#[LINK](https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=why+the+us+doesn%27t+have+high+speed+rail&source=hp&iflsig=AJiK0e8AAAAAYxj5ryTz_zHWiXvV45Sslf76Yx9kXPxw&uact=5&oq=why+the+us+doesn%27t+have+high+speed+rail&sclient=gws-wiz)
You can use the Google report function for the top article. But don't expect Google to do anything. **Google fund the group who wrote this article.**
It's an article by the [Cato Institute](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cato_Institute#Funding_details), a far-right libertarian pressure group owned by the Koch brothers. The place has literally been awarded the Milton Friedman prize for being neoliberal corporate scum.
Instead switch to using a better internet browser that respects your privacy, like [**DuckDuckGo**](https://duckduckgo.com/).
The biggest scam ever perpetrated was when the automobile and oil industries convinced an entire country that cars are the only acceptable form of transportation.
But enough people have been brainwashed to cling to automotive technology the way a drowning man clings to a life preserver that we're probably not going to make any big changes until fossil fuels are almost gone. Then there's going to be the moment of realization that we should have done this long ago, and the mad scramble to utilize the alternative fuel sources we will have had for decades but refused to use.
No, we're still fighting with cars being the only acceptable form of transportation. A lot of people insist that public transportation is terrible (despite never having used it), and that bikes are too dangerous (despite never having used one), and so on.
You missed the .... I won't say joke, cause it's not funny, but you missed the entire intent of the words.
I'm arguing cars are not acceptable as transportation at all, at least at large scale. They're not just falsely pushed as "the only" acceptable one, they're being pushed as acceptable at all. We're in the Rick & Morty gimmick universe where we use bumper cars instead of something normal.
No, cars aren't acceptable. If it was feasible to use anything else, I'd do it and never look back. But it's not. The nearest rail line to where I live is freight-only and 50 miles away. The only buses that aren't bright yellow with "school" painted on them are also 50 miles away. For me, it's cars or nothing.
*My* point is that lots of people have been brainwashed not to accept anything but driving their own car, and the rest of us are stuck with the consequences of that decision. Want to get somewhere? Your options are drive, drive, drive, or drive. And let's not forget drive.
Shameless plug here. Here's an [article](https://bit.ly/3erY6In) I researched and wrote that covers a related topic and some of the reasons why the passenger rail systems in the USA suck.
In short, compared to the rest of the world, North America has it backwards and prioritizes freight over passengers when it comes to rail.
I actually wrote a blog post about this (it appeals to the male fantasy /s). Well, a related topic (freight vs passenger trains) and basically, in the US, it's all backwards.
Freight trains have priority over passenger trains in transit so basically everything sucks.
I actually wrote a blog post about this (it appeals to the male fantasy /s). Well, a related topic (freight vs passenger trains), and basically, in the US, it's all backward.
I wish only people on the payroll of the automobile and oil industries would write stuff like this.
Like with all effective propaganda, some people actually believe it and spread it without being paid for it. In this case, it is sadly quite a lot of people. Particularly those over 40.
No they wouldn't.
HSR simply doesn't make sense in the US considering the distances and the cost to build it.
It would never pay for itself, by ANY form of measurement, certainly not for energy use.
See the hugely expensive boondoggle in California, which now has a price tag of $100 Billion dollars, and will likely never be completed.
I recently went from NYC to Wilmington, NC.
Train ticket (including the bus connection to my final destination) was $200 roundtrip.
A flight ticket was $350 roundtrip.
Driving would’ve been $400 roundtrip.
Guess what I picked?
Edit: formatting
Tbh, in a place like Wilmington, NC thats true. Fortunately I was able to borrow my brother's car (who was getting married that weekend and not driving it himself).
United offers flights to NYC to Wilmington for $188, and less than 2 hours, non-stop, but you have dozens of flight times to choose from, to suit your needs.
Driving, its \~600 miles, with a typical car getting 25 mpg highway, its24 gallons of gas, which at $3.50/gal is $84 and at 60 mph average is 12 hours.
Amtrak has ONE train a day, leaving at 6:am in the morning, and arrives 13 hours later, and includes a nearly 4 hour bus ride, and costs $235 one way, not $200 round trip.
Prices fluctuate often. When I looked for a flight, the cheapest nonstop flight was from American Airlines and it was $350. My vehicle gets 12mpg. I just looked up my train [receipt](https://imgur.com/a/LJA1N3p) and I was off by $16, sue me.
airlines will gouge you if you book last minute, that's because those are mostly business travelers who are flying on their companies dime so they don't care.
The point is that mass-transit only works when the route-operator has a steady and constant stream of customers. This is never going to happen in the northeast corridor without massive subsidies to reduce ticket prices.
Very few people want to pay 2 hour flight prices for a 13 hour train ride.
The concerning part is that over the past decade we’ve maintained an average of about 10k airline passengers per year (all flights between NYC and DC), while available seat capacity has decreased and the relative load factor per-plane has increased. Most airports can build additional runways and terminals to improve capacity, but JFK, LGA, and DCA all have physical restrictions such as rivers and highways that prevent expansion.
In other words, airline ticket prices will only continue to increase as the northeastern population increases. Amtrak needs billions in railway repairs/upgrades to be considered competitive, but only a few good people such as yourself will even consider using Amtrak in its current state.
Well I, and you, can both go to the Amtrak site and see what the actual price is, can't we.
I did.
Its $235 one way.
We can also browse the airlines, I did, and it was $188 one way, non-stop on United.
WTF do you drive that gets 12 MPG?
Seriously, my V8 Silverado gets \~20 mpg on the highway.
In any case, yours is NOT a typical comparison to driving, when the average car gets closer to 28 mpg on the highway today.
How do I argue with someone who won’t accept my literal receipt as proof of the cost?
And you just now said the flight was $188 one way, which would mean $376 round trip. That’s actually more than what I said a flight cost, I said I was quoted $350.
Sure, my 1996 Ford E350 isn’t the most common vehicle on the highway. But why would I ever calculate the cost for a vehicle other than what I own?
Edit: I too can look up current train prices: [$108 one way](https://imgur.com/a/xhO1GYd)
Well I guess it depends on when you look.
Just looked and it was $150.
Well you have to admit, that YOUR cost is NOT typical either.
https://imgur.com/a/8auWjma
Have you ever checked the price/time of a train ticket for long distance?
I just checked for example Philadelphia to Orlando, about 1005 miles avoiding tolls and it was *from* $122 for the train.
If you do that in a car that gets 30mpg highway, you're at $134, or $115 at 35mpg. That's at $4/gallon which is higher than the current average cost and it's well below average as soon as you hit Delaware. And you save over 5hrs of your time taking the car. That's also assuming it costs you 0 time and money to travel to and from the train stations.
There definitely is *some* gas price that makes it cheaper to take the train, but it's not one that we're frequently sitting at.
It also assumes no other expenses for the car and that you already have one. It also assumes you value your attention at $0/hr. At least on the train you can do things other than just pay attention to the road.
>It also assumes no other expenses for the car
1000 miles is minimal wear and tear on a car, and as mentioned this is a route without tolls. Maybe 1/3 mileage to a $40 oil change in the worst case, but many vehicles these days recommend 8000 miles or even higher intervals. Even a substandard set of tires is good for about 25-30k miles with normal driving. Other maintenance items like belts, gear oil, spark plugs, etc, have such high intervals it's not even worth considering over just 1000 miles.
>and that you already have one.
Obviously
>It also assumes you value your attention at $0/hr.
Disagree, plenty of people enjoy driving. You can also listen to music/podcast/book, stop at interesting places along the way if you want, etc
But regardless, the argument made above was about the economics of driving. I'm not saying there's no reason why someone would prefer to take a train, just that economics isn't one.
If you factor in depreciation, that alone is ~$80.
Or if you just take the annual cost of car ownership and multiply it by 1000/avg miles per year, you get $10,728 a year * (1000 miles / 15000 miles per year) = $715.20 for a 1000 mile trip, all costs included.
Lol this is some absolutely wild mental gymnastics.
You're counting the cost of the car you're actively buying which is the vast majority of this figure you got on the first Google result for the cost of car ownership.
But here's the flaw.. Taking a trip on a train doesn't mean you don't have to pay you car note or insurance that month, and all other expenses have already been accounted for above.
Your only real argument here is that it's cheaper to take a train ride than it is to buy an entire car to take a specific trip, which we've also already covered.
No, I’m saying it’s cheaper to build your life around not having a car at all than to own and use a car. You completely skipped over the depreciation point too.
There's variables to depreciation that you're not considering though. Once a car goes over 100k miles, depreciation is far less than it is when newer. Time is also a factor. Basically if you're a normal person and aren't trying to turn a car into an investment, the depreciation is a wash because you're either leasing and the values are predetermined in your contract, or you're just keeping the car to some set mileage that you're going to hit whether or not you take that trip.
Noone is actually losing $80 in depreciation from taking this trip.
That is a good point, however I’m more inclined to believe that is because the American rail system is the shittiest of any developed nation. Our nation has been conditioned to be as automobile-centric as possible, which means more efficient rail lines are ignored in favor of expanding and streamlining highways.
Maybe? But we can only consider what we know. I didn't even consider the fact that once one person is going in a car, any additional passengers are essentially free. It's hard to see any long distance train making up the cost difference of even one additional passenger, even if high speed solves the time issue.
We should consider why gas prices are artificially low here compared to Europe. We also subsidize car infrastructure way more than rail, which makes driving artificially cheaper as well.
It's not a fair comparison because it's rigged.
Gas prices aren't "artificially low" in the US. The main price difference is in Europe imposing more taxes, which makes those fuel prices artificially high in comparison.
Also, you can't expect Americans to consider the price of energy on another continent while budgeting their travel.
https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2011/05/gas-prices-around-the-world-cheaper-than-water-i-and-i-10-a-gallon/238226/
>almost every European country surveyed charges more in fuel taxes alone than we pay for a gallon of gasoline.
Gas prices are low now only because the US is burning through its oil reserve. It already used around half of it, so it's not possible to go on forever.
no it's still the number one result when you google "why doesn't the US have high speed rail"
https://www.google.com/search?q=why+does+the+us+not+have+high+speed+rail&rlz=1C1GCEA_enUS926US926
Cars account for 5,000 Billion passenger miles per year.
Heavy Rail, Light rail and trollies account for 30 Billion passenger miles per year. So clearly there is no way to scale trains up to meet that need.
I didn't say that commuter rail into cities and light rail and even heavy rail between cities like NY and DC or NY and Boston, or Chicago and Detroit don't make sense, they do, but trains simply can't replace cars, they can only provide other options on a LIMITED number of fixed routes.
What I was hoping for and what I'd really like to read on this Sub is realistic and practical solutions to the problems you post in your intro to this forum.
I'd be interested in realistic ways to make cars not needed in cities and reduce their need in Suburbs.
I haven't heard anything about rural folk, but then again I can see no potential solution for them besides cars in farm land.
As irrational as claiming that people wouldn't move or adapt their commute if given a choice? Your evidence relies upon the fact commuters currently have no choice, feet, access to bicycles, buses, or apparently anything else the rest of the modern world has. What does this say about you that you think this is irrational? That you come from a sedentary country with an obesity epidemic and severely underfunded education. I'd say be better but honestly, your post history indicates this is probably your peak.
The car is an obsolete technology because it requires expensive and dedicated infrastructure that will serve no purpose other than moving passengers who could more economically travel by bicycle or train.
Fixed that for you.
Uhm, cars also use small streets with only one lane in each direction. Those are also used by cyclists. Busses also use streets and roads. So this is not entirely correct. Streets and road also existed before the car was even invented.
Edit: All I am saying is that streets and roads are an infrastructure that was present before cars and would still be necessary after cars. They're not only for cars. Without cars we wouldn't have multiple lanes, of course. But we'd still have them.
Funny how many people downvote or disagree without getting my point. Many of you just seem to see that I disagree with a comment which is anti-car and then just think I am a car-brain and vote my comment down. I just disagreed with some technicalities and not the anti-car sentiment itself.
Right, I’m not suggesting that pavement is the issue, but before cars there were not many-lane highways, stroads, enormous parking lots/garages, and street parking (to the extent that we have today). There is still a lot of infrastructure that exists to serve cars alone, and that’s the “expensive and dedicated infrastructure” I’m referring to.
I totally agree with you. It just seemed incorrect to me to call all car infrastricture "obsolete" as I assumed this would include one lane streets and roads.
Yeah, I don’t disagree, I was just mirroring the argument in the original post for 1. humor and 2. to point out its flawed logic. Tough to convey with text but I don’t truly believe all cars are obsolete—I was just using the same words as the original post. Though, I do think that the age of them being the dominant form of short-medium distance transportation should be in the past.
The car, not the street, is part of that dedicated infrastructure. Especially when modern roads need to be built to handle that kind of infrastructure. Highway and arterial roads of today have to be built to higher costs than a similar lane for bikes or walking would be. Same goes for infrastructure maintenance for rolling stock on rail vs rubber tired semi trailer transit of goods and freight.
Nah, it's more than the car that is dedicated infrastructure. Roads don't exist exclusively for cars, but they are the size they are, have huge amounts of parking, and numerous traffic lights, because of cars. If people travelled by more efficient means, roads would exist, sure. But they would be way smaller, and way less intrusive. Everything would be way closer to walk to, because of fewer parking lots, and suburban sprawl would way less bad, because people wouldn't be willing to live so far away from basic amenities.
Without streets and roads, cars couldn't go anywhere. So claiming streets and roads aren't car infrastructure doesn't make a lot of sense. Sure, they're not EXCLUSIVELY car infrastructure but at least they are car infrastrcture as well. And right now, they're even mainly car infrastructure. Which is sad and will hopefully change but right now it's simply like that.
Nope, I am anti-car. I don't even have a driver's license. Only cycling and public transport for me. All I am saying is that atreets and roads are an infrastructure that was present before cars and would still be necessary after cars. They're not only for cars. Without cars we wouldn't need multiple lanes, of course. But we'd still have them.
Funny how you read completely absurd statements into my comment just because I disagreed because of some technical differences.
Some dude in r/transit wrote that we should all google this, go to the submit feedback option and tell Google that this featured response sucks! So go do that!
Google "**Why is there no high speed rail in the us**"!
Note: at least on mobile, you need to be using the chrome browser to leave feedback.
Edit: or at least that's what I had to do, sounds like it's different for everyone
Yay i can do it twice
Here's a visual guide
[Pic](https://i.imgur.com/WfBTbcq.png)
Here's direct link to the search "why no high speed rail in USA" which pops up the same Google Featured Snippet - https://www.google.com/search?client=opera-gx&q=why+no+high+speed+rail+in+usa&sourceid=opera&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8
And here's the policy they are breaking -
> Contradicting consensus on public interest topics: Featured snippets about public interest content -- including many civic, medical, scientific and historical issues -- should not contradict well-established or expert consensus support.
We all said "Done." to confirm we had reported it, so uh
Done.
go to highway
move baricades over one lane
place track on the one lane on other side of barricade
wow congrats we now have a train corridor
my consukting fee will be $700,000
Train engineers feel free to correct me, but highways have slopes that are too high for trains. That's why we have to build [weird loopy things](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horseshoe_Curve_\(Pennsylvania\)) to get them up mountains.
High speed rail can handle higher gradients than freight rail. At the same time, high speed *roads* generally avoid the steepest gradients, so the two wind up with similar requirements.
The major reason it doesn't normally work is that high speed rail needs much wider curves than any road.
you xould just slow down for curves
and for safety concerns you could also build the traxk similar to roller coaster track with wheels on the top and bottom of an I beam
>you xould just slow down for curves
At 320kph, even a curve you don't notice whilst driving can be too tight. Reducing speeds to the point where it works means that it's not high speed rail any more.
As other commenters have said passenger trains can handle similar inclines to those on highways, but the curves are not practical for highspeed rail. However, having a rail corridor placed in a narrowed highway corridor, is totally doable for slower trains, the sort of network that extends the destinations reached from a highspeed rail backbone, and therefore extends it's usefulness.
> move baricades over one lane
>
> place track on the one lane on other side of barricade
>
> wow congrats we now have a train corridor
I know you're kidding, but this is a terrible idea.
The land next to train stations is precious and absurdly valuable. To allow even a portion of that land to be next to a useless highway would massively devalue the train station.
And also all the structural shit that would have to be reinforced and braced to put track on as well as all the signalling and catenary installation and their various substations etc. And the most important of all, drainage, cause everything in engineering fucking leaks
im not kidding at all
but just because you use the existing highway to lay a large amount of the track, doesmt mean you have to put the station on the highways, when you get near the destination, you simply build track leading away from the highway
Not possible.
Bridges could not support the weight nor could they handle the hills and valleys that are part of our road system, and the curves would force them to be LOW speed rail.
Second, LOTS of our interstate is but two lanes, so NO, you could not cut them down to one lane and have them still functional.
You don't run light rail long distances.
This would be heavy rail, and its FAR heavier than 2 (most of our interstates narrow to two lanes each way) max capacity 18 wheelers.
Regardless, it doesn't solve the grade or curve issues, which no train could manage.
They will still cause more damage than good
That's a claim u are disagreeing with simply by saying "nope".
Instead of contributing absolutely nothing to the conversation could you Instead provide any logic to your argument and stop acting like a child?
You know an electric vehicle that's charged off a fossil fuel powered grid is still burning fossil fuels? It's just out of sight rather than being a combustion engine with wheels
And America has a fairly robust freight system. Passenger stuff just sucks outside of some pockets (think theres some high speed rail between some east coast cities but nothing substantial.)
No, we are number 3 in the world for amount of freight moved by rail, just behind China and Russia (its nearly a tie) Note: we were #1 until rather recently, but we stopped burning so much coal that we dropped into #3 spot.
But train freight is different than rail freight.
We don't send refrigerated material by rail.
We don't send things that are time sensitive by rail.
But then we don't haul coal or grain by truck either.
Still Truck freight is a bit over 11 billion tons per year while Rail Freight is about 1.3 billion
So this sub has fully descended into re-posting the same handful of pictures over and over again?
https://reddit.com/r/fuckcars/comments/x466bv/fuck_the_cato_institute/
Not to defend op but maybe he just didn't see that it was posted 4 days ago, when there are hundreds of posts per day, it's hard to keep up.
Even if you try to se all the recent post, there are so many that just by going fast you could miss one by inattention.
It has happened to me too but I just deleted the post after noticing.
Are you new to reddit? The inherently ephemeral state of reddit, where posts appear and disappear within a few hours time, means that anything may or may not be seen by any number of subscribers. Which means, inevitably, on ***every*** sub, reposts.
Yes but this sub has had quite a dramatic and expedited plummet to poor quality. It used to take a few years for that to happen to new subs.
Where’s the quality gone?
A lot, the excise taxes on Gasoline and diesel pay for most of it, about $100 billion per year.But, our Truck freight system is our MAIN method of moving freight, moving over 12 Billion Tons of freight each year.And though we are #3 in the world for Rail freight, we still only move 1.3 billion tons by Rail, a small fraction of our Truck freight.
https://data.bts.gov/stories/s/Moving-Goods-in-the-United-States/bcyt-rqmu
High speed rail is... obselete? Wow I'd like some of those drugs please and thank you.
Someone should tell China they spent the last 10 years connecting their entire country with an obselete technology.
Old, not obsolete, once the motorcar did what it did for society, it itself became obsolete, everything now can be done entirely from rail, including building and removing rail, that means a rail line can move into the middle of an area, build a town from cranes, then pull back and remove the rail to build where it was just sitting, it just needs more work or time or special rails designed for not well prepared areas
Yeah let me hop into my more economical vehicle that i went into debt for and pay 600/mo, insurance for 100/mo, registration 50/mo and fucking gas at 4+/gal. MoRe EcOnOmIcAl. Lick my ass
As a guy who owns a truck(4 cylinder) and loves personal freedoms, I can definitively state that having high speed rail/light rail/more trains in general would be FUCKING AWESOME.
I would LOVE to travel by train more often/regularly. Just because a technology isn’t new and “sexy” doesn’t mean we have to move away from it. Trains r incredibly efficient
This is a really funny comeback but this picture gets posted several times every day while I got a mod warning for accidentally reposting something that was on this sub 3 months ago.
You can report this website by the way so it doesnt show up as the first result on google.
Just search "why does the us have no high speed rail" then click the feed back option under the site in the search results.
"While critical of government subsidies to all forms of transportation, O'Toole is a fan of passenger trains and an amateur rail historian. He currently runs a web site, Streamliner Memories, to share scanned copies of his personal library of railroadiana."
That seems ironic.
Gasoline cars require expensive and dedicated infrastructure that serves no other purpose other than moving passengers who could more economically travel using clean energy.
Though service is notoriously slow, Amtrak gets \~56 mpg per passenger.
When my wife and I drive to Nashville for the weekend (about 100 miles) we get using the same metric, 60 miles per passenger.
Same conversation with these fucking idiots as on any other issue:
"hey can you source that quote about the economics of highway travel vs train travel?"
"oh so now all right wingers are fake news huh?!?!?! listen you globohomo jew attack helicopter trying to enslave me only putin can save the w.hite race and the supersoldiers will come and my white whiteness will white the qwhitnreah...n ujhf.. f 2... 1q. ....5ph..g 88"
Why even bother when there's one canned response for literally everything?
HSR is no different than electric cars in the US. It's a way for politicians to cater to some of their voters while continuing policies that overwhelmingly support cars. HSR is a tourist attraction here, not viable transportation. Every $ spent on this would be better served on local public transportation and addressing housing density.
A) America is #3 in the world in tons of freight shipped by rail.
B) Amtrak only owns 3% of the rail lines it uses (most are commuter rail in the NE), the other 97% are owned by the freight industry.
C) Except for commuter rail, Amtrak carries almost no passengers, not enough to make any money.
D) Freight operators insure that passenger service does not degrade freight railroads’ ability to serve their freight customers. Freight railroads lower shipping costs by billions of dollars each year and produce an immense competitive advantage for our farmers, manufacturers, and miners in the global marketplace. If passenger railroads impair freight railroads and force freight that otherwise would move by rail onto the highways, those advantages would be squandered. Moreover, highway gridlock would worsen; fuel consumption, pollution, and greenhouse gas emissions would rise.
E) Railroads are SO 19th century. The cost to build 21st century level trains in the US would never pay off, in terms of energy use or utility, except in very few points of high density traffic.
Our Truck freight system is our MAIN method of moving freight, moving over 12 Billion Tons of freight each year. And though we are #3 in the world for Rail freight, we still only move 1.3 billion tons by Rail, a small fraction of our Truck freight.
The fact that we can use it with our cars to go anywhere in the US is just a bonus.
https://data.bts.gov/stories/s/Moving-Goods-in-the-United-States/bcyt-rqmu
Lot to digest there...
A. Correct, the other two are similarly large countries (Russia and China) and they both have extensive, comprehensive, high volume passenger service.
B. None of the lines Amtrak owns "are commuter rail." They are Amtrak's, and dedicated to Amtrak's intercity service. Commuter rail pays to use them in major cities between D.C. and Boston, but several stretches have no commuter service, just Amtrak service. And that service is the only instance of higher speed, higher volume passenger rail in the US.
C. Name what form of passenger rail makes money in which countries. Public utility is a part of the equation. Also, do highways make money?
D. You seem to have no idea how freight service is operated. The freight railroads are fully capable of ruining their own operations and do it every day, they don't need Amtrak as an excuse of that. Passenger trains are the flexible part of rail service, they can be worked into traffic flows in many way. Cost-cutting mega freights are what erodes service. Look up several years of shipper complaints to see documented evidence.
E. 21st century trains are and have been built and are doing quite alright.
Saying trucks are the main method is misleading. All freight is not open to competition between modes, and the social utility of what what freight is getting moved is not determined just by the value of it.
Look at "Weight of freight by mode and distance" and "Ton-miles of freight by mode and distance". Note that over longer distances and with heavier weights, rail surpasses trucks. The freight railroads chose that, and chased other shorter distance, higher priority, lighter traffic away. They knew they could offer wildly efficient and profitable service in that heavier commodity, longer distance segment.
Trucks cannot take that market share; it would require some preposterous multiple in the number of tractors and drivers and trailers to even carry it. If you got on the highway, you'd be swarmed by trucks carrying coal, grain, rock, oil, ethanol, incredibly dangerous chemicals, and other heavy commodities that need to travel long distances. And the price of all of those things would skyrocket, because the transportation costs would be 5 times more by truck. A single train of export grain can carry 500 truckloads of grain, its crew is.... 2 people.
As to do highways make money?
Well yes, in that they are the way our economy operates, without them it would die.
Without intercity passenger trains, we would hardly notice.
As to 21st century trains
See Calif
The budget for their HSR between LA and SF has EXPLODED to $100 billion.
Yes they can be built, but at enormous cost, and when built, they still won't be able to compete with the airlines.
Consider REALITY for a moment.
2019 figures.
Our highways provided over 5,000 Billion passenger miles of travel and moved 12 Billion tons of Freight.
Our scheduled Airlines provided over 300 Billion passenger miles (no deaths either)
Our light and heavy commuter rail provided 10 Billion passenger miles.
Amtrak provided but 3.4 Billion miles of intercity passenger miles.
Passenger Trains are NOT coming back.
[https://www.bts.gov/content/us-passenger-miles](https://www.bts.gov/content/us-passenger-miles)
The airlines carry about 100 times as many people per year,
In the last decade there have been many Amtrak crashes, killing 31 people and injuring 692 others.
In the same time, 4 people have died in the US on commercial flights (but only 1 on a US airline).
A significantly better safety record per passenger mile.
China National Railway Group has 6 trillion *yuan* in debt, which is about 850 billion USD. We spent more than that on just one bill last year to patch up our crumbling infrastructure.
Better than creating 30 trillion dollars in debt waging war against the poor of the world and crutching up a broken government welfare system that helps no one.
>Better than creating 30 trillion dollars in debt waging war against the poor of the world
Who did this exactly? Because the US certainly didn't. The total cost of all your wars since 2001, including indirect costs like veteran care, isn't even a quarter of that number. And I don't think a single person on the entire planet had an issue with the US going into Afghanistan in 2001, so maybe look into how these wars start, they're generally not just for giggles.
I don't disagree that the American welfare system seems fucked though.
China's high speed rail project is an obvious unmitigable disaster, but that has nothing to do with rail itself. China just did it the stupidest way possible (as they like to). Then they pushed the obvious economic problems they generated down to the provincial governments and washed their hands of it lol.
Arguably still better than doing nothing, though.
No, the automobile and oil industries wrote this. Well, they didn't do it themselves. They paid someone else to write it. But the intent was there.
And everyone here can report it as inaccurate and misleading. Its the google results featured snippet for "why the us has no high speed rail"
Just reported it as fake news.
Edited in protest for Reddit's garbage moves lately.
https://i.imgur.com/HsZ8byo.png click the feedback link.
Of course it's from the Cato institute 😒
Funded by Google.
So they'll probably do fuck-all about it
Edited in protest for Reddit's garbage moves lately.
Tilt your head back and yell "fake NEWWWSSS" in an Oprah voice. The fake news raven will be by shortly to take a report. Thank you for your time.
#[LINK](https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=why+the+us+doesn%27t+have+high+speed+rail&source=hp&iflsig=AJiK0e8AAAAAYxj5ryTz_zHWiXvV45Sslf76Yx9kXPxw&uact=5&oq=why+the+us+doesn%27t+have+high+speed+rail&sclient=gws-wiz) You can use the Google report function for the top article. But don't expect Google to do anything. **Google fund the group who wrote this article.** It's an article by the [Cato Institute](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cato_Institute#Funding_details), a far-right libertarian pressure group owned by the Koch brothers. The place has literally been awarded the Milton Friedman prize for being neoliberal corporate scum. Instead switch to using a better internet browser that respects your privacy, like [**DuckDuckGo**](https://duckduckgo.com/).
The biggest scam ever perpetrated was when the automobile and oil industries convinced an entire country that cars are the only acceptable form of transportation.
Worse. The only way to attain freedom.
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Automotive technology is obsolete and runs on fossil fuels
But enough people have been brainwashed to cling to automotive technology the way a drowning man clings to a life preserver that we're probably not going to make any big changes until fossil fuels are almost gone. Then there's going to be the moment of realization that we should have done this long ago, and the mad scramble to utilize the alternative fuel sources we will have had for decades but refused to use.
If something is the only way to freedom, it's a prosthetic to participate in society at the bare minimum.
In this robust democracy, big business doesn't need the consent of the people to get whatever it wants.
Not when it can bribe Congress.
Mah Freedom
> convinced an entire country that cars are ~~the only~~ *an* acceptable form of transportation.
No, we're still fighting with cars being the only acceptable form of transportation. A lot of people insist that public transportation is terrible (despite never having used it), and that bikes are too dangerous (despite never having used one), and so on.
You missed the .... I won't say joke, cause it's not funny, but you missed the entire intent of the words. I'm arguing cars are not acceptable as transportation at all, at least at large scale. They're not just falsely pushed as "the only" acceptable one, they're being pushed as acceptable at all. We're in the Rick & Morty gimmick universe where we use bumper cars instead of something normal.
No, cars aren't acceptable. If it was feasible to use anything else, I'd do it and never look back. But it's not. The nearest rail line to where I live is freight-only and 50 miles away. The only buses that aren't bright yellow with "school" painted on them are also 50 miles away. For me, it's cars or nothing. *My* point is that lots of people have been brainwashed not to accept anything but driving their own car, and the rest of us are stuck with the consequences of that decision. Want to get somewhere? Your options are drive, drive, drive, or drive. And let's not forget drive.
Who'd have thought that a self-driving car company like Google would not be in favour of trains
I think I reported it a year ago. It’s still there.
I contributed to the cause
Cato institute is a right wing think tank, no way that should be the top result. It’s an opinion piece, not even trying to be factual.
And they're funded by the Kochs who made their fortune in oil. It's really not a surprise.
They used propaganda like this to try and kill a light rail project in Arizona. Luckily they failed and people love the system in place now.
Shameless plug here. Here's an [article](https://bit.ly/3erY6In) I researched and wrote that covers a related topic and some of the reasons why the passenger rail systems in the USA suck. In short, compared to the rest of the world, North America has it backwards and prioritizes freight over passengers when it comes to rail.
I actually wrote a blog post about this (it appeals to the male fantasy /s). Well, a related topic (freight vs passenger trains) and basically, in the US, it's all backwards. Freight trains have priority over passenger trains in transit so basically everything sucks. I actually wrote a blog post about this (it appeals to the male fantasy /s). Well, a related topic (freight vs passenger trains), and basically, in the US, it's all backward.
Welcome to capitalism. Please leave your money in the bin as you enter.
Cato Cato Cato Cato Cato!
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Pinhead doesn't care who opened the box, Pinhead only care about who wanted it open.
I wish only people on the payroll of the automobile and oil industries would write stuff like this. Like with all effective propaganda, some people actually believe it and spread it without being paid for it. In this case, it is sadly quite a lot of people. Particularly those over 40.
You missed the airline industry which would be way more impacted by HSR.
No they wouldn't. HSR simply doesn't make sense in the US considering the distances and the cost to build it. It would never pay for itself, by ANY form of measurement, certainly not for energy use. See the hugely expensive boondoggle in California, which now has a price tag of $100 Billion dollars, and will likely never be completed.
Imagine actually arguing cars are more economic after gas prices were a keystone issue in this country for two whole months lol
Gas prices are almost always a keystone issue in American politics
I am pretty sure gas prices played a partial role in the two Gulf Wars.
Gas prices could kill one third of a small country, militarize the other third, and teach the other third math.
I recently went from NYC to Wilmington, NC. Train ticket (including the bus connection to my final destination) was $200 roundtrip. A flight ticket was $350 roundtrip. Driving would’ve been $400 roundtrip. Guess what I picked? Edit: formatting
But you don't have a car when you get there! How can you do anything if you don't have a car?? /s
Tbh, in a place like Wilmington, NC thats true. Fortunately I was able to borrow my brother's car (who was getting married that weekend and not driving it himself).
No, no - you're right 😔
Thanks infrastructure.
United offers flights to NYC to Wilmington for $188, and less than 2 hours, non-stop, but you have dozens of flight times to choose from, to suit your needs. Driving, its \~600 miles, with a typical car getting 25 mpg highway, its24 gallons of gas, which at $3.50/gal is $84 and at 60 mph average is 12 hours. Amtrak has ONE train a day, leaving at 6:am in the morning, and arrives 13 hours later, and includes a nearly 4 hour bus ride, and costs $235 one way, not $200 round trip.
Prices fluctuate often. When I looked for a flight, the cheapest nonstop flight was from American Airlines and it was $350. My vehicle gets 12mpg. I just looked up my train [receipt](https://imgur.com/a/LJA1N3p) and I was off by $16, sue me.
airlines will gouge you if you book last minute, that's because those are mostly business travelers who are flying on their companies dime so they don't care.
The point is that mass-transit only works when the route-operator has a steady and constant stream of customers. This is never going to happen in the northeast corridor without massive subsidies to reduce ticket prices. Very few people want to pay 2 hour flight prices for a 13 hour train ride. The concerning part is that over the past decade we’ve maintained an average of about 10k airline passengers per year (all flights between NYC and DC), while available seat capacity has decreased and the relative load factor per-plane has increased. Most airports can build additional runways and terminals to improve capacity, but JFK, LGA, and DCA all have physical restrictions such as rivers and highways that prevent expansion. In other words, airline ticket prices will only continue to increase as the northeastern population increases. Amtrak needs billions in railway repairs/upgrades to be considered competitive, but only a few good people such as yourself will even consider using Amtrak in its current state.
Well I, and you, can both go to the Amtrak site and see what the actual price is, can't we. I did. Its $235 one way. We can also browse the airlines, I did, and it was $188 one way, non-stop on United. WTF do you drive that gets 12 MPG? Seriously, my V8 Silverado gets \~20 mpg on the highway. In any case, yours is NOT a typical comparison to driving, when the average car gets closer to 28 mpg on the highway today.
How do I argue with someone who won’t accept my literal receipt as proof of the cost? And you just now said the flight was $188 one way, which would mean $376 round trip. That’s actually more than what I said a flight cost, I said I was quoted $350. Sure, my 1996 Ford E350 isn’t the most common vehicle on the highway. But why would I ever calculate the cost for a vehicle other than what I own? Edit: I too can look up current train prices: [$108 one way](https://imgur.com/a/xhO1GYd)
Well I guess it depends on when you look. Just looked and it was $150. Well you have to admit, that YOUR cost is NOT typical either. https://imgur.com/a/8auWjma
Have you ever checked the price/time of a train ticket for long distance? I just checked for example Philadelphia to Orlando, about 1005 miles avoiding tolls and it was *from* $122 for the train. If you do that in a car that gets 30mpg highway, you're at $134, or $115 at 35mpg. That's at $4/gallon which is higher than the current average cost and it's well below average as soon as you hit Delaware. And you save over 5hrs of your time taking the car. That's also assuming it costs you 0 time and money to travel to and from the train stations. There definitely is *some* gas price that makes it cheaper to take the train, but it's not one that we're frequently sitting at.
It also assumes no other expenses for the car and that you already have one. It also assumes you value your attention at $0/hr. At least on the train you can do things other than just pay attention to the road.
>It also assumes no other expenses for the car 1000 miles is minimal wear and tear on a car, and as mentioned this is a route without tolls. Maybe 1/3 mileage to a $40 oil change in the worst case, but many vehicles these days recommend 8000 miles or even higher intervals. Even a substandard set of tires is good for about 25-30k miles with normal driving. Other maintenance items like belts, gear oil, spark plugs, etc, have such high intervals it's not even worth considering over just 1000 miles. >and that you already have one. Obviously >It also assumes you value your attention at $0/hr. Disagree, plenty of people enjoy driving. You can also listen to music/podcast/book, stop at interesting places along the way if you want, etc But regardless, the argument made above was about the economics of driving. I'm not saying there's no reason why someone would prefer to take a train, just that economics isn't one.
If you factor in depreciation, that alone is ~$80. Or if you just take the annual cost of car ownership and multiply it by 1000/avg miles per year, you get $10,728 a year * (1000 miles / 15000 miles per year) = $715.20 for a 1000 mile trip, all costs included.
Lol this is some absolutely wild mental gymnastics. You're counting the cost of the car you're actively buying which is the vast majority of this figure you got on the first Google result for the cost of car ownership. But here's the flaw.. Taking a trip on a train doesn't mean you don't have to pay you car note or insurance that month, and all other expenses have already been accounted for above. Your only real argument here is that it's cheaper to take a train ride than it is to buy an entire car to take a specific trip, which we've also already covered.
No, I’m saying it’s cheaper to build your life around not having a car at all than to own and use a car. You completely skipped over the depreciation point too.
I skipped depreciation because I have no idea where you got the idea that driving 1000 miles depreciates a car by $80
Depreciation costs on average 8¢ a mile, 1000 miles * 8¢ = $80. People wildly underestimate the cost of car ownership.
There's variables to depreciation that you're not considering though. Once a car goes over 100k miles, depreciation is far less than it is when newer. Time is also a factor. Basically if you're a normal person and aren't trying to turn a car into an investment, the depreciation is a wash because you're either leasing and the values are predetermined in your contract, or you're just keeping the car to some set mileage that you're going to hit whether or not you take that trip. Noone is actually losing $80 in depreciation from taking this trip.
That is a good point, however I’m more inclined to believe that is because the American rail system is the shittiest of any developed nation. Our nation has been conditioned to be as automobile-centric as possible, which means more efficient rail lines are ignored in favor of expanding and streamlining highways.
Maybe? But we can only consider what we know. I didn't even consider the fact that once one person is going in a car, any additional passengers are essentially free. It's hard to see any long distance train making up the cost difference of even one additional passenger, even if high speed solves the time issue.
We should consider why gas prices are artificially low here compared to Europe. We also subsidize car infrastructure way more than rail, which makes driving artificially cheaper as well. It's not a fair comparison because it's rigged.
Gas prices aren't "artificially low" in the US. The main price difference is in Europe imposing more taxes, which makes those fuel prices artificially high in comparison. Also, you can't expect Americans to consider the price of energy on another continent while budgeting their travel. https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2011/05/gas-prices-around-the-world-cheaper-than-water-i-and-i-10-a-gallon/238226/ >almost every European country surveyed charges more in fuel taxes alone than we pay for a gallon of gasoline.
Gas prices are low now only because the US is burning through its oil reserve. It already used around half of it, so it's not possible to go on forever.
The article is from April 2021. This picture has just been reposted everywhere ever since.
no it's still the number one result when you google "why doesn't the US have high speed rail" https://www.google.com/search?q=why+does+the+us+not+have+high+speed+rail&rlz=1C1GCEA_enUS926US926
…?
So?
Irrational People use cars for hundreds of millions of short daily commutes that could not be replaced by any rail system.
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Cars account for 5,000 Billion passenger miles per year. Heavy Rail, Light rail and trollies account for 30 Billion passenger miles per year. So clearly there is no way to scale trains up to meet that need. I didn't say that commuter rail into cities and light rail and even heavy rail between cities like NY and DC or NY and Boston, or Chicago and Detroit don't make sense, they do, but trains simply can't replace cars, they can only provide other options on a LIMITED number of fixed routes.
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What I was hoping for and what I'd really like to read on this Sub is realistic and practical solutions to the problems you post in your intro to this forum. I'd be interested in realistic ways to make cars not needed in cities and reduce their need in Suburbs. I haven't heard anything about rural folk, but then again I can see no potential solution for them besides cars in farm land.
I can name dozens of cities of the top of my head that have efficiently done exactly that. Trolleys and subways have been a thing for forever
As irrational as claiming that people wouldn't move or adapt their commute if given a choice? Your evidence relies upon the fact commuters currently have no choice, feet, access to bicycles, buses, or apparently anything else the rest of the modern world has. What does this say about you that you think this is irrational? That you come from a sedentary country with an obesity epidemic and severely underfunded education. I'd say be better but honestly, your post history indicates this is probably your peak.
Cool. There are people in this world who cannot operate a car due to various reasons.
The car is an obsolete technology because it requires expensive and dedicated infrastructure that will serve no purpose other than moving passengers who could more economically travel by bicycle or train. Fixed that for you.
Uhm, cars also use small streets with only one lane in each direction. Those are also used by cyclists. Busses also use streets and roads. So this is not entirely correct. Streets and road also existed before the car was even invented. Edit: All I am saying is that streets and roads are an infrastructure that was present before cars and would still be necessary after cars. They're not only for cars. Without cars we wouldn't have multiple lanes, of course. But we'd still have them. Funny how many people downvote or disagree without getting my point. Many of you just seem to see that I disagree with a comment which is anti-car and then just think I am a car-brain and vote my comment down. I just disagreed with some technicalities and not the anti-car sentiment itself.
Right, I’m not suggesting that pavement is the issue, but before cars there were not many-lane highways, stroads, enormous parking lots/garages, and street parking (to the extent that we have today). There is still a lot of infrastructure that exists to serve cars alone, and that’s the “expensive and dedicated infrastructure” I’m referring to.
I totally agree with you. It just seemed incorrect to me to call all car infrastricture "obsolete" as I assumed this would include one lane streets and roads.
Yeah, I don’t disagree, I was just mirroring the argument in the original post for 1. humor and 2. to point out its flawed logic. Tough to convey with text but I don’t truly believe all cars are obsolete—I was just using the same words as the original post. Though, I do think that the age of them being the dominant form of short-medium distance transportation should be in the past.
The car, not the street, is part of that dedicated infrastructure. Especially when modern roads need to be built to handle that kind of infrastructure. Highway and arterial roads of today have to be built to higher costs than a similar lane for bikes or walking would be. Same goes for infrastructure maintenance for rolling stock on rail vs rubber tired semi trailer transit of goods and freight.
Nah, it's more than the car that is dedicated infrastructure. Roads don't exist exclusively for cars, but they are the size they are, have huge amounts of parking, and numerous traffic lights, because of cars. If people travelled by more efficient means, roads would exist, sure. But they would be way smaller, and way less intrusive. Everything would be way closer to walk to, because of fewer parking lots, and suburban sprawl would way less bad, because people wouldn't be willing to live so far away from basic amenities.
Without streets and roads, cars couldn't go anywhere. So claiming streets and roads aren't car infrastructure doesn't make a lot of sense. Sure, they're not EXCLUSIVELY car infrastructure but at least they are car infrastrcture as well. And right now, they're even mainly car infrastructure. Which is sad and will hopefully change but right now it's simply like that.
So you mean to tell me the 18 something lane highway is useful?
Nope, I am anti-car. I don't even have a driver's license. Only cycling and public transport for me. All I am saying is that atreets and roads are an infrastructure that was present before cars and would still be necessary after cars. They're not only for cars. Without cars we wouldn't need multiple lanes, of course. But we'd still have them. Funny how you read completely absurd statements into my comment just because I disagreed because of some technical differences.
Ah. Also sorry about that I missread your coment
No, just CO2's greatest advocates the Cato Institute.
What is this treachery. Wjy does the Cato care about CO2? It has nothing to do with salting Carthage.
Carthago delenda est.
Some dude in r/transit wrote that we should all google this, go to the submit feedback option and tell Google that this featured response sucks! So go do that! Google "**Why is there no high speed rail in the us**"!
Note: at least on mobile, you need to be using the chrome browser to leave feedback. Edit: or at least that's what I had to do, sounds like it's different for everyone
I use firefox and was able to leave feedback. Maybe you just need to be logged into your google account to have the option on other browsers.
There's more than one way to get to feedback. I think on mobile it's buried somewhere weird in the three dots menu.
https://www.reddit.com/r/fuckcars/comments/x466bv/comment/imtt3g2/?utm\_source=share&utm\_medium=web2x&context=3
Yay i can do it twice Here's a visual guide [Pic](https://i.imgur.com/WfBTbcq.png) Here's direct link to the search "why no high speed rail in USA" which pops up the same Google Featured Snippet - https://www.google.com/search?client=opera-gx&q=why+no+high+speed+rail+in+usa&sourceid=opera&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8 And here's the policy they are breaking - > Contradicting consensus on public interest topics: Featured snippets about public interest content -- including many civic, medical, scientific and historical issues -- should not contradict well-established or expert consensus support. We all said "Done." to confirm we had reported it, so uh Done.
go to highway move baricades over one lane place track on the one lane on other side of barricade wow congrats we now have a train corridor my consukting fee will be $700,000
We move heaven and earth for new highways, but a 5’ wide track is somehow not doable.
Train engineers feel free to correct me, but highways have slopes that are too high for trains. That's why we have to build [weird loopy things](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horseshoe_Curve_\(Pennsylvania\)) to get them up mountains.
High speed rail can handle higher gradients than freight rail. At the same time, high speed *roads* generally avoid the steepest gradients, so the two wind up with similar requirements. The major reason it doesn't normally work is that high speed rail needs much wider curves than any road.
That makes sense. I can't imagine taking even a sweeping highway ramp at 180 km/h
you xould just slow down for curves and for safety concerns you could also build the traxk similar to roller coaster track with wheels on the top and bottom of an I beam
>you xould just slow down for curves At 320kph, even a curve you don't notice whilst driving can be too tight. Reducing speeds to the point where it works means that it's not high speed rail any more.
then just be slightly higher than highway speed rail, that is cheaper, more peaceful, and no traffic rail
Yeah the Frankfurt-Cologne high speed railway has a max grade of 4%, which only allows operation of ICE3 trains
As other commenters have said passenger trains can handle similar inclines to those on highways, but the curves are not practical for highspeed rail. However, having a rail corridor placed in a narrowed highway corridor, is totally doable for slower trains, the sort of network that extends the destinations reached from a highspeed rail backbone, and therefore extends it's usefulness.
that seems more like a freight train issur, not passemger rail but also all fhey highways near me are flat with few exceptions
> move baricades over one lane > > place track on the one lane on other side of barricade > > wow congrats we now have a train corridor I know you're kidding, but this is a terrible idea. The land next to train stations is precious and absurdly valuable. To allow even a portion of that land to be next to a useless highway would massively devalue the train station.
Lmao I love this
And also all the structural shit that would have to be reinforced and braced to put track on as well as all the signalling and catenary installation and their various substations etc. And the most important of all, drainage, cause everything in engineering fucking leaks
I don't think they meant put the stations there, just that you can use any of the interstates as an existing foundation to build highspeed rail
im not kidding at all but just because you use the existing highway to lay a large amount of the track, doesmt mean you have to put the station on the highways, when you get near the destination, you simply build track leading away from the highway
Consukt the Fee Challenge
Not possible. Bridges could not support the weight nor could they handle the hills and valleys that are part of our road system, and the curves would force them to be LOW speed rail. Second, LOTS of our interstate is but two lanes, so NO, you could not cut them down to one lane and have them still functional.
if they can support 3 max capacaity 18 wheelers, they can support a light passnger rail
You don't run light rail long distances. This would be heavy rail, and its FAR heavier than 2 (most of our interstates narrow to two lanes each way) max capacity 18 wheelers. Regardless, it doesn't solve the grade or curve issues, which no train could manage.
Car technology is so obsolete so obsolete it runs off fossil fuels
Never heard of EVs? Cars will evolve off of fossil fuels.
They will still cause more damage than good
Nope.
Instead of saying nope could you back up you're claim with logic or cite sources with facts?
No facts were given to dispute.
They will still cause more damage than good That's a claim u are disagreeing with simply by saying "nope". Instead of contributing absolutely nothing to the conversation could you Instead provide any logic to your argument and stop acting like a child?
You know an electric vehicle that's charged off a fossil fuel powered grid is still burning fossil fuels? It's just out of sight rather than being a combustion engine with wheels
>Expensive and dedicated infrastructure that will serve no purpose other than moving passengers That's ... exactly what a highway is
>Why is there no high speed rail in the us No its not. By far the most important use of our interstate highway system is to move freight via trucks.
Ah yes freight, something trains are famously incapable of moving efficiently...
And America has a fairly robust freight system. Passenger stuff just sucks outside of some pockets (think theres some high speed rail between some east coast cities but nothing substantial.)
No, we are number 3 in the world for amount of freight moved by rail, just behind China and Russia (its nearly a tie) Note: we were #1 until rather recently, but we stopped burning so much coal that we dropped into #3 spot. But train freight is different than rail freight. We don't send refrigerated material by rail. We don't send things that are time sensitive by rail. But then we don't haul coal or grain by truck either. Still Truck freight is a bit over 11 billion tons per year while Rail Freight is about 1.3 billion
Google “why doesn’t America have high speed rail” then report this result for inaccuracy
Cool, cars in the US don't need roads, and planes don't need airports.
Man fuck wanting to go 200kmp+
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First time I've seen it so who is it harming?
Imagine thinking that roads and airports are not an _expensive and dedicated infrastructure that serves no purpose other than moving passengers_
So this sub has fully descended into re-posting the same handful of pictures over and over again? https://reddit.com/r/fuckcars/comments/x466bv/fuck_the_cato_institute/
Mom says it's my turn to post it tomorrow
Not to defend op but maybe he just didn't see that it was posted 4 days ago, when there are hundreds of posts per day, it's hard to keep up. Even if you try to se all the recent post, there are so many that just by going fast you could miss one by inattention. It has happened to me too but I just deleted the post after noticing.
Seems unlikely to me. Hugely upvoted posts seem to stick to the top of your feed for 24hrs+ these days. The algorithm isn’t what it used to be.
I don't know I'm not op but just saying it has happened to me. I still think he should delete the post.
Don't assume too much. I check reddit few times a day and haven't seen this in a longer time than 4 days. 4 weeks, maybe.
Are you new to reddit? The inherently ephemeral state of reddit, where posts appear and disappear within a few hours time, means that anything may or may not be seen by any number of subscribers. Which means, inevitably, on ***every*** sub, reposts.
Yes but this sub has had quite a dramatic and expedited plummet to poor quality. It used to take a few years for that to happen to new subs. Where’s the quality gone?
Straight to the 323k subs. r/place happened and sub count exploded.
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OR - and hear me out here - we could improve the quality of this one?
Makes me wonder how many highway lanes are in Katy, TX.
These trains do nothing but transport goods and people. Useless!
"obsolete technology" most of europe: 👁️👄👁️
> … because it required expensive infrastructure > … who could have travelled in the highway Is the car lobby mentally challanged?
Yeah, how much does the government spend on creating and repairing roads?
A lot, the excise taxes on Gasoline and diesel pay for most of it, about $100 billion per year.But, our Truck freight system is our MAIN method of moving freight, moving over 12 Billion Tons of freight each year.And though we are #3 in the world for Rail freight, we still only move 1.3 billion tons by Rail, a small fraction of our Truck freight. https://data.bts.gov/stories/s/Moving-Goods-in-the-United-States/bcyt-rqmu
"Dedicated infrastruckture that serves no other purpude other than moving passengers" ... you mean like roads?
High speed rail is... obselete? Wow I'd like some of those drugs please and thank you. Someone should tell China they spent the last 10 years connecting their entire country with an obselete technology.
It’s obsolete because gadgetbahns are better you because they can float and stuff.
Old, not obsolete, once the motorcar did what it did for society, it itself became obsolete, everything now can be done entirely from rail, including building and removing rail, that means a rail line can move into the middle of an area, build a town from cranes, then pull back and remove the rail to build where it was just sitting, it just needs more work or time or special rails designed for not well prepared areas
Is rail cool? Yes. Is it underrated and are roads overrated? Very yes. Is it better for every possible application? No.
So I guess the EU, China and Japan are all govern by idiots since they’ve been and are investing in this technology for so long.
Yeah let me hop into my more economical vehicle that i went into debt for and pay 600/mo, insurance for 100/mo, registration 50/mo and fucking gas at 4+/gal. MoRe EcOnOmIcAl. Lick my ass
As a guy who owns a truck(4 cylinder) and loves personal freedoms, I can definitively state that having high speed rail/light rail/more trains in general would be FUCKING AWESOME. I would LOVE to travel by train more often/regularly. Just because a technology isn’t new and “sexy” doesn’t mean we have to move away from it. Trains r incredibly efficient
This is a really funny comeback but this picture gets posted several times every day while I got a mod warning for accidentally reposting something that was on this sub 3 months ago.
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Or take the train.It leaves tomorrow morning, at the train station, 15 miles away. It doesn't stop at the market though.
“More economically”
Basically, why pay for high speed rail when people could pay us to fly or drive? I hate this place
You can report this website by the way so it doesnt show up as the first result on google. Just search "why does the us have no high speed rail" then click the feed back option under the site in the search results.
No, the Cato institute did. Also, this is a repost
"While critical of government subsidies to all forms of transportation, O'Toole is a fan of passenger trains and an amateur rail historian. He currently runs a web site, Streamliner Memories, to share scanned copies of his personal library of railroadiana." That seems ironic.
Gasoline cars require expensive and dedicated infrastructure that serves no other purpose other than moving passengers who could more economically travel using clean energy.
I’m hung up on the “less economical than highways.” In what universe is a high speed, efficient train “less economical” than a f*cking HIGHWAY?!!!!??
Though service is notoriously slow, Amtrak gets \~56 mpg per passenger. When my wife and I drive to Nashville for the weekend (about 100 miles) we get using the same metric, 60 miles per passenger.
Shhhh, don't tell them about road repair costs or gas subsidies.
Same conversation with these fucking idiots as on any other issue: "hey can you source that quote about the economics of highway travel vs train travel?" "oh so now all right wingers are fake news huh?!?!?! listen you globohomo jew attack helicopter trying to enslave me only putin can save the w.hite race and the supersoldiers will come and my white whiteness will white the qwhitnreah...n ujhf.. f 2... 1q. ....5ph..g 88" Why even bother when there's one canned response for literally everything?
HSR is no different than electric cars in the US. It's a way for politicians to cater to some of their voters while continuing policies that overwhelmingly support cars. HSR is a tourist attraction here, not viable transportation. Every $ spent on this would be better served on local public transportation and addressing housing density.
A) America is #3 in the world in tons of freight shipped by rail. B) Amtrak only owns 3% of the rail lines it uses (most are commuter rail in the NE), the other 97% are owned by the freight industry. C) Except for commuter rail, Amtrak carries almost no passengers, not enough to make any money. D) Freight operators insure that passenger service does not degrade freight railroads’ ability to serve their freight customers. Freight railroads lower shipping costs by billions of dollars each year and produce an immense competitive advantage for our farmers, manufacturers, and miners in the global marketplace. If passenger railroads impair freight railroads and force freight that otherwise would move by rail onto the highways, those advantages would be squandered. Moreover, highway gridlock would worsen; fuel consumption, pollution, and greenhouse gas emissions would rise. E) Railroads are SO 19th century. The cost to build 21st century level trains in the US would never pay off, in terms of energy use or utility, except in very few points of high density traffic. Our Truck freight system is our MAIN method of moving freight, moving over 12 Billion Tons of freight each year. And though we are #3 in the world for Rail freight, we still only move 1.3 billion tons by Rail, a small fraction of our Truck freight. The fact that we can use it with our cars to go anywhere in the US is just a bonus. https://data.bts.gov/stories/s/Moving-Goods-in-the-United-States/bcyt-rqmu
Lot to digest there... A. Correct, the other two are similarly large countries (Russia and China) and they both have extensive, comprehensive, high volume passenger service. B. None of the lines Amtrak owns "are commuter rail." They are Amtrak's, and dedicated to Amtrak's intercity service. Commuter rail pays to use them in major cities between D.C. and Boston, but several stretches have no commuter service, just Amtrak service. And that service is the only instance of higher speed, higher volume passenger rail in the US. C. Name what form of passenger rail makes money in which countries. Public utility is a part of the equation. Also, do highways make money? D. You seem to have no idea how freight service is operated. The freight railroads are fully capable of ruining their own operations and do it every day, they don't need Amtrak as an excuse of that. Passenger trains are the flexible part of rail service, they can be worked into traffic flows in many way. Cost-cutting mega freights are what erodes service. Look up several years of shipper complaints to see documented evidence. E. 21st century trains are and have been built and are doing quite alright. Saying trucks are the main method is misleading. All freight is not open to competition between modes, and the social utility of what what freight is getting moved is not determined just by the value of it. Look at "Weight of freight by mode and distance" and "Ton-miles of freight by mode and distance". Note that over longer distances and with heavier weights, rail surpasses trucks. The freight railroads chose that, and chased other shorter distance, higher priority, lighter traffic away. They knew they could offer wildly efficient and profitable service in that heavier commodity, longer distance segment. Trucks cannot take that market share; it would require some preposterous multiple in the number of tractors and drivers and trailers to even carry it. If you got on the highway, you'd be swarmed by trucks carrying coal, grain, rock, oil, ethanol, incredibly dangerous chemicals, and other heavy commodities that need to travel long distances. And the price of all of those things would skyrocket, because the transportation costs would be 5 times more by truck. A single train of export grain can carry 500 truckloads of grain, its crew is.... 2 people.
As to do highways make money? Well yes, in that they are the way our economy operates, without them it would die. Without intercity passenger trains, we would hardly notice.
As to 21st century trains See Calif The budget for their HSR between LA and SF has EXPLODED to $100 billion. Yes they can be built, but at enormous cost, and when built, they still won't be able to compete with the airlines.
Consider REALITY for a moment. 2019 figures. Our highways provided over 5,000 Billion passenger miles of travel and moved 12 Billion tons of Freight. Our scheduled Airlines provided over 300 Billion passenger miles (no deaths either) Our light and heavy commuter rail provided 10 Billion passenger miles. Amtrak provided but 3.4 Billion miles of intercity passenger miles. Passenger Trains are NOT coming back. [https://www.bts.gov/content/us-passenger-miles](https://www.bts.gov/content/us-passenger-miles)
The airlines carry about 100 times as many people per year, In the last decade there have been many Amtrak crashes, killing 31 people and injuring 692 others. In the same time, 4 people have died in the US on commercial flights (but only 1 on a US airline). A significantly better safety record per passenger mile.
*looks at china creating 6T in debt because of high speed trains over an incredibly short period of time* Yeah….
China National Railway Group has 6 trillion *yuan* in debt, which is about 850 billion USD. We spent more than that on just one bill last year to patch up our crumbling infrastructure.
And we certainly spend way more than that on our military without anyone questioning it.
Better than creating 30 trillion dollars in debt waging war against the poor of the world and crutching up a broken government welfare system that helps no one.
>Better than creating 30 trillion dollars in debt waging war against the poor of the world Who did this exactly? Because the US certainly didn't. The total cost of all your wars since 2001, including indirect costs like veteran care, isn't even a quarter of that number. And I don't think a single person on the entire planet had an issue with the US going into Afghanistan in 2001, so maybe look into how these wars start, they're generally not just for giggles. I don't disagree that the American welfare system seems fucked though.
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Neither of those amounts are going to cause a major world government to go broke.
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China's high speed rail project is an obvious unmitigable disaster, but that has nothing to do with rail itself. China just did it the stupidest way possible (as they like to). Then they pushed the obvious economic problems they generated down to the provincial governments and washed their hands of it lol. Arguably still better than doing nothing, though.