J. Clarke wrote:
....

The simple fact is that nobody wants to ride trains. Even if you build your
railroad it will be empty most of the time unless you give it huge
government subsidies and operate it at an immense loss, thereby essentially
providing free transportation at taxpayer expense.

sorta like the use of automobiles today. the public subsidizes both oil
and most of the highway system. similar subsidies keep the airlines
going. trains are a far better value than either of those. of course,
suburban sprawl is built only for the use of a car, so much more would
need to be done than simply laying new tracks, we need whole new cities
built around them.

hydrogen will not replace oil in cars. beside the fact that hydrogen is
an energy sink, it is not feasible to store or move it on the scale we
are used to with gasoline. (not even 10% of the current scale) this is
a physical problem that cannot be mitigated by technology. forget about
it.

maybe a better battery will be developed, the best minds with the best
funding have been on it for many years, but say you could get the
weight and capacity problem solved, electricity generation and delivery
is less efficient than burning the gas directly in the cylinder, (about
3 times less). so clearly coal and gas is not going to provide the
power. nuke plants arent all that big a bonanza once you consider all
of the energy required, and it takes aobut 20 years to even start it
up, but does seem the only viable source of power down the road. and
what's more, an all-electric fleet is untenable with the current grid,
just rebuilding the decrepid system we already have has to happen
before one starts talking about delivering 4 times the juice.

personally, i prefer to ride the train over the car or the plane from a
sheer comfort standpoint. but whether you prefer it or not, the
airplane and car will no longer be an option within 10 years. but if we
dont start re-building the system immediately, the trains wont be there
either. between currupt US leadership and the public's
head-in-the-sand-ism, i'm pretty sure we'll end up with the latter
option.

to think that our society can maintain any significant percentage of
its current energy consumption levels is pure wishful thinking i'm
afraid. which means that all of this is thrust onto a backdrop of
worldwide economic failure. how to power your car will be a sick
joke...how to obtain food will be the main topic of the day 20 years
from now. along with "we coulda" and "we shoulda".





Amtrak operates a high speed train based on the French TGV technology
between Boston and New York. I thought about riding it once and it turned
out that the fare was higher than any airline for the same trip. What
makes you think that your miracle train will be cheaper?

And you talk about hydrogen being impractical? We've had trains for more
than two centuries--we know trains--and trains don't work for us anymore.
Why do you have so much trouble with that notion?

Maybe economic conditions will change in such a way tha trains become
practical again. When that happens then trains will become popular again.
--
--John