you can fly to SF for $59 each way on Southwest

Is that for the convertible or the hardtop?

More seriously...

Kids have to learn this stuff in school for the most part. They then forget it.

My Aunt passed the citizenship test many years ago (10 or so). Obviously she must have known most of that stuff to pass. She has no idea about this stuff now - last fall when our senator was on TV she asked what they did. And not in a snarky way.

Seems pretty much the same.

I would like to see something though. A friend from high school who was quite smart and an individual thinker - now a friend on FB is fond of saying "If that was true, the union would tell me." (or something similar). Just a union cog now.

Heinlein in his book Expanded Universe thought that voters should perhaps be required to solve a quadratic equation before being allowed to vote, with embarrassment (a red light and horn of rejection) or death (improving the breed, he called it) the penalty for failure.

"..when you can fly to SF for $59 each way on Southwest."

You keep using that (word). I do not think it means what you think it means.

There is no way Southwest, or any air carrier, can carry the number of people that a properly-designed train can. That rail has not been installed yet is merely a symptom of the poor planning typical of politics, where the vote depends on popular notions, often wrong.

Rail runs in any weather and cannot be hijacked. Funny thing, though - it has to be located near people who will use it, and damned if they didn't move in first, and right where the rail needs to be. Funny how a hundred-foot right of way can be so expensive.

I rode a French train from Brest to Montparnasse ages ago. It was remarkably like air travel of the day: clean, roomy and quiet.

And as long as we holler, "Me First! Me First!" everywhere we go, Americans will never have this.

Not knowing the particulars of California's high speed rail plan, I won't comment on it specifically.

However, living in a country that has high speed rail all over (Korea), I do feel equipped to comment on just how awesome it is. For around $70 in tolls and gasoline, I can make a miserable 4.5 hour drive to Seoul. 4.5 hours, of course, depends on a lot of traffic variables and is about the best case scenario. Alternatively, I can pay around $35 and be there in clean comfort in about an hour and a half and can depend on my arrival time nearly to the minute.

As I said, I'm not commenting on whether or not now is the time for California to make such an investment. I'm only commenting on how absolutely kick ass high speed rail is. It's a shame we didn't make any investment in it in the U.S. long ago.

I'm with Rad on this one.

I live in Switzerland where we have trains all over the place. It'll be good when baby is a teen, but honestly, we tend to drive everywhere because the cost of train tickets, plus having to schlep the stroller, the Bjorn, the diaper bag, etc... of course we live on a commuter rail and not the main line so maybe that's our problem.

I do like having the rails all over. They don't all pay for themselves, though, and are taxpayer funded. They do bring in tourists, though, so pay for themselves indirectly.

Voters - sure, put a test in place. But also (at least as important) restrict the right to vote to those people who make a net contribution to the system. If you pay zero taxes (or, worse, get welfare or EIC), you have no skin in the game, and do not get to vote in federal elections. Prohibiting parasites from voting would make a huge difference!

NicoleK, regarding trains in Switzerland: sure they are taxpayer funded, but so are the roads. We are in much the same position as you are (living near a regional line) and I would never dream of taking the car if I can get there by train. You don't have to find a parking spot, you don't have to pay for parking, and you can read, work, or snooze while travelling. Rush hour is a bit crammed, but otherwise the trains are lovely! Granted, I am no longer schlepping a stroller and baby-supplies along...

The problem in the States is that trains have become political boondoggles. They give greenies something to yack about, politicians use them to give money to companies that then contribute to their re-election campaigns, and so forth. If the train lines were ever actually finished, all of that would go away. So, of course, they never are...

You bring up a good point, NicoleK. If I had a big family here, it would make more financial sense to pile them into one car for the same price as transporting just me.

Of course, that's also a problem with Amy's $59 airfare as well. Before my three kids were grown, I would happily drive thousands of miles before even considering any sort of airfare for five people.

The trains here help those families driving as well, though. With a train packed with people, that's a lot less cars on the road.

I don't know what the financial details or government subsidies are here in Korea, but I can't imagine they aren't making money as nearly every train sells out every day and they run every hour. They aren't short trains either.

However, this is a really dense population. Fifty million or so crammed into a space a bit smaller than Virginia. Virginia has just under eight million people -- about half the population of Seoul alone.

It couldn't work in more rural parts of the States, but Southern California and the East Coast (say from D.C. to Boston) seem like good candidates to benefit. It's certainly worth looking into anyway.

High speed rail cannot work in most of the US--there is not the population density to support it, there is no infrastructure on destination points to support it, and quite frankly, it wouldn't go where folks need it to. It barely works in the Northeast corridor but I think the Acela Express from Boston to DC costs something along the lines of $400 for a round trip.

I'm with bradley13 on his comment about taxes. If you don't have any skin in the game, you shouldn't get to vote. That's why landowners were the only ones to vote at first--they were the ones footing the bill.

"Voters - sure, put a test in place. But also (at least as important) restrict the right to vote to those people who make a net contribution to the system. If you pay zero taxes (or, worse, get welfare or EIC), you have no skin in the game, and do not get to vote in federal elections. Prohibiting parasites from voting would make a huge difference!"

Bradley, really? I've gotten an Earned Income Credit quite a few times in my life. That's because a lot of my salary is tax free. Man, what a parasite I am. I shouldn't be given the vote. I'm a worthless fuck with no skin in the game.

I just filed my taxes this year and a little bit of my last combat deployment to Iraq overlapped into 2010 so I got a modest EIC. I guess I'm just not American enough for your candied ass.

You're right. Rich people and corporations don't get nearly enough say about what goes on in this country.

Fuck you, you panty-waist. Contribution to society is all about money, isn't it?

While we're at it, those people who put out our fires, police our streets, and teach our children don't contribute shit if it can't be measured in money, do they? The bozos who mentor children at a non-profit youth center, create community outreach centers for the elderly, build homes for the deserving poor -- they don't contribute shit because their 1040A doesn't reach a certain threshold, do they?

What are you contributing Bradley13? I'll bet it's not nearly as much "skin in the game" as the people I've described.

Plus, I don't think you would want a "voter test". Something tells me you wouldn't pass.

There is no way Southwest, or any air carrier, can carry the number of people that a properly-designed train can.

Rail is subsidized every where it is in use. Even in Europe and in Asia, where the population densities are much higher.

Rail runs in any weather

That's not completely true...aircraft don't need to worry about avalanches.

Midwest Chick,

1. There are zero high speed rail systems in the United States.

2. You'd really like to go back to only landowners able to vote? Holy shit.

IRA,

"Rail is subsidized every where it is in use. Even in Europe and in Asia, where the population densities are much higher"

That may be true. As I said, it wouldn't work in most parts of the U.S. where the population isn't so dense. All I'm saying is that it's really, really nice to have where it makes sense and is something worth looking into for the East Coast and Southern California.

Dick, the DC-to-Boston corridor is pretty well served by trains already. You've pointed out the main problem with trains from an economic standpoint -- they only work in areas with extremely high population density. I'm not at all sure that SoCal actually has sufficient population density. Even the DC-to-Boston routes would not be able to operate if they weren't heavily subsidized.

Bradley, I don't know how it works in Switzerland, but in the U.S., roads are funded by fuel taxes, which serves as an approximation of a use tax. Similarly, much of the aviation infrastructure is funded by landing fees and taxes on aviation fuels.

Hey Bradley13,

I apologize for the amount of bile in my post to you. I may have had a beer or two. You're post just hit a bone. Sorry, man. Time for me to go to bed :)

Cousin Dave,

"the DC-to-Boston corridor is pretty well served by trains already."

Not really. Those are the "clickety-clack" trains that are only slightly quicker than a car and are way too expensive. The high speed thing really does make a huge difference. You're right to say that roads are funded by fuel taxes and one could call that a subsidy as well.

If I could get from D.C. to Philly in an hour or so, do my business, not worry about traffic, and get back home within the confines of a typical workday, I would think that commerce wouldn't be hurt at all by that sort of arrangement.

If you're talking about AmTrak, they are shit and should have lost their government subsidies many years ago in favor of investing in a nice bullet train. I'm telling you, for heavily populated areas, it clearly works and has a huge economic impact beyond ticket prices.

I think nothing of jetting up to Seoul for an afternoon meeting. It's that convenient.

Hi whistleDick. No problem - I expect we have all done that - sent off comments, and later wished we'd said things differently.

For what it's worth, I am ex-military, and I also qualified for EIC a couple of times. Doesn't change my opinion: if someone pays no net taxes to the federal government, why should they get a say in how tax money is spent? They can still vote in State and local elections, because they certainly pay sales tax, just not federal.

What really brought this home to me was an interview I saw during the last presidential election. A woman on the dole, who had zero idea where the government got its money. It was "just there", and she got a piece of it every month. Of course, she's going to vote for anyone who promises to give her a bigger check every month, having zero idea that the money is taken from other people.

Cheers - virtual clink of beer bottles...

Just go ahead and build it. Money, we ain't got no money. We don't need no stinkin money.

Realistically very few people know much about our political system, or political affairs. Even people who are very 'political' tend to have a poor understanding of the system beyond the few issues that they're concerned about. Voting is just a lifestyle expression for them.

If we really wanted to improve the utility of voting, we'd compel people to earn their citizenship, whether they were born here or not. That doesn't mean that we would need to make the process difficult, simply more than just showing up. Non citizens would be free to live an work in the US, but they couldn't vote or hold office.

Does Granderson not realize that "literacy and comprehension" exams were part of the backbone of Jim Crow laws? How could we "not go back" to those days while implementing similiar policies? Would Granderson pass the test? (To be fair, the tests prevented uneducated, poor whites from voting, too.)

People convince themselves that if only they could keep "those idiots" from voting, THEIR side would win every time. Note that both conservatives AND liberals think this. The Democrats think that a test like this would keep the rural population and the Fox News-watchers home. The conservatives think it would keep the welfare leeches out of the voting booth.

"This has nothing to do with who a person is or how they may vote but everything to do with a person voting as an informed citizen, not a sound bite regurgitator." Indeed.

Oh, and I wouldn't vote for a taxpayer-funded high-speed rail in Texas, but I'd certainly ride it if it were more convenient than taking I35 or I10.

2. You'd really like to go back to only landowners able to vote?

The reason in the olden days only landowners received the right to vote was precisely to avoid what is happening today: the raiding of the treasury. Now, it's 1 person = 1 vote, no matter how much of the tax is paid by the person. Maybe it should be changed to 1 person = number of votes based on tax paid?

OK, one more thing... I took the sample test through the link to the editorial piece and got all 10 right... Is there even any mention of taxing powers in the actual citizenship test (because there wasn't any in the sample test)?

I think that those who support these voting restriction schemes base their support of them on a false assumption: "that if only people knew X legal technicality, or reached Y fiscal threshold, they would vote more like me." I'm all in favor of informed voters (I think the suggestion of placing financial restrictions on voting is odious, however), but I don't assume that because people are more informed, they'll be more likely to do what I want in voting.

I have discussions all of the time with smart, well-informed, tax-paying people who look at the available data and reach different conclusions about how to act in response. This is actually why we need the democratic process. Things are frequently not obvious, and we need a way to resolve them that is perceived as fair. Restricting the vote won't affect outcomes as much as proponents think, but it certainly will increase the number of people who think the process is unfair.

As someone who has seen a lot of detail on the high speed rail being planned for CA (presentations from the people themselves at neighborhood planning group meetings) I can sum it up as follows: Just the feasibility stuff (including things like the EIR) is projected to run about $9-10 Billion of taxpayer dollars on top of that. That's before any land is bought and work is started. Their best case scenario has it finishing in maybe 20 years (at least the part reaching down to San Diego where I live) and maybe projecting ticket costs about the same as flying. This is assuming they're going to get all kinds of corporate money buying in but still requiring many $Billions more. So best case: maybe the same cost as flying but taking far longer.

The only way it really wins is if air travel is made to be far more expensive, or perhaps far too troublesome/intrusive (TSA pat downs anyone?). Of course if rail travel ends up with the same security crap, there goes that edge. I was surprised that even the most liberal, pie in the sky, utopian believers on the planning group board (and in the audience) were extremely skeptical of the whole idea. They usually think just about every such plan is great or continually whine about the lack of public transportation, but most of them were asking questions and voicing doubts as to it working at all, and they all assumed that it would have to run with heavy subsidies as well. Actually, some of them didn't have a problem with subsidies and seemed to think that if you could have better ticket costs with even more subsidies, that was a good thing.

I agree that if we already had the high-speed railways laid and/or didn't have to go through tons of right-of-way stuff to build anything, it probably would be a nice option. But the reality is that, to build such a system today, with all the land need, and especially all the red tape and environmental requirements... it's just going to be a nightmare at best. Of course, plenty of us likely won't even live to see it finished considering their own estimates are a couple decades, and we know how well those estimates tend to turn out.

I'm reminded of the utilities undergrounding happening here. When I first looked at the interactive map at the city website 8 or so years ago, my section was planned for a 2012 start and 2013-14 finish. It gets pushed back a couple years every few months and is now at (checking site).. start in 2049, end in 2051! Awesome. I'm paying extra fees for this on every bill but will be dead before they do most of the work, let alone my area.

I'm also for a kind of "non-net contributors shouldn't vote" plan. I would do something more like: If you sign up to be on the dole (welfare, WIC, etc) then you're also knowingly giving up your right to vote while on said programs. I would also love to see those who work in the gov't bureaucracy not allowed to vote since they're essentially voting for themselves to get more money in most cases. Things like militiary, police and such wouldn't be kept from voting because they are contributing directly and they do pay taxes (or in other ways by putting their life on the line) anyway. I would only want to disallow those who depend on the gov't to live without actually earning that by adding to or protecting society in some way. Hopefully that makes sense.

BTW, whistleDick, I think the earlier mention of EIC didn't mean anyone that got it at all wouldn't vote, but if through getting that and other "refundable deductions" people were getting a net gain through a refund.. which is just another form of redistribution. At least that was what I assumed bradley meant.

Voting Morons?

Okay, you want to cut the federal budget, and cut federal bureaucrats and tax-eaters into the private sector where they can create wealth and jobs?

Yay! Okay, what federal employees do we cut? You are so smart, right? You are not as voting moron, right?

Check out these stats: By employment, largest federal departments:

Defense: 3,000,000
Veterans Affairs 235,000
Homeland Security 208,000
Treasury 115,000
Justice 112,000
Energy 109,000
USDA 109,000

We also have

HUD 10,000
Labor 17,000
HHS 67,000

Hmmmm. Hmmmm.

Yes, morons are voting. But who are the morons?

I say we cut each of the above agencies in half, except for total elimination of the USDA, Homeland Security and the VA (give veterans vouchers, and set them free in the private sector).

Just eliminating the USDA, the VA and Homeland Security we cut more than 500,000 lard-snufflers off of the federal payroll.

High speed train to LA sounds great. I'd be down there twice a month if it were built.

Frankly we could do with more LA weekenders up here. People are waaay too uptight in the Bay Area.

We need some of that Vatican assassin rock star from Mars tiger blood to stir things up.

Real high-speed rail would be wonderful. Imagine being able to zip from LA to SF in 1-2 hours (about as long as a rush hour suburb-to-city commute up here in SF). Real high speed rail means your economic, entertainment, and employment frontiers would be wider.

But that's not what they're talking about building. The trains (at least in California) that they're talking about building will utilize existing rails, which not only limits the "high-speed" part of the project, but also conflicts with the current users of those rails (Amtrak and freight trains).

How'd you like to slam into a mis-routed cattle train at 100mph? Or have your "high speed" rail trip delayed two hours because a freight train missed a coupling or has to change engines?

Rail runs in any weather....

I'm not so sure about that, having had the butt-clenching experience of enduring the commuter rail skid to several stops on my ride into work this morning.

...and cannot be hijacked.

Any transportation system can be hijacked. Rail just can't be diverted to another destination...easily.

They can still vote in State and local elections, because they certainly pay sales tax, just not federal.

No, they just don't pay federal income taxes. But they pay other federal taxes.

We are the sons and daughters of the American revolution. We are the descendants of Washington, Jefferson, Madison, and, later, of Thurgood Marshall and Martin Luther King, Jr. We are the promise keepers of the greatest, most ambitious experiment in individual liberty ever conceived, an experiment nurtured in blood, upheld by laws, and envied around the world.

We are the American people. And we are as dumb as a box of rocks. ~ Michael Graham (The Dumbest Generation)

In this book, Graham asks if a nation of uninformed idiots living in a culture that so enthusiastically celebrates stupidity can successfully govern itself (the same question Mike Judge asks in Idiocracy.

Graham points out that in American elections today, ignorant voters aren't a problem, they're a target demographic.

Just go ahead and build it. Money, we ain't got no money. We don't need no stinkin money.

This is the only comment that makes sense. If it was actually competitive, it would be there already.

It's not - what does that tell you?

It's not - what does that tell you?

Well, the Eisenhower Highway system or what ever the official name is of the interstate system, was lobbied by the auto industry, but not really paid by them...maybe B.O. wants to equalize this with his Barry Rail system, built by gov. money?

If it was actually competitive, it would be there already.

Not necessarilly.

The barriers to entry in the railroad industry are high.

For one thing, you need rails. You can utilize existing rails (sharing with other users), but then you have to contend with the other traffic on those rails. Or you can obtain rights of way to build new rails.

And, unlike trucking companies or airlines which utilize government-purchased rights of way (roads and airports), trains must construct and maintain their own modes of transit.

Prior to 1970, passenger rail companies were privately owned (usually by freight rail companies) and actually owned the rails on which they ran.

Due to airlines, automobiles, a national highway network, the elimination of rail postal revenue in 1966, contentious unions, and onerous government regulation of railroads, passenger rail service was no longer profitable.

In the post-war boom, governments rushed to build highways and airports, the infrastructure for buses, trucks, and airlines; while treating the railroads like a cash cow. Every foot of rail was subject to property taxes. Railroads are still taxed at higher rates than most other industries (even with the elimination in 1962 of a World War II era excise tax).

Railroad struggled with antiquated work rules. Unions refused to adjust their 100-150 mile workday restrictions, despite train speed doubling since the enacting of those rules. Obsolete positions were enforced (until recently, most trains were required to have a fireman on board to shovel coal - despite the fact that modern diesel engines do not use coal and do not need someone to shovel coal).

Rail companies reduced service and geographic coverage in an effort to stay alive. But the writing was on the wall.

In 1971, the government created Amtrak, a hybrid public-private entity that was essentially a corporate bailout of the passenger rail industry. Initially, Amtrak owned no tracks. In 1976, it acquired most of the railway used in the Northeast Corridor line (where the Acela line runs today). This is still the only track Amtrak owns outright.

In 1947, the government required enhanced switching and routing equipment for all passenger trains travelling over 79 mph. These features were not economical to put in place for trains traveling in the open spaces of the American West. In the crowded Northeast Corridor, most rail lines had already installed them. Those regulations effectively killed high-speed rail development outside the Northeast. They are set to be eliminated by 2015, when new regulations take over.

So, the barriers to entry in building a private high-speed rail system in the US were practically insurmountable. You had to buy your own rights of way, lay the rails, install signalling and switching that complied with government regulations, contend with outdated union work rules, compete with heavily-subsidized alternative modes of transit, and pay higher taxes than most other industries.

Well, now. Having heard the naysayers, I have a better suggestion, yet:

Stay home.

Bunches of people don't really need to leave the house to work anyway.

Commuter rail is a waste of time, space, and money.

All the land could be put to more profitable use. The materials could be used to make higher value merchandise. The time could be put to more productive use as well.

And traveling by car will STILL almost always be a better experience.

The ONLY efficient use of rail is for cargo.

I'm surprised Rad's fallen for this one.

Commuter rail is a waste of time, space, and money...And traveling by car will STILL almost always be a better experience.

Commuter rail is fantastic in dense urban areas; it doesn't work everywhere. I take the train from San Francisco to Palo Alto every day. It's cheaper, faster, more energy-efficient and less stressful than driving. And I can either read or get work done while I commute. It's in every way that matters to me superior to driving my car to work.

No, Christopher, you're confusing urban rail (intra-city subway) with commuter rail (inter-city above-ground).

Between New Haven and New York, yeah. Metro North almost covers itself there, but it's still almost $40 round trip on-peak for what would otherwise be a 2-3 hour drive plus parking. You have 4 people going to the city for the day, and you're better off driving.

This isn't rocket science. Trains cannot be cheap enough to be better than cars unless they are heavily subsidized. We're out of money, so subsidies are out.

Which means that in a free market, trains lose.

If it requires a subsidy or tax to compel people to use it, then it probably isn't the most efficient allocation of resources.

"Due to airlines, automobiles, a national highway network, the elimination of rail postal revenue in 1966, contentious unions, and onerous government regulation of railroads, passenger rail service was no longer profitable."

From what I've read of the history of railroading in the U.S., passenger service never really was profitable here. The railroads did it for the prestige mostly. They made their money on freight services.

I take the train from San Francisco to Palo Alto every day. ~ Christopher

No, Christopher, you're confusing urban rail (intra-city subway) with commuter rail (inter-city above-ground). ~ Brian

Most likely, Christopher takes CalTrain.

CalTrain runs Amtrak-sized passenger rail cars on regular rail tracks (like Metra in Chicago).

It runs up the peninsula from San Jose to San Francisco and is a pleasant (and faster) way to travel through (or around) the crowded Silicon Valley. It's how many SF Giants fans from the South Bay get to the games.

CalTrain is not comparable to the high-speed rail systems being discussed here. The distance is too short and it's all within the SF-SJ-Oak metro area.

Do the basic arithmetic youself. How many people are going between LA and SF every day? Call it 100,000 and say every one of them takes the train. Airfare is $160 round-trip, including taxes, according to Expedia, today. That's $16 million a day in income or about $480 million a month.

Say there were no employees, and you only had to cover financing the thing. It costs about $5,368 a month to mortgage a million over 30 years at five percent. That means the railroad has to cost less than $90 billion to build and run for 30 years.

It's not viable.

Most likely, Christopher takes CalTrain.

Yep, what Conan wrote is correct. Caltrain is what I use on a daily basis (his other observations about CalTrain are on point, too). I use BART (our subway system) less frequently, but it can be a good way to avoid the need to use the Bay Bridge (BART doesn't run very far south of the city, but it does go to the airport, making it a good choice for people traveling here).

Conan is also correct that CalTrain is not the same as the high-speed rail systems being discussed. But is a good example of the sort of commuter rail that can be a effective part of a regional transportation system.

True high speed rail has a lot of challenges - cost, dedicated tracks, NIMBYism - that make it hard to reach places it would work well in. If I could take the train to LA quickly and cheaply, I would. But I won't drive a hour to get on a train that leaves me 100 miles from LA (I think that's about what would happen with the current high-speed train plans in CA). I'll fly.

Bunches of people don't really need to leave the house to work anyway.

Rad,

I'm sure you're job would let you telecommute. :-p

I had to pass a voter test when I first registered. The test had been struck down by the courts but was still going through the appeals process. I had to read and interpret parts of the state constitution. I am proud that I passed.

I am sorry you live in California. It was a nice place at one time. I especially liked San Diego. The people there were very nice. Not surly or angry like those in many other similar cities. However, there were bullet holes in the wardrobe in my hotel room.

WhistleDick, while not hi-speed like France's TGV or the Japanese bullet train, Acela is higher speed than the old Metroliner on Amtrak. One thing I miss about the northeast is the option to take the train anywhere between New England and DC, in less time than the airport TSA routine took to fly the route (arrive early, check in, fly...). I think Philly-DC is now under 2 hrs on Acela. Plus, you can grab coffe, a meal, a beer; use your laptop and celly, and hit the head whenever you want. Sadly, the NE corridor is the only place it comes close to paying for itself.

Bradley, our regional line is a hassle... the terminal station is the town center, not the Gare, so we have to take the metro to the main station if we want to go any other city... so the regional line to town, metro to the station, and then the station to whatever other city. My husband's commute by train is about 1:15, and its about 30 minutes driving. He gets a parking space at work. So it works out better for us to drive most of the time.

However, if when baby is older she and her friends want to go into town, or want to take ballet lessons at the slightly bigger village a few stops down, she can do that.

Or if there is an oil crisis or something, we're good.

I agree the train is often very good, but I'd say it depends how many transfers you have to make and how much stuff you have with you.

Switzerland is about 16,000 sq. miles with a population of 7.785 million people. It is 137 x 216 miles, at the longest distance. You can drive from Geneva to St. Gallen in 3:30 hours.

California is 163,000 square miles, is 250 x 779 miles in size and contains 37 million people. Driving time from the Mexican border to Oregon is 13 hours. Realistically, a high speed line would go from San Diego to Sacramento via San Francisco. That distance is about 600 miles.

All of these dimensions make one realize how much easier it is in Europe to have high speed train service and yet the trains I have ridden there are not full. I took the Chunnel train from London to Paris last summer in about 2.5 hours. While it was a neat experience, the car I was in had about 15 people in it. The car seated at least 60. People fly in Europe now because it is fast and not very expensive.

You can get anywhere in Europe in 1 or 2 hours in a plane. yet trains, even high speed trains can't get you from London to Geneva in less than 8 hours because of a two hour layover in Paris, plus you have to ride Metro from Gare du Nord to Gare de Lyon. A flight over the same distance takes 1:35 and costs less than $100 round trip. Eurostar charges $100 RT for London to Paris.

Trains & high speed trains are great ways to travel, but in the scale of the US, at 3 million square miles, it is not practical to look for trains to solve our transportation problems. Moving people in trains has never been financially successful on its own. Freight charges subsidized passenger travel for over a century in the US, but after the Interstate highway system was built, trucks took a huge amount of revenue from the railroads & that money will never come back.

The other problem that very few realize is that federal loans to build a rail system are typically good to cover 30 years. That is enough time to plan, construct and operate a rail system, but after 30 years the federal money stops since the idea is that the local governments will have come up with their own revenue stream to keep subsidizing riders and buy new stock. The huge problem is that after 30 years all of the hardware in a rail system has to be replaced.

This means that the original investment dollars need to be invested again in order to maintain the railroad. This is happening now in the DC Metro system and I can see daily problems on the network. Tracks break, trains derail, escalators don't work, and on and on. Metro now costs $15.30 a day from Vienna, VA to downtown DC, including parking at the Metro station. Costs keep going up, service declines, and safety has become a big issue on Metro.

As much as I like trains, and I have ridden Amtrak a lot in the 31 years I've lived in DC, they cost a lot of money, the return on investment is negative and gets worse with time.

As has been said so many times on Top Gear:

When you put any part of your trip in someone else's hands, you're potentially screwed.

Yeah, I know, statistically you're safer in a plane or on a train. But statistically you're dead too, so that should tell you something about the predictive power of statistics as applied to individuals.

Yeah, I know, statistically you're safer in a plane or on a train. But statistically you're dead too, so that should tell you something about the predictive power of statistics as applied to individuals.

Brian is... the outlier! Living in the long tail of the distribution, always several standard deviations away from the mean, controlling his own destiny at every turn, not subject to the probabilities that constrain other men.

As usual, Christopher basks in his ignorance.

Let me use small words so you can understand it.

large-group statistics are no good for predicting individual risk.

So when the NHTSA reports that highway fatalities are 2.36 per 100,000 person-miles per year, it doesn't mean that a family of five that gets toted around in a minivan for 20,000 miles a year is going to lose 2.36 people.

I mean, statistically, their kids ought to die every year in a car accident, but it just doesn't happen.

Which is why the argument of "you're statistically safer in a plane than you are in a car" is stupid, immature, puerile, and meaningless.

But that doesn't stop idiots from using it to promote their pet projects in mass transit.

As usual, Christopher basks in his ignorance.

Basking in ignorance as always. That's me.

I'm well aware of how statistics work. One of the fun things I get to do at work is develop stochastic models to use in risk assessments.

While you are correct that statistical modeling will not tell us conclusively if someone will or won't die in a car crash this year, they do allow us to determine the relative likelihood of dying in a crash depending upon one's actions and other relevant factors.

For the sake of argument, let's assume monotonic relationship between miles traveled in a car and the likelihood of dying in one, and that mileage is the only relevant factor (obviously, there are others, but this isn't the place for multiple regression or hierarchical linear models).

If this is the case, then as one travels more miles in a car, the likelihood of dying in one goes up. If you never ride in a car, your probability of dying in a crash is 0 (or asymptotic to 0). If you ride an infinite number of miles in a car, your probability of dying approaches 1. If you ride X number of miles in a car, then we can use a binomial distribution (dead/not dead) with a P (dead/mile) = .000023 to estimate your likelihood of dying in a car crash that year if we know how many miles you'll travel (I'm not sure the binomial distribution is necessarily the correct one for this, because I'm not sure it's proper to treat the miles as discrete events, but I think you get the point) .

It won't tell us if you will die, but it does tell us how likely it is someone who acts like you will die in a car crash. Therefore, unless you somehow think you're special in some way (which is what I was mocking), getting in a car to drive is more risky for you than taking a plane that same distance. But hey, if you don't think that underlying probability distributions have any bearing on what happens to you, then feel free to get drunk and ride a motorcycle helmetless on the wrong side of the road at 100MPH.

This is a real question: Who does not actually pay taxes? I made less than 10,000 last year. In CA, you cannot go much lower than that and still support yourself I still owed federal taxes (more than I have ever owed before) when I filed this year, because I was an independent contractor and did not withhold any taxes at the time.

Christopher:

If this is the case, then as one travels more miles in a car, the likelihood of dying in one goes up

No. Common mistake in random processes. The previous outcome of an iteration does not impact the next outcome.

I've driven my current car 105,000 miles. I've not died that I know of.

You can't take aggregate statistics and use them to predict individual outcomes. You can say that statistically there will be n fatal accidents in Connecticut this year. You can't predict that Joe Glotz is going to die.

And that's what I was mocking. You cannot use the 2.36 fatalities per 100,000 person-miles to predict that anybody driving 50,000 miles this year is going to die.

And that's what I was mocking. You cannot use the 2.36 fatalities per 100,000 person-miles to predict that anybody driving 50,000 miles this year is going to die.

That's not what I was doing. And you are wrong. Read what I wrote, "likelihood" goes up. It does not mean it necessarily happens, even if you drive 500,000 miles. Nor does it mean that your driving today isn't an event independent of your driving yesterday or tomorrow. But it still means that the more independent events you experience, each with a non-zero probability of dying, the more your overall likelihood of dying, not in a single event (which I agree is constant), but across all events in a year.

I'm not feeling like doing the math for you, but this should be enough to get you started:

http://www.pindling.org/Math/Statistics/Textbook/Chapter5_Discrete_Dist/binomial_dist.htm

My mistake then. I assumed you were insinuating that the likelihood of a single event being fatal increased over the course of the year, which is clearly not the case. (FYI - I've got a math degree too, I know math.)

but across all events in a year. that's aggregation.

And a great many people actually DO make the aggregation error - like thinking that "odds of winning are 1 in 4.32" means they're guaranteed to win if they buy 5 tickets.

I think what I am trying to say (without jargon this time) is that you should not let the statistic that airline travel is "safer" dissuade you from driving, because the number that shows that it is "safer" is completely devoid of the context in which you are driving or flying.

Glad we got that cleared up, then :)

You are absolutely correct that people's instinctive math with probability is wrong (i.e., that if an event has a probability of 1/100, then if you do it 100 times it's bound to happen). I don't have a math degree (kudos - that takes work) but my grad work involved a lot of stats (which I use all the time, a tremendously useful tool); I wish more people had a basic understanding of these things, because the folk approach leads to serious misunderstandings.

Absent context, the "flying is safer" aphorism isn't that helpful. In general, the probabilities of dying in a car or a plane are negligible. The reality is that it's likely to be a complex function of number of trips, distance, and a bunch of other variables; more short trips most likely favors driving, fewer long trips, flying. Either way, if you need to make a trip, you probably should.

Unions refused to adjust their 100-150 mile workday restrictions, despite train speed doubling since the enacting of those rules. Obsolete positions were enforced (until recently, most trains were required to have a fireman on board to shovel coal - despite the fact that modern diesel engines do not use coal and do not need someone to shovel coal).

I've got a better one than that Conan. Where I live there's a restaurant tram (trolley) - you make bookings, turn up at a certain spot, they trundle through the city while you eat. Nice food I've heard, they shoehorned a kitchen into it somehow. Sounds nice.

About 15 years ago this tram was still required to have a conductor (ticket collector) on board. This was a plum shift handed out by the union for long serving members. Obviously there were no tickets to check, so they brought a book and sat down at the back and read for their shift. Very productive.

Having said that, a fireman on a train is not much different to a co-pilot on a plane - someone who can take over if necessary. Whether that's required or not is up for debate, but it's just a question of terminology.

Oh, but the morons in California who keep voting in the most moronic legislature have PhDs.