Why there will be no XL pipeline: Warren Buffett

Railways are the transport of the future. Buffet knows this.

The pipe is still many times more efficient than using a train to move fuel. I also doubt the rest of the world is ahead of the US in freight trains. It is the passenger train that we do not embrace and a lot of that has to do with how spread out we are. You still need to get to and from the train station. Whole countries in Europe are the size of states here and we only have a handful of states with typical European population densities.They have effective mass transit in most of those states.

The USA is ideal for passenger trains, especially across the mid West. High speed passenger trains. You could have the fastest rains in the world. But nothing has been done. People in the USA are stuck in the past. And the politicians.

Astonishing. You need to be using the train for passenger/goods transport not for moving oil.

Sure it is. Do you have any idea how big the US midwest is and how far apart all the cities are? How much expensive high speed track it would take to connect even a decent subset of just some of the major cities? And the point to doing it is what, exactly? When airplanes that can go anywhere are already available? Take a look at the true cost of unsubsidized travel and airplanes are hard to beat. Amtrak for example, which is actually heavily subsidized, has ticket prices that are about the same as the airlines. And that is with the current rail system, not your proposed high speed, which would have to charge substantially higher ticket prices and would still take substantially longer to get you to your destination. So, I;'d say it's you who is stuck in the past.....

Have you any idea how big China is?

Do you have any idea that China is a communist country, that labor costs, environmental costs, safety considerations, are significantly different than in the USA? That when a state controls everything, fixes prices, wages, material costs, that it's not the real world?

I've been on the fastest train in the world. It connects the Shanghai airport to the city. It was cute, nice to say I've done it, but it offered no overwhelming advantage.

I've been on the Eurostar between London and Paris. WTF is up with that? It takes 2 1/2 hours and the cost is similar to airline prices which takes 1 1/2 hours. Again, there is no compelling advantage. And that is for two cities that are close, not like the US midwest. So, why the fixation on trains?

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The advantage is that you can start/finish in the city centre, not have to travel out to an airport. Besides, aircraft/travel will disappear as fossil fuels become expensive. You get a lot more space on the train too.

Why the fixation on flying?

Is this sophisticated enough for you, Sir Harry, UK Minister of Total Knowledge?

Passenger trains work well in the UK but the scale mitigates against them in the US.

You speak of the midwest. Take two mid-west cities: Chicago and Detroit. The two are 282 miles apart. That distance exceeds the widest part of the UK! Train service in the UK more closely resembles that found in US subway systems - it is no way equivalent to the US train network.

"Malcom \"Mal\" Reynolds" wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@free.teranews.com:

Personal example: North Jersey suburb to Somerville, MA door to door (i.e New York City area to Boston area)

Car ~4 1/2 hours driving. Cost: gas + tolls end result: have car available at all times (watch out for Boston area parking tickets)

Bus: Walk to train station, train to Penn Sta (~45 min); Bus (4 hr); T + walk another 45 min total including waiting 6 hours (advantage very cheap, I don't have to drive, disadvantage bus is less comfortable)

Train: same as bus, but quite a bit more expensive (depending on train chosen, time of day), much more comfortable

Plane: 45 min to Newark airport (drive yourself, cost of parking, cost of limo, or cost of train (then it takes longer than 45 min because of transfers). TSA etc 1 1/2 hours. Flight 1 hr; transportation in Boston,

Btw, I think Amtrak makes money on the Boston to Washington corridor, certainly on the Acela which is a nice train if it has no problems .

Trains have much less subsidy than airlines do. Certainly for the middle distances trains should be much more economical (taking ALL costs into account) than cars or planes. But who can truthfully account for all costs. Having ridden high speed trains in Europe, I would reallylike them here too, but the costs and the NIMBY would be very high since true high speed trains require special tracks and rights of way without same level crossings. This works in Europe because, despite population densities similar to the Washington-Boston area, there is still much more land available for rights of way (towns are much more compact with agricultural and recreational lands between). And especially in the early era, the French rail development just said we need the land.

We had passenger rail service in the central U.S. long ago. It wasn't high speed. I remember dropping my grandma off at one small town in Nebraska. She rode the train to the next town which was about 8 miles away. Amtrak does still run here. I checked out of curiosity to see about going from the nearest station in Lincoln, NE to St. Louis, MO. It would cost me $156 and take almost 16 hours. I can drive there in about

oh we could just take the direct and indirect subsidies that Nuclear Power gets/will get and put that money into fixing all those tracks, sort of just like when we built the interstates

the difference being that you don't have to take a car to/from either airport to get to/from the city...kind of makes the train safer than driving your car on those dangerous roads/motorways

is?

Try driving a car into a jet.

And how far ahead of time do you have to arrive at the airport compared to how far ahead of time you have to arrive at the train station? And do you get fondled by TSA operatives at the train station?

Perce

The customs on Eurostar was almost nonexistent. I think they stamped my passport and that was about it. There must be some deal between European nations. As far as "how long", I don't know, but I was reading one review that said they preferred the Chunnel to a ferry with regards to driving.

It comes down to money. You can buy planes and build airports a lot cheaper than buying land and laying track. The environmental impact studies would sink you before you ever cut down the fist tree or filled the first wet land. Somewhere in that thousand mile route there would be some endangered bird or fish. When you were finished you would serve a dozen cities and leave a thousand too far from the station to make the railroad useful.

We move plenty of freight by rail and I agree trains are not the way to move anything you can pump. It is just passenger rail that doesn't work for big areas in the US. You still can't really get a grasp about how big this place is and haw spread out the cities are. England, Scotland and Wales is about the size of Florida with 3 times the population clustered in cities that are within bicycle distance of each other (or less than 2 kilotons apart in NATO terms)

Maybe the same reason France and Israel wanted their first nuke plants, bombs.