High Speed Rail - Yes or No?

minneapolis has "the light rail" running from downtown to more residential areas or other business sections of the city. I've only used it once, but it is FAN-TAS-TIC.

If only I didn't work outside of the city.. lol. I really should move to the suburbs closer to work.

Rail systems are perfect for city commuters, but you have to build them right. It would also be a great addition to the already prevalent "park and ride" bus systems we have running in just about every major city already. Houston, for example, really needs a high capacity park-and-ride rail coming in from the west headed downtown, right along I-10. Perhaps even only with one stop on each end.

If you implemented mass-transit park-and-ride to shuffle people into houston, and then had another "light rail" system similar to the one in minneapolis running around downtown, you could get rid of 30% of houston's rush hour traffic, and that's a VERY conservative estimate.

The problem is the cost in money and time to put the system together, plus restructuring downtown to accomadate a new traffic system.

Unfortunatly train travel does not make sense travelling between the destinations all around the country. As mentioned earlier, countries that are small in landmass can have rails running between all major cities and constantly run commuter trains between them, but here in the US, our rail systems are better used as they currently are, to shuffle mass amounts of goods around. We already have plenty of train tracks built for traveling around the country, but the cost in time and money to get from one destination to another is great enough that air travel or driving makes much more sense.

I'm all for implementing the use of this cheap and clean technology as long as they don't build one from Mexico, through the U.S. and into Canada, like the plans for that super highway that would have the government confiscating all the land along the route, and that would bring us that much closer to losing our sovereignty as a nation, and turning us into the North American Union.

I guess I am not so worried about high speed (over 200mph) trains, but rather a stable system of passenger rail routes in the midwest and east coast.

Japan is just about the same size as the eastern seaboard, from the top of Florida to mid New York. They have an exstensive rail system, with several high speed trains connecting major cities. Japan is a very mountainous country surrounded by volcanos, experiences regular earthquakes and typhoons, yet rail is exceedingly popular and safe way to travel by.

I don't see why it couldn't be translated here in eastern America. Obviously, we are no experts with rail, but doing the planning and bringing in experienced people will greatly help us achieve success.

I'm pretty stoked about all of this, if you can't tell! :sunny:

when i lived in tampa, they talked about putting one that went from tampa across the state. i would rather ride that thing than drive on I4 anyday!! the plans fizzled out for some reason....probably budget cuts. it was supposed to go from tampa to the east coast and then down to miami.

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Originally Posted by littleindiangirl

I think putting things off will hurt us in the long run. I think the benefits of decreasing our oil use, creating jobs for the rail system of this size, and cutting emmisions is something to invest in.

We are already decades behind europe and asia in regards to transit, why should we put it off any longer?

Remember, to make money, you have to spend money. Have you seen an increase in taxes lately? I havent. Or is it moving money and spending it on other projects?

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I completely agree that we are decades behind many parts of the world in regards to mass transit and need to solve our energy issues. My main point is that I'm for a train system (one should have been built in 60's - 70's however the teamsters union massively fought against it fearing they would loose their jobs) however how this money was appropriated I believe was wrong. I don't think that we should we should just say hay were spending 10's of billions of dollars a day, what a few more. As a nation Obama is trying to tackle WAY to much at once, I say WAY more that what this country can afford and potentially more that what it can survive.

In regards to Tax's, call someone who smokes, someone in california paying 9% sales tax or anyone self employed who actually plays by the rules to the T, paying threw the nose. Both sides have fully acknowledge that taxes are going up, way up to cover all the entitlements being handed out right and left. Most won't go into effect until 2011, but they are coming and the TEA parties that took place this week will look like a joke when hundreds of thousands of people start protesting working until june or july to just pay their tax's. Cities and States are already massively raising taxes, even after federal bailout money as they are nearly all still facing huge deficits and the federal government is lining up to HAVE to do the same just a few years behind them.

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Originally Posted by neilgolli

In regards to Tax's, call someone who smokes, someone in california paying 9% sales tax or anyone self employed who actually plays by the rules to the T, paying threw the nose.

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9.25% by the way...

It burns a bit, but I know it had to happen.



YAY Rail, by the way :)

The government is only studying the possibility of high speed rail. Most large length "new" travel systems require insane amounts of right of way. To aquire the right of way from citizens could take 10 plus years for the legal work and hundreds of billions in tax money.

Or since this is a socialist county they could just take the land from people.

My opinion is that it will never happen and the government is just wasting money. They should be putting more into roads and developing fuel efficient inexpensive vehicles.

Yes! Create Jobs and it's an alternative to the airline industry.

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Originally Posted by LadyOhh

9.25% by the way...

It burns a bit, but I know it had to happen.



YAY Rail, by the way :)

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Heather it burns now, but how will 10, 11, 12 % feel like? You know the increase had to happen because of poor choices and overspending in the past. How will burning threw 8,000,000,000,000 (thats 12 zero's) (plus interest) to study the possibility of a railway system impact your taxes in the future? Is it worth the burden on your children?

Personally, I'm all for investing in Schwinn. :P Might take a bit longer to get where you're going, but it'll be cheaper! ;)