Riled about rail: Why all the anger over high speed trains?

So you were crossing the border. That changes the story quite a bit, we were talking about high speed rail in the U.S. (based on the political battles over the current budget where the Republicans are trying to take what remains of that out of the budget).

Well, I wasn't a teenager in 2003, but yes, I used to cross the border a fair bit too as a kid, and all you needed was the driver to have a drivers license and everybody else was related to him and you were fine. Then Canada didn't like us coming over and fishing and camping and made things difficult for Americans, so we stopped going. But security-wise, I'd say the big changes for flying occurred obviously in 2001, and then just a year or two ago with the visa needed to go to Mexico or Canada, even in a car.

 

Going back to the original post, it seems most of PCer's and Americans have never ridden a modern high tech high speed rail. Surely you must have when in Europe or Japan.
The system in Japan is not only fast but clean and safe. Millions depend on it everyday to go to school, work and travel.

If only, the USA would stop giving money away to other nations and start focusing on rebuilding itself first, a high speed rail is a necessity for travel as well as commerce. So get out of the middle east, bring our boys and girls home, don't give any more funds to any other country and lets start focusing on making the USA what it used to be.

 

It would be very nice to be able to travel by rail. Air travel has become so painful that I really don't consider it viable for personal travel, and car drives are nice - but too expensive to use for long distances. Right now, passenger rail is limited to being extremely low priority on current rail lines - which means people sit in side-skirts while bailing twine gets to travel the line at 5 mph on rail car. It's just not very quick... but definitely an experience, for sure.

 

It's also something of pride for the nation too. I can't believe there is so much (though not exclusively) negative comments regarding high speed rail travel on here. I'd have thought Prius owners would be all for it.

High speed rail is high speed ie 200+ mph. I read that many long distance passenger trains in the US run at 60 or 70 mph. That's not any use for passenger travel. Our UK inter city trains that run at 125 mph are old hat and past their prime and that's why we're starting to build the infrastructure for 200 mph+ trains.

That's 200 miles in one hour or 400 miles in two hours. It's quicker than using the plane (no messing about checking in, waiting a sitting around), you can sit down in comfort and talk on your phone and use your laptop to surf the net much more easily than on a plane.

I think once you see how good a service it is and how well it works you'd change your misconceptions. Comparing high speed rail to Amtrak is like comparing a Prius to a model T Ford.

 

Make no mistake, the vast majority would support high speed rail that works. The problem in the US, is that we could quite possibly implement a high speed rail line that does not work. When a "rail line" is primarily touted as a "jobs program" instead of a "transportation solution", then a close examination of the end result should be reexamined.

All the European Rail and Japanese rail systems I've experienced and seen are well thought out systems that integrate into the local public transportation systems. I can get to my destination from my start point without a car. There there are a great many US cities that need to have a much better local system in place to maximize the payoff of a high speed rail system. Once you have to get a car to transverse any part of the journey, it's an easy step to use the car for the whole journey.

 

Not one who likes to talk religion or politics but Rick Scott is an idiot

 

Who are you talking about?

 

I would assume he is talking about Rick Scott.

 

You are correct. He is talking about Rick Scott, recently elected Governor of Florida, and around here affectionately known as "Governor Voldemort." He's been the biggest antagonist of high-speed rail here, and the Legislature has followed his lead. What's really silly is that he ran for Guv promising jobs, and killed a good potential source of jobs.

 

Now I know that - hence my earlier stupid question. It seems a lot of elected officials deem it popular to hate things like trains, buses, mass transit of any kind...