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Ok, you're correct on that point. Now here's what I want you to do... Go on to Amtrak.com and configure a trip for yourself. You'll notice that riding on Amt

by kirse 18y ago

Ok, you're correct on that point. Now here's what I want you to do... Go on to Amtrak.com and configure a trip for yourself. You'll notice that riding on Amtrak costs MORE than a plane ticket. For a round-trip from Philadelphia to Austin, TX it's $500. I can go on Southwest.com right now and book the exact same trip for the exact same price. The difference? With Amtrak you're riding in a train for 56 hours. Now tell me exactly how a high-speed train (one with advanced infrastructure) is going to be cheaper than Amtrak? Trains are a lose-lose compromise between buses and planes. They cost way more than buses and for the price range you might as well use air travel which saves 2 days of seat time.

gcheong 18y ago
Trains can have stops at smaller cities along the way making them more accessible to people who don't live in major cities. Case in point. My mother-in-law lives in Klamath Falls, OR. The planes costs more than the train if you do the regular train fare or about the same if you get the small sleeper. There are no direct flights from SF to KFalls, so that means I usually have to fly to Seattle or Portland and then transfer to a smaller commuter which can make trip time almost as long. With the train, I get on at 9pm, go to sleep and wake up in Klamath Falls the next morning.
frossie 18y ago
Did you read that article at all? First, there is no point looking at current prices, because it is a service running on relatively unsubsidised ifrastructure. The point here is to subsidise infrastructure. Secondly and even more importantly, yeah dude, if I want to go Paris to Shanghai I am better off flying than taking a train. Does that mean there is no point in building a high speed rail network in France? It's not Philadelphia to Austin that is the aim here, it is journeys at the 300 mile sweetspot where a high speed train is a more optimal solution than either car or plane. I am really sorry but I am starting to think that anybody who doesn't see the benefits of a high-speed rail network has simply not been on one. And that's even before you throw in the environmental cost.
- kirse 18y ago
  300 mile sweetspot Yet again, Southwest.com is $200 from Philly to Pittsburgh, and Amtrak is $110. Except then I'm spending 14 hours on a train round-trip. If I'm going to spend 14 hours on my trip, then I might as well drive to Pittsburgh which takes me 10 hours round trip and about $30 less, not to mention I have a car to get me around. Of course we could build the high speed network and subsidize the benefits to cut that down to ~5 hours, but then we get to pay the additional cost anyway come every April 15th. Trains are still a lose-lose. The highway system is already subsidized and we lose money on that, there's no reason to subsidize more transportation. Pardon me for trying to cut the fat when I'm going to be paying my country's debt for the next 20 years.
  - jonknee 18y ago
    Do you not understand what highspeed means? The train you're booking today goes really slow. That's not being argued. The trains they want to build go much faster. There are other up sides too, such as internet access and phone service, not having to go through the TSA, being able to take your car for an added fee, etc. It won't work for all routes, but considering how well Amtrak already does in NE, there's demand out there.
  - thingie 18y ago
    I have yet to see a transportation system that can pay for itself, stay profitable and still be useful. Measuring real benefits of transportation with current economics seems to be very hard. Almost everything has to be subsidized or accompanied by something that is, otherwise it doesn't work. And you're certainly not going to propose abortion of every transportation, as then you would maybe have less debt, but also no country, so it wouldn't matter anyway. Trains are a real thing that is going to work for 100 years or something, that n billions are mostly some meaningles number flying around... (well, yes, that's only my point of view)
  - carbon8 18y ago
    "Except then I'm spending 14 hours on a train" HIGH. SPEED. RAIL. TGV does that distance in 2 hours.
  - 18y ago
briansmith 18y ago
Trains are not for trips like Philly to Austin. They are for trips between Houston, Austin, and Dallas. In those trips, there is significant overhead to air travel: the time it takes to go to the airport + go through security + take off + climb thousands of feet + descend + land + get your baggage + drive from the airport into the city. The cost to fly these short trips is disproportionate to their distance when compared to longer trips. That is why so most people drive instead. With trains, you reduce/eliminate almost all of that overhead. If you have a train that goes only 120mph between Houston and Austin, you have reduced the travel time from 3.5-4 hours to 1.5 hours each way. That is a huge savings in time that makes a lot of currently-infeasible trips practical. Will it be cheap? Based on my experience riding the trains in Japan, I would say it is going to be much cheaper than flying and more expensive than taking buses and/or slower passenger trains. If the high-speed train people were smart, they'd price it at exactly the price of driving (gas-wise) in the beginning in order to build demand, and then ramp up the price as trains start getting sold out.
natrius2 18y ago
You are arguing against something that no one is proposing. Cross-country rail trips rarely make sense. Short haul high speed rail trips are faster than plane flights (plus security, baggage checking, commuting to and from far-flung airports, etc) and pollute less. You're complaining about a $500 trip that no one is going to take. Try comparing Acela trips with flights between those cities. High speed rail corridors designated by the Federal Railroad Administration: http://www.fra.dot.gov/us/content/203 http://www.fra.dot.gov/us/content/203 (One important caveat to that map is that there's no way high speed rail will come to Texas without connecting Houston and Dallas, probably like this: http://www.thsrtc.com/ http://www.thsrtc.com/)
- briansmith 18y ago
  Thanks for the link to the map. It looks pretty wonky to me. As you mentioned, Houston isn't connected to Dallas (or Austin or San Antonio). A huge portion of the proposed track is in southern states where there isn't a lot of wealth. Do the people who drew that map expect those routes to break even? I'd love to see them re-draw that map color-coded to predicted profitability as a way of prioritizing the work. Also, we need to look at how much money we can get from private investors. For example, I bet L.A.-Las Vegas can be built a lot more profitably (for the U.S. government) than Little Rock to New Orleans.

by kirse 18y ago

gcheong 18y ago

Trains can have stops at smaller cities along the way making them more accessible to people who don't live in major cities. Case in point. My mother-in-law lives in Klamath Falls, OR. The planes costs more than the train if you do the regular train fare or about the same if you get the small sleeper. There are no direct flights from SF to KFalls, so that means I usually have to fly to Seattle or Portland and then transfer to a smaller commuter which can make trip time almost as long. With the train, I get on at 9pm, go to sleep and wake up in Klamath Falls the next morning.

frossie 18y ago

Did you read that article at all? First, there is no point looking at current prices, because it is a service running on relatively unsubsidised ifrastructure. The point here is to subsidise infrastructure. Secondly and even more importantly, yeah dude, if I want to go Paris to Shanghai I am better off flying than taking a train. Does that mean there is no point in building a high speed rail network in France? It's not Philadelphia to Austin that is the aim here, it is journeys at the 300 mile sweetspot where a high speed train is a more optimal solution than either car or plane. I am really sorry but I am starting to think that anybody who doesn't see the benefits of a high-speed rail network has simply not been on one. And that's even before you throw in the environmental cost.

kirse 18y ago
300 mile sweetspot Yet again, Southwest.com is $200 from Philly to Pittsburgh, and Amtrak is $110. Except then I'm spending 14 hours on a train round-trip. If I'm going to spend 14 hours on my trip, then I might as well drive to Pittsburgh which takes me 10 hours round trip and about $30 less, not to mention I have a car to get me around. Of course we could build the high speed network and subsidize the benefits to cut that down to ~5 hours, but then we get to pay the additional cost anyway come every April 15th. Trains are still a lose-lose. The highway system is already subsidized and we lose money on that, there's no reason to subsidize more transportation. Pardon me for trying to cut the fat when I'm going to be paying my country's debt for the next 20 years.
- jonknee 18y ago
  Do you not understand what highspeed means? The train you're booking today goes really slow. That's not being argued. The trains they want to build go much faster. There are other up sides too, such as internet access and phone service, not having to go through the TSA, being able to take your car for an added fee, etc. It won't work for all routes, but considering how well Amtrak already does in NE, there's demand out there.
- thingie 18y ago
  I have yet to see a transportation system that can pay for itself, stay profitable and still be useful. Measuring real benefits of transportation with current economics seems to be very hard. Almost everything has to be subsidized or accompanied by something that is, otherwise it doesn't work. And you're certainly not going to propose abortion of every transportation, as then you would maybe have less debt, but also no country, so it wouldn't matter anyway. Trains are a real thing that is going to work for 100 years or something, that n billions are mostly some meaningles number flying around... (well, yes, that's only my point of view)
- carbon8 18y ago
  "Except then I'm spending 14 hours on a train" HIGH. SPEED. RAIL. TGV does that distance in 2 hours.
- 18y ago

briansmith 18y ago

Trains are not for trips like Philly to Austin. They are for trips between Houston, Austin, and Dallas. In those trips, there is significant overhead to air travel: the time it takes to go to the airport + go through security + take off + climb thousands of feet + descend + land + get your baggage + drive from the airport into the city. The cost to fly these short trips is disproportionate to their distance when compared to longer trips. That is why so most people drive instead. With trains, you reduce/eliminate almost all of that overhead. If you have a train that goes only 120mph between Houston and Austin, you have reduced the travel time from 3.5-4 hours to 1.5 hours each way. That is a huge savings in time that makes a lot of currently-infeasible trips practical. Will it be cheap? Based on my experience riding the trains in Japan, I would say it is going to be much cheaper than flying and more expensive than taking buses and/or slower passenger trains. If the high-speed train people were smart, they'd price it at exactly the price of driving (gas-wise) in the beginning in order to build demand, and then ramp up the price as trains start getting sold out.

natrius2 18y ago

You are arguing against something that no one is proposing. Cross-country rail trips rarely make sense. Short haul high speed rail trips are faster than plane flights (plus security, baggage checking, commuting to and from far-flung airports, etc) and pollute less. You're complaining about a $500 trip that no one is going to take. Try comparing Acela trips with flights between those cities. High speed rail corridors designated by the Federal Railroad Administration: http://www.fra.dot.gov/us/content/203 http://www.fra.dot.gov/us/content/203 (One important caveat to that map is that there's no way high speed rail will come to Texas without connecting Houston and Dallas, probably like this: http://www.thsrtc.com/ http://www.thsrtc.com/)

briansmith 18y ago
Thanks for the link to the map. It looks pretty wonky to me. As you mentioned, Houston isn't connected to Dallas (or Austin or San Antonio). A huge portion of the proposed track is in southern states where there isn't a lot of wealth. Do the people who drew that map expect those routes to break even? I'd love to see them re-draw that map color-coded to predicted profitability as a way of prioritizing the work. Also, we need to look at how much money we can get from private investors. For example, I bet L.A.-Las Vegas can be built a lot more profitably (for the U.S. government) than Little Rock to New Orleans.