Is a US High-Speed Railway Economically Feasible? 1139
An anonymous reader writes "The federal government has committed at least $8-billion (and counting) for the development of a nationwide high-speed intercity passenger railway system in almost three-dozen states. Rail advocates have long dreamed of an extensive railway grid that will provide clean, speedy, energy-efficient travel. The high-speed rail program is also expected to create thousands of desperately needed jobs, while reducing the nation's dependence on foreign oil and easing gridlocked highways and congested air-space. However, this noble, ambitious, multi-year plan faces a multitude of obstacles — including costs that will no doubt escalate as the years pass by; and an American public that may be reluctant to relinquish the independence and convenience of their beloved automobiles for a train."
Solution: Tax gas more. (Score:5, Insightful)
Once they're paying as much as people in any other first-world country, "beloved" will give way to "practical". And it brings in some nice cash too.
Long-distance trains are better than busses... (Score:5, Insightful)
Don't target cars (Score:5, Insightful)
A high speed rail network should be targeting air travel. There are many short haul air routes (e.g. New York to Washington) where high speed rail could provide an comparable door-to-door journey time (especially once you take check-in, security and all the other things into account). High speed rail has none of the big downsides of air travel like the need to get to the airport 2 hours before the flight to check in, the need to pass through 3 layers of security, bans on liquids and other things, cramped seats etc.
Now obviously trains cant compete with long-haul air travel such as New York to LA but for short haul, it could really work. (but only if its given proper high speed track and doesn't have to share that track with slow freight trains)
Short answer: (Score:5, Insightful)
In some places yes, in other places no.
Next question?
Re:Don't target cars (Score:5, Insightful)
Just wait until the first person tries to blow up a train. Then many of those advantages will vanish.
No, think big oil and property taxes (Score:1, Insightful)
never gonna happen, corp. america has way to much at stake, the auto industry is in trouble; but big oil is healthy and Ain't gonna let it happen
Faster Solution (Score:5, Insightful)
Or they could design the train so that people could drive their cars onto it and park.
It'd kill the airlines in a week.
no need (Score:5, Insightful)
If we just stopped subsidizing it, we wouldn't need to tax it, and we'd get the same revenue benefit without the infrastructure needed to enforce the tax. Bastiat [wikipedia.org] has a lot of interesting things to say about both subsidies and taxes. I personally hate driving and flying, so I'd really enjoy a national rail system. I'd like a local transit system even more, but that is not something my city is even close to.
Rail System Needs (Score:5, Insightful)
I'd rather have a train system that had a range of trains to different places at lots of different times, every day. But most importantly, I'd like to have a train system that actually follows the time table. Nobody wants to pay for public transportation when you have to arrive early, wait a long time, and then not leave on time... and probably not arrive at your destination on time.
Wait, we do that for airplanes. Nevermind. Go about your business.
Re:Don't target cars (Score:5, Insightful)
it's hard to crash a train into the pentagon, if the tracks don't go that direction.
Re:Don't target cars (Score:3, Insightful)
Why do that for a short haul trip, I could have just taken my car and not had to fart with any of that. Now if I am traveling to a city with decent public transportation like ny and where finding parking is hell then yes I might would do it.
Even then I can smoke in my car and cannot anyone say shit about it, so the chances of taking the train at least for me are zero.
Independence? (Score:4, Insightful)
"and an American public that may be reluctant to relinquish the independence and convenience of their beloved automobiles for a train."
The automobile is far more of a ball-and-chain than an independence-granting device.
It's too late for Rail to save US (Score:3, Insightful)
and an American public that may be reluctant to relinquish the independence and convenience of their beloved automobiles for a train.
Well, duh. Convenience and independence are huge. Public transportation isn't "when you want it" or "where you want it" and just doesn't have the trunk space. In many major american cities, the suburban sprawl is enormous, bordering on ridiculous. It's too late for the US. You'd need to throw in something like $100 TRILLION in order for (rail) mass transit to work. You'd need to interconnect each sprawling suburb with each other--not just with downtown, regrettably how its often done--in order to make it even feasible.
And it still won't be convenient to travel by mass transit if you have more than you can carry in your arms.
And then, at some point, it's still not the cheapest. For example, $5 a roundtrip ticket for me, my wife, and two others to travel downtown for a baseball game. Even with expensive event parking, that's already about even. If we had a van and squeezed in another couple, it'd be cheaper to carpool, perhaps even including the amortized costs of vehicle purchase & repair for that event, especially since we still needed a vehicle to get us to the rail station...
Re:Don't target cars (Score:5, Insightful)
Some people would do it because it's more cost-effective, less stressful, or even because it's more energy efficient.
Obviously you're not one of those people.
Railways (Score:2, Insightful)
The reason trains haven't been very popular with Americans has a lot more to do with train scheduling than trains themselves. Basically, if you decide to take Amtrak, you have almost no idea when you're going to arrive at your destination. As I understand it, much of the problem is that Amtrak runs over railways owned by other entities; they aren't Amtrak's rails. So when a freight train comes rumbling along, the passenger train effectively yields to it. This rather complicates scheduling, so if you know you need to be in Springfield by 11:00 AM Tuesday, you can bet that you won't get there in time if you don't take the train scheduled to arrive on Monday. Even if Amtrak doesn't have to yield, the tracks are crap so the trains can't run at their design speeds.
Out here in the West, I don't think I've ever heard of the Coast Starlight being on time. Not even once.
In the Northeast, where Amtrak owns the rails, the trains are actually useful.
Dedicated rail lines would actually allow the trains to run more-or-less on time. Dedicated rails would also let them run fast. Then trains can be quite a nice way to get around, especially when weighed next to the bullshit you have to put up with when you fly. Realistically, it takes pretty much all day to fly anywhere, even for very short flights, given the lines, misery, and chaos at the airports. So if you can get a comfortable seat on an uncrowded train where you're not required to be photographed naked to get a seat, and you can walk around a bit, and maybe have some acceptably palatable food, you're not charged an extra $50 because you had the gall to bring your purse and a bag, and it costs 1/2 the price of an airplane ticket, trains could be pretty nice -- if only you could guess +/- half an hour when you might actually arrive.
Fixing rail service in the US means installing dedicated passenger rails.
Re:Don't target cars (Score:4, Insightful)
Doesn't matter. It's not about causing actual damage; it's about causing psychological damage. The image of dirty, bearded, beady-eyed Muslims blowing up a train will haunt soccer moms and inspire gun-toting overcompensating internet-tough-guy "patriots" and give endless fodder to demagogues both radiophonic and actually involved in the political process. If any joker claiming to be Al Qaeda accomplished even popping a paper bag on a US train, trust in the system's safety and the government's ability to defend the homeland would be compromised and the right wing would go apeshit sending out chain-mails of weeping, twinkling, glitter-covered bald eagles wrapped in American flags.
And, so, as soon as the first firecracker is detonated on a high-speed US train, and maybe even before then, you'll be taking off your shoes, placing your laptop and one-ounce bottles on the conveyer, and stepping into the backscatter microwave to the titillation or, more likely, horror of some TSA flunky tasked with scrutinizing the greasy rolls of fat enveloping like undulating armor the most insecure, paranoid nation of all the tribes of the Earth.
Re:Alternate solution (Score:1, Insightful)
Cut subsidies for all forms of transportation. Then, tax in proportion to carbon emissions. Trains win in every densely populated region, hands down.
And for those of us not in densely populated regions?
Re:Another stupid idea that will increase the defi (Score:5, Insightful)
I suggest you read this: Sewers and Storm Drains [typepad.com].
Yes, paying a million people to fix up our crumbling infrastructure (or in this case, to build a high-speed railroad) will be expensive. However, all those million people will no longer be unemployed, which means that they will go from being a drain on society to being a benefit to society. This sort of thing would lead to much faster economic recovery than your "everyone stop spending money right now" plan.
Re:Don't target cars (Score:1, Insightful)
You can say that about flying as well. Or ship. Or just about any form of transport other than driving yourself.
There are multiple transportation issues. The first is getting people from their homes to work. That's what a local public transport network is supposed to do. The second is getting goods from their source to wherever they're needed (be it a factory, the shops, or somewhere else.) That's what a freight network does. The third is getting people from city A to city B. That's where airlines, fast rail, and other such transportation systems come in.
Fast rail is not a local public transport network. It should, however, link up with the local public transport network at both ends, so that passengers aren't forced to hire cars, or find a nearby car park to stash their car for the duration of their trip.
Me? Given the choice between fast rail or air on a trip that would take 1-2 hours by plane, I'd pick the fast rail. It's slower on paper, but the benefits - no need to checkin, no security theatre, the ability to do whatever I want (within reason; we're in public here after all) in terms of work or entertainment, and the prospect of decent wireless Internet connectivity - make it a no brainer for me. If only it were available in my country...
Re:Don't target cars (Score:5, Insightful)
You mean like in West Bengal http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/10178967 [bbc.co.uk], Madrid http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2004_Madrid_train_bombings [wikipedia.org] or Russia http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/8383960.stm [bbc.co.uk]?
Yet people are still building new train projects worldwide.
Do you honestly think 'b..b..but terrorists' is any sort of intellectually valid answer to questions of national transport projects?
Re:Not on National Basis - Some Local Solutions, Y (Score:3, Insightful)
It just doesn't make sense, and even politicians recognize that.
Now, what I have heard suggested is more routes for rail travel. When I lived near the Pocono's, there was a large number of people that traveled to New York City every day by bus for work. It was worth it for them to spend 3/4 hours on bus one way due to the lower living expenses and high wages. For them, having rail service(shorter travel time) would have been a god send. But, again. That was not high speed rail. Just new/additional rail service.
Ya think so, do ya? (Score:3, Insightful)
http://www.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/europe/03/24/uk.smoking.ban.cars/index.html [cnn.com]
London, England (CNN) -- A British doctors group called Wednesday for a ban on all smoking in cars, saying the secondhand smoke inside a vehicle can cause severe health problems for children and adults.
Re:Alternate solution (Score:3, Insightful)
Tough shit. Living in a dense, urban area has certain economy-of-scale advantages over rural areas, because distances between everything are much shorter.
Why should everyone subsidize your choice to live in a rural area?
Don't forget, land values in rural areas are generally far lower than in urban areas, so you're already getting a benefit there.
Don't get me wrong, I plan to move to a rural area as soon as economically feasible, but I don't think I should expect city-dwellers to pay for this luxury for me. I'll consider the increased costs of transportation as one of the downsides I have to deal with. Hopefully, telecommuting will reduce this as a factor, so I only need to drive when I have to get groceries.
'Beloved cars' is a stupid dichotomy (Score:4, Insightful)
The choice is not between 'car' and 'rail'. The choice is between 'rail' and 'airplane'.
There is a nice Amtrak route from Seattle, WA to Portland, OR. It takes about 3 hours, and a plane flight is less than an hour. At least, until you factor in getting to the airport (way outside of town, and the Amtrak station is right downtown), going through security, the cramped seating, and the overall icky stupidity of the entire process of air travel nowadays. Then the Amtrak starts looking a heck of a lot more attractive than a plane flight.
I also travel to San Francisco from Seattle sometimes. My current choice is to take a plane. If there were a high-speed rail corridor to San Francisco that took less than 5 or 6 hours, I might well choose it instead. Sure, it's an hour or two longer than even the total time spent to travel there by air. But it's an hour or two of comfort, not an hour or two of not-quite uncomfortable enough to be unbearable that air travel is.
Re:Solution: Tax gas more. (Score:5, Insightful)
You overstate the case. In Britain, fuel prices are vastly higher than they are in the USA, and driving is still usually cheaper than taking the train.
People travel by rail in Britain when it's more convenient. For commuters it makes sense because you can work or relax on the train; of course, many US cities already have popular commuter rail services. For other people, it often boils down to things like the very poor parking facilities at urban destinations and the poor roads at rural destinations -- an expensive train ticket looks a lot more attractive if you know the alternative is going to be six hours stationary in heavy traffic on a narrow road, or an extortionate charge for commercial car parking. These latter problems tend not to exist so much in the USA, where there's plenty of room for wide roads and large car parks.
Re:Don't target cars (Score:5, Insightful)
What is needed is to upgrade the Acela and give it dedicated right-of-way for as much of its run as possible (similar to what has happened with the TGV and ICE trains in Europe which have dedicated high-speed track). If the Acela could travel at the higher speeds of high-speed-trains in Europe, even MORE people would start using it.
And you know this by what empirical data? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:No. (Score:3, Insightful)
And to clarify, for the haters. Government subsidized anything is not economically feasible. Privatized rail and you'll have competitive free market stuff to determine what's feasible and what's not, then the question won't matter except to Entrepreneurs and investors.
Re:Solution: Tax gas more. (Score:3, Insightful)
Think about it: a good number of Americans are willing to go to war to keep gas prices low. Do you think they will appreciate it if gas prices rise double for no reason other than some people (you) don't like their cars? Not to mention there's a good portion of the country where people couldn't ride the train even if they wanted to.
Re:Alternate solution (Score:5, Insightful)
Maybe, but those rural areas create the food that the cities need to house and feed their populations. When you increase the costs of those areas, you greatly affect the cost of city life. Cities are also far, far more subsidized then any rural area is. The roads needed to truck in supplies, heavily subsidized food programs, and greatly disproportionate distribution of state tax income as well as federal aid.
Re:Another stupid idea that will increase the defi (Score:4, Insightful)
The CCC did some wonderful things. And quite a bit of those things are up for repair or replacement. If we're in the 'worst recession since the great depression' then we need to treat it as such. Cancel 'handouts'. If you want welfare, you can work for it. Everyone gets a job and stuff gets built.
Bridges, Dams, Power lines, roads. Quite a bit of stuff was built during the great depression putting people to work. After the MN bridge collapse inspectors are coming out of the wood work going "Yeah, these could fail at any time now too."
Take all those 2.9M employees that are out of work and have them start building shiat. If they want to sit on their Union ass and do nothing, they get nothing. Turn off unemployment. There'll be no shortage of jobs. Pay them what they're actually worth as manual labor. Caterpillar & Deere, the big 2 domestic construction manufacturers would need to increase their workforce (Which is partially union). Truckers would get more work shipping construction supplies and equipment. Mobile home makers would need to up production for temporary housing. Concrete, asphalt, and steel industries would need to up employment to help keep up with demand.
Along every road and every bridge run fiber, it costs nothing compared to what a new road does, so run a fat pipe to every town in America. The next Wozniak or Linus could be sitting at a place that currently just has 14.4 dial up. Maybe the smartest of the high school students could take part in remote learning at MIT or some where where they'll not be kept behind with the rest of their class.
In addition, toss a rail line down the center of the interstates. Get a light rail connecting most large cities. Maybe even a 'ferry' service. Need to go to CA? Load your car up on a rail. Go sit in the comfortable seats and in a day. You're in CA.
Just like all those roads and bridges helped spark the auto boom a decade or so later, in 10-20 years we could really see the economy back on its feet doing something else productive.
Re:Alternate solution (Score:5, Insightful)
I guess we'll just have to increase what we charge for production, then. You know, trivial things like:
* Corn
* Wheat
* Soy
* Fuel (yeah, we make a fair amount of it)
* Beef
* Chicken
* Pork
* Machinery (used to pave your roads, build your sky rises, construct your high speed rail...)
*
Don't get me wrong, I plan to move to a rural area as soon as economically feasible, but I don't think I should expect city-dwellers to pay for this luxury for me.
What luxury is that? Driving an automobile? Apparently you're not aware of what most "rural areas" in the US require. Yes, you can very easily die getting to work in the weather we've got out here without the protection of a vehicle. And when that's not a concern...
You also realize that if someone is being taxed more for the "luxury of driving" - this tax money going towards the construction of rail, which said people are not being given - then it's the rural people who will be getting gouged, right?
It's been shown time and time again that urban dwellers have a (significantly) higher carbon footprint because it takes more energy to maintain that way of life. It's been true since the first person grew his first field of corn and realized "hey, I can support a lot of people with this". While people in an urban area are in malls buying things, playing laser tag, eating at a restaurant, and doing whatever it is urban people do, people in rural and remote areas are spending time outdoors, cooking their own food and having simple social pleasures.
Re:Alternate solution (Score:3, Insightful)
My 20-year-old van with one passenger has a lower carbon footprint than someone traveling on high-efficiency highspeed rail. Why?
Because the energy put into building the van is already spent and done with. Not true for the HSR.
Re:Don't target cars - target planes (Score:5, Insightful)
The comment about air travel being the real competitor is right on the money.
Survey after survey has shown that people would much rather take a train (where they can get on easily, walk around during travel, not get slapped suddenly into their seats for an impromptu ride on the biggest roller coaster on the planet, drink a beer or eat a sandwich for a reasonable price, not have to wait in long lines for a restroom, and "land" within a short cab ride of their actual destination) than suffer through the growing indignities of air travel. Even adding in proper security screening, it's still no contest. But the obstacle to high speed rail is economic and political -- the extensive government subsidies to auto travel are dwarfed by those offered to private commercial air carriers (the whole TSA thing, but also the airports themselves and air traffic control, not to mention the weather service and other such incidentals that are nominally for other purposes). Investment in high speed rail directly undercuts the most lucrative air travel market: short haul trips. That's why the hub and spoke system all the air carriers use exists, and why you can hardly ever find a direct flight to where you're going if you aren't lucky enough to live in a hub (but also notice that if you leave directly from a hub, you'll pay a big mark-up compared to people who are simply transferring there).
So the bottom line is that there is a gigantic, lucrative industry whose whole existence depends on never having effective rail transportation (such as high-speed rail that connects urban areas as well as major airports and provides competitive, timely, cost-effective, weather-insensitive service for trips ranging from 200-500 miles). So you've got a bunch of noble idealists without a dime to their name lobbying for high speed rail, and you've got all the airlines hell-bent on preventing it from (so to speak) getting off the ground. It's a miracle the current administration thinks they can beat those odds, and I wish them all the best. But this is sort of like trying to outflank the medical industry with health care reform, and unfortunately there's probably just as little chance of substantial success.
Re:Alternate solution (Score:5, Insightful)
Trains win in every densely populated region, hands down.
There are other issues besides subsidies. For example, here in California wealth NIMBYs in southern Marin County (near San Francisco) have successfully lobbied to have the proposed high speed rail line either routed around or tunneled under their wealthy suburban communities, at great additional expense, so as not to disrupt their perfect neighborhoods or negatively impact their property values. They have also lobbied to have the "high speed train" substantially reduce speed on many parts of the route, essentially defeating the purpose. Here in the United States, unlike in Europe and Japan, it much easier to be a NIMBY and essentially kill a project with lawsuits, environmental impact studies and other political chicaneries as long as you have money to burn. The price of your train rapidly escalates as decades of legal wrangling, planning commission hearings, and environmental impact studies make the final cost of your rail line completely uncompetitive.
Re:Long-distance trains are better than busses... (Score:3, Insightful)
Not only Sweden; there is the EuroNight and CityNightLine network as well. Not the fastest connections (they do detours to serve more cities) but it's overnight so just sleep a little longer.
China also has lots of sleeper trains, and they are popular.
Now China is developing a lot of high speed rail, this will include 8-12 hour journeys (e.g. Hong Kong to Shanghai or Beijing) - now those trips are 20-24 hours. It would be great if that is on high speed. Imagine on Monday evening you can have dinner with your family, then off to the station, Tuesday all day meetings in Beijing, after dinner you take the overnight train back to HK, and Wednesday morning day back in office. Now try that by plane!
For those 8-12 hour journeys overnight trains rule. A plane can not compete to that, even if the train is more expensive as you really start to save time and don't have to pay for hotels.
Re:Independence? (Score:4, Insightful)
The automobile is most certainly not more of a ball and chain than an independence-granting device.
Which grants more freedom?
* taking the train to an interview or driving
* taking the train/bus to get groceries or driving
* packing the kids up and taking the train to grandmas -or- driving
* going for a weekend picnic in the country on the train... and walking a dozen or so miles.
* going on a business trip, takign a plane, a train, a bus, a taxi, and then doing the same on the way back, lugging your one small bag the whole two days... or driving.
The only place I can see an argument for trains is in highly urban environments, where subways are a better choice anyway in most cases (or simply pushing everything into the sea, as is the case in California).
I'd be interested in seeing someone who has a vehicle and makes statements like these go without their car for a month. Maybe some will be fine, being fewer than a couple miles from work or not having responsibilities outside of themselves.
Honestly, if a car is so much of a responsibility for you that it's a ball and chain, please never get married or have children. They are a mild inconvenience at best, for what they grant a person (or a family) in mobility - the ability to go about daily tasks, the ability to look for work while unemployed, and so on.
If you're not just one to shirk anything difficult, as your post suggests, maybe pick up a book or two on automotive repair? Or, I suppose, you could one day carry your family along in a rickshaw to the grocery; they're certainly less of a ball-and-chain than an automobile, after all!
Re:Solution: Tax gas more. (Score:5, Insightful)
You can't turn America into Europe by simply taxing fuel at the same rate.
There are many on the left who, out of a desire to see "good" things done quickly, reflexively support higher taxes and increased government spending, regardless of the prevailing economic circumstances. In response to their claims of concern for the plight of the common man, Milton Friedman once said, "I admire the softness of their hearts, but unfortunately it very often extends to their heads as well."
Train to nowhere (Score:4, Insightful)
In the US, when you arrive at a city, the first thing you need is a car. Otherwise, you can't get anywhere.
NYC is an exception. Almost anywhere else, you will need to get of the train and immediately rent a car. Without addressing this issue, this might as well be a train to nowhere.
On statistics: The train throughput numbers ( passengers per hour ) are often very deceiving. The numbers are based on trains being closely spaced ( very frequent ) and 100% full of passengers. Just look at Caltrans in CA. I've seen numbers showing how the train corridor carries a lot more people per hour than the same sized road. However, the assumption is that you can run one train every 6 minutes. Caltrans can't get anywhere near that rate of trains. Also, the Caltrans trains run virtually empty through the middle of the day. There are no passengers, but the engine is cranking out massive amounts of pollution from the big diesel engines. The pollution per person must be awful.
Mass transit is sabotaged in the US (Score:5, Insightful)
We have to stop sabotaging mass transit in the US.
Mass transit is made hard-to-use. Consider, for example, arriving in Chicago via train at Union Station. Chicago's got a good subway system, but to get on it, you've got to leave the station and walk several blocks outdoors. Metra? Somewhat better, if you're lucky enough to be leaving on a train from Union or maybe Ogilvie, but LaSalle and Van Buren are quite the hike. God forbid you want to take rail into Chicago so you can get to O'Hare for an international flight. If you come into Union, you're faced with hauling your luggage down a dingy concrete stairway to a subway station for a long el trip to the airport.
Mass transit is made second-class. Amtrak has for years struggled to be on-time, even though they're supposed to have priority over freight, they're using the rails of the freight railroads, and it's quite common to be waiting for some freight train to do its business before you can continue on your way. The tracks are poor and the trains wobble. People who suffer from motion sickness sometimes get sick from them, especially on the upper deck of a Superliner. Train speeds are low, meaning that a long haul trip is probably overnite, and if you want to be able to sleep in peace, that means paying for a roomette on the train, at substantial extra cost.
If we had high speed rail that was interconnected intelligently with subways, regional rail, buses, airports, etc., it'd be a great incentive to leave the car at home. I for one have driven enough miles that I'm happy to let someone else do the driving, but it also has to be convenient. For me, driving to O'Hare for an international flight and paying to park the car for several days is still more compelling than taking Amtrak, walking to the subway station, wrestling our luggage down the stairs and through the turnstiles, then taking the hour long trip to O'Hare.
I don't expect the current high speed rail proposals to address this sufficiently, so it isn't clear to me just how many people would start to take the train.
Re:Alternate solution (Score:5, Insightful)
How you're modded "Troll" is beyond me.
Perhaps the moderator should have posted a dissenting view instead. I recommend something like "Fifty years from now, your van will be long gone and its replacement replaced by other vans, but those tracks, built once, would still be in service and paying energy dividends."
Re:Don't target cars (Score:5, Insightful)
Doesn't matter. It's not about causing actual damage; it's about causing psychological damage. The image of dirty, bearded, beady-eyed Muslims blowing up a train will haunt soccer moms and inspire gun-toting overcompensating internet-tough-guy "patriots"
And then they'll all stop using high speed trains, just like they stopped flying, right?
Re:Alternate solution (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem with rail... (Score:3, Insightful)
...is that it'll steal customers from the airlines, which are already hurting. What will we do then, bail them out?
We're spending too much and we need to stop.
Re:Another stupid idea that will increase the defi (Score:4, Insightful)
> If it was really cost effective some private company would have already built it.
No. At least, not unless it were possible to build today with the kind of free land grants that enabled the original railroad corridors to be constructed 150 years ago.
The fact is, without the authority to condemn land via eminent domain, it would be point blank impossible to build a rail line (or freeway, or even a sidewalk for that matter) of any useful length anywhere in America besides maybe the desert or Alaska -- REGARDLESS of how profitable it might otherwise be once constructed. The moment landowners along the way realized you were building something that needed a continuous path, every last one of them would instantly demand rent-seeking amounts of money for THEIR property. Even if Oprah Winfrey, Warren Buffet, Bill Gates, and Madonna pitched in everything they had to buy the necessary ROW to build a rail line heading north from downtown Miami, they'd collectively be bankrupt before they got to the county line 15 miles north.
Rail lines have an additional disadvantage when it comes to negotiating ROW purchases with individual landowners. Unlike a normal road, which increases the value of land it passes by, a rail line only hurts the property values of adjacent land unless there happens to literally be a station nearby. When stations are 25 miles apart, good luck convincing a landowner 15 miles away that just about anything you care to offer is worth considering, especially if the rail line's construction will effectively cut off access to property on the other side.
Not about trains vs cars vs planes (Score:5, Insightful)
All the posts talking about rail (hsr/intercity/commuter/LRT/RRT) vs other modes of transportation have got it wrong. It's not about supplanting one of the current modes with trains (although that may happen), it's about providing regional (and local) transportation options where it makes sense to. A HSR system linking a village in Wyoming with another village in Wyoming probably doesn't make much sense. A HSR system linking major metro areas in regional spots like CA, the midwest, the Pacific NW, New England, etc makes perfect sense given that those are spots with the density to support rail and who's highway and air infrastructure are overburdened.
Is it economically feasible? It's gonna be expensive, no doubt. However expanding our current roadway/air infrastructure will also be expensive. The other issue is that the longer we wait, the more expensive it will become. If you feel that our current transportation system is adequate for our current and future needs, then fine; if you don't than you have to accept that "pricey" rail is also going to be part of the mix.
If you are someone who loves your car, you should be backing rail wholeheartedly for one reason: every rail passenger means one less driver on the road, which will make driving easier for you. It only takes a couple percent reduction in traffic to go from level-of-service F (stop-and-go traffic) to LOS D (traffic slow but moving)
(ftr I'm someone who does consulting for the rail industry and I'm also a member of a rail advocacy group [newengland...lition.org])
What a stupid question. (Score:3, Insightful)
There is absolutely NO DOUBT that a high speed rail system could be economically feasible. It's a matter of making it competitive with airlines, on price, and on convenience, and on speed. If that is done. You will replace the airlines almost over night.
I for one would much rather NOT stand in the homeland security line, and if the train doesn't have a 2 hour take off your shoes wait, well, I'll risk riding with the terrorists.
Re:Alternate solution (Score:5, Insightful)
... Cities can not support themselves. They require trains, trucks and ships to get food and supplies. A city without a transportation network is a tomb.
Rural areas are generally capable of becoming self sufficient if need be in practically no time at all.
You're looking at an illusion you seem to think of as being efficient.
Cities are in no way efficient, pretty much everything about them is inefficient.
You think because its only a short distance to where YOU get your supplies that it is efficient, and that is ignorant.
You have to supply water, food and energy from the city. In rural areas where density is sustainable, one can provide all 3 for themselves. A major city on the other hand has to ship in all of those things from remote areas.
Its not that I'm going to 'get you wrong' its that you are wrong because you have no concept of how quickly your life would be over if you had to use the same set of resources as those that you are seem to think you're paying for luxuries for.
You pay a tiny increase on a phone bill to a company that is completely ripping you off ... and in exchange, they get Internet and phone ... and you don't die in 3 days because they stopped giving a shit about feeding your ignorant selfish ass when they stopped communicating with you.
You are so utterly disconnected from reality I'm surprised your even in the same universe as the slashdot I'm on.
Re:Solution: Tax gas more. (Score:5, Insightful)
That would make sense, except that government size and the current scale of spending is the result of folks on the right, largely. It's always boggled my mind to hear people call for smaller government and then vote in favor of things like the patriot act and new government departments like the DHS and TSA. The left may be accused of tax and spend, but the right is definitely about spending *and* tax cuts. Pretty amazing stuff.
Re:Alternate solution (Score:3, Insightful)
I buy another one for $200?
This one, I got for free.
Re:Don't target cars (Score:2, Insightful)
Ever heard of walking? Most everything in my city (st. Louis) is within a mile of a bus stop, and within a few miles of a metrolink station, one links up to the train. For the most part you can go anywhere, unless you are so pathetically and morbidly obese to be able to walk a half a mile. And trains might be a little bit slower than aircraft, but you can still get long distance in comfort without all kinds of crap.
Re:Solution: Tax gas more. (Score:3, Insightful)
Here's my main issue with the density argument: ever been to Japan? We've ridden all over the country on the rails. Much of it is incredibly rugged terrain. In a lot of the country, your train dives into a tunnel, then a couple minutes later emerges on the other side of the mountain and immediately onto a bridge over a ravine, then straight into another tunnel, and so forth. The cost per mile must be obscene -- at least an order of magnitude higher than the cost per mile across the Great Plains. Yet they've not only merely "managed", but they've built a wonderful system.
Here's another issue: air travel suffers equally to density problems. For example, last winter, we wanted to visit my grandfather's cousin in Cimarron, NM. We had to fly in to Amarillo and then drive 4 1/2 hours to Cimarron. We could have gotten the drive down to about 3 hours by flying in through Colorado Springs or Santa Fe. Either way, air serves these remote places poorly as well, even with our current air-focused infrastructure and rail neglect, so it's hardly an argument against rail.
Re:Alternate solution (Score:5, Insightful)
Cut subsidies for all forms of transportation. Then, tax in proportion to carbon emissions. Trains win in every densely populated region, hands down.
Why the hell can't we just have taxes for the purpose of paying for government? Rather than these "I don't like what you do with your life so I'm going to try to hinder you from doing it through a passive-aggressive tax measure"
When you don't have the Constitutional or popular backing to ban something, Tax it.
Re:no need (Score:5, Insightful)
Politicians want everything to be either taxed or subsidized (or even both at the same time) so they retain control over it and hence grow the size of their own bank accounts. Not to mention, it makes it a lot easier for politically connected cronies to keep a hand in the cookie jar.
Re:Alternate solution (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Alternate solution (Score:5, Insightful)
Around here, the farmers tend to do pretty well. They generally hire Americans, things are generally harvested and handled by machines operated by well-paid Americans, and the machines are serviced locally by companies that also employ Americans who seem to be doing pretty well.
Now, we generally grow just soy, corn, and wheat around here (and lots of each), and all of those things are easily mechanized. Other areas that grow more hands-on crops (tomatoes, perhaps) might behave differently, but unlike you, I won't speak for them because I don't have any first-hand knowledge of them.
Where I come, farmers have money. Agriculture in these parts builds cities. Not the other way around.
Re:Citation Needed (Score:3, Insightful)
Oh, you mean like in the 3rd portion of that article you posted?
Re:Citation Needed (Score:1, Insightful)
Now my understanding is the exact inverse.
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn16819-city-dwellers-harm-climate-less.html [newscientist.com]
Though I am open to a rational rebuttal.
Storm
It's a moot point. Without the country people, the city slickers would last about a week.
Re:Mass transit is sabotaged in the US (Score:3, Insightful)
Mass transit is made hard-to-use. Consider, for example, arriving in Chicago via train at Union Station. Chicago's got a good subway system, but to get on it, you've got to leave the station and walk several blocks outdoors. Metra? Somewhat better, if you're lucky enough to be leaving on a train from Union or maybe Ogilvie, but LaSalle and Van Buren are quite the hike. God forbid you want to take rail into Chicago so you can get to O'Hare for an international flight. If you come into Union, you're faced with hauling your luggage down a dingy concrete stairway to a subway station for a long el trip to the airport.
If the point of mass transit in these places was to provide an efficient, useful system, then these trains would go where you want. That's not the purpose. It's for appearances, like a lot of things. That's what I see with this proposed high speed train. It'll be an opportunity to spend eight billion or more dollars to show that certain politicians care about mass transit. Also, creating a few thousand politically beholden jobs at the expense of a few thousand more independent jobs is just gravy.
Re:Alternate solution (Score:1, Insightful)
Cities don't get that food for free. Farmers SELL it to them. And farms are already massively subsidized, to the tune of tens of billions of dollars a year, a quarter of a TRILLION dollars [ewg.org] over the last 15 years, in fact. HINT: It ain't farmers who are covering the cash needed to pay for those subsidies.
Re:Train to nowhere (Score:3, Insightful)
"The pollution per person must be awful."
Sorry, is this pollution per person over the net of the service, or are you looking at times that require cars to run with its capacity?
I would doubt that if you looked at the 'systems pollution output / persons serviced per day' that it would be worse than 'Car pollution / one or two people in the same car commuting per day'. Who cares if most of the cars are totally empty. If the system is a net loss of pollution, does it mean the system's broken? Worst case scenario, they run two or three sets of schedules to handle peak travel times and get the best of inconvenience / pollution&waste.
Re:Alternate solution (Score:3, Insightful)
Sure, but governements pretty much always have mechanisms to guarantee sufficient food production. Most countries use a fixed pricing structure which is adjusted to work, while the US uses a more problematic fixed subsidy-per-creation model.
In other words, food production is not really a problem in need of an economic solution. That one is well-explored.
As for spending per capita, city dwellers are not subsidised.
Re:Independence? (Score:2, Insightful)
Your argument boils down to the fact that cars make it convenient to live an otherwise unsustainable lifestyle. You are clearly dependent on cars -- its only the fact that you happen to be able to afford one that makes them an instrument of "freedom". Should you no longer have access to a car, you would clearly be screwed.
Cars make "sense" where communities were built around them and to people who were reared to depend on them -- no surprise there.
Re:Alternate solution (Score:5, Insightful)
That's funny, because if you look at where federal tax revenue comes from vs where it goes, you'll see that it's primarily the more densely populated areas paying federal taxes, and the rural, less densely populated areas receiving taxes. That particular link is tilted as a red vs blue thing, but it also shows that more densely populated states receive more in federal tax money than less densely populated states.
So if cities are far, far more subsidized, where's that money coming from? It doesn't seem to be from the federal government, and if it comes from the state where does the state get that money? Cities are still the main source of income for state governments, after all.
Face it, rural areas are highly inefficient. Yes, they create the food that the cities need - but in practice, that means a couple of factory farms owned by an agro-megacorp and manned by maybe a thousand people out in the boonies where nobody can smell the manure. The rest of it is just people who drive too much to get to their day job in the city.
as soon as agriculture was invented (Score:2, Insightful)
people started to piling into cities. cities are the ideal for a social species
"Cities are in no way efficient, pretty much everything about them is inefficient."
uh... what? if you pile everyone together, all communication and transport is minimized between people. yes, you have to move food and water in... why do you believe this is the most important or the most intensive form of communication/ transportation? the obvious truth is that cities are the ideal for efficiency (what's inefficient is the suburbs, but this is a quirk of the last century when oil was cheap, the suburbs will die as energy becomes more expensive)
look: people prefer to live in cities. as of 2005, 81% of americans live in the city or the suburbs
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_the_United_States [wikipedia.org]
does that factoid mean anything to your bizarre anti-city bias?
cities are the ideal environment for mankind, by choice, and by design. we invented them, we overwhelmingly choose to live in them. all other species adapt to their environment, but homo sapiens adapts its environment to itself. and what we have chosen to make, and prefer to be born, to live, and to die in, are cities, as point of historical and contemporary objective fact
Re:And you know this by what empirical data? (Score:2, Insightful)
Actually this exists and is very practical: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auto_Train [wikipedia.org]
I've taken this before and it is constantly booked. I got my car after 10 minutes at the station. I wish that they had more of these.
Why I would take a train rather than a plane:
1) no nude pics get taken of you or your significant other
2) I've never had my stuff stolen on a train by the TSA.
3) check-in is faster. you don't get charged for talking to a human
4) it is more comfortable, and you get more leg room
5) you aren't nickle and dimed for every little thing
Who has NOT seen something like this at an airport: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z7AWw7t5zj0 [youtube.com]
Re:Alternate solution (Score:3, Insightful)
Face it, rural areas are highly inefficient. Yes, they create the food that the cities need - but in practice, that means a couple of factory farms owned by an agro-megacorp and manned by maybe a thousand people out in the boonies where nobody can smell the manure. The rest of it is just people who drive too much to get to their day job in the city.
Exactly. There's more though: many people are just people who don't want to live in big cities, so they live in small towns, or outside of small towns. They do tons of driving: they drive 10-20 miles every day or so to the nearest small town for regular grocery shopping and to eat out, and every week or so they drive 50 miles or so to the nearest larger city so they can go to the mall and do other things their local town doesn't have. But they do all this driving in a big pickup truck, and complain about gas prices.
Re:Solution: Tax gas more. (Score:3, Insightful)
Jesus christ, I'm sick of trolls who claim that we went to war for oil. If we went to war for lower gas prices, then why the frak did gas prices double after the war started? Yes, some of it was due to price gouging on the parts of oil countries and speculators, but that's already been negated by the recession and gas STILL costs twice what it did before the war.
Yes, I get it, you hate Bush. So do I. I also think the war is pointless and unprovoked. However, you're only hurting your arguments with claims that we went to war over oil.
obvious answer: (Score:2, Insightful)
rail makes sense in high density populated areas
therefore, the east coast: yes. the west coast: yes. the middle of the country: no
this is why the usa lags in high speed rail from countries like germany (dense), france (dense), japan (dense), china (dense), etc
on a national basis, rail makes no sense, due to our overall low population density
but in isolated sections, like the california coast and the northeast: its a no-brainer yes
Dear Leader taxes us for our own good (Score:1, Insightful)
Would-be social planners love the idea of raising taxes to get the rest of us to behave the way we're supposed to. Taxes for them are not a source of revenue for essential government services, but the financial equivalent of an electric fence for the cattle they see the rest of us as. Get bent, buddy.
Re:Germany is 1/2 the size of Texas (Score:5, Insightful)
And Sweden is larger than California (449,964 km^2 vs 423,970 km^2), but only has a third of the population of California (9.3 million vs 36.9 million).
What are you smoking, that makes you believe that California couldn't sustain as extensive a train network as Sweden?
Re:Alternate solution (Score:4, Insightful)
Sure, if by 'self sufficient' you mean 'living in stone age conditions'.
Sure a rural region can provide all three 'for themselves' so long as they have an industrial base to provide the tools and implements, otherwise it's back to the stone age. Not to mention that there probably aren't enough oxen, mules, donkeys, or draft horses about to pull the plows...
Re:Don't target cars (Score:3, Insightful)
Easy solution: Nudist trains. I would love to travel without worrying about all that crap, and get to do so comfortably. Nudist airlines would be pretty cool too.
Apparently you've never seen me nude. The railroads might save a bit on uneaten meals, but they'd spend a lot more on mops and janitors.
Re:Alternate solution (Score:3, Insightful)
Sorry, but you're the one disconnected from reality.
If you moved all the tens of millions of people from the cities into rural areas, at the same density that people in rural areas already live, everything would be far LESS efficient than with cities. You're totally ignoring the size of the population, and the fact that real estate is limited, and also that the population is rapidly expanding.
Fresh water is already a diminishing resource. You think that'd change if everyone moved to fertile rural areas? (It certainly wouldn't change if everyone moved to arid rural areas...)
Where do you think all the available land is, for 150+ million Americans to move to the country and each have 40 acres to themselves? And no, I don't think they want to move to the Nevada desert.
Re:Alternate solution (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Well, if it were economically feasible (Score:0, Insightful)
No, they think Atlas Shrugged was a deranged pile of shit. Which it was. Please learn to think beyond the third grade level before you post again.
Re:Alternate solution (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Solution: Tax gas more. (Score:4, Insightful)
I think it's kind of similar to liberals who get upset when Democrats turn out to be beholden to the big corporate interests they are supposed to be fighting. Politicians are always hypocrites, don't expect otherwise.
Re:Alternate solution (Score:5, Insightful)
"Sure, if by 'self sufficient' you mean 'living in stone age conditions'."
I don't.
"Sure a rural region can provide all three 'for themselves' so long as they have an industrial base to provide the tools and implements, otherwise it's back to the stone age."
Are you under the impression that "rural area" means "only farms"? You know more electricity is generated in rural areas than urban and suburban, and that there are factories in rural areas?
We're talking about the rural United States. We're not talking about Somalia.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Alternate solution (Score:3, Insightful)
Why so much hatred for the rural folks on Slashdot?
My guess is the City Dwellers noses were put out of joint by the Rural Folks suggesting that city life is subsidised by rural life. My guess is that it's closer to a more symbiotic relationship, although it ought to be pretty clear which lifestyle could exist on its own and which obviously couldn't!
Given that CD's need the RF to make the food it doesn't seem so bad for the higher population centre's obviously higher tax take (more people generate more tax revenue) to be spread to the lower population centres. I think calling that a subsidy is perhaps a bit wide of the mark though, as without those willing to live a rural life, and grow the food, the CD's would presumably starve.
But what if the farmers/farms/food wasn't subsidised (as suggested above by node3)?
Then the farmers would charge the actual cost for the products and the city dwellers would buy it at the real cost, but not be taxed so heavily for the privilege!
This would be not so great for the low wage earners, who presumably don't pay so much tax anyway!
Maybe the answer is that, even in the US, the whole country should look at itself as a community and understand that taxation isn't the root of all evil, but just how communities work. The problem is no longer "how much am I taxed" but "how is that money spent", and in some areas of the US a High Speed Rail link is a no-brainer - NY to Washington DC for example - expand that to the East Coast. Throw in a West Coast line too. NY to Chicago would probably work too. Joining large cities together where the journey times could compete with airlines (remember, check in times vs city centre to city centre, etc) and join the dots. There would then likely be some areas where it will be less economically viable, and yet joining the East and West coast, esp. using some of the viable sections that head inland anyway, would just make sense!
I'd say there seems to be a reticence in the US for rail, high speed or otherwise, and I'm not sure the arguments against are actually arguments against rail and not just "DON'T TAX ME".
On the other hand, long distance rail travel is always going to be more expensive for the traveller than flying because it takes longer, but it is a far more civilised mode of transport, if you have the time and the inclination!
FWIW, I like the idea of HSR ... Bring It On!
Re:Alternate solution (Score:3, Insightful)
If cities are subsidizing some of the increased cost of living in the country, then if we just have the rural places pay the actual costs directly, but charge more for food to make up for it, doesn't that basically balance out?
Nope. Instead, you'll start importing more food because domestically produced food becomes more expensive than locally produced food. The domestic famers then go out of business and stop producing. Relying on imports for food is generally regarded as bad for national security, although blockading a country the size of the USA would be a nontrivial endeavour. Mind you, the British said something similar before the Second World War...
Re:Citation Needed (Score:5, Insightful)
He's talking personal carbon footprint. You're talking per capita (and defined by a limited geographic area). You're penalizing the farmer and any manufacturing (like steel and aluminum, usually done outside of cities near power plants in rural areas) against the rural area, when they are lopsidedly providing for the city folk, but counting the emissions per capita against the farmer and manufacturing.
Your study is crap. It's using the geographic boundaries of city and rural to cheat. Most rural carbon emission is for urban consumption. For example, trucking the city food in from the rural area, counts against the farmer. The farmer being product for the city works against the farmer, since running his tractor to work his 1,000 acres to support 200+ city folk, contributes hugely to his emissions.
(And honestly? Air samples? Not calculations based on economic flow of material and goods serving the communities by weight of who the end users area? Methane? That's the best you could find?)
Moving his steers to be slaughtered counts against him. Not the city folk for which they farted and were slaughtered for.
The concrete for the highway to get the goods in, counts again the farmer, not the city folk.
etc. etc.
Simple analysis--to get his work done, the farmer receives hydrocarbons. For city folk to get their work done, they require food. A tanker of diesel is more efficient than 2 semis hauling corn in to the city.
Re:Alternate solution (Score:3, Insightful)
"Why so much hatred for the rural folks on Slashdot?"
Urban elitism.
However (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Alternate solution (Score:3, Insightful)
Two reasons. Firstly, even when you are taxing to raise money, you have a choice what to tax. You can tax alcohol and medicine the same. This is a choice, but most people have shown a preference for taxing what they see as luxuries higher than necessities.
Secondly, sometimes personal use has public costs. Many things produce pollution, whether it be atmospheric, noise, water etc. which produce a cost on everybody but a benefit for the few. It seems reasonable to require the few to compensate the many for the harm they done. The compensation may be used to rectify the harm done, or to buy something different which will compensate. The demand for compensation then produces a pressure on the few to consider others to some extent. Of course, the compensation must be proportionate. But the production of CO2 is a harm to everybody: it is reasonable to expect those who get the benefit from the CO2 to compensate others for the harm they do.
Re:Another stupid idea that will increase the defi (Score:3, Insightful)
No, but you could get a single mom of 2-3 kids to run books. Do phone support. You still need people doing office work.
And John Henry was replaced by a machine just because we say he was replaced by a machine. Even if we did nothing I'd rather pay someone to dig a hole one day and fill it in the next than let them sit around doing nothing on unemployment & welfare. I bet you'd see a dramatic drop in crime because people were too tired to go gangbanging after a day of hard labor.
If drugs were legalized, it'd take away a huge cash incentive to go make or sell drugs. I don't remember hearing stories from my grandpa how his family was 'entertained' while he was away. It wasn't an easy situation for anyone, but it got America through.
If everything was 'machines machines machines' then why do we hear about people being laid off when production goes down? Shouldn't there just be stories about how Cat had to flip some breakers?
No, but you train them and they're a trucker or a pilot or a machine operator. I bet a majority of CCC workers weren't brick layers, or cement pourers, but somehow they managed to build the stuff that we've used for the last 70 years.
Have you ever seen the middle of an interstate? In 90% of the country there is a reason they're called 'divided highways'. Plenty of room to add a rail service [google.com] Once you get to the city, you take it elevated or under ground, or just have main hubs outside of cities with commuter trains or subways actually going into the city.
And "on and off the train without dodging traffic", seriously? That's the best argument you have? You'd build overhead stairs. Just like trains in every other damn country have, or an elevated platform that the train goes up on.
Re:Don't target cars (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Solution: Tax gas more. (Score:5, Insightful)
Look at the tea-party platform, and you'll see it's primarily economic: they've dropped the 'moral' aspect of the right and have focused mainly on cutting deficits by cutting spending.
Hardly. The libertarian right views its form of meritocracy as a moral issue. It's immoral to give healthcare to the needy because you take money from those who "earned" it. I haven't seen any tea-partier actually support reducing the size of the government by cutting funding to the largest military in the world. I haven't seen a single tea-partier come out in favor of personal liberty through marijuana reform, or legalizing prostitution, or really any other actual limits on our liberty. The tea-party platform is total bunk. It's the same old conservative, right wing, republican platform dressed up in colorful rhetoric.
Re:The Advantage (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Alternate solution (Score:4, Insightful)
Why so much hatred for the rural folks on Slashdot?
Because Slashdot is mostly made up of city dwelling yuppies? They're the sort of people that will curl up into a ball on the floor and die if the electricity ever goes out.
Re:Alternate solution (Score:5, Insightful)
Then honestly, you don't know what you're talking about.
Yes, I know both. And I know neither will function long without industrial support for fuel, materials, and spare parts. This is the real world, not a game, and factories aren't fungible. If you're talking a scenario in which cities vanish, but long distance transport remains intact (economically impossible BTW), then you aren't using a definition of 'self sufficient' that has any reasonable meaning.
Re:Independence? (Score:3, Insightful)
False dichotomy. Without a car-biased culture, most of your transport needs are reduced or eliminated as there is no suburban sprawl.
In many parts of America, you have to have a car. This is not independence, this is a burden. You're burdened with the purchasing, maintenance, storage, licensing and insurance of a liability which declines in value every time you use it.
Re:Solution: Tax gas more. (Score:3, Insightful)
I met a long-time Republican state legislative type. When he decided to do something else, he ran his campaign on legalization of prostitution and drugs! The result was predictable, but somehow I do not think your complaints apply to him! Anyway, saying tea party platform is ignoring reality. The rank and file are trying to deal with some critical issues, with no competent leadership. When you talk about platform, you are dealing with theater, and I figure pretty much a Republican coop attempt. Really the only thing the Republican economics policies have going for them is that Obama's economics policies make the Republican policies look good!. Just today, "respectable" people are talking about the real unemployment figures. Now you know how this works. Every since Nixon, every administration has tweaked the study protocol and it always somehow reduces the unemployment numbers. Now it turns out if you take the Reagan or even the Clinton protocol, the unemployment numbers are 22%. This is *nationally*, not Detroit! And is it not great!Timmy say we are getting a consensus to nationalize all the real estate mortgages to avoid foreclosures. Now it happens all the money would end up with the banks. We spent 2.3 trillion on bailout so far and here is another 3 trillion coming. Can you say "hyper-inflation". So tell me what the so-called "tea party platform does to employ another 20 million people? The rank and file know in their guts it does nothing.