On Wed, 8 Jun 2005 23:00:22 -0500, "Morris Dovey"
wrote:


"J. Clarke" wrote in message
...
Robatoy wrote:

In article ,
"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.

Have you every commuted on a train? How do you know it's just no
good? We simply don't have appealing options right now. Nobody wants
to hop a frieght train and ride in a dirty boxcar to work, but I'd
love to have the option of taking a nice train in to work. It'd be
even better if it had a car with a little diner that served breakfast,
and high speed wireless internet access. Sitting in a comfy seat
doing something interesting sure beats getting ****ed off sitting in
gridlock for me.

We've done rail transport rather badly in the USA. The industry fell victim
first to bad management; and then to overregulation by a legislature who had
no understanding of the problems and which was fed misinformation (and
campaign funding) by special interest groups who weren't terribly concerned
about the well being of either railroads or the country.

IIRC, the highway system was a military lobby to begin with. We were
going in the direction of rail before all that money went into the
roadways.

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?

Why would it need to go that fast? I'd like to see commuter rail for
short trips- that doesn't have to go 400 mph... hell, it could done
with steam locomatives and still get the job done.

Why should it be cheaper? In France the TGV costs more to ride than do the
other trains. The TGV (Train Ã* Grande Vitesse or "high-speed train" to the
French, "Train Goes Voom!" to us) is especially clean, comfortable, safe,
and breathtakingly fast (and only stops at major cities.) Their other trains
seemed safe and reliable but not quite as spiffy and seemed to stop at every
town - and they cost less per km to ride than the TGV.

Sorta like the difference between the Concorde and flying coach on a
747.

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?

Because the trains were killed, they didn't die of natural causes.
Now nobody thinks they're an option anymore- but they still are.
They're putting in a bypass in a nearby city, it's a seven year
project that is costing god-only-knows how much money, and they've
moved enough earth to make several good-sized mountains- for cars.
With the same investment, they could have put in a first-class train
system, and it would have done a whole lot more for the traffic
problem.

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

Passenger trains don't work for us any more because we stopped allowing them
to work for us. If our need becomes sufficient, we have the option of
allowing them to work for us again - but it'll be expensive to restore all
of that infrastructure and undo all of the special interest legislative
damage.