State of the Union Address 2006

http://www.mydd.com/story/2006/1/27/11451/1587

....as seen in my unvisited thread

Ask a Republican

and then the govt just sort of forgot about actually doing it

Excerpts were released in advance of the 9 p.m. EST speech.

One is tempted to sneer, "No shit, Sherlock", but that would be petty of one.

TRANSLATION (courtesy Moogle Language Tools): "You may want me to call a halt to endless, ruinously expensive wars, but the only way we're going to stave off the fate that befell imperial Rome is to fight everybody on the planet, one by one, or all together if necessary, under my leadership. They all hate us anyhow, so let's drop the big one now."

well he allowed that there might be something worse, which is practically a thumbs-up from him. anyway, i don't have any stanley kubrick movies at home to watch.

WIZARDISHUNGRY

"Gee, thanks Senator Feinstein, I'd love to come along!"

Reminded me a lot of when WCW tried to restart the NWO for the fourth or fifth.

America's fatal dependency on oil isn't even about commuters with dinky stupid office jobs in cities - it's the fact that everything you buy or sell travels some huge distance in the trailer of a truck with 18 retreaded tires, in questionable mechanical condition and running on diesel over roads paid for by everyone's taxes. That's what's going to kill us, when those guys start to squirm. They burn oil all day and all night while you and I only do it for an hour a day. And if they don't burn that oil, you and I don't eat. Pay up. "Why do we need trains? Cars work just fine!" For one person's groceries, maybe, not 250 million.

huh?

America's fatal dependency on oil isn't even about commuters with dinky stupid office jobs in cities - it's the fact that everything you buy or sell travels some huge distance in the trailer of a truck with 18 retreaded tires, in questionable mechanical condition and running on diesel over roads paid for by everyone's taxes.

i'd argue that it's more to do with almost every manufacturing process you can think of, way way before products get to market. the shortsighted thinking in all this, to me, is thinking of gasoline as solely a transportation fuel.

Of course the govt. investment required for high-speed rail would be sustantial. Of course it would impact "the budget." Everything does, especially huge projects whose benefits will be measured over decades rather than next quarter. I don't see how this is a criticism.

The DOT estimated in the mid-1990s that there is enough demand for a high speed rail system serving major metro groupings (journeys up to 500 miles or so) that the industry would be sustainable and could turn a profit. Yes, we have a "car culture" in the US, but every time a mass transit option has sprung up here, the public has flocked to it.

For a thorough breakdown of the rail options, you can look at this CBO report - http://www.cbo.gov/showdoc.cfm?index=4571&sequence=0&from=0

interesting. are there any subsequent studies? the world has sped up a lot since the mid-90s, and it's easier to communicate across distances. would demand have fallen?

185 mph

xpost - o i see, yes

This graph seems to show that transportation is the major use of oil in the US (>60%).

Another interesting graph:

http://www.eia.doe.gov/pub/oil_gas/petroleum/analysis_publications/oil_market_basics/images/conspcap.gif

I do. I like trains better than planes or cars. I just don't think it's necessary right now. Thinking about prospects, though, it some potential lines in the Southeast started to seem logical, i.e. Hampton Roads-Richmond-Raleigh-Charlotte-Atlanta-Nashville-Memphis (or Louisville?), but is there a geographical reason Nashville isn't already rail-connected?

too many proles, natch

does that make you feel good?

Southwest Airlines to thread, pls. JetBlue to follow with AirTran in tow.

I dunno I just can't honestly see how anybody could be AGAINST a quality passenger rail system

there's not a viable market for one in the US. Light rail is glamorous but inflexible; busing in metro areas is a more cost effective solution. gabbneb OTM. Anyone want to pull out the financials for Amtrak so we can discuss our culture's adaptation of choo-choos?

Anyone want to pull out the financials for Amtrak so we can discuss our culture's adaptation of choo-choos?

Good lord, don, why don't we also pull out the financials for the auto companies after we stop maintaining and building all the roads for them with our tax money? I am so fucking sick of that shit, it's goddamn nonsense if you take a split second to think about it

At any rate this argument is a waste of time since we have one group assuming catastrophic results if we continue to consume oil at current rates and another group assuming that the American Way Of Life can persist indefinitely or change to adapt to new conditions at such a gradual pace that nobody really notices.

don, the DOT says otherwise. full report

Anyone want to pull out the financials for Amtrak so we can discuss our culture's adaptation of choo-choos?

OMB link, with analysis, already provided. and tom obviously on the money. you might also want to look at the positive effects on 1) airfares 2) wasted time at the airport 3) highway congestion 4) highway maintenance -- for starters -- if an effective high speed rail network were built to serve even just the NE corridor and the west coast.

o. nate - "big!" "centrally planned!" you're pulling out the big anti-commie guns, there, but if "no one can be sure where the rails will be most needed when crunch time finally hits," surely the issue is not one of private vs. public but the US's monumental lack of engineering and planning expertise in general?

the car people are winning the battle for tax dollars (i.e. more roads, metropolitan-centric priorities, etc.)

why don't we also pull out the financials for the auto companies after we stop maintaining and building all the roads for them with our tax money?

I have no idea what you are intimating here.

Someone should comment on the light rail they are building in Minneapolis. I haven't checked lately, but does the LA rail system service LAX?

Tracer, that report is a decade old nor does it adequately address the cultural barriers to light rail success, let alone the optimistic, Mineta-fueled projections of fiscal viability.

yes. it's just a skeleton for now. but it has the potential to be serious in 10 years.

don weiner solves the energy crisis!

I was waiting for Tom to answer you about the taxpayer funded highway system, but he hasn't, so I will -- what do you think our auto manufacturers' balance sheets would look like if they had to pay the cost of putting in new traffic lights and repaving miles of interstate?

From your article: "So far, the building splurge hasn't boosted transit use much. Subway, bus and rail ridership has been flat since 2002. The Gold Line especially — 14,000 daily boardings — has been disappointing, but officials note that it runs only 13.7 miles and new links will pick up more riders. The subway took years to attract 111,000 weekday passengers."

I don't have any factual data at hand (in fact, my infant daughter is at hand and making it hard to type) but that paragraph alone suggests that there are cultural barriers to the embrace of rail.

what do you think our auto manufacturers' balance sheets would look like if they had to pay the cost of putting in new traffic lights and repaving miles of interstate?

what's the point of that question, exactly?

kingfish, there's a bunch of info on light rail (and other stuff) here --> http://www.apta.com

xpost: the point is that effective daily transport -- whether by automobile or by rail -- needs massive government investment to keep it viable, and by asking us to look at amtrak's financials as a barometer of passenger rail's success, you're holding it to a totally different standard than the auto industry, whose products are guaranteed smooth sailing thanks to taxpayer investment to the tune of billions a year.

Baltimore, MD
Boston, MA
Buffalo, NY
Calgary, AB
Cleveland, OH
Dallas, TX
Denver, CO
Edmonton, AB
Guadalajara, JA
Hudson-Bergen, NJ
Los Angeles, CA
Mexico City, DF
Monterrey
Newark, NJ
Ottawa, ON
Philadelphia, PA
Pittsburgh, PA
Portland, OR
Sacramento, CA
Salt Lake City, UT
San Francisco, CA
San Jose, CA
San Diego, CA
St. Louis, MO
Toronto, ON

with a bunch under construction and a bunch more proposed.

xpost thanks

Cleveland has one (four lines). I moved last year specifically to get closer to the rail line. I now drive my car once or twice a week. Fares don't cover the budget however and the citizens of the county raised the sales tax in order to cover the deficit.

this is true, but note that the list doesn't include something like the People Mover in detroit, which really IS something that small(tho it originally had far greater plans 30+ years ago)

i meant to say "don"

I'm holding it to an entirely different standard because it's an entirely different industry and as the infrastructures and they are incomparable because of structural and cultural reasons. Like Rahmneb, I like riding trains and prefer them to a plane or a bus. Are you going to take my argument of the efficiency of buses head-on? (and also, what do you make of the CBO report that says, "outside the Northeast Corridor, Amtrak's cost structure differs from that of freight railroads in that it is not characterized by the large fixed costs of infrastructure (since Amtrak uses the freight railroads' tracks).?)

Again, I like trains. You do have to start somewhere, as far as encouraging the public to try to embrace mass transportation. But it kinda flies in the face of the suburbian lifestyle.

No, cause I honestly don't know enough about it. But I imagine that without significant decongestion schemes, buses would be a misery in many cities.

A pro-light-rail site does take on "BRT" (bus rapid transit) head-on in a series of articles. Here's one which notes the public appears to prefer rail to buses - http://www.lightrailnow.org/myths/m_brt002.htm

thing is, how many more decades is the suburban lifestyle gonna go on, as is? what happens down the line when gasoline stays over $4?

Altho, I think they'll do anything to keep the suburban thing going as long as possible, even when this means everybody switching over to hybrids and alt.fuels

laurence, do also you work in downtown Cleveland or near an RTA stop? I lived in Cleveland for many, many years, and aside from the Red Line to/from the airport I always found RTA terribly inconvenient, since so many stops weren't actually near anything, and instead dropped off at bus depots. And don't even get me started on how bad the bus schedules were in parts of the county. Good luck getting anywhere south of 480 on a Sunday!

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v134/tracerhand/dcmetrofantasy.gif
http://www.chesapeake.net/~cambronj/wmata/mymap.htm

still pretty light on NE, though

Riverdale Park
Hyattsville
Mount Rainier
Arboretum (Bladensburg & R)
Northeast (14th & H)
Stanton Park (East side)
Union Station
Convention Center
Logan Circle (14th & P)
Adams Morgan (18th & U)
Mt Pleasant (16th & Irving)
Carter Barron
Walter Reed
Silver Spring
Walter Reed Annex

and the Gray Line...
Kennedy Center
GWU
Dupont
Adams Morgan
Kalorama
Glover/Dumbarton
Whitehaven
Chain Bridge
Spring Valley
Glen Echo
Cabin John
Great Falls
Potomac