Reaction to Joe Biden's "Hey, let's spend $53 billion on high-speed rail" contribution to the latest "boondoggle in the name of Progress":
Why not? The federal budget is now like a teetering Jenga tower that stretches into the Earth's upper atmosphere. There's no question that it's going to topple pretty soon, so in the meantime, why not have fun and see how many more pieces we can stick on there before it does?
[. . .]
Theoretically, there has to come a point where the budget grows so bloated that even leftists agree that pursuing risky new projects is imprudent for the time being, until we retrench fiscally and reprioritize. And yet, evidently, we haven't yet reached that point. Where is that point, exactly?
I use to wonder about that, too. But I don't think there is a "stop spending" point for them.
Comments
Politicians are always talking about eliminating waste, fraud, and abuse. Well, here's an opportunity to do something about it.
There isn't a form of travel that isn't subsidized - but high speed rail would involve less subsidy than the same travel via airline or interstate highway.
What's more, it reduces American dependence on foreign oil, makes us less vulnerable to terrorism, and is built using American steel and American vehicles, instead of relying on foreign-made Toyotas and Airbus 1011s.
What's the logic in objecting to spending less on travel subsidies?
One word answer why Greasy Joe and the rest of his pals are nucking futz:
Amtrak.
and you believe Amtrak on the northeast corridor of the U.S., for example, went bye bye, our transportation would be better off for it? Or if there were no subsidies, making riding a train prohibitive, that would be good for the long run?
AJ
Federal subsidization of transportation is a fact of life and one of the things that can actually be justified by the Commerce Clause. And it's fair to question what the right balance of spending is -- how much on highway, air travel, rail, shipping. But accepting that isn't the same as endorsing sinking billions into a scheme for "high-speed" rail that, for all the reasons in the articles and the others it links to, won't work.
Air travel doesn't work either, Leo. If you add together all the profits and all the losses of all the airlines ever since the start of the industry, you get a net loss, and that's not counting the money that goes into air traffic controllers, paving the runways, etc.
And in the last ten years, we've increased the subsidy of the federal government in air transportation by an incredibly amount in the name of fighting terrorism.
The system they're talking about isn't really addressing the issue properly. What we need is a separate set of rails running between all the metropolitan statistical areas, and individual low-passenger-count cars that are operated by computer using GPS and satellite communications to eliminate high labor costs, at incredibly high speed, wide rails for stability, welded rail so there is no clack-clack-clack, so that you could eliminate most of the air travel in this country.
Want to go to Orlando? Head down to the terminal, and climb on board a Marriott-owned car at 8 PM tonight. Each car has its own power, like an interurban, so that you don't have to change trains in Chicago, and go through a switching yard in Chattanooga; it's point-to-point travel. Crawl into your berth and catch a nice night's sleep, and arrive in the morning, rested, and ready to negotiate a contract without jet lag.
It doesn't need to be cheaper than a plane ticket. What you need is something that costs less overall than existing transportation - and the biggest part of the current cost is the labor.
Competition between companies that own and maintain cars keeps the system operating well. There are a lot of people out there that used to build custom vans that would love to build custom cars on a standard chassis. Lots of doctors and dentists would view buying a single car as a viable investment. Cars on the same rail headed in the same direction would creep towards each other and automatically couple so as to minimize wind resistance and maintain efficiency.
We already have most of the right-of-way for those tracks - it's the median running down the center of the interstate highway system.
When you're short of cash, you need to pay to put a new transmission in your car. Taking a taxi every time you need to go somewhere is just too damned expensive.