C'mon ride the (high speed) train, hey, ride it, woo woo!

Free market unleashing the ingenuity of our job creators. Duh.

It certainly doesn't have anything to do with government. No sir.

 

Because they cost much less than a high speed rail and you can go anywhere.

 

Oh you mean how much do we subsidize air travel vs. what high speed rail might cost us? Judging by this project I say we stick with airports. You?

 

I'm with the Tuna on this one. Unless they can devise a boarding and unboarding similar to how they used to handle mailbags [using hooks] it ain't gonna fly.

 

You mean a luxury bus system on our overburdened (and subsidized) interstate system?

 

I'm pretty sure the point was conceded that it is not merely the existence of subsidies, but their cost relative to the expected ridership.

 

That's a charitable take on his posts.

 

Hey I do not mind subsidizing the Construction Industry with billions of dollars so they can pay nice dividends to their investors at a very low capital gains tax, but the system should at least make enough profit to fund continuous operations and system maintenance.

I would vote for a project where tax payers take the loss of a capital investment write off as long as we are not on the hook to constantly bail out the train due to not having enough demand to cover day to day expenses.

Basically I support socialising the loses of a big investment but not the socialising of loses of operations.

 

Sure subsidizing the middle class transportation will always get more votes than say helping the poor.

Like the home interest tax deductions, lots of our government tax goodies go to win votes over helping those that really needed.

That is democracy, I understand, but I still like to bitch about it.

 

Yes, and is subsidy a bad word? I have no problem subsidizing worthy projects that otherwise would never get off the ground, but your high speed rail isn't one of them.

 

Really, because I found it a pretty concise take on my point of view.

 

Why would you need that?

Trains only stop for about a minute. It's not like a plane, where you have to unload containers of checked-in baggage.

 

Stopping for even a minute kind of defeats the purpose of having a high speed rail system doesn't it? Just sayin'

 

What? You mean instantaneous accel-decel cycles aren't possible? Well, I never!

 

Pretty much what Timon said....

 

err...no.

It's how high speed rail works across the entire world. They don't just have trains going from terminus to terminus.

Take the Tokyo - Osaka route. 300 miles, about the same at San Francisco to LA. It takes 2.5 hours* and Osaka is the 5th stop.

If they went straight through they'd miss all the passengers from/for Yokohama, Nagoya, Kyoto.


* That's longer than flying, obviously, but the time you save not having to get to airports, having to check in, wait around, collect luggage at the other end, and having to get from the airport to the city, means it saves time.

Go beyond about 500 miles and flying will be quicker, but even then, I'd rather do a 700 mile trip like Tokyo - Fukuoka by train in 5 hours, than fly - although it does depend on the route.


Just by way of illustration...


The train pulls to a stop at 3 minutes. One minute later, the doors close and it's pulling away.

You don't have to check in. You don't have to wait in a waiting room until the train arrives. There's no checked baggage. You just take your bags on yourself and put them on the overhead rack or in the racks at the end of the carriage.

 

Ok now Google the populations of the 5 stops between Osaka and Tokyo and compare it to the 5 stops the LA to SF would make.

Also something I am just finding out, there are more trains running the Osaka to Tokyo route than the bullet train, they make a lot more stops, because of the demand of the bunch of medium size towns in between.

That population density only really exists in the east coast.

A bullet train that does not bleed hundreds of millions of tax payer dollars per year, on the west coast would be San Diego to Vancouver with only about 5 or 6 stops.

 

Yeah....Honshu [Main Island] is about as wide [143 mi] as Massachusetts and length [810 mi] close to Boston to Charlotte, NC [845 mi].

R/t flight today $262 with a cheapie offered for $160. Would it be worth it?

 

That is a great point!! Would the super fast trains be required to have one or 10 different gender restrooms?

 

No need for them. If you can't hold it for an hour or so you shouldn't be traveling.

 

You miss the point. Making multiple stops on high speed lines in the norm for the entire world that has high speed lines. I don't think there are any anywhere in the world that just run point to point airline style services.

They do indeed. There are three types of service on that route. All are bullet trains. The difference is the number of stops, so you have a 2.5 hours service, a 3 hours service, and a 3.5 hour service.

There are also local trains that stop at even more stations, but they don't run the whole route.

It doesn't exist in most places that have high speed rail either. Take the TGV in France, for example. I took the 1h 40m route from Lyon to Marseille, around 200 miles. It also stopped in Avignon and Aix-en-Provence, which are not major cities.

In terms of routes you are possibly right, but you could probably have a few more stops, e.g.
Vancouver
Seattle
Portland
(Possibly a stop at somewhere like Medford - high speed lines often stop at small places if there are no other stops nearby)
Sacremento
San Francisco
San Jose
(Fresno & Bakersfield, depending on the route the line would take, which would also be dictated by geography)
Los Angeles
Anaheim
(possibly another stop somewhere between there and San Diego)
San Diego


A line elsewhere in the country where all the stops are about 2-3 hours apart just wouldn't be worth it.

 

I just flew from LA to San Fran. It took about 55 minutes. Why would I want to spend more money and increase the trip time to 3 hours?