About why we need high speed rail;
A (formerly) Far East located web site devoted to The Resistance, discussion of all things political, travel, women, golf, women,adventure, and did I mention women?
A (formerly) Far East located web site devoted to The Resistance, discussion of all things political, travel, women, golf, women,adventure, and did I mention women?
About why we need high speed rail;
Oh gee Skippy,
our trains move at the same speed they did 100 years ago….What, the milk trains? Our cars move at 80mph on interstates. How fast is your bullet train going to go from downtown LA to where? Where do LA pussies want to be in a hurry on a train? Malibu? Santa Monica? Paso Robles? Las Vegas?
Our planes now move 500 times faster than they did 100 years ago. Does that not count for shit?
We need planned communities where the serfs live close to their day jobs? So you want the same kind of shit urbanization that Japan, China, Korea, France et al have with the urban cluster infernos centered on rich downtowns of a traditional nature such as Paris, London, Seoul, Tokyo? I never ever want to see that kind of thing replicated in the US. Give me surburbs or give me death!
Dickheads who advocate high speed rail are generally those who are aware that they can achieve the same spread and speed with a good violent projectile vomit as they can with high speed rail and, their idiot counterparts from such places who think the same conditions must apply universally. So, why not spend 33 trillion building hi speed rail between Cairo and Alexandria?
I used to ride the metroliners on the eastern seaboard and they were crap. You invariably lost power on some track in downtown NYC and spent hours waiting for power to be restored or the train wrecked.
Do you have any idea how easy it is to kill train riders in America? Look at LA where one douchebag killed 22 and he didn’t even take the obvious step of parking on the rail he just texted messages and blew off track signals. I love those idiot muslim fucks that think they need explosives to kill hundreds when all they have to do is rent a Peugot and park on the TGV line between Paris and Nice.
Can we just say from a critical infrastructure security POV hi speed rail here and now is right up there with bathing and toasting bread at the same time?
They make it work in Asia-and it has been a liberator of people in many ways. Having lived in Tokyo I would not call its urbanization shit.
Its about efficient use of time. I have a co worker who lives in Knoxville and has to geo-batch during the week. ( For financial reasons his wife needs to stay there-and he has a military background like I do, and has had a hard time breaking into the civilian job market. He could live at home if there was good high speed rail like in Japan. People live in Utsonomiya and commute to Tokyo all the time. Same distance. With security and everything else, flying from Knoxville to here is a pain in the ass-especially since you cannot fly direct. Europe and Asia has trains that run on time-we could too.
Me, I’d rather live close to my job, as I do, so that I can come home at lunch and or work from home some days. I’d also rather live in city where there are things to do instead of out here in farmland with nothing to do at night except watch TV.
Skippy,
I get your points and agree with some. I’m not sure that the concept of train wrecking ever caught on in Asia but it started in the Western world right about the time trains were invented and tracks laid and the luddites decided to smash them.
Asia is throughout, a cluster of homogeneous societies with a few exceptions. They don’t seem to have luddites.
The problem that your friend experiences with the place you live has always been there. When we lived in your city back in the mid to late 70’s that place was a joke among Army circles because there were almost no direct flights and anybody commuting to DC had to fly through Atlanta and the airline frequently canceled the flights.
Compared the population density of the larger Tokyo Metropolitan Area and that of Huntsville? I can certainly see how the TMA justifies high speed rail to bring in workers from its suburbs but how do you see that applying to Knoxville or Huntsville? The simple economics of mass transit in the most densely populated area in the US cannot support mass transit without huge subsidies from the government. I realize that you think this is totally reasonable and after living so long in a society that has virtually squeezed out personal ownership of cars feel that the rest of us owe it to ourselves. But in the US there are few places that are like MMA in Asia and have little to no room for cars or make owning them so expensive that they are unaffordable and therefore the government has an obligation to provide alternative means such as rail and high speed rail.
I live downtown. When I was married I lived in Carmel Valley and had a 15 minute commute to the office. When I moved north a ways I had a 30 minute commute until I got drafted. Now I am living in a nice downtown neighborhood and have a 5 minute commute to work. I would ride my bike but the decrepit old thing is mildly terrifying shooting downhill to work and a major pain riding back up the hill at the end of the day plus there’s that whole I’ve got customers scattered from Point Loma to Old Town that call me up from time to time and invite me over for a short fused meeting. I dislike commuting intensely.