You really are the village idiot harry. Why do you persist in making such a fool of yourself? I can take you to vast sections of railroads that are either closed for good or in such sad shape that they can only support freight traffic at 10 MPH. I can take you to JFK which features brand new terminals, eg #8, and supportes flights of the Concorde and now the A380. I can show you trains from Paris to Milan that take a day and a plane that gets you there in 2 hours. You really don't travel much, do you?
I'm beginning to wonder if harry was involved with the Concorde. That program came out of some of the same thinking, courtesy of the UK. The US govt even had a program to build a SST at the time and Boeing was working on it. After some development work was done and we figured out the cost versus economics of it, the US pulled the funding plug. Boeing decided it didn't make sense either and put their $$$ on the 747. That plane first flew in 1969 and the world's airlines are still buying them, Boeing is still building them. The airlines are making money, Boeing is making money. The Concorde lost huge amounts of money every year it was in service. That despite the fact that a ticket cost $12,000. A huge percentage of those flying paid nothing at all because they had empty seats and passengers used airline frequent flyer points for tickets to ride the technological marvel.
What harry is proposing is similarly divorced from reality.
What the hell does nuclear power have to do with trains? You could take all the sunsidies to nuclear power and it would be a drop in the bucket in creating a high speed rail service in the northeast or connecting the midwest cities. It's not just "fixing" tracks. There are HUGE problems. For example, does a high speed 250mph train go across grade crossings ANYWHERE in the world, let alone in a section of the country, like the northeast where they occur multiple times in a mile? Any go around turns with radiuses designed for 100mph? What's the value of the homes, business, roads, highways, streets, that are in the way of expanding those turn radiuses?
Yes, that's an advantage IF your final destination happens to be the city itself. Between London and Paris, it's an advantage IF your final destination is within the city itself. But it has little relevance to linking up the midwest USA as harry is advocating. And if you apply it to say Boston to DC, the cost of getting that
250mph train that could compete with an airplane, would make the ticket so expensive it would be the next Concorde. At 100mph, the ticket is already the price of an airline ticket.
That depends entirely on how you look at it. If you look at it in strictly dollar terms, then it's probably true. If you look at it in terms of how many passengers are moved, then Amtrak is getting huge subsidies per compared to the airlines. It's about the VOLUME.
>Certainly for the middle
I agree. The folks that think you could easily put in a high speed
250mph train between Boston and DC for example, have no idea what that would entail. Like all the grade crossings. You want a 250mph train going through those? Of the turn radiuses that support 100mph. What happens when you have to widen them out for a mile? All the homes, businesses, roads, highways that are in the way? All the environmental studies, issues that come into play. harry keeps bringing up China. It's mostly open space, and if the commies want to take your hut, they give you $1000 and bring over the bulldozer. Oh, and unlike the Chinese, we'd have to pay union wages and benefits for all the labor, etc.....
I road the fastest train in the world. It connects Shanghai to the airport. It's only like 20 miles. It reached 260mph. They have a speedometer display so you can see it, like the Concorde did. Yes, it gets you there fast, but.......
We were staying at a hotel and they wanted to know our flight so they could pick us up in a car. Yes, that's right, a car. We said we wanted to experience the train, and they didn't like that idea at all. They couldn't even seem to grasp why one would want to try the train. In the end, they insisted on sending a car to the airport to greet us and escort us to the train. They were worried we would have trouble finding it. That's kind of funny, considering it's a nice modern airport and the world's fastest train. So, that's what we did. They met us and escorted us over to the train, which wasn't hard to find at all. We took the speedy 20 mile ride. At the other end, the train ended kind of in a crummy neighborhood part of Shanghai, not a transportation hub, subway center, or anything like that. Another one of their cars was waiting and took us to the hotel. Given that people have luggage, want to get to their hotel direct without having to get on a train, off a train, into a taxi, etc, and that car transportation is cheap in China, I can see why the train doesn't make much sense.
Oh, and despite the fact that it was afternoon, there were few people on it. Probably because the cost was about $10 or so, I suspect the locals can get a bus or similar to the airport for a lot less. Also, it only hits that 260mph speed for one brief period on straight track..
A 100 year old railway will not handle trains today. Track requires constant maintenance and as trains go faster, the older track will not handle it. That is one reason why the US does not have bullet trains. They can't afford to take the older track out of service to upgrade it and getting the right of way to build new track is very expensive. If an area is unpopulated enough to be politically viable, it is probably a protected wildlife area. I suppose the Europeans are more used to the government coming in and taking their land, since you have had a war every 30 or 40 years where they redraw all of the maps and everyone loses their land.
Rich people in those two cities. You are giving us an example of two of the richest cities in the world and then saying the US should build a train between Fumbeck Alabama and Pig's Knuckle Texas.
The part you ignore is the Chinese are buying cars at a faster rate than any country in the world. Somebody there doesn't want to ride the train.
Not in the US. It may shock you but we don't really follow European news here and we are very detached to what happened there. There was virtually no reaction to that Scandinavian guy who shot up the summer camp but Jodi Arius is the only thing on TV here..
When they talk about airline "subsidies, they are really talking about the fact that FAA runs the air traffic control system at a loss (air fare taxes do not cover that cost) and the fact that the government operates a lot of the airports. There are still substantial gate fees paid by the airlines that defray that cost. The subsidies for passenger rail are a lot higher per ticket and they are direct payments to the railroad along with government maintained infrastructure. The air fare subsidies are a couple bucks a ticket, the rail subsidy is twice what the ticket costs on some trips.
The economics of Concorde fell through when the price of oil rose. The price of oil will rise again will rise again and the economics of all air travel will fall down. If you don't have a substitute, the USA will fall down.
Buffet has all this figured out. But you're so thick, you can't see it.
That is an experimental maglev train. Not very practical at the moment, But maybe a pointer for the future. There is even a proposal for a sub Atlantic train. I don't suppose we'd see that fora few years.
Yes, I think it's likely you would join them in jumping off the tower, because you're a commie loving, monkey see, monkey do, kind of clown. Following your logic, the USA should have followed your lead off the cliff in building the Concorde too, because building a SST aircraft was the in thing to do. Why, you'd have to be dumb not to build SST, they are the future of travel.
Instead, Boeing bet the company on the 747. The results? To date 1,500 747s have been built and are flown by the major airlines of the world. They continue to be built today. The Concorde? You and your friends the French, who you needed to help you, built 20 of them and none are flying today......
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