These mean nothing for as long as the US government continues to contract work for these projects through private companies. This country needs a publicly-funded and operated office of construction. Otherwise, be prepared to watch that $8.2b amount to a couple hundred feet of rail and go 10x past budget and schedule
Not just that, we also need to take back the physical rails from private freight companies.
We gave them to them because they said they’d maintain them, but they don’t because the insurance premiums are cheaper, and after major wrecks the taxpayers still have to pay to fix the worst sections to prevent a crash.
That’s why passenger rail is virtually non existent here.
Since freight owns the rails, they get priority. So a passenger train might have to pull over and wait a couple hours for a freight train going 5 mph to get past them.
If we don’t fix that, there’s no point in doing anything else
One rather comedic and unfortunate problem—rail tracks are designed to somewhat circumvent this problem by occasionally splitting into two parallel tracks. The slower train goes onto one track and then the faster train goes onto the other track to pass it.
Now, the biggest issue is that freight companies have realised it’s more profitable to run obscenely long trains rather than running more trains. As a result, the freight train is often longer than the entire section of parallel track, rendering it useless.
Ugh, Cincinnati just voted to sell the last municipality owned rail line to Norfolk Southern. I agree with you completely.
Well, at least they didn’t sell it to a company who just had a crash spilling dangerous chemical is their state…
/s
Fuuuuuuuck. I voted against that but I didn’t have high hopes.
Yeah that sale never felt right at all, especially with the campaign having common administrators as the mayor’s own campaign and he got lots of TV ad time out of the push to pass the sale
Freight, by law doesn’t actually get priority, but that law is basically never enforced which amounts to the same thing.
sounds like the perfect use of eminent domain.
I know that you mean “pull over” as in, onto another track, but I can’t stop picturing the conductor cranking a steering wheel to derail the train and huffing and puffing on the side of the railway while slow traffic passes him.
I agree. You should start a grassroots campaign to get people in these local communities to start beating down their Rep’s doors to make this happen. Not even joking.
Me? No, I’m just gonna bitch about it online. But you, you should
No. U, PP_BOY_.
Yeah! Step up and stop being a PP_BOY and be a PP_MAN!
I agree that regulated public rail is a better implementation, but this does not “mean nothing”, it’s a substantial investment in critical infrastructure and shows that the US is trying to catch up to the rest of the world.
It’s a significant policy.
Amen.
Just look at the further decimated ruins of our public education system after diverting funds to charter schools.
Privatization of the commons is just another capitalist con-game to grow/metastasize/profit off of aspects of society where any rational, empathetic person would immediately understand greed has no place.
But acknowledging greed as the destructive force it is is the height of Un-American at this point, so whatever. There doesn’t seem to be anything more than a tiny smattering of powerless peasants that even acknowledge let alone care what giving sociopathic, insatiable greed the keys has and continues to do to the citizenry. Even those most hurt tend to side with the faceless, amoral corporate entities that hurt them and blame whoever their preferred mass propaganda tells them to blame.
Oh lost your job/savings/future? Man, I’ll bet you’re really mad at that camp of powerless homeless people over there, or the concept of government (even though the corporations intentionally, loudly broke ours and bribe officials to keep it broken), it’s really their fault if you do enough mental gymnastics, herp derp!
Or to put it another way:
Trenitalia high speed rail in Italy is the best high speed rail I’ve ever used. It’s both government funded and privately owned. It’s a lot more complicated than just private vs public ownership.
Was gonna say, the Shinkansen is another great example of privately owned mixed with public work and amazing high speed rail
Please, I implore you to visit Japan to see what real HS railways are supposed to be like.
Japan is mostly private too, isn’t it?
The federal government has never built these kinds of projects directly. The money goes to states to spend with the feds instituting auditing procedures to make sure the money is spent correctly.
what is the CCC
what is the Alaska Highway
what is the TVA Hydroelectric dam system
Two are depression era programs and the third was a military project built in an area without much of anything. It has been the preference of the Federal government over several generations to outsource construction. That isn’t going to change any time soon.
That isn’t going to change any time soon.
Democrats need better slogans.
This is the international norm. The closest to government control has been China’s State Owned Enterprises, but even then China pushed these to be run as private companies without the protections afforded to employees that they would have as government employees. China also created SOE’s as the local market didn’t have the local experience to build the initial projects.
Government operation of part of the construction industry is very low on the public’s list of things that need to be done and it isn’t exactly certain that the control will produce cheaper projects.
All I did was notice that “that won’t change anytime soon” is said frequently by Democrats.
And I’m responding to the context of the discussion you said it in.
me: “these projects should be administered by government managed offices”
you: “actually that’s never been done before”
me: “here are some examples of when it was done”
you: “well those were government-managed projects”
???
Sure. That’s the way the interstate highway system was built and is maintained. This time, though, companies will be directly involved in the build.
Aren’t government jobs put out for tender and any company private or public can bid on them? They are required to take the lowest bid as well (so you don’t just give it to your buddy) but if your buddy is the lowest bid the only way to not take it would be to prove it couldn’t be done for that price.
Lowest qualified bidder. There is also a lot of play in the spec writing. If for example my employer has something our competition can’t offer they can push for the spec to include it. For example I came up with a standy-by power mode with one of our systems that saves utility costs. Pretty proud of it. Sometimes the sales guys can convince the government to require that in the scope.
I don’t like that because lowest bid can often be lowest quality, plus it’s not like they only pay the lowest bid up to that bid and then move on to the next lowest bidder if the lowest bid goes over budget. The bidding system kinda sucks in all aspects.
Like if one company put in a bid for a bridge at $12 million but their design would need to be replaced in 20 years and another put in a bid for a $20 million bridge that would last a century, would the better bridge or cheaper one be built?
It isn’t that simple. Standards are set and there are punishments governments can use if things aren’t followed. Your stuff broke early? You are banned from bidding in this area for the next decade. Project is delayed? We are paying you 80% of what is agreed upon. You are constantly causing problems? We will write a spec that is so specific to your main competitor that you can’t possibly meet it.
The system is not perfect but it isnt as bad as people might think.
The spec is allowed to require a certain level of quality. So the job could require a 100-year lifetime. You write it so that the bridge is as quality as you want and then take who can do that quality for the lowest amount.
It is becoming a lot more complicated than that.
A lot of newer contracts are design-build, where the Contractor is given a design that is conceptual and the Contractor has to finish the design and build it. Because the design is partially done by the Contractor, the contract is usually won by a combination of price and rating based on technical merit.
Well, this is definitely the best case scenario. It’s not something that US government is capable of. Publicly funded and operated projects are a nightmare when managed by the US government.
Take the Artemis program for example. Constant shifts in power and Congress People’s desire to help their own region over the nation as a whole has slowed the program, increased costs, and lead to an outdated and illogical rocket design.
Also 8.2 billion dollars is a fucking pittance in terms of national rail service. That’s barely enough to expand an already existing rapid transit network in a moderately sized US city.
Ministry of construction? Going to be a bit hard to pull for any country, especially with multiple international standards for everything from fireproofing to waterproofing, and measurement systems etc
Annnnnd straight into executive pockets. “Well these things happen, we tried!”
Okay for those who aren’t aware of how this program works, here is a breakdown of what’s being handed out and a very brief summary of the programs.
The Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) of 2021 creates two very broad categories for train development.
- The Federal-State Partnership Grant Program, AKA the “Fed-State National” (The actual building of new stuff)
- The Federal Corridor Identification and Development Program, AKA the “Corridor ID” (The looking at maybe building stuff)
The Fed-State National is getting the most money because obviously it’s going to be building new things and repairing old things. The Corridor ID won’t be building anything, per se, but will be helping the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) and “others” to identify locations that could join the current network of passenger rail. The Corridor ID is only handing out $500,000 per selection so I won’t be giving amounts there.
Fed-State National
- Alaska — ARRC Milepost 190.5 Bridge Replacement Project (Awarded $8,200,558)/~$10.3M(2026)
- California — California Inaugural High-Speed Rail Service Project (Awarded $3,073,600,000)/~$33B(2029)
- Illinois — Chicago Union Station Mail Platform Reactivation Project (Awarded $49,600,000)/~$62M(TBD)
- Illinois — Chicago Union Station Platform Capacity Expansion & Train-shed Ventilation Improvements Project (Awarded $44,000,000)/~$55M(TBD)
- Maine — Downeaster Corridor Track Improvement Project (Awarded $27,492,000)/~$34.3M(2025)
- Montana — Malta, MT, Corridor Operational Enhancement Project (Awarded $14,900,000)/~$18.6M(2026)
- Nevada — Brightline West High-Speed Intercity Passenger Rail System Project (Awarded $3,000,000,000)/~$10.4B+(2028)
- North Carolina — Raleigh to Richmond (R2R) Innovating Rail Program Phase IA and II (Awarded $1,095,576,000)/~$1.4B(2033)
- Pennsylvania — Pennsylvanian Rail Modernization Project (Awarded $143,629,028)/~$180M(2030)
- Virginia — Transforming Rail in Virginia Phase 2 Project (Awarded $729,000,000)/~$2.6B(2029)
Total award: $8,185,997,586
Do note that for pretty much all of these projects, the awarded amount is NOT the total cost of the project. After each awarded amount, I have put / and then the current estimate for completion of the project. As example, the California high speed rail is currently estimated to cost $33 Billion. The year of TBD in parenthesis is the latest year the project is expected to be completed. The Nevada high speed rail project has a + on it’s cost because that $10.4 Billion is an initial estimate that was put into the program before the close date, the cost has increased since then.
The Corridor ID program can be divided into four sub-programs.
- Purpose a new high-speed rail - brand new, solely dedicated to this purpose.
- Purpose a new conventional rail - brand new to passengers, may share with freight
- Use an existing route with upgrades/extensions - already serves passengers, shares with freight, some new rail
- Use existing route - simple improvements to frequency, trip times, stations, or other simple characteristics
Remember that each of these is awarded $500,000 to do detail study in how to implement the program they’ve been slotted into:
New high-speed rail
- Amtrak - Texas High-Speed Rail Corridor
- NV DOT - Brightline “West” High-Speed Corridor
- CHSRA - California High-Speed Rail Phase 1 Corridor
- WA DOT - Cascadia High-Speed Ground Transportation
- NC DOT - Charlotte, North Carolina, to Atlanta, Georgia, Corridor
- North Central Texas Council of Government - Fort Worth to Houston High-Speed Rail Corridor
- Antelope VTA - High Desert Intercity High-Speed Rail Corridor
New conventional rail
- NC DOT - Asheville to Salisbury, North Carolina, Corridor
- GA DOT - Atlanta to Savannah Corridor
- City of Chattanooga, TN - Atlanta-Chattanooga-Nashville-Memphis Corridor
- LA DOT - Baton Rouge-New Orleans Corridor
- MA DOT - Boston and Albany Corridor
- CA DOT - Central Coast Corridor
- NC DOT - Charlotte to Kings Mountain, North Carolina, Corridor
- IL DOT - Chicago to Quad Cities Service Extension Program
- City of Fort Wayne, IN - Chicago, Fort Wayne, Columbus, and Pittsburgh
- OH Rail Dev Commission - Cleveland-Columbus-Dayton-Cincinnati (3C&D) Corridor
- OH Rail Dev Commission - Cleveland-Toledo-Detroit Corridor
- CA DOT - Coachella Valley Rail Corridor
- Front Range Passenger Rail District - Colorado Front Range Corridor
- VA DOT - Commonwealth Corridor
- DE Transit Co. - Diamond State Line
- Eau Claire County, MN - Eau Claire-Twin Cities Corridor
- NC DOT - Fayetteville to Raleigh, North Carolina, Corridor
- Southern Rail Commission - Gulf Coast Passenger Rail Service
- TX DOT - Houston to San Antonio Corridor
- Southern Rail Commission - I-20 Corridor Intercity Passenger Rail Service
(continued…)
- FL DOT - Jacksonville-Orlando-Miami Corridor
- KY KIPDA - Louisville-Indianapolis Passenger Rail Corridor
- FL DOT - Miami-Orlando-Tampa Corridor
- WI DOT - Milwaukee-Madison-Eau Claire-Twin Cities Corridor
- Big Sky Passenger Rail Authority - North Coast Hiawatha
- MN DOT - Northern Lights Express
- City of Peoria, IL - Peoria to Chicago Passenger Rail Service
- AZ DOT - Phoenix - Tucson Corridor
- Schuylkill River Passenger Rail Authority - Reading-Philadelphia-New York Corridor
- PA DOT - Scranton to New York Penn Station Corridor
- TX DOT - Texas Triangle: Dallas-Fort Worth-Houston Intercity Passenger Rail Corridor
- WI DOT - TCMC Service Expansion via La Crosse
- NC DOT - Wilmington to Raleigh, North Carolina, Corridor
- NC DOT - Winston-Salem to Raleigh, North Carolina, Corridor
Use existing routes with upgrades/extensions
- Amtrak - Amtrak to Long Island
- CA DOT - Capitol Corridor
- Northern New England Passenger Rail Authority - Downeaster Corridor
- VT VTrans - Green Mountain Corridor
- MO DOT - Hannibal Extension of Existing Chicago-Quincy Corridor
- KS DOT - Heartland Flyer Extension
- MO DOT - Kansas City, MO, to St Joseph, MO
- CA DOT - Los Angeles-San Diego-San Luis Obispo (LOSSAN) Rail Corridor
- WI DOT - Milwaukee to Green Bay (Hiawatha Service Extension)
- CA DOT - San Joaquin Valley Corridor
- VT VTrans - Vermonter Corridor
- VA DOT - Washington, D.C., to Bristol, VA, Corridor
- MI DOT - Wolverine Corridor
Use existing route, simple upgrades
- NY DOT - Adirondack Corridor
- WA DOT - Amtrak Cascades Corridor
- AK Railroad Corporation - Anchorage North & South Corridor
- NC DOT - harlotte, North Carolina, to Washington, D.C., Corridor
- IL DOT - Chicago to Carbondale Corridor
- MI DOT - Chicago to Grand Rapids Corridor
- MI DOT - Chicago to Port Huron Corridor
- IL DOT - Chicago to St. Louis Higher-Speed Rail Corridor
- Amtrak - Daily Cardinal Service increase
- Amtrak - Daily Sunset Limited Service increase
- NY DOT - Empire Corridor
- CT DOT - Hartford Line Corridor
- IN DOT - Indianapolis-Chicago Corridor
- PA DOT - Keystone Corridor: Pittsburgh to Philadelphia
- WI DOT - Milwaukee to Chicago Hiawatha Service Expansion
Total Award: 69 (noice) that I counted multiply by $500,000 = $34,500,000
Remember that the Corridor ID program is money the indicated people can use to do a required study for ultimately asking to be in the next grant of the Fed-State National. Just because these people are handed the money for the study DOES NOT MEAN that a rail project will be funded by the Fed-State National program.
Total awarded amount by the FRA as directed by the President: $8,220,497,586
Also note this excluded explicitly funding already earmarked for Railroad Crossing Elimination (RCE) and Consolidated Rail Infrastructure and Safety Improvements (CRISI) as required by law. Things inside the RCE and CRISI are mandatory spending line items.
Thanks for the breakdown. Can’t wait to see the eventual rail improvements, I’m glad to see my home state in the list multiple times.
AZ desperately needs one going in-between Phoenix and Flagstaff. Not that a route between Phoenix and Tucson isn’t good it’s just that there is so little options for going up north right now.
I have what is basically classified as a moped because I’m cheap and gas is expensive and I can get to Tucson from Phoenix in about an hour and a half longer than driving. I can’t even go north reasonably because the state says the option for crappier vehicles is some overlong scenic route that makes going from Phoenix to Flagstaff be an extra 100+ miles.
Maybe this isn’t true with newer models but I thought mopeds had really bad fuel efficiency?
I’m basically using a 2 stroke chainsaw motor and I get around 20 miles per liter on a 40-1 oil mix
So basically ~0.32 liters per 10km, that’s nice!
No love for Connecticut.
CT DOT - Hartford Line Corridor
Thanks. Missed that.
I was a bit curious and found more details in Wikipedia. It can be difficult to really understand the impact of what can appear to be smaller changes for huge money, but the important part is ….
On the line from Hartford to Springfield improvements including more double-tracking are
expected to allow for an increase in service from 35 to 44 trains each day. Work on the project is expected to take place between August 2024 and November 2027
This line not only connect two important medium sized cities in the region but carries traffic north to Vermont
Ironic given that “Connect” is even in the name! … Unless they cut it.
I’ll see myself out…
ITT: “I like trains but this is bad because I can’t admit that Biden is capable of doing anything good.”
Cynicism is what’s killing America. Faster than any politics. Look in the mirror and grow the fuck up.
I don’t agree with him often, but damn we should have put in a rail system decades ago.
The best time was decades ago, the second best time is now!
Can’t disagree with that!
I would bet actual cash money we will not see any high speed train outside of California in the next 10 years.
I was high on copium for a decade that Obama was gonna give me fiber internet and it never happened.
This isn’t cynicism, this is just a giant novelty size pork barrel filled with rotting lard like the last several nationwide infrastructure projects were.
Well, you probably already lost that bet, because the LA->Vegas train is likely to be done before 2033 (even with some setbacks in the schedule). In fact, it’ll probably be done before LA->San Fransisco. It follows an existing highway route, so there isn’t much fight over land use. Most of the things that bog down these projects already seem to be cleared for it. Also helps that there isn’t a lot in between LA and Vegas; you don’t have every town over 10k people demanding they get a stop.
Ok you got me there. I forgot Nevada is part of this, and they’re aiming for 2028 for the next Olympics.
Well, he tried, but it turns out it’s more profitable to just steal the money and hire some lawyers with part of it.
this is just a giant novelty size pork barrel filled with rotting lard
That took my imagination for a high speed ride.
Seriously. I went lower to look and it’s wild. So many people try to sound calm and unbiased but they’re all just complaining that it’s fake and nothing good will happen.
What about the the last decade (60 years really) has given you hope about our political system? Shit keeps getting worse for people on the bottom and better for the 1%.
For me, Acela.
Previously even in the highest population corner of the country, big cities that already have significant train systems, somehow we couldn’t get reasonably from one to the other.
Since it opened, I choose Acela over flying from Boston to NYC every time, and over Driving every time I’m going into the city (still might drive suburb to suburb). Acela runs reliably, not slower than driving/flying, and it’s easier/more comfortable. It works. We can build a working train system!
Problem is when you get outside of the Boston through DC corridor, population drops off a cliff. It starts to get too spread out.
But I’d settle for spreading two forks out toward Pittsburg and Richmond. Then keep getting the forks out further toward Chicago and Atlanta, with the big/growing cities along the way.
Most of the reasonable high speed rail proposals I’ve seen are to start in higher population areas where they make sense, build up feeders, extend as passenger traffic rises and eventually connect in places. Focusing on ideas like a new trans-continental railroad may be inspiring but just not practical. Who would ride where there are no cities or where flying or driving is faster and easier?
But the northeast proves it can work, and many of the allocations in this announcement are to upgrade standard rail to support more traffic as feeders, and I believe some could eventually lead to extensions southward
The usual regional centers proposed include:
- northwest- Vancouver, Seattle, Portland
- California- la to sf (being built)
- Houston, Dallas, Austin (I’m not convinced we’d get them out of their cars)
- Florida- brightline
- Midwest- connect rust belt cities centered on Chicago
Its also just like every time I see an american flag I’m like “oh this person hates americans”.
Cynicism
Because it’s the people’s fault and a little attitude adjustment will fix everything
It sure will if not fix, at least improve your overall mood, and consequently your life
yeah it’s kind of difficult to feel good about it when it’s coming on the back of him / congress enabling literal genocide on the other side of the planet, thanks
I don’t need a train. I need rent that isn’t 60% of my take home, or, better yet, a house. What’s that? NYT is saying that’s never going to happen and that I should just be okay with it. Oh and the economy’s doing great.
We should have both. The trains will do a lot for regular people, and so would bringing back capital gains taxes.
What did your want Biden to do about your rent?
Put capital gains tax on housing investments. Divert all cash from a pie in the sky train program for housing subsidies.
Housing subsidies raise the overall cost, and the middle class still gets to pay the bill. It has its place for low incomes, but it’s counterproductive when done too broadly. I’m definitely in favor of taxing investment real estate though.
This “pie in the sky” train system is currently using like none of the federal budget. Find something else to cut money from.
Read the news. There’s a few things being tried, but one guy can’t unilaterally do everything, even if you’re president
Most of the things that would improve the housing market would be done at the city level. Getting hedge funds out of owning houses would be nice, but zoning and higher density are things done by your local city council.
I am surrounded by hundreds of empty units owned by a few multinational corporations subcontracting out their properties to the same management firm. They all use the same profit maximizing algorithm with a shared database. It’s very illegal. I don’t think a city could win a fight against a single billionaire, let alone a legion of them. I don’t see my city even trying. Right now some tenants across the country are suing, which is an even more damned approach. This needs a federal stick.
I blame the aftermath of the New Atheist movement tbh.
Go around telling people there’s no mysticism, it’s all pointless, and misery is enlightenment and be shocked when everyone is sad.
You’re talking about nihilism, not atheism. Atheism does not preclude humanism.
New Atheism is a fast track to Nihilism
I’m not sure y’all know what nihilism means. Assuming you are talking about Nietzsche’s nihilism, he described it as a series of transformational stages where a new understanding of self would necessarily emerge while the control structure of religion slowly crumbled away in modernity. He argued that this idea was so revolutionary that it would be news to atheists too.
There isn’t even a lot of despair or handwringing about it—he just points out that we need a new type of operating parameters to meet the modern world head on:
“…we are faced with a difficult, long term restoration project in which the most cherished aspects of our way of life must be ruthlessly investigated, dismantled, and then reconstructed in healthier form—all while we continue somehow to sail the ship of our common ethical life on the high seas.”
I"m not, I’m talking about the Modern Reimagining where it’s just being depressed all the time.
Even if you don’t necessarily believe in a God, unless you’re proud of cynicism without rationale (your typical teen), considering people have gotten this far, both collectively, and if you imagine your father or mother’s life, you’d still believe in something good, even if it’s just the power of money, or laughing at life’s misery in general
So…what if the railroad companies take the money and then do absolutely nothing, like what happened every single time this has been tried? What is there to hold them accountable this time?
Add telcoms to that list as well… almost a trillion was given to them to get broadband in all homes in the USA…poof
Broadband is getting better! My in-laws who live in the boonies a few miles outside of a tiny town of 400 are jumping from ~2-4mbit/s download speed to fiber to the home, and I’ve seen broadband expansion in my extremely rural area by multiple telecom companies! It’s obviously slow going but it is happening
That’s surprising…only way we are getting it here is from our power company which is a coop. They’re basically running it to all the homes they supply power to. Only another 2-3 years for us.
Good to hear. We had a quick expansion of fiber a couple decades ago and it seemed like it just stopped there. You never hear about more fiber rollout
In fairness, last time this was tried we had Husky Musky employing a fraud with the explicit intent of killing the high-speed rail. Toss on a host of republican opposition and undermining in 2013± and you have the reason why it failed. It has nothing to do with the rail companies. It has everything you do with political dysfunction and not wanting to “let liberals win”.
what would be the point in killing the high speed rail project? to defend tesla sales?
Generally, also pompous-ass disease. As the other user mentioned, Musk has pretty systematically worked against the 99% for his entire adult life. The idea that a normal everyday person could afford a ticket from LA to San Francisco that would get them there in roughly the same amount of time as his private jet would probably have infuriated him beyond compare. Just look at how he reacted to a college student forwarding publicly available information about the movements of that very same jet.
I don’t like musk at all but this is the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard and probably isn’t true
Really? https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-63978323 It is 100% real. Just to be clear, in early 2022 Husky Musky got butt-hurt about the account and attempted fo give the kid $5,000 to shut it down, thinking he would just take the money and comply. He refused and laughed at him. A couple of months later, we start hearing talk of him buying twitter. About a month after buying twitter he bans the account after making some retarded changes to the ToS to justify it. Yes, I am literally saying he spent 44billion dollars because some 19-year-old in Florida pissed him off and there was nothing he could do about it because the kid was 100% within his rights and didn’t violate any rules of twitter. I’m sure he had additional motivations, like having control of a cesspool of pro-conservative nutbags that he thought he would be able to milk for power and money, but short of Elon Musk pulling up in front of my house and showing genuine human emotion besides anger to tell me that it is not the case, the primary reason he bought twitter is because a peon had the audacity to tell him no and he was impotent to do anything about it.
that has nothing to do with high speed rail. why are people upvoting this toilet garbage comment i hate reddit
Lol, I am supporting my assertion of the underlying reasoning for his decisions based on real and factual evidence. It is an inductive argument. Look at a problem, find a pattern, find a general description for the pattern, then execute the general description on further instances of the system.
I asserted that Elon Musk was a pompous assclown who looks down on normal people and thinks they don’t deserve to be capable of the same things as him. You challenged that assessment, so I found a pattern of behavior and was able to support it with evidence that validates it, then generalizing the pattern of behavior and applying that generalization to my original assertion still yields a true output, so therefore 'ole Husky Musky is a pompous assclown who sees fit to punish the little guy and make sure we are all kept in our place. QED ∎
(to my math literate comrades, the redundancy is a joke)
Sounds like you’ve never heard musk speak
The general theory is that musk dislikes any public transit that decreases car dependency. My personal feelings are more along the lines of “rich dumbass doesn’t like ideas that help the poors”, but obviously that may very well be cynicism on my part.
In the one hand, most of these allocations are to fund planning studies, so that’s exactly what will happen
In the other hand this is not like the telecom situation where we hand money to private companies promising to provide service. It’s generally infrastructure improvements and I believe project ownership is Amtrak or local DOT
The US desperately needs a high speed rail road. It’s long overdue. It’s the future. This should be a bi-partisan project.
Bi-Partisan? You’re speaking the language of Cthulhu at this point
no it does not it needs to return to horse vehicles and french style conventional rail
france has world class high speed rail
France is literally renowned for its tgv
thats the joke
Finally someone is making sense. Also replace guns with open carry swords.
That’s the peak of self defence. No one is mugging someone carrying an arming sword or rapier.
Yo u want to break into my house? Cool I have a pike with your name on it and a long hallway.
All these decades of conversations about the best firearms for home-defense when indoor jousting was the real answer all along.
Well, jousting or not - an axe is a legal option. Just sharpen it well.
deleted by creator
why is this being downtown voted
If I could ride a train, instead of flying across the US, that would be so nice. Hop on one train, take the travel time to read, wfh, relax and avoid traffic.
I also find it ironic how central to the web Chicago is looking when Saint Louis put up that fight so long ago.
There’s an Amtrak station blocks from my home. I’ve had destinations in mind with Amtrak stations nearby. Amtrak is effectively not capable of connecting stations unless the same train serves both. For example, Raleigh NC to Altoona PA. Amtrak can’t say “Take the Silver Star up to New York, hang out in Grand Central station for two hours, take the Globular Condor or whatever the Westbound train is called to Altoona.” I guess “You can’t get there from here” is easier to program.
take the Globular Condor or whatever the Westbound train is called to Altoona"
Lol, it’s the Pennsylvania 43, I’ve been taking it a lot recently - but their site may have been upgraded since you last tried it, because they told me basically that exact thing in reverse for how to get to Jacksonville from Pittsburgh when I was poking at it last week, so it might be worth giving it a go again if it’d be helpful.
Edit: lmao, I gave it a go, and nope, it says “we do not have any travel options.” Taking a look, I’d bet it’s because the Pennsylvania 43 leaves at 11AM, and the Silver Star arrives at 7:10PM, so maybe it has rules requiring same-day departure between arrivals to be consider “the same trip”? The Pittsburgh->Jax route has much shorter connections. Also you could connect in Philly if you’d like, if I’m tracking the Silver Star’s path correctly - the 43 goes NY->Philly->Altoona
Edit 2: yeah, it seems like it just doesn’t consider taking the Silver Star to the Pennsylvanian as an option when going to West PA from SC - like, even getting to Pittsburgh the only option it gives is heading to Washington DC then using the Capitol Limited from DC - which is completely reasonable, but means missing out on the extra stations you get with the Pennsylvania 43 like Altoona. I wonder if these routes between places are hand-written?
I tried the same exercise and it’s so frustrating most people would give up. It took way too long to get to a route map, so I could find out Altoona connects to Philly and Pittsburg
Booking a trip as one thing didn’t work so I tried booking two legs: Raleigh—>Phil, Phil—>Altoona. This approach lets you specify different dates, so your logic about different days doesn’t hold …
Then I had to give up. Amtrak’s site is broken for iPhone/Safari so each operation was delayed by as long as a minute or more and I was never able to proceed far enough to see schedules. No one uses a smartphone these days: clearly just a fad
This is why I find the response “people don’t use rail much in the US, there just isn’t the demand, we have to wait until there is demand” so annoying. It’s like Amtrak sucks, I would have spent innumerable more time on trains if Amtrak wasn’t overpriced crap that makes you book far in advance like a fucking airline flight in order to get a reasonable ticket price.
I pretty much only utilize commuter rails like the MTA in Boston because they are so much more functional and affordable.
Me and my family members have tried a few times. "We’re going there and coming back, this is kind of a pleasure trip, I’m in no immediate hurry so going slower than an airliner is acceptable, let’s see what Amtrak can do. In almost all cases, Amtrak’s answer is “We can’t do that.”
The ONLY train that serves my local platform here is the Silver Star. They don’t want you using it for short-haul trips like from here to Raleigh, so there are routes I’m locked out of unless I drive myself to Greensboro. The Silver Star is served by one physical train, it comes through here at about 9 at night and about 6 in the morning, and those hours aren’t even a little stable.
The navigation a passenger has to do to get from here to the West coast by Amtrak is more complicated than needed to drive yourself. I can get from here to Los Angeles on street signs alone. Amtrak is I suspect deliberately unhelpful.
For at least 30 years middle Georgia (USA) has asked for rail commute to Atlanta and Savannah.
Now see…this rail used to be a passenger rail. Somehow this ended and we can’t get it back.
With the abysmal traffic in Atlanta, this would seemingly call for enthusiasm. Somehow the issue always dies quietly after a poll is given.
Living in Savannah, I’d really just like the old passenger schedule to re open.
Not gonna happen anytime soon.
My god, a rail system all the way down I-75, A STRAIGHT FUCKING SHOT PERFECT FOR A TRAIN, would be amazing.
Instead, we got more Peach Pass that is seemingly never open on the side that actually needs it.
I lived in Savannah for 5 years for college.
I really miss that city, I haven’t been back since 2009. Say hi for me.
I served at Ft Stewart and loved visiting Savannah ❤️
Will do!
I can’t believe there’s not a plan for a rail from Atlanta to New Orleans also. There is so much back and forth from Atlanta to New Orleans these days.
I think this already exists with Amtrak. I think it’s called the southern crescent.
Wow, this guy really fucking loves trains. For real, though, this is really great news.
Even horrible presidents can do good things. This is definitely a good thing
You think biden is terrible, I would advise you to read up on the last person in office.
I want to be clear that I’m not a Trump supporter.
Every American president in living memory was terrible. Every American president has had a destabilizing effect on foreign countries. Trump’s destabilizing effect was at home, and he was such a wild card that he had a stabilizing effect internationally. He was worse for America than he was for the world.Fdr was pretty cool idk what you’re talking about.
Were you alive during his presidency
and he was such a wild card that he had a stabilizing effect internationally
Eh, no. He didn’t. Inaction where action was expected is no better than action where inaction was expected. When the US has already put its hands into something, less harm would be done in finishing it than just pulling out in the middle.
And of course the automobile and oil lobbies will have such a massive fit that these plans end up always going nowhere.
oil choo choos are cool bro deal with it
maybe but they’re less cool than non-oil ones
Love how these huge infrastructure projects get announced right at beginning of election season, so even if it does actually get set up, it’ll just get ripped out by the next party after he loses.
Ain’t no way we’re getting bullet trains when NYC’s subway barely qualifies as having a circular route.
Can’t wait to see all this go to the lowest bidder so we can get the finest rail made of 1880 cast iron after a decade’s worth of delay.
Its been 13 years and AT&T still hasn’t given my old city fiber with the morbillion dollars they got to expand the nations network.
Cynicism is what’s killing America.
Cynicism is a symptom of a broken system that either breaks promises or fails to meet needs.
I don’t think having that attitude to somebody who is going to really do something will impede them. While having the opposite (as in “blindly trusting”) attitude to somebody who isn’t going to do anything won’t change the reality. So I don’t see how it’s killing anything.
It’s more likely the crooked people in positions of power taking money from crooked companies lining their pockets that are killing America more than the previous OP’s cynicism. What power do we have against it? If we had any at all you’d be using it, wouldn’t you?
Cool.
Can we treat rail road workers like people too? Or are we still building all of this on the backs of people sacrificing their health and their families?
Not to downplay anything but passenger rail employees are treated significantly better than freight. The majority of employees have set schedules including conductors and engineer. It’s different from crew base to crew base but between 15% to 30% are extra board working on call.
I wonder if the fact that Amtrak is nationalized and freight are private corporations has anything to do with how the employees get treated… Something to think about when it comes to freight railroads
It’s more so because moving freight vs passengers are a fundamentally different challenge. There are a handful of class one freight railroads that hold the operation contract for some commuter lines and those employees still have a significant better quality of life.
According to the unions and Biden administration worked behind the scenes to pressure the rail companies to capitulate and give rail workers the sick days they were going to strike for – and it was successful. So there’ll be no sacrifices here.
Yes that was what the news reported. The rank and file however were everywhere trying to be heard that it wasn’t what was needed. They can get 4 days off with pre clearance. It’s still a case of showing up or getting fired if you get sick. The points system is still there as well. Biden forced them back to work and then depended on the media to give him a victory lap.
Everyone except actual labor is patting themselves on the back. That’s not a good thing.
Do you have sources where I could read more about the rank and file opinion? Or surveys/polls?
No he’s just talking out of his ass, because if Biden is doing good things he can’t argue for his accelerationist nonsense.
FWIW my next door neighbor is literally a low level freight rail worker and we have discussed this in depth
What’s their opinion on things?
And yeah it’s very convenient that news reporting has skipped over all the dissenting opinions. The same news reporting that goes out of its way to show both sides to an issue. And the same reporting that isn’t a monolith, and has some outrightly stated leftist publications.
I don’t think it’s possible for there to be absolutely no news coverage of widespread worker dissent. That kind of news drives sales, and plenty of publications have ideological reasons to cover them too.
Their opinion is that yes, Biden did fight off-camera to get them the lions share of what they wanted. The job is still hard, because that’s the job.
What a lot of people miss in this discussion is that being a freight rail worker is just a job they wouldn’t do. All the workers know the game when they sign up. They know the attendance policy, they know the serious bodily harm risks, and they know the hours. They then look at the pay and decide it’s worth it, or they don’t become rail workers.
My best friend is a lineman, and it’s a similar thing there. You’re going to get electrocuted. You’re going to get bit by enormous spiders. You’re going to get injured, sometimes seriously, and you’re absolutely going to work sick because there aren’t enough linemen and electricity is important. By embracing that risk, you can get a 6 figure income in rural wherever without any education.
All of the arguments like the dude above makes involves taking away the agency of the actual workers, and imo infantilizing them, to try to score some shitty “but Biden isn’t a god who can magic into existence exactly what I want” kind of thing
I think that has to be part of the discussion, education. These workers are “unskilled laborers”, and that means companies can push them around however they’d like. There isn’t a limited pool of workers that requires them to offer comprehensive benefits, like with more technical positions. There’s also a very high chance some of the job hazards will be eliminated with automation – while also eliminating jobs. We need to prepare for that.
In the meantime, we should create formal education programs for these positions so the workers have more leverage if they desire.
Lol why is the image at the bottom of the article so tiny? I want to see the map.
Fucking Republicans slashed funding for the Democrat imaging software and now they can’t afford more than 0.5mb!
its a map for ants
It took a bit to find a map that isn’t so tiny, but the main thing to know is the red lines are high speed rails, and the blue lines are conventional rails. The solid lines versus dotted lines differentiate between FSP-N selections and CID selections.
A PDF can be found Here.
Yes, vector images for the win!
dont click
dude sent mr me straight to a FEDPOST
Im sure you Biden hating pessimistic losers would love to shit on this one.
I’ll believe it when I see it is all I will say. Anyone can promise nationwide high speed rail for the US, and many have in the past, yet here we are. Genuine praise will be warranted when it’s actually completed and carrying passengers.
Believe it or not, the money isn’t the hard part. The endless environmental studies, NIMBYism, and debate make it nearly impossible to build projects of any size in the US anymore.
The only president that I can remember that has promised high speed rail was Obama… and he spent 2 billion dollars just in the planning portion. I would imagine Biden saying 66 billion would actually do something with the blueprints already made… it seems like a done deal i dont know why you would complain about that.
i dont know why you would complain about that.
Where in my comment did I complain about it? I completely support projects like this but simply have my doubts that it will actually go as advertised. Genuinely confused because all I said is I intend to suspend my praise and celebration until it’s actually delivered, like we should with all promises by any politician. Is that considered complaining now?
Sorry i didnt mean that you specifically are complaining about waiting to see. I meant people complaining about not seeing progress even though I dont remember seeing any talks about having this done in the past other than Obama.
CAHSR at least is already under construction and has made significant, material progress in the last few years. Brightline West I’m less confident in, but CAHSR is definitely happening.
he’S OnLy doInG thiS To kILl JobS iN thE AUtOmOtiVE INdUSTry BECAUsE he’S EVil
BuT hE’s So OlDdddd
Imagine being so perpetually upset that when Genocide Brandon does something good, your reflex to is say this
Imagine being so immature you can’t mention someone without calling them a petty name, even when they do something good.
This is not something he’s done. It’s something he says he will do. Reminds me of the time he forgave our student loans.
I was sarcastically quoting that comment, but I think using a red herring severely weakens their statement and is quite childish.
Since you didn’t read the article, this is literally something he has done using funds provided by legislation he pushed and passed via Congress.
Fair assessment. It generally seems to be a way of conditioning the argument to prevent further or critical discourse. Honestly with how deprived folks in the US are (as I am in my country), I think it is a bit condescending to rain on their parade. What else would they look forward to? The widening gap in wealth inequality? The increase in infant mortality? The support of genocidal regimes? Working on the positives and what people want might be a better strategy. I will say I do appreciate your comment even if others don’t think it’s insightful, it made me pause and think a bit.
That said, I am glad this is implemented, and I don’t have evidence (read: haven’t seen anything or bothered to look too much into it) this project will fair worse than others which appeared to be ‘too good to be true’, baring such evidence and with the general sentiment that this makes total sense, I want to say it’s fair that it would be done even if it is being done decades late.
He’s still committing genocide.
If you like railway and genocide you’d like the CCP as well. Xi for Pres baby.
Bro, name a president without blood on their hands.
NullReferenceException
Can’t because you keep voting for genocidal maniacs instead of voting third party.
Voting for a better third party in our current system unfortunately just makes it more likely that the worse of the two genocidal maniacs becomes the president instead.
Trump started his run at a 1% polling rate and became president.
The only reason a third party keeps winning is because Democrat voters are so stuck in their old boomer ways that they can’t fathom the possibility of changing anything.
The Democrats are the real conservatives.
🤦🤡
Trump became president by winning over enough Republican primary voters and then exploiting the electoral college’s inbuilt favoring of conservatives.
For someone better to get in, they have to go through one of the major parties, and that means winning a primary. As such, by voting in a primary, there is the chance to actually stop a genocidal maniac from being put on the ticket in the first place. In our current system, that is unfortunately our best option. Voting third party in the general election in a first-past-the-post system that filters the popular vote through the electoral college is about as close as you can get to throwing your vote away without putting it in a literal trash can.
For the record, while this is the system that we live with and have to work within as long as we have it, this system is also total shit and we should absolutely abolish the electoral college and adopt a more parliamentary system like stronger democracies have elsewhere in the world.
Building it is only part of the solution. The other part is making it affordable to use. The rail in Florida was basically already built, and recently. The problem is that it’s not affordable as an option for residents. A weekend trip from Orlando to Miami is $120 (one way) https://www.gobrightline.com/booking. It costs half that in gas to drive round trip, and takes about the same time too.
In my opinion, public transportation doesn’t need to be profitable. Subsidized by taxes, like our freeways. Adds to the economy and is worth the investment
About damn time.
