6 ms·

It really kind of fascinates me why people are so obsessed with rail and high speed rail. What are the emotional reasons for it, because there are no rational a

by wahsd 10y ago

It really kind of fascinates me why people are so obsessed with rail and high speed rail. What are the emotional reasons for it, because there are no rational and reasonable arguments for it that can't be refuted. It makes absolutely no sense and strikes me as another one of those examples of obsessive thoughts and ideal people have these days. It's like all the shitty education we subjected people of roughly <35 years old to are starting to bear shitty rotten and mutated fruits.

ghaff 10y ago
Oh, there have been train fans for a very long time. And IMO rail is a comfortable way to travel for certain distances--especially given what a pain airports can be these days. But HSR is really expensive to build and distances and geography in the US make it hard to justify.
- gozur88 10y ago
  It may be hard to justify a national high speed rail network, but the coasts easily have enough population density to make it work on a regional basis. The big problem with rail in the US, at this point, is you'd have to build out an enormous number of track miles to make the system actually work for people who wanted to use it, and that's going to cost a lot of money and displace a lot of people.
mikeash 10y ago
High-speed rail is the best way to travel intermediate distances, say 200-1000 miles. In this realm, it's faster than air travel overall (because you have much less security nonsense and getting to the train station is much faster than getting to the airport) and it's far more comfortable. I must know, how do you refute that?
- wahsd 10y ago
  Well, I can assure you that if train ridership increases, the risk will increase as a function of the attack vector and the threat by muslims. As that risk profile increases, so will the "security nonsense" and difficulty getting there increase. Also, the degree of expedience at which airports function leaves a lot of room for improvement. There is really little reason why it could not get far more efficient. You seem to also miss the fact that even if you establish a route through 1,000 miles of other people's land and have dispossessed them through eminent domain, and you have blasted your way through ecosystems, you are then stuck with specific routes that can only adapt by scaling throughput of that specific route. Think of it this way, with the pestilence of douchebags overrunning Austin there is no way that rail could have accommodated that growth, let alone even triggered it. What, are you going to build high speed rail infrastructure across multiple states to California to accommodate the flow of douchebags to SXSW and ACL? You'd be lucky to be done before Austin has suffocated itself and the bubble bursts and the next fad has drawn the attention of the pretentious class. I won't disagree that train travel is more comfortable, but hell, you really need to be because the trip, at best, is going to take you three times as long. Because what you are also missing is that we are talking about high speed rail here, we are not talking about fast rail like Acela, which is quite convenient in the NE corridor, but also only because of the population density. But even that train stops on a regular basis, which is also a function of what makes is even remotely not a horrific idea even though it still loses money. The problem with air travel these days is that the Airline industry has essentially captured regulators and legislators and are raping the public with high prices they are colluding on and ever decreasing service and features, also essentially due to collusion and a lack of real competition. Don't get me wrong, I realize that train travel has some benefits and is probably more energy efficient and less polluting, but reality is that it is in no way cost effective let alone adaptable and flexible. The thing that kind of irks me the most about he wide eyed, pie in the sky, rail supporters is that they have absolutely no idea how much it actually costs to provide the kind of level of rail and public transportation infrastructure that you see in Europe. The costs are astronomical both in long term investments and in M&O. There are inklings of how much it really costs, but reality is that no one really have an accurate understanding of its cost because European governments keep that information under lock and key, lest the rabble find out how much their money is squandered.

by wahsd 10y ago

ghaff 10y ago

Oh, there have been train fans for a very long time. And IMO rail is a comfortable way to travel for certain distances--especially given what a pain airports can be these days. But HSR is really expensive to build and distances and geography in the US make it hard to justify.

gozur88 10y ago
It may be hard to justify a national high speed rail network, but the coasts easily have enough population density to make it work on a regional basis. The big problem with rail in the US, at this point, is you'd have to build out an enormous number of track miles to make the system actually work for people who wanted to use it, and that's going to cost a lot of money and displace a lot of people.

mikeash 10y ago

High-speed rail is the best way to travel intermediate distances, say 200-1000 miles. In this realm, it's faster than air travel overall (because you have much less security nonsense and getting to the train station is much faster than getting to the airport) and it's far more comfortable. I must know, how do you refute that?

wahsd 10y ago
Well, I can assure you that if train ridership increases, the risk will increase as a function of the attack vector and the threat by muslims. As that risk profile increases, so will the "security nonsense" and difficulty getting there increase. Also, the degree of expedience at which airports function leaves a lot of room for improvement. There is really little reason why it could not get far more efficient. You seem to also miss the fact that even if you establish a route through 1,000 miles of other people's land and have dispossessed them through eminent domain, and you have blasted your way through ecosystems, you are then stuck with specific routes that can only adapt by scaling throughput of that specific route. Think of it this way, with the pestilence of douchebags overrunning Austin there is no way that rail could have accommodated that growth, let alone even triggered it. What, are you going to build high speed rail infrastructure across multiple states to California to accommodate the flow of douchebags to SXSW and ACL? You'd be lucky to be done before Austin has suffocated itself and the bubble bursts and the next fad has drawn the attention of the pretentious class. I won't disagree that train travel is more comfortable, but hell, you really need to be because the trip, at best, is going to take you three times as long. Because what you are also missing is that we are talking about high speed rail here, we are not talking about fast rail like Acela, which is quite convenient in the NE corridor, but also only because of the population density. But even that train stops on a regular basis, which is also a function of what makes is even remotely not a horrific idea even though it still loses money. The problem with air travel these days is that the Airline industry has essentially captured regulators and legislators and are raping the public with high prices they are colluding on and ever decreasing service and features, also essentially due to collusion and a lack of real competition. Don't get me wrong, I realize that train travel has some benefits and is probably more energy efficient and less polluting, but reality is that it is in no way cost effective let alone adaptable and flexible. The thing that kind of irks me the most about he wide eyed, pie in the sky, rail supporters is that they have absolutely no idea how much it actually costs to provide the kind of level of rail and public transportation infrastructure that you see in Europe. The costs are astronomical both in long term investments and in M&O. There are inklings of how much it really costs, but reality is that no one really have an accurate understanding of its cost because European governments keep that information under lock and key, lest the rabble find out how much their money is squandered.