Reduce potential terrorism with high-speed rail?

In My Humble Opinion
21

“A good train route, Chicago to Seattle and that in between is heaven a bad one Chgo to NYC is a nightmare.”

Which Chicago-New York train are you referring to? The Three Rivers via Akron, Pittsburgh, and Philadelphia, or the Lake Shore Limited via Cleveland, Buffalo, and Albany? The latter has a proper dining car and modern sleeping cars, while the former has only a cafe (7-Eleven-style microwaved frozen food) and older sleepers. Then again, I’ve heard that some people like the older sleepers – different strokes and all that.

“Amtrak is even ruder than the airlines.”
I’ve heard stories of both very rude and very friendly Amtrak personnel (and variations inbetween), sometimes from the same traveler or even the same trip. In my personal experience, five long distance train trips, all the Amtrak personnel I encountered were polite and most were friendly. Amtrak DOES have a problem with some bad apples who were hired in the 70s and early 80s when an Amtrak job was considered almost an entitlement and a lifetime position, and when many believed that the passengers meant only more work to do. Amtrak has actively tried to weed that out in their new hires, and have generally been successful.

22

The possibility for terrorism on trains is enormous. All they have to do is place pennies on the tracks, and we’ll have derailments everywhere.

Right?

23

Some kinda disjointed thoughts:

I personally have a couple of problems comparing trains to planes/cars.

For one thing, many advocates of air and auto travel do not acknowledge considerable subsidies they receive in terms of building and maintaining airports, roads, air traffic control, etc. Here in Chicago they are talking about paving over hundreds of acres of farmland miles from Chicago to build a 3d airport. And we haven’t mentioned such things as sound or air pollution.

Moreover, it is easy to say that train service sucks, if the money is not being spent to improve it. Sure, no one will take the train from Chicago to St. Louis if there are only one or two departures a day (I don’t know the correct number) as opposed to competing airlines offering any number of flights.

Further, the airlines are able to cut costs on short hauls where rail would be an option, and subsidize with higher rates on popular long hauls.

As long as people feel they need the option of essentially unlimited inexpensive air travel, that is where the money will go. Apparently people feel they need to be able to fly from Chicago to St. Louis every hour on the hour, whether the plane is half full or packed.

I think people tend to minimize the externalities of their preferences. As long as they can get a flight when they want, and drive from their suburban home to the airport, they choose to ignore all of the costs that went into providing that level of luxury.

Also, part of my personal bias is that I think people today tend to think of themselves and their time as too damned important. And they miss sight of the ways that their “apparent” haste actually creates inefficiencies. But that should probably wait for my “Luddite” thread! :slight_smile:

What rail improvements could be bought/subsidized for the kind of numbers they are discusing pouring into the air industry as a bailout?

Having said all of this, I understand that the airlines and road construction are a huge industry, and have no idea how to compare the employment/economic/etc impact of air vs rail.

BTW, my comment about driving a train into a building was intended to convey that even if you took out a train and its passengers, you wouldn’t have collateral damage of a scale caused last Tuesday.