Power blog post

This got my attention:
Imagine whisking through towns at speeds over 100 miles an hour, walking only a few steps to public transportation, and ending up just blocks from your destination."

I think I'd rather drive to my destination, rather than ending up "just blocks" away from it.

You know I loathe Obama, and I'm not going to get into the whole issue of highspeed trains, which make sense in some contexts but not in others, I will only point out that this:

"Passenger rail has spent almost a century proving its unviability in most of the U.S. as competition to cars and planes"

is baloney. If passenger rail had been subsidized out the wazoo like cars and planes, it would've been just as viable.

You guys might laugh at public transportation, even though millions of people (like me) value it and depend on it, and even though Europe has put the lie to the "unviability" argument, but at least admit that the automobile industry, the highway system, and the aviation industry have received and do receive huge subsidies from the government. They are not examples of "free market" by any stretch of the imagination.

Lisa - Passenger rail has never been UNsubsidized in the US.

If you'd watched your Top Gear, you'd understand that a car is always superior to public transport.

And if you think the highway system is a subsidy, then you have a funny idea of what constitutes subsidy. The bulk of road costs are paid by road and fuel taxes - mostly on trucks.

And given the rank incompetence, inconvenience, and loss of dignity involved in flying, I'll drive anywhere on the continent before I'll get on a plane.

Lisa, your are way out there on this one. The interstate highway system was constructed for two reasons. First was to allow better transcontinental trucking of goods, but primarily for rapid mobilization and transport of defensive armaments and troops. That folks drive on them has been a nice plus since the '50s. As far as trains, I am pretty sure Amtrak has been a losing proposition ever since it emerged. The only benefits of train travel is for people that do not like to fly, but then again, Greyhound is cheaper and just as fast (slow). The "high speed" rail that they are touting here and california and that the moronic voters passed a 10 billion dollar spending prop on, will almost certainly cost at least 3 times that amount, and will take about 3-4 hrs to get from LA-SF at best, and cost twice as much as flying. This is not europe, this is not japan, this is the litigous good old USA. I say by the time they lay the first rail, enough lawsuits will have been filed that it will never in actuality be built. I would rather put the money into an elevated monorail system over existing highways, that might actually fly. Better yet, wait until the "jetsons" cars are an actuality and forget the interstate system (sarcasm intended)

The folks gushing over high-speed rail in Europe & Japan are forgetting basic arithmetic and the fact that North America is a different continent. A look at census data for Andorra, Austria, Belgium, Czech Republic, Denmark, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, Monaco, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Slovakia, Spain, Switzerland and the UK reveals a population of about 448 million in an area of just over 1.1 million square miles. That's almost 50% more people than the US in less than 1/3 the space. To put it another way, if the US was as crowded as western Europe it would have 1.5 billion people. Of course Japan is more crowded still. Do Obama & company really think this geographic reality has nothing to do with the viability of passenger rail over there?

Sorry ronc, but the interstate highway system was not built for the rapid mobilization of troops. That was the excuse Eisenhower used to get around the commerce clause.

One interesting thing about trains in Europe and Japan is that most high speed lines lose massive amounts of money there as well. Given the stats that Martin listed, this doesn't bode well.

A long, long, time ago (1970s), we would purchase of book of Southwest tickets and do our CPA work where ever Southwest flew. Cheaper than owning offices and staffing them. No reservations, so searches - we just grabbed our adding machines and headed to the airport. Flights every half-hour so no reservations necessary - you just took you chances in getting a seat.

Lisa, someday you may notice that the problem is the government, but probably not. Government is involved in every problem you see, yet is does not ring a bell for you.

> even though Europe has put the lie
> to the "unviability" argument

Oh-puleeze... Let's ask them!

And not in the undergrad-with-a-clipboard outside-the-market kind of way, but after they've savored each kind of life for, say, a decade or two.

I love my car. I love the elaborate stereo, the scent and touch of the leather seats, all the electronic voodoo, the sleekly raked gearshift, the supercharger, and the fact that it's disguised as an unremarkable hatchback for paralegals.

"Viability" is not how people want to live. I want to drive home every day with thundering music, shout-about-my-boss privacy, and whimsical freedom in selection of destinations... Maybe a visit with the sex girlfriend, or maybe just to pick up a salad at Gelson's and head home for an early night with the guitar.

Europeans are no less interested in fulfillment... They're just less capable of composing a culture to deliver it. And so, like a cat having fallen off the back of the sofa, they stretch and preen as if to say "I meant for that to happen...."

I keep a fresh load of "viability" in my pants.

Europe is not the US, Lisa. Let's say that again-europe is not the US. Europe could FIT in the US. What works with a very dense population crammed in a small space does not work with a very spread out population over a huge space.

Subway works well in New York. It would not work well in Oklahoma City or Billings Montana. Unless you think people should be forced to live in high density "people farms" and the rest of nature left alone. If that's true, we simply have nothing left to say.

And ALL rail is and ever has been subsidized. Passenger rail, especially so. Have you ever checked the price on Amtrak? $1500 for one person, to Orlando from here. I can fly my whole family for nearly that. Not to mention they take me all over the US for 3 days before getting me where I want to go. Rail is simply too inflexible for most of the country.

Just think Lisa, without our cars we would not have had Woodstock.

I'd love to see a high speed, and I do mean HIGH speed, rail system that leads between the major cities of every state in the union.

That would be great, taking the train from Savannah to New York, I enjoy the journey by train...but...but...BUT, the question of cost, the question of actual need by the market...the cold hard truth of the matter is very simple.

Few cities have sufficient population density in a reasonable proximity to one another. Moreover, the cost of maintaining such an extensive rail network MUST drive up the cost to the point where the majority of the city dwelling population that would make use of the system, would find it just cheaper to fly.

And even our fastest possible rails, won't be as fast as flying.

SO...great as "I" think it would be, it just doesn't make economic sense at the moment. If a few other major cities spring up in between the existing large ones, sure, but until then, no.

Joe, have to disagree. What the military learned in ww2 was that we could bomb the crap out of rail systems, as they were somewhat limited, but the autobahn allowed convergent flexibility. Also, the funding was subsidized by the defense department. That being said, the highway system became symbolic of America. Family vacations were never the same

OK, I misread Lisa's comment, and mischaracterized her intention. I sincerely & wholeheartedly apologize. (The following sentence will not begin with "But...")

However... Aside from the geographic differences (noted by other commenters) between this continent and that one, there are other reasons to doubt that "our" current admiration of their rail systems is the product of their virtue. Their rail is one of the few systems that survived (or was rebuilt quickly) after the war, and has been running ever since.

But how well has it been running? Has it allowed them to build an integrated economy as productive and responsive as ours?

Well, of course not. European integration is famously troubled, especially this summer.

So why is that? I'm not a conspiracy theorist or anything, but I sometimes wonder if the effete leadership in Europe during my lifetime was somehow encouraged by Americans in ways that aren't obvious. Maybe we didn't WANT good, free-wheeling transportation in Europe... Both the military and economic consequences could have been too expensive for us. Heya there, Francois!.. Sweet little 1930's-era passenger system you got there... You guys should keep up the maintenance of that thing! Yeah! It's cute.

(The Chunnel is only ten years old, right?)

This point is inescapable: Trains are always heavily regulated by government, right down to the individual ticket. Prices, routes, schedules and expansions are always the product of political processes.

Even with the subsidies you rightly deplore, an American carbuyer enjoys a freedom, including freedom from government control, unseen in human history.

I reacted strongly (perhaps wrongly) to the word "viability" because it so often seems that lefties dream of power before they dream of anything else: Decency, freedom, opportunity, etc.

I drove to St. Louis from my home in CT this year. Took 2 days. Totally worth it to not spend 5+ hours crammed into a metal tube next to people I don;t know and having to smell them and be touched by them.

Plus I got to see places that I would have otherwise just flown over.

And I got to choose the in-flight entertainment and meals.

And there were no baggage charges, so I brought all kinds of shit with me.

And my little car was absolutely brilliant the whole way.

I'm a Floridian, and I dislike Rick Scott intensely. But I did agree with his decision to shoot down Hi-Speed Rail in FL. For all the reasons stated above and a few more.

One of my bigger concerns was where would they get the LAND to build all this wonderful rail on? I mean, if you want it to be convenient and all, it can't be too winding or curving. And it probably wouldn't be able to cut off any existing highways. So we'd probably have to exert quite a bit of "Eminent Domain" to take private lands to build our nifty rail. Or cut down existing green spaces so that my beloved Sunshine State can be even more over-developed.

High-Speed Rail is a giant boondoggle, and every time I hear it being touted as the second coming, I cringe. Blech.

I say this as someone who hates to drive, too. I'd use the hell out of public transportation if it were more accessible. Hell, if train fare were cheaper, I'd buy me a sleeper car and use it to travel cross-country to avoid the TSA and the hassle of the airport.