Highspeed rail
Caronte22 — Thu, 04/16/2009 - 15:17
Europeans and Japanese already enjoy high-speed rail service, but Americans are woefully dependent on cars and planes to get from city to city. Not for long, if Obama has anything to say about it.
Obama's right-hand goon, Joe Biden, unveiled the administration's plans for high-speed rail all across the country today, showing off a seriously impressive map that adds lines connecting cities all over the country.
Of course, this is all going to take time and a whole lot of money. The first line that's likely to go in, thanks to its advanced state of planning, is the California section, which hopes to link up its major cities with a 200mph rail line sometime in the next decade.
What's unclear is how all of this will be paid for. After all, the current stimulus package has $8 billion marked for high-speed rail projects. Sounds like a lot until you learn that the CA section alone will cost somewhere around $40 billion.
But still, in the long run the benefits of a reliable, fast rail system connecting major cities is clear. I hope they're able to make this happen. [WhiteHouse.gov and The Economist]
Living in the Northeast, I
Agoney — Fri, 04/17/2009 - 08:36Living in the Northeast, I can't wait for this to happen. Flying in/out of ny/jfk etc is qutie a pain, so many delays. I can drive from my parents place in Upstate NY to NYC in about 3 and a half hours so. A flight is only 35 minutes, however your probably in the airport for 4 hours total. A train takes about 6-7 hours, and buses with their stops is about 5.
We do have the Acela express though, which is amazing. NYC to DC in 2 and a half hours or so. It's the best way to get their, if you fly, you'll be waiting in delays, and if you drive..lol.. well leaving the city isn't too bad, but driving into the city I've waited over an hour to get into the tunnels or cross on the G.W bridge.
Rail and Mass Transit were to
Dragon — Thu, 04/16/2009 - 15:53Rail and Mass Transit were to of the bigger draws I had when voting for Obama. I will be honest when I say that I am 22 and don't even have a driver's license atm (will probably fix this during the coming summer). I have done at least 2 reports in college on Mass Transit, specifically light and high speed rail in my area.
In fact, by now Florida WOULD have a high speed rail connecting Orlando and Tampa, but due to a few politicians and 1 amusement park it was shot down 2 years after the voters voted for it. I would love to see more of the US connected by rail. Whats more, It would make getting to the guild meetup that much easier.
TLDR: It's about time
It's interesting that you
garreth — Thu, 04/16/2009 - 16:09It's interesting that you mention the guild meetup. I was actually looking at train ticket cost to get to Portland from various places. The good news: Cheap! The bad news: DAYS of travel. I wonder if we'll see the day when we can travel halfway across the country in under a day via rail, or other ground methods.
I would take a high speed
garreth — Thu, 04/16/2009 - 15:42I would take a high speed rail to Seattle every weekend if we had one. Public transport is a major source of employment and job opportunities. I live in Portland, a city with arguably the best public transportation system in the country. Every day I see huge crowds of people using the buses and rail systems. If this many people use public transportation just to go to the store, how many more would use it to visit friends in another city?
Most of these systems run on something other than plain old gas. As our country moves away from fossil fuels for energy (another big Obama shake up), electricity for these kinds of transportation projects envelope a larger, cleaner strategy for transportation. No, it won't be cheap. No, it won't be easy.
A few years ago I spent a summer in Europe (I was level 45 in WoW to give you a time frame, I know, laaaame). I paid $120 for an unlimited train pass and rode the rails and buses from Norway to Sweden to Bonn, Germany to Bavaria to Marseille, France to London, England. It was liberating, quite fast and (once you'd figured out the schedule) easy. Europe is much more tightly packed together, of course. There are nonstop cities at the edges of other cities. However, the map above sure is a good start for those cities in America that are in similar spacing.
To clarify a point or
Dufe — Thu, 04/16/2009 - 16:15To clarify a point or two:
The $120 cost of that pass is a subsidized price for non-EU member-state citizens and can only be purchased at that price from outside of the Eurorail member countries. For a person who actually lives in one of those countries, the real cost is roughly 3x (nominal cost was ~4-5x more) more - and the passes were for a relatively short period of time (2-3 weeks or thereabouts). A round-trip ticket from Copenhagen to Munich was ~$80.
The funny thing is that the people I knew over there were apparently intensely proud of the fact that they had finally caught up to the "cheap" airfare system they thought we enjoyed. They have actually surpassed it. I could buy a round-trip plane ticket from London to Rome or Prague for like $70, and the flight would take ~3 hours compared to at least a full day by "high speed" train.
Don't get me wrong, I mostly like the train idea and I loved meandering about Europe using a Eurorail pass when I was there. I just don't want to see this misrepresented and over-hyped as some kind of travel holy grail.