I-Like-To-Bike

It was right up there with the tarping tall buildings like shade trees thing. Or vending machines for camping equipment out in nowheresville for the benefit of traveling vagabonds.

Darth Lefty 

A recent news magazine type podcast was doing a thought experiment - has there ever been a society with no money? And they did dig down into the age of trade. Neolithic Egyptian sites have pretty stones traded from Afghanistan. There was always someone walking out of town to make a buck.

Bandera

As a Texan I see little point in going to either Dallas or Houston, much less traveling between them by any means of transportation.
If you see the need have at it, just don't add your cost and complexity to my budget local/state/federal.

Hideous places both, unless compared to NYC or LA.

-Bandera

Mobile 155

Yes, people always moved about. And the real point is they have always been looking for the easiest way to do it. That is why I said for the HSR to work it had to be easy to use and inexpensive for the user. The HSR sounds like a good idea but I am not sure it will be worth it with the cost of air traffic being the bench mark.

For or most compact cars the trip would only take about a tank of gas. At today's prices that could be as little as 20 bucks maybe 30.00 door to door. I think you can get a flight for less than $200.00. It would seem as if the cost margin got the HSR might be a bit tight.

I-Like-To-Bike

With two or three and passengers, a couple of bicycles on a rack, and the family dog if so desired for little extra cost.

cooker

Don't bury your head in all that Texas sand . You have a huge stake in this. Tens of thousands (maybe hundreds of thousands) of Texans and others travel into and out of and between those cities every day, and even though you don't, both your wallet and your lungs are already being heavily taxed to support it. So what would really benefit you, is if they did it in an energy-efficient and cost-effective way, and it's strongly in your interests to to pay attention to this and get involved to influence developments in the direction that will cost or harm you the least.

cooker

Yes cars are very efficient for group travel, but the overwhelming use they are actually put to is solo travel.

Mobile 155

A very good what if point. Cars are great "if" used efficiently. And as we know they are getting more fuel efficient every day. Following that same train of thought what "if" the HSR turns into another Amtrak? What "if" it turns out to cost more than air travel? What if people don't use it?

Being built by by a private company if it doesn't work as expected will in be allowed to close up like any other private interest or will the people of Texas have to save it like the people of the US have to save Amtrak? Will the public get their land back?

I am not committed to believing HSR will not work only that from my experience in my state it is turning into a bit of an albatross.

tandempower

It's the same as expecting people to drive 40 mile commutes for employment. MVs are the amphetamines of transportation.

Those are different forms of travel than commuting and running multiple errands daily over numerous linear miles of distance. You know people didn't cover that much distance daily before MVs. You call any geographical area "sprawl" but the concern with sprawl is that it distances people's homes from work and other destinations that makes alternatives to driving a difficult choice. This has been discussed a million times and you "deniers" persist in sticking your fingers in your ears and singing "la la la." You understand the problem of sprawl and driving-dependency but you just defend and defend it in any way you can for some reason. What's so hard about just admitting it is an objectively valid point that's incredibly difficult to address because of the scale and complexity of the problem?

Bandera

The San Antonio-Austin "high speed rail" boondoggle collapsed today under scrutiny of it's plausibility, which was Zero despite hyperbole and lobbying.
Score 1.

PS: Both of my grandfathers were railroad men and the technology is quite familiar to me having been responsible for moving several Billions of $ of merchandise via rail on a couple of continents over the years. Texans know the smell of Bull_**** at a distance........

-Bandera

Mobile 155

That would be a subjective not objective point. If you took the example of Southern California it would be just as easy move employment into outlying industrial parks where property is already less expensive. All that has happened is people have found a way to move at greater speed over greater distances. Read about the early travels of Franklin and see how many states he moved between and how often. Trains made it possible for people, that may have moved to San Francisco, the capability to travel back to New York or Chicago several times a year rather than once or twice in a lifetime. Cars simply give people the freedom to live where they want and commute if the so desire. There are people today that live on the west coast and work on the east coast. They commute by Air.

And desire they did if you bother to read about the success of the Red Cars in LA. Those Red Cars moved workers to what was called the suburbs because they could live better or in better places for less money.

Still the HSR goes to expand on the point. People could live on Houston and Work in Dallas if they wanted. It seems as if several already do with the amount of air traffic that suggests the HSR might have a customer base. I have my doubts that they will gather that many from air travel but you never know. But what it absolutely proves even by its suggestion that living and dying within walking distance of your birth place isn't the norm and hasn't been for a very long time.

cooker

fify

cooker

What are your thoughts on rail freight - should it be built up more in the US?

Mobile 155

Not a problem for me. I believe only Ford showed any ethics by not taking the bailout. And Chrysler stiffed the public when the went belly up and now that effort to save them is enjoyed by Fiat. I don't believe in too big to fail. GM should have been allowed to fold and replaced by any other company that had the will to produce what ever the public wanted.

So when passenger rail was proven unprofitable I think it should have died an honorable death. Amtrak is little more than a diseased corps of a transportation system that is hardly ever on time and only used by the grace of rented or leased tracks.

If the Texas HSR is to work I believe it has to be profitable or should be allowed to fail. If it fails it should cost the tax payers nothing. But that is simply my opinion. For my State I see no advantage to a HSR because it will be state and federally funded so it will cost the tax payer for something they never asked for.

cooker

I'd be in total agreement if the same market discipline and transparency were applied to the automotive and airline industries, and I actually think rail would do very well on a level playing field.

Mobile 155

Maybe, but you don't have to lay track in the air. You don't have to put your rail lines where only the people that cannot afford to fight you live.
Rail gad their shot. They got government land grants for ROWs and government bonds to build it from congress. They had passenger rails and slowly but surely they lost money because of Cars, trucks and airlines. Freight lines still benefit from that head start. How much more level do you need it?

Rollfast

It just makes the oops I can't use that bar name sorry tonks next to the track noisier and more dangerous, I gather.

SHBR

HSR is inevitable, car ownership will start to decrease as it will become less affordable for the masses. Texas and California both have a deeply entrenched car culture. Consider these states as a testing ground for further nationwide implementation. In China, car ownership is increasing, however this is mostly because of the tax revenue it creates. Nothing happens on a massive scale by accident.

Ekdog

Is China moving away from their experimentation with replacing bicycles with cars in their cities?

Ekdog

Less affordable as regards money or also in terms of the environment, public health and safety and so on?

Even if we don't give a damn about anything but money:

[h=1]Pollution crisis is choking the Chinese economy[/h][h=2]The Asian colossus is losing 6.5 percent of GDP to pollution-rated costs.[/h]

Ekdog

1.6 million deaths due to air pollution in China. Can they afford not to move away from the car-centric model defended by so many in this forum?

https://www.cnbc.com/2016/02/11/pollution-crisis-is-choking-the-chinese-economy.html

Bandera

The entire infrastructure from ports through the railway system is badly outdated and in need of an overhaul/upgrade, essential elements of the economy that are well worth investment/re-think. Yes, a more efficient freight rail system would serve real world needs quite well.

-Bandera

tandempower

Do you mean by putting the public right-of-way of all roads up for bid to corporate investors who would transform them into either toll roads, rail lines, or both?

If you did that, you'd have to regulate the sale to prevent automotive interests from pooling their money for the sake of creating roads with low enough tolls (or free of charge) that promote driving over trains, etc.

MV sales, service, and insurance makes a lot more money than train ticket sales so if you allow business competition to control road right-of-way, the car companies will use their market position to exclude rail and promote driving by lowering the tolls, as they have done with the interstate highway system.

They will even pay smart marketing minds to spin it as a benefit to consumers and commerce to have big business pay for the highways and allow private individuals to use them for free.

cooker

Airports take up massive space in their own right and have an impact on property values for miles around due to height restrictions, noise pollution, fumes, fear of crashes, and so on, so one major airport probably impinges as much on property owners' rights and economic benefits as thousands of miles of rail. Certainly in many area there is a lot of public resistance, both rural and urban, to airport expansions and highway re-routing, widening, extra interchanges and so on, so all forms of transportation have both good and bad implications for property owners in various locations, and can only operate if government gets involved with permits, expropriations, and in most cases, subsidies of various sorts.

It's true that rail ceded most of it's long-distance passenger business to cars and planes over the course of the 20th century, but they had a lot of help from government - for example, as mentioned the interstates are one of the costliest government projects anywhere, ever, and certainly LAX or O'Hare or whatever only exist at their current massive size because governments sided with proponents over opponents, and kicked in a lot of funds too.

Now, all around the world, passenger rail is making a comeback, as both the general public and governments start to buy into it again, and inevitably it will claw its way back into a competitive position in the USA again as well, although obviously not as readily as it is doing so in Europe, China, Japan etc.

cooker

Why don't the rail and freight companies just start doing it?