"Socialism" from Philadelphia to New York in 37 minutes
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"Socialism" from Philadelphia to New York in 37 minutes
How cool would it be to travel from Philadelphia to New York in 37 minutes? I don't know. Truth is, we may never know. I would put high-speed rail -- the subject of an interesting multi-part series that began in the Inquirer today -- near the top of the great ideas of 2008 that is surely getting lost in the kill-all-government-spending-except-the-Bush-and-Obama-wars-and-Bush-tax-cuts-for-the-rich frenzy of 2010.
As I'm sure Glenn Beck will say sometime in the near future, show me one place where the Founding Fathers said anything about high-speed rail!!!
Here's the crux:
Want to go from Los Angeles to San Francisco in two hours, 40 minutes? Or from Philadelphia to Pittsburgh in 21/2 hours? Or from Philadelphia to New York in 37 minutes?
Want to cut carbon-dioxide emissions by 71 percent per passenger-mile compared with car travel, or 76 percent compared with air travel?
Want to cut travel fatalities to zero? That's how many people have died in high-speed train accidents in France or Spain or Japan.
Want to escape airport security lines? Want to get out of seat belts? Want to elude traffic gridlock?
Want to spend $10 billion a year?
To the Tea Party crowd, you lost them at $10 billion. What a shame. This is a program that would create literally thousands of manufacturing jobs in the private sector in the United States, as contracts are awarded, and then would create thousands more jobs for mechanics to maintain the trains and the tracks, and for people to operate the system once it is running. Frankly, the global warming and traffic and safety benefits, while importantly, are tangential to the jobs right now. But it doesn't really matter because America has lost its nerve, especially our leaders.
One other quote from the article stuck with me:
"This is what the rest of the world is doing," said Robert Yaro, an urban planning professor at the University of Pennsylvania and president of the Regional Plan Association, a New York-area research group. "We're behind not only France and Spain and the U.K. and Japan and China and Korea, but now Morocco and India and Vietnam are building high-speed rail. This is what we have to do.
The rest of the world isn't paralyzed by fear.
You just can't convince me that just taking an hour off the travel time to NY is worth all that money.— SteveMG- High speed rail is just another example of the conservatives pushing us behind the rest of the world due to some misguided ideals. The reason Europe can say that they don't want U.S. workers is high-speed rail. The reason the Asian companies are outworking the U.S. is a combination of cheap labor and high speed rail. Not only does it do so much for manufacturing, it saves money for the average citizen(via gas and travel prices) and reduces numbers of law enforcement playing traffic cop. Don't know why the conservatives hate it because it would allow for more enforcement of immigration laws and create manufacturing jobs which helps the economy.— HandNik
Comment removed.- lol in your view, a tax cut is "government spending"? Where on earth did THAT idea come from lol?— texas.troubadour
- In the '70s all of the pundits said we should have an SST (Super Sonic Transport) plane. The French/British and Russia were going to do it, we should too. Congress said no. Turns out that the Internet killed the SST after all. Do we need HSR because the Europeans/Asians have it? We have the I-95s and the US-30s, they don't. We should spend the billions on the infrastructure. Build new stuff if needed and maintain the existing.— cpl8139usa
Fear, Will? How about Greece, are they building high speed trains?- Too logical...even for the dull and misinformed...dude you may want to back off on legitamizing the failed newspaperboy...:-)— pmorse
- taxpayers should not be obligated to pay for something just because you think "how cool" it would be to do something.— Bud Fox
Two quick reasons this is another liberal money pit. First, America is a car culture, Europe is geared much more toward rail. Second, once the unions get through with this project it'll cost a few hundred bucks a person to get to NYC.— jmc- Comment removed.
- Since when does what the rest of the world does have anything to do with our decisions? They all have high speed rail because they are jealous of our freedom, prosperity, dirty air and dependency on foreign oil.
- Comment removed.
- "Unlike roads, which aren't subsidized by government one bit." No, Will, they are mainyl paid for by user fees. Ever hear of a state and federal gas tax, motor vechile registration and license fees, and tolls?— RG
- We need high-speed rail! I hope that the politicians will work toward making high-speed rail a reality. (I feel a little embarrassed for poor "bobbyd24" who does not know that high-speed rail can not come to fruition without the cooperation of government agencies and our elected officials.) I would travel to NYC, DC and Pittsburgh a lot more if I could do so on high-speed trains.— sjjr
- Comment removed.
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