9 Responses so far

1. 1. Jim on Mar 9th, 2010 at 4:33 pm

   I couldn’t agree more. Good mass transit — hell, any mass transit — here in the US is something that we badly need, but good luck convincing anyone with the power to make it happens that it’s necessary and beneficial.

2. 2. Anonymister on Mar 9th, 2010 at 9:07 pm

   Absolutely. Conversely, they also want to ram a high-speed corridor through a park and stream area in the desert where I live, since the park doesn’t have any people living in it, and every other piece of land has a homeowner who will sue.

   We should have high speed transit, but some people are going to lose their houses over it. China and India aren’t so picky about property rights.

3. 3. Tobias Buckell on Mar 10th, 2010 at 1:06 am

   Conversely new roads are constantly being built all across the US without nearly the complaining or same issues. If roads can be built, so can rail.

4. 4. Anonymister on Mar 10th, 2010 at 1:00 pm

   Actually, speaking as one of those annoying activists who reads the environmental documents, there are lots of protests about roads too, for much the same reasons. Thing is, there’s a local infrastructure (state highway agencies and their cadres of contractors) who know how to build roads. We don’t have the same infrastructure for building railroads (which are normally private institutions, such as Union Pacific), so it takes federal action.

   I wish it was simpler, as I do agree with you about rail. For writers, though, it’s a great example about how political choices ripple out.

5. 5. Stephen Watkins on Mar 10th, 2010 at 3:44 pm

   Got to agree about the complexity of the politics of something like this, but I also generally agree with the need for things like high-speed rail linking up our nation. And, for that matter, our neighbors. How cool would it be to get from New York to Buenos Aires by rail in a day or two? And, I’d imagine, a lot more economically than by plane.

   Something like that isn’t feasible, though, as long as our budget is structured the way it is (and as long as we’re pouring wealth and investment into countries where we’ll get no return on our investment; i.e. the wars in far-flung lands; which isn’t to say that helping these countries isn’t the right thing to do, at this point; it’s our mess and we oughta clean it up).

   Also consider, Europe is a land of dozens of developed countries, and for all that China likes to pretend it’s still an oppressed third-world economy, it is effectively a developed economy as well. Over on our side of the world… we’ve got two developed economies on the northern mainland, and a hodgepodge of developed and undeveloped economies in the south. I’m not sure what the implications of that are, but there are some large hurdles to overcome, internationally speaking.

6. 6. Tobias Buckell on Mar 10th, 2010 at 3:50 pm

   Actually, speaking as one of those annoying activists who reads the environmental documents, there are lots of protests about roads too, for much the same reasons.

   I didn’t say there weren’t *any*, I said not to the same extent, as in, politicians here in Ohio and Wisconsin have already declared they’ll block any high speed rail on the principle that it’s rail. I have yet to see any politician in this area reflexively use their position to block a road just because its a road. Rail has a whole other layer of opposition that roads don’t even begin to approach.

7. 7. Tobias Buckell on Mar 10th, 2010 at 3:58 pm

   I’m not sure what the implications of that are, but there are some large hurdles to overcome, internationally speaking.

   Yeah, but even just investing further in rail for the greater Chicago/Toronto/Ohio/NYC region would achieve some levels of integration and efficiency.

   I was talking to some older folk not too long ago, from when Bluffton used to be connected to a rail system, and they talked about going to Chicago and Toronto frequently, and they lamented how their grandchildren hardly travel or even head out to see their *own* country like they were able to. These old chaps used to go catch Chicago baseball games and do their Christmas shopping there.

   The midwest has actually become *less* connected and traveled, even though individually there is more freedom with car culture, as a society, the upshot has been more travel within, say, an hour’s drive, and beyond that, way less interaction with places that are outside a couple hours drive.

   So people where I live can *more* easily visit Toledo, Fort Wayne, and Columbus. But they no longer easily travel to Chicago, Toronto, Indianapolis, St. Louis, etc, those ‘mid-distance’ cities.

   To one of my hippy neighbor’s chagrin, these same older folks though, shouted down leftists who decried the mothballing of trains as ‘communists’ in the 70s. Some of them now, reflectively, are regretting the shift as they wistfully talk about how they haven’t visited Chicago since, oddly enough, the 70s, because their kids, who they depend on now to drive them anywhere, don’t want the hassle of driving all the way to Chicago.

   Were train service still here, the older folks told me, they could travel on their own.

8. 8. Stephen Watkins on Mar 11th, 2010 at 12:23 pm

   That is indeed ironic, and what you express would be great, even if just on a more local level. Where I live, they talk about trying to connect Atlanta to Athens with a high-speed rail, and though I’m not opposed, I wonder what’s the point, because Athens is just an hour-and-a-half, maybe two-hour drive to the east. Atlanta to Savanna, or Atlanta to Columbus, or Atlanta to Nashville – those are connections worth making, for sure. You get enough of those regional rail connections made, and soon enough you have a viable national rail network again.

9. 9. Wyman Cooke on Mar 17th, 2010 at 8:38 pm

   Heck, there was a lot of lobbying for high speed rail between Chattanooga and Atlanta. It seemed to die out at the federal level, and it didn’t matter which party was in power.

   Here in Huntsville, Siemens is running a radio ad in support of their high speed trains.