’t comprehend they wonder why we oppose the system.
Comparisons to Japan, or even many European countries, are not very good. Japan’s HSR, while very nice, can serve virtually every major city on the main island. Europe’s rail system doesn’t even need to be HSR, as it tends to have more and more interesting destinations within useful rail distance. And mostly that’s not HSR. With a couple of exceptions (the coasts, and even then mostly the East Coast).
And as mentioned, the East coast is, or at least was, quite well-endowed financiall until very recently. If the demand is there, why not pay for it yourselves? You only have, oh, New York, Philadelphia, Boston, and Washington. There’s a lot of wealth if the will was there. I’d even be willing to chip in something. But don’t expect me to pay for it as if I was going to get to use it everyday. I might be able to use it once or twice in my life, and then only as a tourist.
Anyway, starting another thread on an alternative.
When I lived in Seattle, they were discussing potential new mass transit systems for the city. I don’t know how well you know Washington, but there’s quite a divide (physical, cultural, and political) between the eastern and western halves of the state. Well, there was opposition from the easterners who didn’t want their gasoline taxes to pay for a system they couldn’t use. Someone ran the numbers and discovered that the eastern part of the state had been getting more from the transportation fund than they’d been paying into it for years.
So, you don’t want to pay for transit infrastructure that will move people between cities along the coasts? I can’t find any numbers for funding and revenue by state, but can you assure me that my taxes have never helped pay for roads in Tennessee?
What’s wrong with it is that not everyone wants to live that way. I sure as hell don’t.
Also what’s wrong with it is that packing people into congested cities seems contrary to the increasingly distributed nature of the economy. It’s industrial-age thinking. The trends I see are towards decentralization. Information technology, micro-manufacturing using CAD/CAM, more efficient distribution networks, both information and physical, lessen the need for people to remain in close proximity.
Also what’s wrong with it is that it creates choke points and increases risk. A society with the population distributed and communicating and traveling through many different and redundant methods is a society much less vulnerable to terrorism or natural disaster. The future is one of increasing power being put in the hands of individuals, for good and bad. Bioterror, nuclear proliferation, etc. A distributed society is much safer against such threats than one where everyone is packed tightly into large population centers with very expensive transportation links between them.
Also what’s wrong with it is that urbanization tends to lead to lower birthrates, and a natural birthrate below replacement levels is very destabilizing for a country. Ask the French.
I’d like to know how you’re supposed to protect an HSR link from terrorism. All it it would take to do immense damage is for a terrorist to drive a truck loaded with amphol under a rail bridge and detonate it just as the train is passing overhead. Or fly a private Learjet into the side of the train as its passing by. Or do any number of other things. How many spectacular 200 mph derailments would it take before we start having to live with extreme measures to protect the trains? Or scrap a multi hundred-billion dollar investment?
Let society grow organically. Let people decide where and how they want to live. Stop being so damned meddlesome in people’s lives. Stop trying to plan their society and stop dictating the way they should live.
After September 11th (and who knows how many other aircraft hijackings), we associate terrorism with weaknesses in our methods of transportation. But that is incorrect. Terrorists didn’t see airliners as the targets of their attacks, they used them as the weapons. Trains can’t be used that way, and are no more a target for terrorists than any other gathering spot for large numbers of people. If you were a terrorist and had a truckful of amphol or a private Learjet, would you blow up a high-speed rail line, or the Super Bowl?
Rail lines are no more of an instrument of social planning than roads are. I could make the same argument you did, but in reverse. By distributing our population to the suburbs, we’re taking up valuable land that could be more productive in agriculture. It demands huge investments in every infrastructure (water, electric, sewer, communications) to connect this far flung sprawl. Why do you want to build superhighways to scatter people hither and yon? Stop telling them how to live.
I’m not telling them how to live. I don’t like central planning, period. I like letting societies grow and evolve organically, from the bottom up. Roads are generally responses to demand. They generally get built as congestion increases due to the choices people make, and they are generally funded by the communities that build them.
I’m sure you can do better than idiotic simplifications and sneering.
As for externalities, that’s another discussion. I’m not opposed to making people pay for externalities at all. For example, most economists would agree that one way to solve the congestion problem is with congestion pricing. It would make the road system more efficient and capture one form of externality.
Sam the interstate highway system, which include of course the main ways in and out of cities, was and is primarily funded by the Feds - 90%, was indeed centrally planned, and did indeed have predictable effects on various towns that it bypassed and those that got on and off ramps. Of course when it was proposed by Roosevelt
HSR (or what will pass for that in America) will be a response to defined long established traffic patterns but will have some effect on development just as has every other transportation infrastructure before it.
Its intended effects includes relieving congestion on the interstates and other roads which will allow them to function less inefficiently.
Look, it’s not just a matter of esthetic choice between suburban/exurban and New Urbanist living. The latter is more sustainable because it requires less energy input, and specifically less petroleum input. Distributed systems might be more efficient for communication, but not for transportation. And that makes the basic form of our built environment a legitimate matter of public policy.
Certainly a lot of Americans want their suburbia, but that doesn’t mean they can have it indefinitely. If government doesn’t narrow their range of choices, nature will. As Kunstler has pointed out, junkies love their heroin, but that doesn’t mean they can keep doing it without negative consequences; eventually their veins collapse and organs fail.
Why would there be shorter (or non-existant) security wait times for HSR than for air travel? Wouldn’t a suitcase full of guns or explosives be as serious a threat to a train as to a plane?
True, but why would John Q. Public feel safe about riding on a no-security train? Doesn’t the farce that is the TSA demonstrate that people want imaginary safety for the passengers?
Would the people in charge of making (or defending) that decision be willing to admit that preventing a few thousand deaths from a plane hitting a building is worth the intrusive, useless security theater, whereas preventing a few hundred deaths on a train is not?
It isn’t about rational analysis, but about a feeling of control over one’s environment, however imaginary that feeling is. Lots of people have a fear of flying, few have a fear of riding ground vehicles. Lots of people have a fear of being hijacked on a plane and crashing and dying, few have that fear on a train or bus.
People always tend to give away the fact that the arguments they offer against any given proposal aren’t their true more self directed motives by using the “Lawnmower argument”.
I’ve given you your Lawnmower back already.
And anyway you said that I could borrow it for as long as I liked…
And anyway you never leant it to me …
And anyway I never wanted your stupid lawnmower…
And anyway it was broken when you leant it to me…
It would be so refreshing for people to stand up and admit that they work for the auto industry/road delivery/oil industry etc. then subject us all to the tired old,not very convincing chestnuts such as …
High speed rail travel would be a non starter because…
The infra structure would be too expensive…
And anyway there would be no demand for it …
And anyway it would be a security risk …
And anyway we’ve never done it before…
And anyway I like driving my car long distances or enjoy all the fun of airport security/check in etc.
And anyway it wouldn’t be as fast as a jet plane…
And anyway I dont like change…
And anyway it would put too much power into the hands of (Insert personal bugbear of choice here)…
And anyway I’m in a right wing anti government militia…