bullet trains criss crossing the continent.

[woodsmoke]

Ok, let's keep the POLITICS out of this....

It's an article about how messed up the bullet train in Ca is but almost toward the bottom is a sentence, the implications of which, have puzzled me, at best, for a long time.

nation crisscrossed by bullet trains, providing cleaner, safer and cheaper competition to airlines and reducing reliance on gas-guzzling automobiles

https://www.latimes.com/news/opinion...tory?track=rss

Two questions, quite simply:

What does one "DO" when one gets there?

And, given that most people "might" have a "one week" vacation. Again, in terms of even bullet train travel time....what does one have the TIME to do when one gets there?

Subhead 1. In the previous century of the U.S., and in Europe to a large extent today, there is an "transportation infrastructure" at the "end" of the railheads.

Subhead 2. ALL of Europe is dinky compared to the landmass of the U.S.

http://goeurope.about.com/od/europea...arison-map.htm

Japan is roughly the size of Montana.

http://wiki.answers.com/Q/Japan_is_r..._what_US_state


Again, I do NOT want this to be the "politcs" of it, but

a) what does one "do" when one gets "there" in terms of the transportion infrastructure.
b) Considering even bullet train times how much time is available to "do" anything when one gets there?

Just friendly questions for friendly discussion.

BTW I love trains, I used to ride the Illinois when I was in the navy, rode BART or whatever it was in Ca, have a model rr now.

woodsmoke

[thelonegunmen]

Re: bullet trains criss crossing the continent.

Well I hate to get or sound political, but all this has to do with limiting people's freedom of transportation, making it to where we go where the government deems we can/should go, google "Agenda 21", that's where all the bullet train stuff leads. Instead of going from Texas to New York in a few hours it may take 2 days. If the cost is the same as an airline, it's a waste of time.

[ardvark71]

Re: bullet trains criss crossing the continent.

Hi all....

I would agree with thelonegunmen, it's going to be hard to keep this topic apolitical. Along with "Agenda 21," my concern is that if we can't keep Amtrak solvent and efficient (with the equipment they have now,) how are we going to make a nationwide bullet train system work? A report was issued around 2002 regarding these issues. Would a completely private company make the concept work better than what a government corporation could possibly do at this point?

As a side note, I love trains too but I prefer my car to public transportation any day and I think the vast majority of Americans feel the same.

Regards...

[oshunluvr]

Re: bullet trains criss crossing the continent.

a) what does one "do" when one gets "there" in terms of the transportion infrastructure.

I'm not sure what this means. One walks, rents a car, takes the bus, uses the subway - depends on where "there" is.

As far as the value of train travel, as someone who has traveled quite a bit;
Trains are way more comfortable than planes: larger seats(even beds in some cases), more legroom, table space, you can walk around, virtually no luggage limitations, even real food is available.

In Europe, they're cheaper than flight and in some cases faster than flight, not so here.

One example: One way Paris to Amsterdam;
Rail: $122us, 3hrs 18min, 6 or so departures daily, arrive 5 minutes before the trains leaves if you want.

Plane: $250 to $500us, 1hr 15min PLUS 2 hours to get to check in, be searched, etc, plus waiting for your luggage.

Car: $?, 5+ hours on the road.

In this example, it's a no-brainer. Cheaper faster and more convent is the train. But only if you're staying in Amsterdam, not going to the countryside.

I can drive from LA to San Diego in about 2-3hrs depending on traffic. The train takes an hr and a half and costs ten times what gas for my car does. Neither train station is in an area I want to hang out in. Therefore, no train for me.

I suspect that train travel is heavily subsidized in most countries otherwise it would be much higher cost.

There are some undeniable issues:
Compared to the other parts of the world where train service is commonplace (Europe, Japan) you must travel vast distances in the US. For example the drive from LA to San Fransisco is about an hour longer than the drive from Paris to Brussels to Amsterdam : Half way across California is longer than half way across France, all the way across Belgium, and a third or so of the way across The Netherlands.

Our major cities are not really cities at all, but collections of cities. This makes train travel difficult because the advantage of the train is lost if you have to stop ten times or spend four hrs on a bus after your train ride. Plus our cities (as they are) are very numerous - New York, Chicago, Dallas, Atlanta, LA, San Fran, Denver, Newark, Pittsburgh... and a huge portion of our population does not live in any major city. In comparison, one fifth of France lives in Paris.

If you want political issues, look into Firestone, Standard Oil and GM and their conspiracy to shut down all major rail based public transportation in cities throughout the US. Despicable.

I doubt there's a looming government conspiracy to control population placement via train tracks.

One place on the west coast I can see a real advantage via high speed train is LA to Las Vegas. It's a 4-5 hr drive except on Friday nights when it's 7 hrs because of the traffic. The plane ride is only an hour but LAX security (TSA is retarded) takes 2 hours and is usually an hour drive from anywhere in LA (unless you live right by it). I could totally see thousands of people piling on a train and parting all the way to Vegas.

And @Ardvark: I would submit that the vast majority of Americans have never had access to good public transportation and would not prefer their cars if there was a safe, clean, and efficient way to travel otherwise. The vast majority of the world uses available public transportation even when private transportation is available. I must have a car to live and work in LA. But if I didn't have to have it, I could rent a car whenever I wanted one and spend way less money than owning one.

[dibl]

Re: bullet trains criss crossing the continent.

I really don't see this issue as inherently political, at least not in the common sense of the term. It looks like pure economics to me. Like oshunluvr I have spent enough time in Europe to appreciate the value of their ubiquitous light rail transportation, and it is great. But Europe is small, their cities are more compact, and their populations are far more dense than here in the USA. Their investment in a light rail network makes great sense there -- all of the population can enjoy the benefits, and a lot of them can either skip owning a car altogether, or else leave the one they own in the garage most days. I can see that it might make sense here in some regions, like the east coast, the west coast, and perhaps along the Great Lakes as far west as Minneapolis. But to make a European-style network, you'd have to lay track and build stations in places that just don't have the kind of populations and traffic volume that would justify it. Tulsa to Denver? I don't think so! :P

So, if it won't serve all the people, then how do you ask the non-served public to pay for it? Perhaps that's where it gets political.

[thelonegunmen]

Re: bullet trains criss crossing the continent.

I doubt there's a looming government conspiracy to control population placement via train tracks.

Lol, then read Agenda 21, it calls for an 80% population reduction. They want people to live in what's called "microcities", you would be living in a really small apartment in a sky scraper, in the sky scraper there's a McD's, and various other stores and you might be working there or for the city. Sounds pretty nice eh? Well they plan on cramming about 20 mil people into a place the size of Dallas (just the city, not the metro area), you have to have government permission to leave, you can't go camping or anything out in the country because "humans are not allowed" and a whole bunch of other stuff. Bush Sr. helped right this piece of legislation with the U.N., Clinton signed it into law, and we have been implementing it bit by bit over the years.

If I could bring my car on to one of these trains so I could drive it around the city, that would be my transportation of choice when I decide to go on vacation.

[GreyGeek]

Re: bullet trains criss crossing the continent.

I see two issues here.

The first is that due to cheap oil policies the US chose in the early 1950s, they set the stage for an urban population model using personal automobiles to travel from the suburbs to work and back again. In fact, most people live too far from any major services to walk to them. In Lincoln the buses run from 6 AM to about 6 PM, and most stops are visited only 4 to 6 times. While the nearest bus stop to my home is only a block away, to have used it to go to and from work would required an hour each way on the bus, requiring me to leave before seven and not get home till 6 pm. I rode my bike the 3.25 miles to work and it took my only 20 minutes. By car it took 12 to 15 minutes. The bike afforded shortcuts the car couldn't take. Some people commute each day 55 miles to Omaha and back. I know of one person who commutes 70 miles.

The US is stuck with urban sprawl because converting down town high rises to vertical apartments would be too expensive and wouldn't solve the transportation problems because most jobs are not where the people live. Currently, the only businesses in downtown Lincoln are movie theaters, bars, fast food places, one major university which supports the fast food and bars, a library, cheap merchandize stores, a court house and jail. The alleys behind most downtown businesses smell of urine because folks leaving the bars relieve themselves in the nearest ally.

The second issue is mass transit between urban sprawl areas. Air flight is the least time consuming and most affordable for most distances. It takes two hours to fly the 523 miles from Lincoln to Chicago, the first hour being spent in preflight checks. It takes 8 and a half hours to drive to Chicago. My car gets 40 mpg on the road. Fuel here is $4.10/gal. One way would be $54 in fuel costs. A friend of mine frequently visits his daughter in Chicago and drives his pickup, which gets less than 20 mpg. His one way fuel costs are about $120. $240 both ways. From Lincoln a one way plane ticket costs $300, but from Omaha it is only $207. A round trip from Omaha is only $235. (My wife just told me that she got word that a lady, whose car was stolen in Lincoln and later found abandon in Omaha, was selling her blood to help pay the impoundment costs of $90) However, if he were to fly instead of drive his pickup, he would have to rent a car at the airport, which would probably add $100-$200 to the trip. The only thing he saves flying is about 6 or 7 hours one way.

I flew a Cessna Skyhawk 172N for business purposes. At $40/hour it was/is too expensive for routine joy riding, although I did give my wife and kids a joy ride, and took my son with me on a business flight once. One MUST make one hour of preparation for each hour of flight -- you must instantly know during each second of your flight, where the highest objects are (to be above them by the reg altitude), the nearest landing spot reachable within maximum unpowered glide descent, in case of engine failure, and the comm frequency of the nearest controlled air space. Failure to make those preparations prior to flight is playing Russian roulette using a plane instead of a gun. My experiences showed me that it is faster and more economical to drive to destinations closer than 250 miles or fly commercially to destinations farther than 1,000 miles (A Skyhawk, which cruised at 130mph had an 800 mile range. I also flew a Cessna Centurion 210, which cruised at 220mph, at $80/hr, but it was faster and had a 1,100 mile range, so it would work between 200 miles and 1,500 miles. It had an autopilot which made holding course a LOT easier.) I could fly to Chicago in under 2 hours and I only paid $40/hr plane rental when the engine was running, even if it sat on the ground for two days in Chicago before I flew back. At 5PM one evening in Grand Island I got a call from an Apple customer of mine. His power supply quite. I got one out of stock, drove to the airport, rented a Cessna 152, flew to his farm out side of Fullerton, 45 minutes away by car, landed on a tractor road next to his corn, taxied to his house, swapped out his power supply, took off for home and was in my recliner by 6 PM. Fastest out of town service call I ever made. Stunned him when he saw me pull up to his back door in an airplane! 8) Apple reimbursed the repair bill.

The US doesn't have the money to invest in a coast-to-coast 300+ mph monorail train, which is the only mode which could compete with the travel time of airliners. But, like ground rails, protecting the legs and spans over their entire distance is impossible for no other reason than economics. Using existing rails for transit of mass quantities of coal, raw and finished goods, and the occasional Amtrak train, is still the most economical system of transportation. For people? No. Buses do a better job more economically and reach more towns and villages. But, greed and corruption is adding significantly to the maintenance and repair of asphalt and concrete roads. The most expensive part of asphalt is getting the mix hot enough to flow, fill and bond with the substrate. With concrete it is Calcium Oxide (Quick Lime). The number one cause of cracked concrete roads is insufficient quick lime in the mix. The Romans built concrete roads 2,000 years ago and some of them are still in use. How can a gov road inspector take a sample of concrete mix OFF the newly poured road at some random location and NOT KNOW that the Calcium content is below specs? He/She can't. I helped build I80 near Kearney, NE in 1962, between my sophomore and junior years in college. In 1980 large sections of the road had to be relaid. Longer portions have been paved over with asphalt. Now, on an interstate highway which was sold as lasting 60-100 years, they are having to redo what was done in 1980.

I never heard of "Agenda 21" before. The readings on the URLs cited are interesting. But, equally as interesting is that in the 1950s my childhood home at 3000 South Pear st, Englewood Co (Google Maps 39.662198,-104.980391 ) was only about 1/2 mile West from Downing St. East of Downing st were cornfields and prairie. Cherry Creek Lake was newly built when I was a teenager and I used to ride my bike out there to hunt and shoot my .22 rifle. It was "way out", over 7 miles into the country. Now, one has to go 15 miles East to reach open prairie. In 1800 it was estimated that the world held only 1 billion people. The second billion took 130 years, or 1930. In 1960, 30 years later, the world reached 3 Billion. About 14 YEARS LATER the world reached 4 billion, and 5 billion was reached around 1987. During 1999 we reached 6 billion. This year we reached 7 billion. By 2040 the "low" estimate has the world trying to feed 7.5 billion, the "middle" estimate puts the number of plates at 8.5 billion, and the "high" estimate says we will have to use the same resources to feed 10 billion people. What has NOT increased since 1960 is the number of acres of friable land or gallons of fresh water for crops and people. This year the world will create 10 populations, each the size of New York city.

The free world's economic system is dependent on "growth". There are basically two kinds of growth: linear and non-linear. The most common form of non-linear growth is exponential growth. It describes most accurately the growth of populations- people, food, resources, etc... It also models most closely their declines-- death rates and resource consumption. Our exponential growth is eating us out of resources and planet. If we do not put reins on our excesses voluntarily then Mother Earth will put them on us using her way, and very few people will survive that test, which always has to come before the lesson, it seems. We never learn from our mistakes.

Call it anything you want ... Agenda 21 ... ZPG ... This lifeboat Earth has only so much oil, food and water. People cannot continue to breed as their heart desires without consideration for those who are already here. We already have enough children giving birth to babies they cannot support and have no clue as to how to raise them to be good citizens. The attitude that they have a "right" to enjoy the sex any time they want, unprotected and without birth control, but everyone else is responsible for the cost of raising their children, or funding the healthcare problems they cause, is total nonsense.

We require people to be trained and licensed to drive cars. It is not a "Brave New World" when population pressures require more controls than were necessary in the past. It is a "Brave New World" when, unable to control ourselves, we submit to demigods and dictators.

[woodsmoke]

Re: bullet trains criss crossing the continent.

This has been a very productive thread, and I look forward to more comments.

and the greygeekness is just so smart!

so, let's keep this thread locomotin'.....(PUN) along!

woodsmoke

[thelonegunmen]

Re: bullet trains criss crossing the continent.

This has been a very productive thread, and I look forward to more comments.

and the greygeekness is just so smart!

so, let's keep this thread locomotin'.....(PUN) along!

woodsmoke

I agree, I think it's great that their is so much maturity on the forum.

[woodsmoke]

Re: bullet trains criss crossing the continent.

ummmm there are THOSE who would say that is because at least I....and a few others....are do OLD!!!

woodVERYMATUREsmoke

[thelonegunmen]

Re: bullet trains criss crossing the continent.

ummmm there are THOSE who would say that is because at least I....and a few others....are do OLD!!!

woodVERYMATUREsmoke

Lol, well you'd be amazed at how many old folks I've seen act immature. Maybe it's cause we are Linux users, therefore we are a tad bit wiser.

[woodsmoke]

Re: bullet trains criss crossing the continent.

TLG...possibly, possibly... don't know about MY case but....

To get back to the thread.

As to "what to do when you get there".

Back in Carter days.... this whole thang came afore....and it seems that I remember that the French government, private, don't know who.... actually tried to work out "what to do".

Supposedly, there were pictures in the magazines and everything, they had AT BOTH ENDS of "the line"... what is disparagingly called today "clown cars"....that were totally electric.

They were hooked up to what we, in the U.S., would call a 'parking meter" that also had a "plugin". The person on the train popped a credit card, or some kind of card, into the parking meter, unplugged the car, drove it to work, you name it, drove it back, plugged it back in popped the card into the meter and then got back on the train.

The whole idea being that in a dynamic, growing, changing, economy, the workplaces change, people change jobs etc. maybe one just needs to go get a new coat or wants to see an opera.

But, that one was on the "fixed" line between places but had freedom of movement "at the ends".

Supposedly the system was shut down, I don't know why, but it seemed like an eminently workable solution.

People who could "relatively conveniently" "get to work" or "go shopping" or "go to the opera" by using a bus did so.

But for the person who was "at sixes and sevens" for some reason could get the car, use it as needed, etc.

I think it was GGeekness above who alluded to "how does one get to work or where the new opera house it, as in San Diego in 1970 when they built the new one about three MILES away from the "old" city centre...

And also to "urban sprawl" etc. or crowding people into cites, dunno...

so...dunno....

[teh603]

Re: bullet trains criss crossing the continent.

Lol, then read Agenda 21, it calls for an 80% population reduction. They want people to live in what's called "microcities", you would be living in a really small apartment in a sky scraper, in the sky scraper there's a McD's, and various other stores and you might be working there or for the city. Sounds pretty nice eh? Well they plan on cramming about 20 mil people into a place the size of Dallas (just the city, not the metro area), you have to have government permission to leave, you can't go camping or anything out in the country because "humans are not allowed" and a whole bunch of other stuff. Bush Sr. helped right this piece of legislation with the U.N., Clinton signed it into law, and we have been implementing it bit by bit over the years.

Sounds like people fear-mongering, if you ask me. Just like the people who were predicting that in five years (about fifteen years ago) these arab zealots would be driving around fogging people with car-mounted plague dispensers.

First off, how do you feed 20 million urbanites crammed into Hive Prime? You're still going to need farmers, and cropland. You can't grow everything with hydroponics, and the only serious hydroponics research I see going on anyway is dedicated to growing dope.

Second, I don't think humans could survive quite that clustered together, even with enough social engineering. Lack of sunlight would be a huge issue. Sure we have sun lamps and tanning lights, but those would trigger an even greater backlash from the skin cancer prevention group.

There also aren't enough workers left in the US economy to actually pay for all this. The fat cats are making too much money with the status quo, and the government is too deadlocked to pass a spending bill that could fund any of that. Most of the holders of the national debt would baulk at the thought of a project *that* big anyway.

And there's one final thing that all of you are missing- wouldn't "they" have had to start building this thing by now? And if they had, wouldn't someone have noticed? You can't just delete a construction site the size of Dallas from the public mind. Someone would have seen it by now, whether from an airliner or google maps' satellite view.

Edit: On the issue of trains, what's to stop the bullet trains from having a few flatbed cars for people to bring their cars with them? Drive the car up onto the flatbed, strap it down, and then drive it off when you get there? Or have it loaded onto a pallet and then lifted onto a flatbed car using a crane or forklift?

I don't see travel time as an issue, though. America has gotten to be too fast-moving for its own good, and the whole world is following in out footsteps. I think the whole nation could take a rare lesson from the French in this regard; don't work too hard, so you don't set a bad standard for the people coming behind you to have to beat.

@GreyGeek- Actually, Brave New World had no demigods or dictators if I remember my reading it right. The only difference between Mustapha Mond and Bernard Marx was Mustapha had a shelf of forbidden books. His job as World Controller was an actual job, even if it gave him celebrity status. Plus, he got that way not by crony-ism, but because he was willing to work for the betterment of society and not just his own personal benefit. Bernard and Helmholtz were too short-sighted and not concerned enough with the long-term effects their plans could have had.

Now, its been five or six years or so since I read Brave New World, but that's what I got out of it.

[GreyGeek]

Re: bullet trains criss crossing the continent.

....
Now, its been five or six years or so since I read Brave New World, but that's what I got out of it.

I wouldn't doubt that your recollection is better than mine. It's been over 50 years since I read it. Your mention of books brings to mind a movie called "fahrenheit 451", which is probably fused together with "Brave New World" in my memory.

[teh603]

Re: bullet trains criss crossing the continent.

I wouldn't doubt that your recollection is better than mine. It's been over 50 years since I read it. Your mention of books brings to mind a movie called "fahrenheit 451", which is probably fused together with "Brave New World" in my memory.

451 was a different kind of distopia, though. Somewhat a fusion of Brave New World and 1984, but with more of an emphasis on fear than pleasure and distraction. Where Mustapha Mond would quietly promote or banish someone, the firemen in 451 would make a huge spectacle of burning someone's house and killing them.