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Installing "high speed" rail that's less than 200mph in the US today is like installing 6MB copper DSL and calling it a win. Notice developing economies are go

by zionic 9y ago

Installing "high speed" rail that's less than 200mph in the US today is like installing 6MB copper DSL and calling it a win. Notice developing economies are going wireless/fiber and skipping the "legacy" generation, the US should be doing the same with MagLev/hyperloop. The issue is we spend our money policing the world/blowing up countries then paying to rebuild them. If we weren't so hell-bent on global hegemony we could spend more on infrastructure at home.

noir_lord 9y ago
The really stupid part is that US military spending is so disproportionate you could do both. A 25% cut in the US military would leave around 165bn for infrastructure and they'd still be spending more than the next 4 countries.
- WillPostForFood 9y ago
  $165 billion is about 4% of federal spending, so if people think it is so important they could cut everything except defense and easily come up with the money.
  - muhfuhkuh 9y ago
    But if we cut military, they'd then be much more fiscally responsible and not have to admit that they'd "lost" trillions of dollars that they can't account for every, oh, decade or so. http://www.cnn.com/2016/08/23/politics/us-army-audit-accounting-errors/index.html http://www.cnn.com/2016/08/23/politics/us-army-audit-account...
    - adventured 9y ago
      They did not in fact admit they "lost" trillions. It's a fair criticism of their mediocre accounting, however they did not lose trillions of dollars, nor are trillions of dollars unaccounted for. That part isn't even actually being disputed by that ignorant CNN article. Trillions of dollars have not been properly audited, which is not the same as that entire sum simply being magically missing. That article is rehashing the same bogus premise that has been thrown around for decades. Here's how it works: https://www.metabunk.org/debunked-8-5-trillion-missing-from-the-pentagon.t3173/ https://www.metabunk.org/debunked-8-5-trillion-missing-from-... https://davidlandy.net/no-the-pentagon-didnt-lose-8-5-trillion/ https://davidlandy.net/no-the-pentagon-didnt-lose-8-5-trilli... Basically: within $N trillion in spending, there is a combination of non-audits and accounting irregularities, so therefore CNN throws up a click-bait article claiming the entire amount of spending is unaccounted for. Pretty idiotic when you consider the sums being claimed vs the known expenditures in question. The premise is: every dollar that wasn't audited was stolen; logically, even if one were to assume theft (etc) happened, it's likely to be a dramatically smaller sum of the whole.
  - noir_lord 9y ago
    NASA is about 0.5% of federal spending. The total education spend is 3%. So you could double spending on education and nasa and still pocket savings... By cutting the US military by 25%. Just an example.
- adventured 9y ago
  The US has an economy larger than the next four largest military countries combined. An economy that is hyper dependent on the global economy functioning well and trade flowing unimpeded. I happen to agree with slashing the US military, however your premise is incorrect. It's also worth noting that China aggressively lies about their military spending - under counting - and has been doing that for decades. The US is also now spending less than Russia per dollar of GDP. Further, the $165 billion wouldn't accomplish anything in terms of infrastructure, or healthcare, or anything else. For example, take a look at the estimate that California Democrats recently ended up with for their single-payer system (it's so expensive to do in the US, it'd instantly bankrupt California; not even a small, somewhat well run state like Vermont can pull it off). You can't even fix California's infrastructure problems for $165 billion per year. Right now, with the US budget what it is, you'd need more like a $400 billion cut to the military to even scratch the surface (we have nukes, it'd realistically be feasible, but we'd have to dramatically disengage from dealing with Russia in Europe and China in Asia, requiring those regions to significantly lift their military spending).
  - Retric 9y ago
    This is not 165 billion to fix infrastructure, this is 165B to fix mass transit and that's plenty when you consider the leverage loans can provide it's closer to 500B per year. Second US gets almost nothing per dollar from it's military spending due to inefficiencies. Slashing the budget for a few years is a critical step to separate the useful from the useless spenind. And realistically a 70% cut followed by a slow ramp up would eliminate vast amounts of redundant waste, and reduce many long term obligations. But, that waste is making people rich and 'bringing home the bacon' making such cuts untenable.
    - adventured 9y ago
      The $500 billion you're quoting for mass transit, would build high speed rail for California, Texas, and maybe a few states on the East Coast. That's it. Might cover 15% of the US population. > Second US gets almost nothing per dollar from it's military spending due to inefficiencies Most US military spending is on human soldiers, not on weapons programs. The waste you're referring to is a few tens of billions of dollars per year. It's not hundreds of billions. Your premise of somehow saving a lot of money by reducing waste, doesn't pan out under any scrutiny accordingly. Unless your plan is to slash hundreds of thousands of soldiers and their associated costs (even if we close half our foreign bases, which would save tens of billions of dollars, we would then need to significantly increase the spending on our domestic base capabilities to handle those soldiers; or we have to dramatically slash our soldier numbers).
- gozur88 9y ago
  Expenditures are a terrible way to measure military strength. The US military can't pay Chinese wages.
  - em3rgent0rdr 9y ago
    ok, so how about the number of bases in other counties and the current number of military operations.
    - gozur88 9y ago
      Are we going to use the list going around which assumes a group of five guys is a military base? If so, there are a lot of other countries with military bases in the US.
  - kashkhan 9y ago
    exactly how much is wages of the total spend?
    - gozur88 9y ago
      I would think nearly everything, either uniform military or contractor employee. What else is there?
      - kashkhan 9y ago
        $139B out of $583B is salaries https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_budget_of_the_United_States#Budget_request_for_FY2018 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_budget_of_the_United_...
        gozur88 9y ago
        But that's sort of irrelevant, isn't it? When the USAF buys an F-35, the cost of the F-35 is almost entirely domestic US labor, even though on the military budget it counts as equipment.
adventured 9y ago
It'd be more accurate to leave off the "we" that you insist on using to artificially bolster your premise. George W. Bush was elected on a platform of no more nation building (and secured his second term in an atmosphere of fear and war), as was Donald Trump. It's very clear that the majority of Americans do not want more war & nation building (the only ones that do, are a contingent of conservatives like McCain and even fewer similar hawks on the other side). The globalists + military industrial complex go ahead and do what they want anyway, against the wishes of the American public. They've been doing so for a long, long time now. Vietnam was not a very popular war, they did it anyway. The notion of no longer blowing up the Middle East and treating Russia as a villain, was impossible for them to stomach re Trump, so the CIA & fellow globalists (aka the deep state, media, etc) immediately went on hyper attack (oh the consequences of going against the machine).
- jessaustin 9y ago
  Yeah they lied to go to war in Vietnam just like they lied to go to war in Iraq just like they lied to go to war in Libya just like they're lying now because they're so eager to go to war in Syria. Fortunately for the MIC we Americans are really stupid and easily distracted by shiny media bullshit.
- cderwin 9y ago
  > Vietnam was not a very popular war, they did it anyway. It was extremely popular when LBJ started the war. Less than 25% of the public thought sending troops to Vietnam was a mistake. Similarly, only 23% of Americans thought sending troops to Iraq was a mistake at the outset of that war. Popular opinion overwhelmingly supported both of those wars. The notion that "it's very clear that the majority of Americans do not want more war & nation building" and "the globalists + military industrial complex go ahead and do what they want anyway" isn't just misleading, it's false -- if not an outright lie.
- pikzen 9y ago
  > as was Donald Trump >The notion of no longer blowing up the Middle East and treating Russia as a villain, was impossible for them to stomach re Trump, Ah, yes, which is why he's threatening North Korea, attacking airfields in Syria, selling weapons to Saudi Arabia (which is currently in a war with Yemen), bombing in Afghanistan, in his own words giving the military "total authorization", authorized a raid in Yemen, and the list goes on. You were _sold_ no more nation building, by a man who has interests in having his fingers everywhere in the globe. That you bought it hook, line and sinker is yet another problem. In the same way, the Vietnam war was reasonably popular at first. It was barely around 67 and after countless deaths that the opinion was overwhelmingly negative, forcing the US to go back tail between its legs. Maybe Americans no longer want war. Every single leader they are electing certainly doesn't share that opinion though. So, either they actually quite enjoy playing world police, or they're quite frankly so manipulable it becomes scary. But go on ahead and blame "the globalists" and "the deep state" (which, intended or not, is very much an InfoWars term, not exactly a reputable source), I am certain that'll do a lot of good.
vorg 9y ago
> developing economies are going wireless/fiber and skipping the "legacy" generation, the US should be doing the same with MagLev/hyperloop Opponents of HSL will not only rally against it, but also kill it by promoting a more expensive solution via another channel. The US isn't going to cut military spending so it can build hyperloop instead of HSL.
- serhei 9y ago
  The dilemma is no different from "should I buy Product X now, or wait a year for version 2 of Product X", only on a national scale. Needless to say, if you play to this psychology successfully, you can delay a project indefinitely.
  - zionic 9y ago
    The point is, HSR is a 2600k and maglev is a 4790k. Both are old vs the shiny 7700k maglev, but if you're gonna buy the 2600k just doesn't make sense. "high speed rail" is an oxymoron. There are no high speed rail transport methods. 200MPH is not high-speed.
    - serhei 9y ago
      "200MPH is not high-speed." Says who? Originally anything over 125mph was "high-speed rail" simply because it required new engineering techniques to be developed (existing trains and tracks were physically not engineered to withstand those speeds). As the engineering was developed further, 125mph became old news and the 'typical' definition became more like 160mph [1]. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-speed_rail https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-speed_rail If you compare to highway travel, even 100mph would be "high speed" because people aren't going to drive 100mph on the Interstate. If you compare to airplanes, nothing is high speed, not even maglev. No one is planning to build maglev with a cruising speed of 550mph. Another important point is that high speed rail is still rail, whereas maglev requires a custom alignment. This could be important or it might not matter at all, depending on where you're building -- e.g. France's system relies heavily on the TGVs being able to use existing conventional tracks (to reach the centre of Paris, and to branch out into smaller cities that don't merit constructing a dedicated line), Japan's doesn't (because the conventional railways in Japan are narrow-gauge). Likewise, California HSR plans to share most of the peninsula rail corridor with Caltrain. Theoretically it's a win-win (HSR doesn't have to tear a completely new alignment through a heavily-built-up area, Caltrain gets financial support for upgrading its corridor) -- you couldn't do that with a maglev. In practice, the project is not well-coordinated, but see what I said above about Brezhnevian stagnation. All that said, a train that can travel on both maglev and conventional track would actually be an interesting next step for high speed rail. It doesn't seem impossible.
macspoofing 9y ago
>the US should be doing the same with MagLev/hyperloop In what way is hyperloop better than high-speed rail? I've never seen any credible study or report that argues it. Hyperloop also has massive unsolved (and potentially unsolvable) technical issues - like building a vacuum chamber of unprecedented size.
- serhei 9y ago
  Agreed. The Swiss did study something similar (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swissmetro https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swissmetro) but their proposal looks a lot more expensive and is entirely in-tunnel.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
tigershark 9y ago
Even Italy and Spain have trains faster than 200mph.. Hyperloop has a much smaller capacity compared to them, so I can't see how it can be an improvement.
maxsilver 9y ago
> Installing "high speed" rail that's less than 200mph in the US today is like installing 6MB copper DSL and calling it a win When the alternative is nothing, as is the case in 99% of the US today, I'd still call that a win. I'd personally be completely overjoyed if the US "only" got 200mph train lines between all major cities.
tajen 9y ago
The trick is, train isn't cheaper that planes. Ecologically, the French TGV isn't considered better than planes in terms of glasshouse gases (i.e. the ecological approach says a km travelled is bad, whether by flight or by train). Moneywise, it mostly depends on how you expropriate land owners. Europe is really good at citing the "public good" or "strategic interest of the nation" to reclaim private land, and I'm saying that because I've seen that the indemnification is way below the market value of the fields. Whereas in US, litigation is costly and land owners can be very powerful, making the costs soar for train infrastructure. I'd like to see a study thay analyses whether tge whole train-in-Europe vs airports-in-USA might even be explained by this sole ability of US landowners to defend themselves. However, remains one question: If Europeans can travel by train without being searched, isn't the USA violating the freedom of movement by using planes instead of trains, then imposing the TSA and other no-fly-list laws?

by zionic 9y ago

noir_lord 9y ago

The really stupid part is that US military spending is so disproportionate you could do both. A 25% cut in the US military would leave around 165bn for infrastructure and they'd still be spending more than the next 4 countries.

WillPostForFood 9y ago
$165 billion is about 4% of federal spending, so if people think it is so important they could cut everything except defense and easily come up with the money.
- muhfuhkuh 9y ago
  But if we cut military, they'd then be much more fiscally responsible and not have to admit that they'd "lost" trillions of dollars that they can't account for every, oh, decade or so. http://www.cnn.com/2016/08/23/politics/us-army-audit-accounting-errors/index.html http://www.cnn.com/2016/08/23/politics/us-army-audit-account...
  - adventured 9y ago
    They did not in fact admit they "lost" trillions. It's a fair criticism of their mediocre accounting, however they did not lose trillions of dollars, nor are trillions of dollars unaccounted for. That part isn't even actually being disputed by that ignorant CNN article. Trillions of dollars have not been properly audited, which is not the same as that entire sum simply being magically missing. That article is rehashing the same bogus premise that has been thrown around for decades. Here's how it works: https://www.metabunk.org/debunked-8-5-trillion-missing-from-the-pentagon.t3173/ https://www.metabunk.org/debunked-8-5-trillion-missing-from-... https://davidlandy.net/no-the-pentagon-didnt-lose-8-5-trillion/ https://davidlandy.net/no-the-pentagon-didnt-lose-8-5-trilli... Basically: within $N trillion in spending, there is a combination of non-audits and accounting irregularities, so therefore CNN throws up a click-bait article claiming the entire amount of spending is unaccounted for. Pretty idiotic when you consider the sums being claimed vs the known expenditures in question. The premise is: every dollar that wasn't audited was stolen; logically, even if one were to assume theft (etc) happened, it's likely to be a dramatically smaller sum of the whole.
- noir_lord 9y ago
  NASA is about 0.5% of federal spending. The total education spend is 3%. So you could double spending on education and nasa and still pocket savings... By cutting the US military by 25%. Just an example.
adventured 9y ago
The US has an economy larger than the next four largest military countries combined. An economy that is hyper dependent on the global economy functioning well and trade flowing unimpeded. I happen to agree with slashing the US military, however your premise is incorrect. It's also worth noting that China aggressively lies about their military spending - under counting - and has been doing that for decades. The US is also now spending less than Russia per dollar of GDP. Further, the $165 billion wouldn't accomplish anything in terms of infrastructure, or healthcare, or anything else. For example, take a look at the estimate that California Democrats recently ended up with for their single-payer system (it's so expensive to do in the US, it'd instantly bankrupt California; not even a small, somewhat well run state like Vermont can pull it off). You can't even fix California's infrastructure problems for $165 billion per year. Right now, with the US budget what it is, you'd need more like a $400 billion cut to the military to even scratch the surface (we have nukes, it'd realistically be feasible, but we'd have to dramatically disengage from dealing with Russia in Europe and China in Asia, requiring those regions to significantly lift their military spending).
- Retric 9y ago
  This is not 165 billion to fix infrastructure, this is 165B to fix mass transit and that's plenty when you consider the leverage loans can provide it's closer to 500B per year. Second US gets almost nothing per dollar from it's military spending due to inefficiencies. Slashing the budget for a few years is a critical step to separate the useful from the useless spenind. And realistically a 70% cut followed by a slow ramp up would eliminate vast amounts of redundant waste, and reduce many long term obligations. But, that waste is making people rich and 'bringing home the bacon' making such cuts untenable.
  - adventured 9y ago
    The $500 billion you're quoting for mass transit, would build high speed rail for California, Texas, and maybe a few states on the East Coast. That's it. Might cover 15% of the US population. > Second US gets almost nothing per dollar from it's military spending due to inefficiencies Most US military spending is on human soldiers, not on weapons programs. The waste you're referring to is a few tens of billions of dollars per year. It's not hundreds of billions. Your premise of somehow saving a lot of money by reducing waste, doesn't pan out under any scrutiny accordingly. Unless your plan is to slash hundreds of thousands of soldiers and their associated costs (even if we close half our foreign bases, which would save tens of billions of dollars, we would then need to significantly increase the spending on our domestic base capabilities to handle those soldiers; or we have to dramatically slash our soldier numbers).
gozur88 9y ago
Expenditures are a terrible way to measure military strength. The US military can't pay Chinese wages.
- em3rgent0rdr 9y ago
  ok, so how about the number of bases in other counties and the current number of military operations.
  - gozur88 9y ago
    Are we going to use the list going around which assumes a group of five guys is a military base? If so, there are a lot of other countries with military bases in the US.
- kashkhan 9y ago
  exactly how much is wages of the total spend?
  - gozur88 9y ago
    I would think nearly everything, either uniform military or contractor employee. What else is there?
    - kashkhan 9y ago
      $139B out of $583B is salaries https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_budget_of_the_United_States#Budget_request_for_FY2018 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_budget_of_the_United_...
      - gozur88 9y ago
        But that's sort of irrelevant, isn't it? When the USAF buys an F-35, the cost of the F-35 is almost entirely domestic US labor, even though on the military budget it counts as equipment.

adventured 9y ago

It'd be more accurate to leave off the "we" that you insist on using to artificially bolster your premise. George W. Bush was elected on a platform of no more nation building (and secured his second term in an atmosphere of fear and war), as was Donald Trump. It's very clear that the majority of Americans do not want more war & nation building (the only ones that do, are a contingent of conservatives like McCain and even fewer similar hawks on the other side). The globalists + military industrial complex go ahead and do what they want anyway, against the wishes of the American public. They've been doing so for a long, long time now. Vietnam was not a very popular war, they did it anyway. The notion of no longer blowing up the Middle East and treating Russia as a villain, was impossible for them to stomach re Trump, so the CIA & fellow globalists (aka the deep state, media, etc) immediately went on hyper attack (oh the consequences of going against the machine).

jessaustin 9y ago
Yeah they lied to go to war in Vietnam just like they lied to go to war in Iraq just like they lied to go to war in Libya just like they're lying now because they're so eager to go to war in Syria. Fortunately for the MIC we Americans are really stupid and easily distracted by shiny media bullshit.
cderwin 9y ago
> Vietnam was not a very popular war, they did it anyway. It was extremely popular when LBJ started the war. Less than 25% of the public thought sending troops to Vietnam was a mistake. Similarly, only 23% of Americans thought sending troops to Iraq was a mistake at the outset of that war. Popular opinion overwhelmingly supported both of those wars. The notion that "it's very clear that the majority of Americans do not want more war & nation building" and "the globalists + military industrial complex go ahead and do what they want anyway" isn't just misleading, it's false -- if not an outright lie.
pikzen 9y ago
> as was Donald Trump >The notion of no longer blowing up the Middle East and treating Russia as a villain, was impossible for them to stomach re Trump, Ah, yes, which is why he's threatening North Korea, attacking airfields in Syria, selling weapons to Saudi Arabia (which is currently in a war with Yemen), bombing in Afghanistan, in his own words giving the military "total authorization", authorized a raid in Yemen, and the list goes on. You were _sold_ no more nation building, by a man who has interests in having his fingers everywhere in the globe. That you bought it hook, line and sinker is yet another problem. In the same way, the Vietnam war was reasonably popular at first. It was barely around 67 and after countless deaths that the opinion was overwhelmingly negative, forcing the US to go back tail between its legs. Maybe Americans no longer want war. Every single leader they are electing certainly doesn't share that opinion though. So, either they actually quite enjoy playing world police, or they're quite frankly so manipulable it becomes scary. But go on ahead and blame "the globalists" and "the deep state" (which, intended or not, is very much an InfoWars term, not exactly a reputable source), I am certain that'll do a lot of good.

vorg 9y ago

> developing economies are going wireless/fiber and skipping the "legacy" generation, the US should be doing the same with MagLev/hyperloop Opponents of HSL will not only rally against it, but also kill it by promoting a more expensive solution via another channel. The US isn't going to cut military spending so it can build hyperloop instead of HSL.

serhei 9y ago
The dilemma is no different from "should I buy Product X now, or wait a year for version 2 of Product X", only on a national scale. Needless to say, if you play to this psychology successfully, you can delay a project indefinitely.
- zionic 9y ago
  The point is, HSR is a 2600k and maglev is a 4790k. Both are old vs the shiny 7700k maglev, but if you're gonna buy the 2600k just doesn't make sense. "high speed rail" is an oxymoron. There are no high speed rail transport methods. 200MPH is not high-speed.
  - serhei 9y ago
    "200MPH is not high-speed." Says who? Originally anything over 125mph was "high-speed rail" simply because it required new engineering techniques to be developed (existing trains and tracks were physically not engineered to withstand those speeds). As the engineering was developed further, 125mph became old news and the 'typical' definition became more like 160mph [1]. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-speed_rail https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-speed_rail If you compare to highway travel, even 100mph would be "high speed" because people aren't going to drive 100mph on the Interstate. If you compare to airplanes, nothing is high speed, not even maglev. No one is planning to build maglev with a cruising speed of 550mph. Another important point is that high speed rail is still rail, whereas maglev requires a custom alignment. This could be important or it might not matter at all, depending on where you're building -- e.g. France's system relies heavily on the TGVs being able to use existing conventional tracks (to reach the centre of Paris, and to branch out into smaller cities that don't merit constructing a dedicated line), Japan's doesn't (because the conventional railways in Japan are narrow-gauge). Likewise, California HSR plans to share most of the peninsula rail corridor with Caltrain. Theoretically it's a win-win (HSR doesn't have to tear a completely new alignment through a heavily-built-up area, Caltrain gets financial support for upgrading its corridor) -- you couldn't do that with a maglev. In practice, the project is not well-coordinated, but see what I said above about Brezhnevian stagnation. All that said, a train that can travel on both maglev and conventional track would actually be an interesting next step for high speed rail. It doesn't seem impossible.

macspoofing 9y ago

>the US should be doing the same with MagLev/hyperloop In what way is hyperloop better than high-speed rail? I've never seen any credible study or report that argues it. Hyperloop also has massive unsolved (and potentially unsolvable) technical issues - like building a vacuum chamber of unprecedented size.

serhei 9y ago
Agreed. The Swiss did study something similar (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swissmetro https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swissmetro) but their proposal looks a lot more expensive and is entirely in-tunnel.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

tigershark 9y ago

Even Italy and Spain have trains faster than 200mph.. Hyperloop has a much smaller capacity compared to them, so I can't see how it can be an improvement.

maxsilver 9y ago

> Installing "high speed" rail that's less than 200mph in the US today is like installing 6MB copper DSL and calling it a win When the alternative is nothing, as is the case in 99% of the US today, I'd still call that a win. I'd personally be completely overjoyed if the US "only" got 200mph train lines between all major cities.

tajen 9y ago

The trick is, train isn't cheaper that planes. Ecologically, the French TGV isn't considered better than planes in terms of glasshouse gases (i.e. the ecological approach says a km travelled is bad, whether by flight or by train). Moneywise, it mostly depends on how you expropriate land owners. Europe is really good at citing the "public good" or "strategic interest of the nation" to reclaim private land, and I'm saying that because I've seen that the indemnification is way below the market value of the fields. Whereas in US, litigation is costly and land owners can be very powerful, making the costs soar for train infrastructure. I'd like to see a study thay analyses whether tge whole train-in-Europe vs airports-in-USA might even be explained by this sole ability of US landowners to defend themselves. However, remains one question: If Europeans can travel by train without being searched, isn't the USA violating the freedom of movement by using planes instead of trains, then imposing the TSA and other no-fly-list laws?