[INTroJect]

Liberals have been swooning for years over their schemes to take the people's money, and to throw it into rail infrascructure, surely making massive profits for both the train operators and construction companies. Is anybody else noticing that the Greyhound bus is both drastically cheaper, and much more versitile? I dont mean a little bit cheaper, but like close to half the price every time I compare the two. In fact, even in Europe, the bus was always slightly cheaper, but a much less fashionable alternative for the dumb American tourists. (Who go there and come back with blind enthusiasm to imitate here what they saw, but know little or nothing about.)

If we are suffering from acute economy problems where more people are jobless and, for those who are employed, are earning much less, why are we taking people's tax dollar contributions paid into a broke government and spending it on something that the taxpayers themselves can less afford to access? Also, assuming there are routes out there where the train system is costing or may cost less, what about the private market bus system having to compete against this other means of government subsidized transportation? Shouldn't we be taking the people's money and also giving it over to the long distance bus companies since they cater more to our growing class of poor and destitute?

[Autumnleaf]

Its one of those things we won't need unless all the planes get grounded for whatever reason. Then if we need it we'll really need it.

[Undead Bonzi]

Originally Posted by INTroJect To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.

Liberals have been swooning for years over their schemes to take the people's money, and to throw it into rail infrascructure, surely making massive profits for both the train operators and construction companies. Is anybody else noticing that the Greyhound bus is both drastically cheaper, and much more versitile? I dont mean a little bit cheaper, but like close to half the price every time I compare the two. In fact, even in Europe, the bus was always slightly cheaper, but a much less fashionable alternative for the dumb American tourists. (Who go there and come back with blind enthusiasm to imitate here what they saw, but know little or nothing about.) If we are suffering from acute economy problems where more people are jobless and, for those who are employed, are earning much less, why are we taking people's tax dollar contributions paid into a broke government and spending it on something that the taxpayers themselves can less afford to access? Also, assuming there are routes out there where the train system is costing or may cost less, what about the private market bus system having to compete against this other means of government subsidized transportation? Shouldn't we be taking the people's money and also giving it over to the long distance bus companies since they cater more to our growing class of poor and destitute?

Does your cost of the Grey Hound bus consider the state/federally subsidized roads that it travels upon? The cost for that isn't in the ticket price, it's in your taxes. Trains, on the other hand, drive on privately owned and maintained tracks.

[INTroJect]

	Originally Posted by Undead Bonzi To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
	Does your cost of the Grey Hound bus consider the state/federally subsidized roads that it travels upon? The cost for that isn't in the ticket price, it's in your taxes. Trains, on the other hand, drive on privately owned and maintained tracks.

Even better. A trip that I am familiar with does not go much on state/federally subsidized roads, except for the parts in town, 80% of it goes right through on an interstate toll road, and the ticket is still cheaper. Not drastically cheaper but still cheaper. I can even remember times when the toll road union has whined/threatened in the news for more pay, so they are probably even driving up costs to travel more than what they should be.

On an additional note, as I am researching into this little thesis, the situation is even more dreary than I initially supposed.

According to here ->
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Ahem. Amtrak is owned by the federal government through the Department of Transportation and depends on subsidies to operate.

Sorry. Couldnt help myself but to put that little gem in underline, bold and italics. I have to wonder how much that ticket is artifically discounted from the politically directed infusion of the people's money.

Meanwhile, Greyound charges a cheaper ticket price, providing much relief to Americas growing class of destitutes, and they still make a profit from this enterprise. They are owned by a British company, so I have to squint and cock my head to one side to understand their financials, but they have remained profitable as far back as I have checked to 2007. This means we can infer that they are paying taxes to a government who turns around and uses their money in what is unfolding to show itself as a wasteful (utopian?) sceme subsidizing their competition.

This isnt helping America's poor, but the well-to-do, who get to enjoy a taxpayer assisted luxury of travelling on the train. If we were not subsidizing Amtrak to allow cheaper prices, our government would have higher tax revenues from the increased business riding on the economically viable bus.

[Arcanist]

I used Amtrak twice. Never again.

Their screwups added days to each trip (Denver-Springfield, MA and Denver-Hartford, CT...and back). Silly me for paying round trip and silly me for giving them a second chance.

First trip: Highlights. Train arrives 14 hours late in Denver, causing me to miss my connection in Chicago. But, hey! They gave me $50 and a hotel room. Too bad the $50 barely covered cab fare, overpriced food was out of pocket. On the way back, the train hit a herd of antelope and was delayed for 3 hours on the CO border.

Second trip: Train arrives 2 hours late in Denver (hey, they improved!) but I actually make my connections and arrive at my destination on the scheduled day! Not so lucky on the way back. The train broke down somewhere in nowheresville, Nebraska for 6 hours. Make it to Denver eventually, friends were pissed.

And don't get me started on the rude employees and the terrible+overpriced food. $20 for a crappy burger, fries and soda on the restaurant car?! Guess it was cool the first time around because the experience was novel. Charm was gone after hour 3.

[INTroJect]

This just keeps getting worse.

According to "FirstGroup plc's" most recent annual report, their Greyhound US operations profitted £40.2 million GBP, or $64.2 million USD. We can guesstimate they paid somewhere around $20 million in taxes. Some of these numbers are inferred but it can be assumed to be somewhere in that range.

According to Amtrak's "2011 Revised Budget and Comprehensive Business Plan", they received about $1.5 billion from the US government for fiscal year 2011. They have been getting +/- about $1.5 billion dollars a year for years already, and they continually request much more. Contrast that against their $1.7 billion in ticket revenues and, someone please pass me some Mylanta, because the true cost for those train tickets should be somewhere around double what people pay for them at the counter.

And they are still more expensive than the bus with these massive subsidies.

Hey guys. As boring as this topic migt seem, I hope some of you are reading this because this situation is really bad. Not only is this monstrosity a black hole of our tax dollars, with an entire "government affairs" office (I suspect is) dedicated to getting every last red cent they can get, but our government is setting even more of our money aside to expand on this monster even further.

I really had no idea it was this bad. These numbers still need to get doublechecked/verified/scrutinized some more, just for precision and confidence that I understand the scope of this situation but, so far, the deeper I dig the more rotten it smells. As is it stinks bad and is representative of other big government social utopian programs. Its an enormous waste, part of a far greater waste, that is driving us into a very unfortunate state of eventual poverty.

[larkin]

Originally Posted by INTroJect To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.

And they are still more expensive than the bus with these massive subsidies. [...] Hey guys. As boring as this topic migt seem, I hope some of you are reading this because this situation is really bad. Not only is this monstrosity a black hole of our tax dollars, with an entire "government affairs" office (I suspect is) dedicated to getting every last red cent they can get, but our government is setting even more of our money aside to expand on this monster even further. [...] I really had no idea it was this bad. These numbers still need to get doublechecked/verified/scrutinized some more, just for precision and confidence that I understand the scope of this situation but, so far, the deeper I dig the more rotten it smells. As is it stinks bad and is representative of other big government social utopian programs. Its an enormous waste, part of a far greater waste, that is driving us into a very unfortunate state of eventual poverty.

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Is this a topic because you're just discovering Amtrak?

What is the difference between the trillions of dollars that we spend to subsidize car travel, and the relatively paltry 1.5 billion we spend on Amtrak? Why the selective outrage?

[ummon]

The cost of roads and buses is higher than the cost of rail and trains. That's simple fact.

[eagleseven]

Rode Amtrack twice, in Cali. The first time I had no complaints, but it was a short trip.

The second trip was delayed for six hours, without warning or explanation. When I went to the terminal to ask for information (used to airports), he told me "It gets here when it gets here" and closed the only terminal. People were literally screaming at him in rage.

With that kind of customer-service, I simply cannot count on Amtrak for time-sensitive transportation. Pathetic.

---------- Post added 03-27-2012 at 09:39 PM ----------

	Originally Posted by ummon To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
	The cost of roads and buses is higher than the cost of rail and trains. That's simple fact.

Only if you assume that trains run at peak capacity at all times (they rarely do), and the train stops close to your target destination (odds are you'll be bussing/taxi from the station).

That's why private passenger train companies all closed down, in favor of busses/taxis/cars.

[Vermillion]

	Originally Posted by INTroJect To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
	Liberals have been swooning for years over their schemes to take the people's money, and to throw it into rail infrascructure, surely making massive profits for both the train operators and construction companies.

Conservatives have been swooning for years over their schemes to take the people's money, and to throw it into an over-inflated military budge, surely making massive profits for both the military industrial complex and leading to massive civilian casualties.

Oh that's right... they're already doing that...

[INTroJect]

	Originally Posted by larkin To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
	To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts. Is this a topic because you're just discovering Amtrak? What is the difference between the trillions of dollars that we spend to subsidize car travel, and the relatively paltry 1.5 billion we spend on Amtrak? Why the selective outrage?

I am discoverng the scale of the financial situation, yes. Amtrak isnt "new to me" but I didnt understand the gravity of it before. You, obviously, have not the slightest clue.

This analysis is a very simple exercise in the failire of the results from redistributionist economic policy, strangely reminiscent of soviet style commerce, that perhaps even the most dim witted of liberals can manage to comprehend. Dissect one failing utopian program, then another, then a few more, after that you start to get a picture of whats going on and the direction where this is taking us.

And your lack of perspective is being made blaringly clear. Not to defend the practice, but we dont spend "trillions subsidizing car travel", not if you look at it honestly anyway. To make such a claim, you would have to take whatever we may have subsidzed over the course of years or decades, and then brought that contrived number to compare directly against one year of Amtrak. Its not only inaccurate, but its a sleezy comparison.

Additionally, we have not even started looking at the tens of billions currently being spent to further expand on this economically unsustainable system. It makes as much economic sense as going to a tuxedo shop to rent a Leonard Logsdail, and then burying it with grandpa at his funeral. This disaster is one of the key pet projects being trumpeted liberal messiah.


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[titi monkey]

Yes well, my argument is that buses suck. Airports are a real pain in the ass. I get bored driving long distances. I like trains. And boats.

How about if we cut-off foreign aid to Egypt (1.5 billion) and used that to fund the trains, would that be OK?

[Subgenius]

Amtrak sucks, but I wish more American cities had real metro lines.

[INTroJect]

	Originally Posted by titi monkey To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
	Yes well, my argument is that buses suck. Airports are a real pain in the ass. I get bored driving long distances. I like trains. And boats. How about if we cut-off foreign aid to Egypt (1.5 billion) and used that to fund the trains, would that be OK?

How about we cut off both, let the people who like to ride the train pay the real cost to ride it, and then we are one step in the right direction to restoring a nation's freedom and economic viability. Train riders would have to pay about double for the economics to break even, or they can ride the bus at a cheaper price and support an enterprise that contributes tax dollars to our overstressed federal budget.

---------- Post added 03-28-2012 at 02:14 AM ----------

	Originally Posted by Vermillion To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
	Conservatives have been swooning for years over their schemes to take the people's money, and to throw it into an over-inflated military budge, surely making massive profits for both the military industrial complex and leading to massive civilian casualties. Oh that's right... they're already doing that...

You highlight the paradigm problem that we are in. The conservatives that you address are not conservatives, but neo conservatives.

Real conservatives say nay to both the liberal utopian projects, and the neocon hysteria for military spending.

---------- Post added 03-28-2012 at 08:22 AM ----------

This is interesting. Another dreary turn in the liberal utopia Amtrak investigation. As much as wealth distributionist advocates seem prone to spend their waking hours grinding about how we need to go after the evil money-earning corporations -> Amtrak does not publish the compensation packages for their top executives. You can pick the most stereotypically evil American public corporations, Monsanto, Walmart, whatever, and it will take me 5 minutes to tell you how much their executives are being paid. The democrat's transportation fetish project? Nope. You have to properly file a Freedom Of Information Act request, then cross your fingers to see if they act responsibly without putting up any undue road blocks.

Who wants to bet that Amtraks executive team is sitting cushy up in the top 1% soaking up bulk quantities of our tax dollars? Must be nice.

Who is up for doing an INTJf FOIA request for their full compensation packages, salary and benefits? They wouldnt be making it so difficult to get if it wasnt worth it for them to hide it. I would also be curious to see how muh more they plan to be making when the rail expansion projects are finished. Eveybody gets a payraise! Yippee!

[LaoTzu]

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The goal is to make the country smaller; by allowing more people to travel farther distances in a shorter time. Modern high-speed trains travel around the same speed as a flight; and no doubt would become a cheaper alternative.


In case you haven't been paying attention; American infrastructure (which includes transportation by various means) has been crumbling since the 80's.

[larkin]

	Originally Posted by eagleseven To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
	With that kind of customer-service, I simply cannot count on Amtrak for time-sensitive transportation. Pathetic.

Typical U.S. solution - starve them of funds, use unsurprising decline in quality as a result to complain about customer service and starve them of more. Thanks, Grover Norquist.

No transportation network in any developed country survives without subsidies. None. We provide them because it's the core to, surprise surprise, development and commerce.

And rail companies like CSX (whose former CEO, John Snow, was former Secretaty of Commerce just as Tim Geithner is Secretary of Treasury, and so on and so forth, natch) exist because of eminent domain, yet today Amtrak has to pay them exorbitant rental rates to use "their" lines. On which they still have right-of-way. (If you've been delayed on Amtrak, it's quite frequently while they wait for freight rail to pass.) So who's the real beneficiary of government handouts, here?

	Originally Posted by eagleseven To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
	That's why private passenger train companies all closed down, in favor of busses/taxis/cars.

Nope, it's because the nexus of oil companies/ automobile companies/ construction companies have better lobbyists than, say, CSX. And certainly Amtrak. (But never underestimate a conservative's skill at picking the absolutely least powerful, least influential stakeholder in the mix and blaming them for anything that goes wrong, in service to simultaneously preserving the status quo while reserving the right to complain about it.)

	Originally Posted by INTroJect To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
	I am discoverng the scale of the financial situation, yes. Amtrak isnt "new to me" but I didnt understand the gravity of it before. You, obviously, have not the slightest clue.

You're just discovering 1.5 billion now (as opposed to, again, the trillions we spend on roads), consider that a large-scale financial outrage, and go on to call investment in transportation "soviet-style" communism, and still suggest that anyone else on this thread has less of a clue than you?

Originally Posted by INTroJect To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.

And your lack of perspective is being made blaringly clear. Not to defend the practice, but we dont spend "trillions subsidizing car travel", not if you look at it honestly anyway. To make such a claim, you would have to take whatever we may have subsidzed over the course of years or decades, and then brought that contrived number to compare directly against one year of Amtrak. Its not only inaccurate, but its a sleezy comparison

Speaking of lack of perspective (and not having a clue), our federal transportation budget for highways and bridges is approximately $100billion in any given year. That's a.) not close to covered by the gas tax; b.) doesn't include state expenditures on highway and bridge maintenance, which are significantly higher; c.) doesn't include state or local expenditures on non-highway roads; d.) doesn't include significant transportation safety expenditures at the local level (42,000 people die in car crashes every year - that's not a significant cost, I guess?); e.) doesn't include subsidies we give to the automobile industry, or investment into researching more environmentally friendly automotive technologies, or to the ethanol industry; f.) doesn't include the subsidies to (and expenses incurred by subsidizing) the oil and oil refining industry; and g.) doesn't include the expense of dealing with the environmental effects of domestic oil exploration, oil refining, and car travel. (How much did the BP spill cost us, again?) To say absolutely nothing of the foreign policy expense related to preserving our access to oil.

So trillions is accurate only in the most narrow sense. What were you saying about lack of perspective?

	Originally Posted by INTroJect To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
	Additionally, we have not even started looking at the tens of billions currently being spent to further expand on this economically unsustainable system. It makes as much economic sense as going to a tuxedo shop to rent a Leonard Logsdail, and then burying it with grandpa at his funeral. This disaster is one of the key pet projects being trumpeted liberal messiah.

High-speed rail is not the same as Amtrak. Are you literally just complaining about railroads? Or is this really just about Obama? At least AutumnLeaf's threads are more honest - maybe Obama really did have gay ex-lovers!

	Originally Posted by titi monkey To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
	Yes well, my argument is that buses suck. Airports are a real pain in the ass. I get bored driving long distances. I like trains. And boats.

Also an honest argument. You like trains, you see value in investing in them; Introject doesn't, so investment in them means we're all turning communist.

[themuzicman]

Originally Posted by INTroJect To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.

Liberals have been swooning for years over their schemes to take the people's money, and to throw it into rail infrascructure, surely making massive profits for both the train operators and construction companies. Is anybody else noticing that the Greyhound bus is both drastically cheaper, and much more versitile? I dont mean a little bit cheaper, but like close to half the price every time I compare the two. In fact, even in Europe, the bus was always slightly cheaper, but a much less fashionable alternative for the dumb American tourists. (Who go there and come back with blind enthusiasm to imitate here what they saw, but know little or nothing about.) If we are suffering from acute economy problems where more people are jobless and, for those who are employed, are earning much less, why are we taking people's tax dollar contributions paid into a broke government and spending it on something that the taxpayers themselves can less afford to access? Also, assuming there are routes out there where the train system is costing or may cost less, what about the private market bus system having to compete against this other means of government subsidized transportation? Shouldn't we be taking the people's money and also giving it over to the long distance bus companies since they cater more to our growing class of poor and destitute?

Trains: Speed of a car, cost of an airplane ticket.

There are some good local uses for trains. The line from Richmond VA to DC is fairly successful because a lot people in Richmond work in DC. Same with the train from Southwest Michigan to Chicago. It's a nice day trip.

But if you're traveling any distance, it just gets ridiculously expensive.

(Albeit the bus is pain. Did the trip to DC with the family once. Never again.)

[Storm]

America use to have a lot more railways and other ground mass transportation lines.
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along with other rails use to connect all of the major cities of Texas. Which make sense since the 4 major cities in Texas (Dallas, Houston, Austin, and San Antonio) are often traveled between. However, the trucking industry didn't like all of these people and goods getting places without their help. so they
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all those rails and let them rot. Here are some pictures of that:

[HIDE="ruins"]
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[/HIDE]

With airplanes, Texans started traveling between cities (each about 100 miles apart give or take) by air. But that soon got ridiculous with security and the trouble of getting to and out of an airport. You can take a bus, but those still have to use the heavily trafficked roads and the ticket price is about the same as the gas you need. Not to mention that you then don't have a means of transportation when you get to your destination. Rails made the most sense, but re-building them is much too hard to do privately at this point in time. So the trucking industry's little plan at a monopoly is working out nicely.

Perhaps someday the initial cost of building a railway coupled with a denser population and extremely fast trains will allow it to be privately done.

[Purgatid]

You build out a countries railway system for
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primarily, and passengers secondly. Hence, it's usually a very sound investment to build a better infrastructure with rail, because that allows for more produce to be transported than it can be with just trucks and/or flight.

[Szepi311]

Fast rail could make accessible more jobs as well as better quality jobs and opportunities to all workers, including the not so fortunate.

If a worker had the ability to reach out further in a shorter commuting time, companies would again have to compete for local workers as well as provide better working conditions. It is not in the interest of corporations for you to know that.

It is the wolf in sheep's clothing that will come to tell you that the "train is the devil." The train is not a rich man's toy. It is the poor man's transport to work.

I prefer it to bus.

However, have no fear! The bus will always be needed in areas that cannot be accessed by trains. In fact as a country's public transport system grows and becomes more reliable, more people are likely to ride it. That may not only reduce the cost to the individual rider but as people are more likely to ride instead of driving individually in their cars, there will actually be a greater demand for buses as well.

Good news for bus drivers.

The thinking that someone has to lose for another to win is faulty thinking. Same goes for bus vs. rail. They can very nicely complement one another.

[INTroJect]

Originally Posted by LaoTzu To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.

To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts. The goal is to make the country smaller; by allowing more people to travel farther distances in a shorter time. Modern high-speed trains travel around the same speed as a flight; and no doubt would become a cheaper alternative. In case you haven't been paying attention; American infrastructure (which includes transportation by various means) has been crumbling since the 80's.

Thats fun. You drop a link from the Chinese state run news agency and then go on to pretend that you just posted something useful. Whats next, the onion?

Heres a link, dont worry its wiki so its slightly more credible.


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---------- Post added 03-28-2012 at 04:12 PM ----------

	Originally Posted by larkin To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
	Typical U.S. solution - starve them of funds, use unsurprising decline in quality as a result to complain about customer service and starve them of more. Thanks, Grover Norquist.

If this were the typical solution, that would be alright, but its not, otherwise we wouldnt be dumping billions upon billions into a failed enterprise. But.....but.... Viva la revolucion!

	No transportation network in any developed country survives without subsidies. None. We provide them because it's the core to, surprise surprise, development and commerce.

Wow. All the others are doing it. That is the most telling response you have made yet. You must sleep well at night with that little conclusion tucked nicely under your pillow.

And rail companies like CSX (whose former CEO, John Snow, was former Secretaty of Commerce just as Tim Geithner is Secretary of Treasury, and so on and so forth, natch) exist because of eminent domain, yet today Amtrak has to pay them exorbitant rental rates to use "their" lines. On which they still have right-of-way. (If you've been delayed on Amtrak, it's quite frequently while they wait for freight rail to pass.) So who's the real beneficiary of government handouts, here?

Nobody who should be.

Nope, it's because the nexus of oil companies/ automobile companies/ construction companies have better lobbyists than, say, CSX. And certainly Amtrak. (But never underestimate a conservative's skill at picking the absolutely least powerful, least influential stakeholder in the mix and blaming them for anything that goes wrong, in service to simultaneously preserving the status quo while reserving the right to complain about it.)

Least poweful? Least influential? Amtrak has the liberal messiah himself pushing plans to finagle them some more "stimulus", to further expand their already-massive rail network. The larger the program these bureaucrat executives manage, the more money they make.

	You're just discovering 1.5 billion now (as opposed to, again, the trillions we spend on roads), consider that a large-scale financial outrage, and go on to call investment in transportation "soviet-style" communism, and still suggest that anyone else on this thread has less of a clue than you?

Do you learn to make these mathematical leaps of reality at wealth redistributionist indoctrination school? Im still not sure if you are that far marroned, or you are just doing this to keep me laughing. Again, you are taking just the operational appropriations to Amtrak, for only one year, and contrasting it against some large numer you were able to find, completely uncomparable to it, and pretend to make some kind of coherent argument out of it.

(pssst... That $1.5 billion is only a part of the much larger expend but represents the waste of their regular operations. However, of course, you secretly knew that as you were making these really ridiculous argumemts)

Speaking of lack of perspective (and not having a clue), our federal transportation budget for highways and bridges is approximately $100billion in any given year. That's a.) not close to covered by the gas tax; b.) doesn't include state expenditures on highway and bridge maintenance, which are significantly higher; c.) doesn't include state or local expenditures on non-highway roads; d.) doesn't include significant transportation safety expenditures at the local level (42,000 people die in car crashes every year - that's not a significant cost, I guess?); e.) doesn't include subsidies we give to the automobile industry, or investment into researching more environmentally friendly automotive technologies, or to the ethanol industry; f.) doesn't include the subsidies to (and expenses incurred by subsidizing) the oil and oil refining industry; and g.) doesn't include the expense of dealing with the environmental effects of domestic oil exploration, oil refining, and car travel. (How much did the BP spill cost us, again?) To say absolutely nothing of the foreign policy expense related to preserving our access to oil. So trillions is accurate only in the most narrow sense. What were you saying about lack of perspective?

A
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You actually went out and googled some stuff, and this dump pile you threw on here is to try to sneak away from your earlier trillions kabillions fazillions estimate on what we spend for roads?

	Hi[gh-speed rail is not the same as Amtrak. Are you literally just complaining about railroads? Or is this really just about Obama? At least AutumnLeaf's threads are more honest - maybe Obama really did have gay ex-lovers!

If it is under the same wasteful bureaucratic management structure as Amtrak, then yes, it is the same thing. Only probably even more wasteful and corrupt than the regular passenger train service.

	Also an honest argument. You like trains, you see value in investing in them; Introject doesn't, so investment in them means we're all turning communist.

Enjoying a little ride on the cho cho train does not make it a valuable investment. Certainly not the way we are doing it. But other countries are subsidizing too, so we must be doing something right. Right?

[LaoTzu]

	Originally Posted by INTroJect To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
	Thats fun. You drop a link from the Chinese state run news agency and then go on to pretend that you just posted something useful. Whats next, the onion? Heres a link, dont worry its wiki so its slightly more credible. To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.

Weird. You totally missed the point...


Oil will not last forever. Americas infrastructure is crumbling.

Meanwhile, China's kicking America's ass.

[plotthickens]

Trains are more reliable than private cars for the long-term transportation of all cargo. This includes people, military, and goods. One cannot haul a fully-loaded tank and its crew, steel from a mine to a mill, or 40 tons of coal on a bus. Train? Yes.

No, it's not very convenient for private citizens to take the train. That's not the point.

[ummon]

	Originally Posted by larkin To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
	High-speed rail is not the same as Amtrak. Are you literally just complaining about railroads? Or is this really just about Obama? At least AutumnLeaf's threads are more honest - maybe Obama really did have gay ex-lovers!

Actually Amtrak does operate a high speed rail line. It's called the Acela and it runs a healthy profit that helps pay for the other Amtrak lines (the ones which are being screwed over by not being funded to nearly the same extent that roads are).

---------- Post added 03-28-2012 at 10:00 PM ----------

	Originally Posted by eagleseven To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
	Only if you assume that trains run at peak capacity at all times (they rarely do), and the train stops close to your target destination (odds are you'll be bussing/taxi from the station).

Buses don't run at peak capacity either, and you airplanes are significantly more expensive, even when the trains run at low capacity. As for cars, they don't run anywhere near peak capacity (not to mention most of the time they are sitting around).

	That's why private passenger train companies all closed down, in favor of busses/taxis/cars.

No. They all closed down because individualist America decided to subsidize car travel instead:
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[Daoist]

Key point right here:

	Originally Posted by larkin To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
	No transportation network in any developed country survives without subsidies. None.

Nobody (besides governments) invests for a more than 30-year horizon, so the government is basically the only option for that.

I don't know that much about the economics of trains specifically. (I do know that most of China has several times the population density of the US though, which makes a difference for them.) The US is trillions of dollars behind on simple deferred maintenance on infrastructure though, so it's an urgent issue.