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Buses, at least, have some flexibility in this regard because they're not tied to rails and can pick up and drop off people based on customer demand and changes in demographics.
And I still haven't seen anyone deal with the issue of cost. I have a family of 3, soon to be 4. Buying train tickets for all of us will almost certainly always remain more expensive, unless gas increases in price by a significant amount (maybe 5 times the current cost). I just ran a quick search on Amtrak, and it would cost the 4 of us $555 roundtrip to go to NYC and back. That's maybe 4-5 times what it would cost us to drive.
Rigorous Scholarship
It should be noted that Amtrak is the only way to get from Omaha to Lincoln without driving a car. There is no Greyhound service between the cities, even though the bus drives right through Lincoln on I-80 when going from Omaha to Denver or Denver to Omaha. It's only 14$ to do so.. but as I said, it comes through only at midnight, so you have to take a cab to get from/to the station here as the bus system shuts down by that time.
If I could get on the HSR train from here to there and back for roughly the same price and not have it take an hour because the train is going slower than highway speed (an hour via Amtrak, 30 mins via car, so HSR could get there in 10-15 mins), not only could people feasibly have a job in Omaha while living in Lincoln, they wouldn't have to burn up gallons upon gallons of fuel driving between them. Now apply this to other states with populous cities in similiar situations and the benefits just multiply.
We had no real economic incentive to build the highway system either (it was built under the auspice of being part of our defense system), but now it's a sacred cow (IMMA DRIVE MY CAR AND GET TO DECIDE WHICH OFFRAMP I GET OFF TO REFUEL AT). We build HSR and actually make it good, people will adapt to it and use it.
Trains can:
- Run in worse weather than bus or plane
- be easily adapted to increased usage by simply adding another car to the train, versus having to spend thousands of exploratory dollars to add another bus route or millions of dollars to design a new airport or plane
- planes maximize profit by squeezing more passengers into the same amount of space and can be fairly late and still make more money this way, trains maximize profit by being on time and as before, can simply attach another car to the train to increase capacity
- faster than bus or taxi for many trips
- faster than a plane for certain long trips
- can have rooms with beds for long trips, so it's actually possible to sleep in them. Privately. Horizontally.
- we can include internet infrastructure under or within the HSR's track right-of-way
- HSR can technically be run down the existing highway system if need be
- It wouldn't need to sit on the side of a track for two hours because the tracks it runs on wouldn't be privately owned and have to defer to freight trains
- take people that cannot ride on a plane safely and cannot drive a car across the country cheaply and effectively
Or we could just never be a great country again and let China pass us by while our infrastructure rots as people don't want to actually do anything anymore, that works too. But I guess some people just can't see how much of a gigantic game changer HSR is. Automated cars are still a ways off.
I don't know why Greyhound doesn't offer service between the two cities. But, unless I'm missing something, Lincoln to Omaha is a one hour drive. And the Midwest being what it is, everyone drives a car out there. Do you really think it's realistic to think that people will take a bus to the train station, ride the train to the other city and then take a bus or taxi, given that they could just drive and save themselves all the hassle?
More likely, in places like Nebraska, it would remain empty and would be a giant money-sink. Because you're talking about low-density populations with little access to public transit at each end of the train lines (and little interest in using public transit when a car is available).
The problem with a lot of proponents of HSR is that they think people are just ignorant of the benefits of public transit versus a private car. But that's not the case. HSR proponents just can't make an argument that makes sense to a person in Lincoln as to why they should take the train to Omaha when they can just drive there in an hour.
HSR has little, if anything, to do with our future as a country. Its proponents are simply unable to make an argument as to how it would be viable outside of a few areas such as the NE corridor.
Finally, you're still not addressing the cost issue. Do you expect gas to get up to $15+ a gallon? Because that's what you'd need to make rail competitive for mid-distance hauls for anyone other than single people.
And for long-hauls, like from NY to LA, unless the train is significantly cheaper, people are going to take a 6 hour flight rather than spending days on a train.
Rigorous Scholarship
it didn't have to be this way - we could have developed like europe or japan - but we didn't and it is
a few months ago i visited NYC from boston. i wanted to take the train but it was $100 each way. i ended up taking the bus because it was $5 each way.
also, i basically agree that america no longer has the juice or political will to do anything ambitious or creative in a large scale anymore. we just don't. we have too many bureaucratic impediments and too many private interests with their nose under the tent to really get anything done anymore. all we can really do is hope that private enterprise will kinda sorta take care of public needs, and they rarely do all that well.
Honestly I think HSR advocates are living in a completely different reality than the rest of the US.
Guaranteed to have riders and guaranteed to have enough riders to make the train viable are completely diffrent. The reason no one 'wants to drive' from Ohama(pop 420k/829k metro) to Rapid City(pop 60k/120k) is that its fucking Rapid City. You think its a good idea to build HS rail line to connect to a city with a population of just 60k. Trains aren't free to run, and the train between Milwaukee(605k/1.76mil) and Chicago(2.85mil/9.79mil) can't get enough riders to break even, and thats with the incentive of avoiding the potential hell that is Chicago traffic(maybe it'll take 90m to drive maybe it'll take 3 hours, roll the dice to find out), not 'Set the cruse control to 75 and jam out' on empty interstate.
I learned about the early history of Seattle a few days ago. When first built, the fledging town had many infrastructure problems, such as plumbing that shot water out of the toilets if you flushed them at high tide.
A fire broke out, burning down the majority of the settlement. One historian referred to this fire as the "Great Seattle Fire"; the reason he called it "great" is because it gave people the chance to redesign the infrastructure of Seattle so it wasn't so damn terrible.
Maybe all we need in America is a few city-destroying disasters that will give us the chance to change our infrastructure over to something that isn't totally shitty?
NOLA says: Hi, come visit, get shot.
What? What do you think people do when they fly Omaha to Rapid City? Or do people not fly Omaha to Rapid City?
Well, even if you factor in the cost of the car and associated costs of ownership, yes it will cost more for your whole family to take the train (though it does save you the work of driving).
A couple things to few though: It is probably cheaper and easier for an individual traveler to take the train, gas prices are only going up, and traffic.
The real issue is that our development in general is retarded and impossible to use if you don't have autonomous control over your transport. The western US is just incredibly stupidly built in the vast majority of places if you're trying to use anything other than a car as your basic transport, however it's fueled.
In order for it to work, mass transit has to be not only cheap but ubiquitous, convenient, and fast enough that you can drop your vehicles. That's damn hard outside of a few urban areas out here - and even then probably pretty damn hard for many people since they work in one area, which may be dozens of miles from where they live, which may be 10 miles from where they shop, which may be 10 miles from their kids' schools, which may be 20 miles from where their select soccer team practices 45 minutes after classes end. And so on.
Rigorous Scholarship
While I'm probably the most pessimistic person ever most of the time, I have a feeling this will change when our empire finally falls apart and we're facing a real crisis. NOLA was ignored because... well ask Kanye, there's more to it but that's the gist.
Do you even know what is sitting just outside of Rapid City?
$Tourism. That's what.
But to even take a train to PAX from here is a 5 day trip.. which is lengthened by the fact that the train takes this route to get there. At sub highway speeds.
Yeah, but people go and see that...once(twice counting when they have kids)? Generally people head out there and do the Badlands/Mnt Rushmore/Yellowstone etc tour circuit. They don't head to the middle of nowhere, look at the mountain then leave.
Citibank reports that, following EIA findings, North America will be able to add only 4-6 mb/d to production for the next two decades. Unfortunately, global oil demand has to go up around 2 mb/d a year in order to maintain economic growth.
Similarly, the IEA reported that at best all oil and gas sources worldwide will lead to a 9-pct increase in production. Unfortunately, global demand has to go up by around 2 pct a year in order to maintain economic growth. The IEA maintains that we will need the equivalent of one Saudi Arabia every seven years just to maintain growth. Oil discoveries peaked in 1964. Oil production per capita peaked in 1979.
Finally, the 9-pct increase is based on the assumption that conventional oil production won't drop, but it will. Oil production from the U.S. peaked back in 1970. Production for two-thirds of oil-producing countries have peaked or have gone past peak. That leaves very few
Thus, we face more expensive oil energy-wise needed to support a global manufacturing and mechanized agricultural system that are heavily dependent on oil (not just for energy but also for petrochemicals), increasing population and resource demand per capita (due to a global capitalist economy and a growing global middle class), resource shortages due to depletion and environmental damage, and with that more expensive alternative sources of energy, all amid high fuel and food prices worldwide coupled with unemployment and threats of shortages for other resources (including phosphates).
We can grow lots of corn.
Well sure if we had waaaaaay more cultivated farming land than we currently do and were willing to let a few million people starve. Let's not even talk about the enviromental impact farming on that scale would have, and that's before you've used the produce to to run an engine that makes green house gassess ect ect.
Biofuels are a PR exersice, not a meaningful fuel source.
He lives on as cheezburger grease in our hearts.
Well not with your pessimism, they won't.
Or with science.
Ethanol is a rabbit hole we never should have gone down.
Pretty crude arithmetic; there is a finite supply of arable land in the world, and an ever increasing number of mouths to feed. Biofuels are a non-starter.
If you are looking for a viable replacement fuel for Gasoline & Diesel, then compressed natural gas (CNG) is the optimal choice, thanks to ridiculous abundance, low cost and the ease of converting existing diesel engines to CNG. The only thing missing right now is pipeline infrastructure to convenience stores outside of Natural Gas Industry hotspots, like Oklahoma City, OK. In addition, there are a number of exceptionally effective and simple Natural Gas Fuel Cells (Bloom Box, for one), that would make the most efficient power plant for home and vehicle electricity generation known to man. If those two things were combined it would revolutionize transportation in the U.S., because at that point you could have electric engines powered by an NG fuel cell converting natural gas (mainly methane) and O2 into electricity, H2O and CO2. Bloom and Tesla should team up to create such a car, IMO, before someone else figures that out, since a CNG tank + Bloom Box would be far cheaper energy storage/generation than the Lithium batteries they currently use for energy storage (plus Lithium is mostly found in China and the U.S. is one of the largest NG producers in the world). The other cool thing about Natural Gas is that there are also many renewable sources of methane like garbage dumps, cattle, swine, poultry, sewage plants, etc., that could be harnessed and brought into that marketplace once NG infrastructure is in place and it begins to be a popular transportation fuel. Right now you can get factory made trucks that are dual fuel: CNG and Diesel, so this is practical and not really too far off. It's a nearly perfect bridge fuel to replace Coal and Gasoline, until we are all-electric on a smart grid capable of handling the ebbs and flows of solar and wind power.
Edit: Also, shale oil is now in play, because Oil prices are sufficiently high and many companies are investing heavily in this new source at this very moment. The OP is wrong that this is not viable: it is and is coming online now (see Chesapeake Energy's announcement of shale Oil production a few weeks ago). The difference is that most of the technology and capacity to perform that work lies with the Natural Gas Producers, since big Oil, never wanted to take the risk and develop horizontal drilling and hydrological fracturing technology. It is possible that we will see a big shift in Energy power away from Standard Oil's children and the other Big Oil players, to other, newer players, and this would be a big positive in my book, because then we might see a shift to NG, which is a lot cleaner and cheaper than Oil.
Frankly, there is really no way to know if Peak Oil has really happened yet. I've heard insider estimates that the shale formations in the Dakotas alone contains larger reserves than Saudi Arabia had, and that is only 1 of numerous shale plays in the U.S., and that's only the U.S.! I think we'll just have to see what happens, but I certainly hope that NG becomes the predominant transportation fuel in the U.S. over the next 20 years, and Peak Oil might accelerate that, to our collective benefit, so even if Peak Oil happens/happened it could be a net positive.
Edit x2: Did anyone else notice the precipitous drop in Oil prices recently? What does that tell you? To me it says that either Peak Oil is not correct or demand is weakening so fast that Peak Oil doesn't matter.
Pessimism has nothing to do with it. I work in the oil industry, it's common knowledge here that biofuels are a PR exercise oil companies pour a few bucks into to keep environmentalists happy and have something to show the government on their reports. They were never meant to work, they're like the original arc reactor in iron man.
He lives on as cheezburger grease in our hearts.
Yeah, can I set up a machine to capture my farts and fuel my car? That would be great.
That's weird. Biofuels are just as bad as any other fossil fuel for the environment (well maybe slightly better but still pretty bad). I really don't know why they'd be considered environmentally friendly.
They're not going to completely replace oil of course- we use oil to make fertilizer for our crops, so of course we can't turn around and use the same crops to make more oil- but I do think they could have a place in supplementing alternative energy, for niche areas where non fossil fuel just doesn't work as an energy source, like running heavy machinery in remote locations.
Biofuels are marketed by PR departments as a Green Solution to fossil fuels.
Cause it's like, from the Earth, man.
As an interesting bit of trivia: if you use renewable natural gas sources for fuel, such as the aforementioned farts, you'd actually be reducing global climate change via the greenhouse effect, because CO2 has a far less powerful greenhouse effect than Methane.
Save The Earth: Burn Farts!!
Does a lawn contain anywhere near enough energy to run a lawnmower?
We shouldn't even have lawns. Sure, they're nice to look at and put your feet on but they consume so much water. It's insanity. And then you have people that fight the use of grey water to use for lawns because they're ignorant assholes that are easily grossed out by things they dont understand.
The more common and existing application is collecting methane from trash dumps and using it in power generation for some of the power needs of small cities.
Japanese gravel gardens for everyone! I'm totally on board with this, I fucking hate mowing the lawn.
In all honesty though, I probably live in one of the few places on earth where we can have lawns 100% watered with rain. Which is annoying.
He lives on as cheezburger grease in our hearts.
Those places are not the American South-West. Pictures of Golf courses in Arizone are rage inducing in their conspicuous waste.
In general, you should be growing whatever grows naturally in your location. There's plenty of things like that around.
StarCraft II User Name: DeadMenRise
Most of the US that is not the southwest?