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USA Will Invest in High-Speed Train to Fight Climate Change::The USA Will Invest in High-Speed Train to Fight Climate Change - US President Joe Biden announced in a speech on December 9, 2023 that they are carrying out the first high-speed train projects in US history. These projects are across America
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I wish them all the best! May this decision carry through administrations and the USA embrace fast, public transport once again.
At this point, Trump will probably win in '24 and immediately kill off the project
Getting more than a little annoyed by the political tennis, back and forth and nothing actually getting done because everything that is done gets undone as soon as the other party takes back control
Will he cancel it though? Or will “Trump Trains” become a thing?
It’s incredibly hard for the government to get anything done that takes more than 8 years. Even if you don’t end up changing presidential parties, trying to keep the house and senate out of the budgets is a serious challenge.
Even if they can keep people out of the piggy bank trying to get the corporations to follow through with their end of the deal It’s like herding cats.
Billions have been sunk into rural broadband with almost no penetration.
As much as I hate musk, The only way we’re going to get people back on the moon and out to Mars Will be because of government leveraging private industry.
Isn’t Trump in danger of being taken off the ballot due to something about being involved in a treacherous act? IIRC it was something about an amendment to the constitution introduced after the civil war to stop Southern soldiers from participating in politics.
Yes, and if it actually gets used to prevent him from running I will be stunned.
One judge already ruled that he did, indeed, incite insurrection, but then weaseled out by saying something to the effect of “it doesn’t specify presidents in the amendment” in their ruling so they did absolutely nothing about it.
Hope springs eternal and all, but he seems immune to consequences. Again, hoping that changes, but I’m not holding my breath.
It’ll take the US decades to get high-speed rail up and running, especially with its culture of litigation, property rights, regulatory capture and politicised overregulation of threats to incumbents, not to mention Citizens United and the ability of the aforementioned incumbents to buy laws and regulations. By then, climate change will have won.
Oh good! I was hoping for some defeatism in the face of a relatively positive bit of news.
Let’s say, ten years in the future, a brilliant scientist invents a magic box that drastically reduces some of the biggest inflictors of CO2, and/or even repairs some of the previous damage. Such a marvelous invention would only be valuable in saving the human race if there were simultaneously other improvements on efficiency and CO2 generation to improve the overall reductions.
Movies get us used to one person/initiative saving the world. What’s more practical is a whole bunch of little initiatives - even if each one doesn’t do enough on its own.
So, should we just give up then and not bother?
I’m betting this money will just go to bribe some political donors. Take note that the amount of investment here is less than what was outlayed to increase the number of EV chargers in the US (which hasn’t happened) for something that is orders of magnitude more expensive and complicated than installing battery chargers. California is working on a 171-mile stretch of HSR, and the estimated cost is projected to be around $35 billion in a state with tons of open, undeveloped land. Imagine the cost of doing this along the densely populated eastern seaboard. $8 billion in grants is a joke.
You’ve got to love internet negativity. Nothing can ever be good.
There are plenty of issues to deal with, but this is a huge improvement over the existing status-quo. Can we be happy that the Biden Administration has done something to move things in the right direction on this issue?
Cool. It’s just like, more than 20 years late, but cool
I keep saying that about almost everything. But yeah, “Oh cool we’re where we should have been!”
The 2000 election was such a massive turning point for the US. So many branching consequences, but imagine if we had had an environmentalist in the White House instead of Mr. Buy and Drill Our Way Out of This? At the time of 9/11 I believe it was Tom Daschle of SD on record calling for a Green Manhattan Project which obviously fell on deaf ears quite quickly as the bombs started raining down on Baghdad. Sure there’d still be cries for vengeance, but I also think if POTUS had been saying at the time ‘we win this war by getting ourselves off foreign energy’ it just might have been persuasive enough to embark on some major developments.
Who wants trains when you have brown people to bomb?
It’s like a hundred years late. The US was built with
inventedtrains, we should have the best train network in the world.In fact we did until we also invented cars and fucked the world up by favoring highways and essentially single-person metal boxes.
The US did not invent trains. Trains were invented in the UK with the first public railway being between Stockton and Darlington.
The US was the first to truly master trains on a large scale I’d argue, but you’re right they absolutely did not invent them.
We invented the steamship though, and we also arguably invented the modern submarine.
The US invented neither trains nor cars.
It is true the US was basically built on railroads, so I agree that it should have an awesome network, but it is just too big. Even if France ships you all a bunch of TGVs it will take days to go from NYC to LA. Something that takes hours by plane.
They also did not invent cars. That were the Germans and the french
We also invented beer, picking your nose, and whatever you think your country invented. USA USA USA /s
Wow. I’m so underwhelmed.
Hasn’t this happened yet because of issues getting enough land in a relatively straight path between destinations? If the curves are too great either the G forces are too high for the passengers or the train isn’t able to travel at a high speed. Elon had his boring machine but I’m guessing the lack of news around that means it isn’t progressing as hoped?
Elon’s hyperloop was just something to delay and boondoggle the whole California high speed rail project, he even admitted as much.
Musk’s Boring Company was an ill-thought out vanity project that has far too many weaknesses and drawbacks (including too high construction and operating costs) to ever produce any truly usable routes.
Just an excuse.
Yes, it is more time consuming and expensive to acquire land than would be ideal, but protecting property owner rights is also important.
However most of the land needed was protected by freight rail and Amtrak. We already have most of the track right of way needed, at least in the Northeast and Midwest, and the expensive part is mainly little bits of land to straighten out curves. It could be worse
The Boring Company is stating to sound like they will just use Teslas in the tunnels not any other form of transportation. So it’s a very lack luster project to say the least
https://www.boringcompany.com/loop https://www.boringcompany.com/products
Came to this thread for my daily dose of trite cynicism. Was not disappointed.
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Even then it’ll probably just be from one town to another very close by thus really only useable for a small subset of people. We need trans continental high speed railways not puddle jumpers
No, really not. It would be great for those of us who prefer that solution but let’s pick the right tool for the job. I believe the current rule of thumb is high speed rail beats flying for cities up to 500 miles apart. Let’s focus on those. Hopefully we end up with an interconnected system as the preferred way to travel between those cities and so some of us can do long distance rail, but there will always be a threshold where flying is cheaper, easier, faster
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The US is extremely far behind the rest of the developed world and even much of the developing world at this point. It will take decades to catch up, let alone become a leader.
Who cares how long it’s going to take, it still needs to be done. And the only way to do it is to start.
This grant amount is enough to build 39 miles of HSR based on California’s project costs. That’s 39 miles of rail for the entire nation. I’m not sure you can qualify this as a ‘start’. More than likely, this money will be completely wasted as it isn’t enough to do anything especially when you spread it out over 50 different states, which would equate to 4,000 feet of track, or 3/4 mile, per state.
There’s the issue. The US has a nasty habit of constant false-starts. The way things are set up, it’s really hard for anything to stick. Not impossible, mind you. But as soon as a Republican gets involved, projects tend to die. It’s a cycle of frustrating futility.
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These projects are part of an $10 billion investment
California’s HSR system come in at $80 billion for 520 miles, or $154 million per mile. Amtrak estimates that it would cost $500 million per mile to turn its Northeast Corridor route into a true high-speed system. source
For $10 billion, we are talking an additional 20 to 65 miles of high speed rail to be built. This is basically nothing…
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The worst part is that it usually follows well known cycle of:
- project is estimated at $10b, government assigns $10b
- private companies spend it on consultants and analysis, little gets built
- government agrees to invest another $5b but requires cuts to the initial scope
- with reduced scope projected passengers numbers drop, project is less attractive
- repeat until cost is 1000% of the initial estimate and usefulness is 0. cancel project
Drop in the bucket, I’m curious how much it would take to make most of the US/NA traversable by high speed rail
What’s after “trillions”?
Kids might say bajillions
Depends on what you mean by most.
- most of the population is quite achievable. Send a little time at https://www.ushsr.com/
- most of the geography, trillions, and we couldn’t afford to keep it operating
I really think that confusing this is a common mistake. People claim high speed rail is impossible in the US because we’re big (and ignoring China, eu), but we have plenty of cities, and most of them are clustered. High speed rail is great for cities within a few hundred miles of each other. We got those, and that’s most of the population
It’s specious to take scenarios high speed rail doesn’t do well at and claiming that it means it can’t work. Let’s apply a little intelligence here’d and use the right technology for the right scenario
Jacksonville FL to Mobile AL is not included even though old rail and established railway right of way is already in place. Its an incomplete plan out of the gate before even looking at the realities of the funding equating to near goddamn nothing. We need real Trillion dollar funding plans at this point for high speed rail on a national level, use the long range east west/north south interstate cooridors to build over/under to connect coasts and Mexico to Canada on 4 or 5 major lines each.
Think if we instead of giving trillions of dollars to the Ukraine, spent it on our own country. If we spent all that money on this project alone it might actually be beneficial to our people
Allowing Russia to conquer our allies will hardly get us high speed rail. Furthermore, the vast majority of lethal aid for Ukraine actually pays for US industry and US jobs. Congress approves money for Javelin missile production, US contractors produce the components and assemble it, then the Javelins are sent to Ukraine to blow up Russian invaders.
There is visual confirmation of Ukraine destroying over 13,000 Russian vehicles, including over 2,500 Russian tanks. Click the link, every single example has a picture or video detailing Russia’s devastating losses.
Exactly.
Allowing Russia to start conquering Europe will just mean that the US will eventually have to fight a war against Europe, China, Iran, and North Korea. If we allow it to get that far I’m sure they will recruit more countries to their axis. And then the US will have a lot worse problems than lack of high speed rail.
I’ve been against every US military engagement in my 50 year life except this one.
Most of this is to fund studies and the rest is probably to cover overruns. Is it political for election season? Yes, but still a step in a positive direction. We’re not talking infrastructure week here.
There’s ~$34 million in there to study new routes. The $3 billion of this going to CAHSR will:
- Fund six electric trains for testing and use
- Fund design and construction of trainset facilities
- Fund design and construction of the Fresno station
- Fund final design and right-of-way acquisition for the Merced and the Bakersfield extensions
- Fund construction in the Central Valley
Even better, I just hate that people are crapping all over making steps in a positive direction.
After decades of promises and zero high speed rails in use in the US, why believe it?
Because it’s wasting money.
And we seriously doubt the claimed positive impacts.
Yeah HSR is cutting edge and unproven technology that hasn’t been successfully implemented in Europe, Japan and China.
The HSR going through the Central Valley of Cali is INSANE. the bridge and strip of it is infrastructure that area and region has legitimately never seen. I keep telling all of my friends and family here in Cali that once you can travel from Stockton to Bakersfield in 45-1 hour it’ll completely change the region. The massive economic boom from just the construction alone will be huge, but then the effect after will be felt for generation.
And make the rest of the country subsidize it.
Gee, thanks.
California receives less than it contributes to the federal government. It subsidises other states.
We subsidize literally every other state. Fuck outta here.
Lol yeah screw the us government helping it’s citizens. Also, there has been funding for other cities to expand their public transportation.
It’s squandering billions. End.
Why no superconducting maglev tho?
Because having cryogenics for thousands of miles of open-air track is kind of hard
Sure, but if we just didn’t do stuff because it’s hard, then we’d never chosen to go to the moon. That guy on TV said so.
We might not do stuff because it’s an awful and downright terrible idea, but both looking at humanity as whole and my own personal experience, that doesn’t seem to be much of a deterrent either.
We choose to build from steel and other things because they are hard
The Japanese SCMaglev only has the cooling stuff on the train, not along the entire length of the track.
And I think there is a “high-temperature SC Maglev” in development in China too.
Too expensive and hard to maintain. You can get pretty good speeds with traditional rail, in western Europe there are trains reaching 200-250km/h.
Until the Republicans shoot it down and instead use that budget to give their rich chums more tax breaks
Deregulation of high speed rail sounds pretty good ngl
No.
Yeah, why should such a thing be regulated?
We all probably still remember the East Palestine accident, but all that turned alright in the end didn’t it?
It’s a joke.
You know, because it’s a god awful idea.
😂
Barack Obama tried to do the same thing: https://time.com/3100248/high-speed-rail-barack-obama/
While I would love for this to be a reality, I just don’t see it actually happening.
The way the US shows more progress is if the Democrats can stay in power for a long enough period of time. But the last time Dems had that kind of power was as far back as 2008. It makes you wonder if the only way Democrats can ever get into power is when a recession hits.
I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but with climate change in front of us, we actually don’t have time.
I’m incredibly nihilistic right now.
Climate change doesn’t matter when it’s lawyers and economists in charge, there’s money to be made… unfortunately.
“Microsoft has just announced it’s brand new, innovative music experience: the Zune!”
United States will never be able to achieve something like this because tiny ass governments of little weird counties all across the country will complain about having tracks run through their stupid shit hole
Run the tracks through your backyard then.
I don’t have a backyard because I’m not a pussy
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Manifest destiny.
as soon as the Republicans are elected with a full house they can shut this down and throw away all of the money that was put into it
Why would they? This is funneling taxpayer money to their donors.
Wut
why did they do it to the California high speed rail
