"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.
"Which is about how long it takes a flight to go from DC to New York." . . . . . Great, if you sleep at Reagan National and work at LaGuardia.
///Great, if you sleep at Reagan National and work at LaGuardia./// -- I wouldn't really expect someone in West Virginia to understand DC and NYC geography, but even by the loosest standards, this is pretty ignorant and completely irrelevant. Reagan airport is easily accessible by subway (DC Metro), bus, and car. It sits right on the Metro red line, and by Amtrak in Alexandria. That actually makes as much, if not more convenient than going to UNion Station to catch the Acela. LaGuardia and JFK you can hop on any number of buses to get into Manhattan in about 15 minutes, or take a taxi. Newark, hop on the PATH train at Newark Penn and boom you're at Madison Square Garden in about 15 minutes. All very, very convenient and just as easy to get around as a high speed train would be. I've done this leg probably 100 times.- "Constantly choosing the lesser of two evils is still choosing evil." -- Jerry Garcia. Seems he had a pretty good grip on our current state of politics.
But General T, this could create a "Mineshaft Gap"
"Great, if you sleep at Reagan National and work at LaGuardia." ....I'm surprised that "progressives" want to subsidize transportation for DC and NYC fat cats. If you are going to spend billions of dollars on transportation wouldn't it be better spent on upgrades to current mass transit systems around the country. My most extensive experience with mass transit is in Philly and DC - one system sucks and the other is OK. DC would have a great system but they provide very shoddy bus service to the excellent Metro system. Instead of trying to get people from DC to NYC in about an hour why not spend money getting people from Center City Philadelphia to their homes in South Philly, West Philly, NE Philly, ect in less than an hour?— bird11- "Constantly choosing the lesser of two evils is still choosing evil." - General I saw that quote myself this weekend (actually posted it to my facebook page) and thought the same thing. Actually felt sympathy for many of the Obama voters who I think actually thought they were electing a "savior" and not a "politician" - reminds me of a Jim Rockford quote "I know it's a downer but people lie".— bird11
- ///Instead of trying to get people from DC to NYC in about an hour why not spend money getting people from Center City Philadelphia to their homes in South Philly, West Philly, NE Philly, ect in less than an hour?//// Or how about getting people from Lansdale, Fairless Hills, Voorhees, and Chester into the city faster, so they don't have to drive their cars every stinking day?
- ///Actually felt sympathy for many of the Obama voters who I think actually thought they were electing a "savior" and not a "politician"//// I don't feel sympathy, because anyone who voted for a savior was looking for one, which again says more about the sad state of discourse in our culture than anything else. No truly authentic politician ever gets elected. TV and mass media have ushered in an era of fake authenticity, and people buy in to it like they buy into anything else. The Obama campaign was very smart and picked up on this right away. Problem is, when people bank on something being authentic, then find out it isn't, it often leads to an even worse reaction than if someone knew it wasn't authentic in the first place, even if the substance of the object or person hasn't changed. That's one of the reasons you see such a wellspring of rejection in politics.
Comment removed.
General - What you're saying is that National Airport is more accessible because you can get to it on the Red Line or Amtrak/VRE, and that makes it better then Union Station because that is only accessible by ... wait for it ... the Red Line, Amtrak, VRE, and MARC. What about Dulles, where you have to deal with a long congested drive on the toll road, at least until the Silver line is finished. And I have no idea how PATH plays in to flying out of Newark, that would involve 3 different transfers from midtown to the airport, vs 1 if you took a train out of penn station, and if you're going to boston or dc, why not just make it 0 transfers and get on the train at penn? JFK is not 15 minutes from midtown at 3am, let alone during the day. LGA has no transit access, good luck.— Pelti
I am strongly in favor of investing in practical transportation, which this is, but I do have a question about the airline security rationale; wouldn't those measures be enacted if there is an attack on one of these trains and wouldn't they make a good target? I'm not suggesting this question should kill the train, I just don't know that I entirely buy that one particular reason. I'd LOVE to travel to NYC in 37 minutes and I think it would be great for tourism in BOTH cities.— Contract Aaron- ah, haven't read will bunch in a while. I forgot the juvenile thoughts from this perennial hack. If the tea party is the only thing stopping the trains, why is Rendell spending $200 million on a questionable family court and $20 million for libaries and crying poor on high speed rail funds? putting up $200 million in local match would net $800 million in federal dollars. Sure, it's not going to get you Philly to Pitt in 2h30m but it would certainly be transformative for our aging rail system in PA. hack.— dreinterests
"CNN host and Newsweek columnist Fareed Zakaria has returned a prestigious award given to him by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), saying he is “stunned” at their decision to oppose the construction of an Islamic community center near Ground Zero." --- Wow! Good on you Mr. Zakaria! Attytood haters heads explode in 3, 2, 1...— Les Ismore- I just drove to Boston last weekend, and regretted it after dealing with traffic both ways. I should have taken Amtrak, as it would cost about the same as the combined gas/tolls/wear&tear cost of driving. The premium for Acela isn't worth it save a few minutes, but I'd gladly pay that to turn my 7 hour drive into 3 hours by train— Pelti
- /// imposed a reasonable fuel tax on jet fuel, we could easily pay for this but the avaition industry is against this and will lobby with all it has to stop this but Tea Heads are pro lobbist and pro corpoartion //// -- Right Rauol (can I call you Hunter?). That's why the bill introduced to eliminate the fuel tax for airline corporations, but double it for private fliers, was jointly submitted by Jay Rockefeller (D). You know, a democrat trying to eliminate a tax altogether for a corporation ,but it's only the "tea heads" who are pro-corporation. Lol. Bwack. Pass. The. Popcorn. Can't. Make. This. Stuff. Up.
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