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USA Will Invest in High-Speed Train to Fight Climate Change
(www.raillynews.com)
What a weak article. It's barely three paragraphs and contains basically no details. Here is the press release from the Dept of Transportation.
Thank you for this. Looked up all the proposed changes for my state. I really hope these get implemented. In MN I've been waiting for a twin cities to Duluth train connection.
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I wish them all the best! May this decision carry through administrations and the USA embrace fast, public transport once again.
At this point, Trump will probably win in '24 and immediately kill off the project
Getting more than a little annoyed by the political tennis, back and forth and nothing actually getting done because everything that is done gets undone as soon as the other party takes back control
Isn't Trump in danger of being taken off the ballot due to something about being involved in a treacherous act? IIRC it was something about an amendment to the constitution introduced after the civil war to stop Southern soldiers from participating in politics.
Yes, and if it actually gets used to prevent him from running I will be stunned.
One judge already ruled that he did, indeed, incite insurrection, but then weaseled out by saying something to the effect of "it doesn't specify presidents in the amendment" in their ruling so they did absolutely nothing about it.
Hope springs eternal and all, but he seems immune to consequences. Again, hoping that changes, but I'm not holding my breath.
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Cool. It's just like, more than 20 years late, but cool
The 2000 election was such a massive turning point for the US. So many branching consequences, but imagine if we had had an environmentalist in the White House instead of Mr. Buy and Drill Our Way Out of This? At the time of 9/11 I believe it was Tom Daschle of SD on record calling for a Green Manhattan Project which obviously fell on deaf ears quite quickly as the bombs started raining down on Baghdad. Sure there'd still be cries for vengeance, but I also think if POTUS had been saying at the time 'we win this war by getting ourselves off foreign energy' it just might have been persuasive enough to embark on some major developments.
It's like a hundred years late. The US was built with ~~invented~~ trains, we should have the best train network in the world.
In fact we did until we also invented cars and fucked the world up by favoring highways and essentially single-person metal boxes.
The US did not invent trains. Trains were invented in the UK with the first public railway being between Stockton and Darlington.
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I keep saying that about almost everything. But yeah, "Oh cool we're where we should have been!"
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It’ll take the US decades to get high-speed rail up and running, especially with its culture of litigation, property rights, regulatory capture and politicised overregulation of threats to incumbents, not to mention Citizens United and the ability of the aforementioned incumbents to buy laws and regulations. By then, climate change will have won.
So, should we just give up then and not bother?
Oh good! I was hoping for some defeatism in the face of a relatively positive bit of news.
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Until the Republicans shoot it down and instead use that budget to give their rich chums more tax breaks
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Barack Obama tried to do the same thing: https://time.com/3100248/high-speed-rail-barack-obama/
While I would love for this to be a reality, I just don't see it actually happening.
The way the US shows more progress is if the Democrats can stay in power for a long enough period of time. But the last time Dems had that kind of power was as far back as 2008. It makes you wonder if the only way Democrats can ever get into power is when a recession hits.
I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but with climate change in front of us, we actually don't have time.
I'm incredibly nihilistic right now.
Eh, it was predicted we would die because the population growth was exceeding our ability to farm food, but then out of necessity the industrial revolution happened.
I think we are predicting we will die but out of necessity we will make the necessary changes to save ourselves just in time. Not just stopping emissions (this will only help slow the worsening, since we might be past the point of no return by the time we do this), but also carbon capture to remove the CO2, while simultaneously seeding extra clouds with something like the salt water canons running on cargo ships, and other such tech to reflect the sun while we get to work on CO2 capture.
The CO2 will have to be sequestered back in the ground, so a method will have to be made to liquify and pump it back in, but it's theoretically possible.
The CO2 will have to be sequestered back in the ground, so a method will have to be made to liquify and pump it back in, but it's theoretically possible.
Not theoretical, they're doing this as proof of concept at cement plants in Norway, they're planning on pumping it into an aquifer under the artic ocean
We're not undoing the atmospheric carbon or methane, and sequestration won't stop the climate change done that will cause issues for 10s of thousands of years. That being said we will figure out survival and a path forward to not make it worse.
Climate change doesn't matter when it's lawyers and economists in charge, there's money to be made... unfortunately.
i want this to be real. I've loved trains since i was a toddler. and as an adult Trains are some thicc power chungus
unfortunately the only trains left are either subways or commercial rails, yes there is Some passenger trains. But can you get to anywhere in americs on one? Not today, Not the infrastructure that will take decades to build and Not the follow up on promises made promises. kept...coughthebigdigbostoncough
(F40PH gang gang) back in my day we memed about objects, zoomers be all meta n shit. get out of my my head charles!
Amtrak is still a thing for passenger trains. It's just that it's slower than flying and just as expensive.
Flew my wife to L.A. for her birthday, easy peasy. Couple of hours by plane.
Amtrak?
Fastest is 26 hours and 13 minutes for $230 coach tickets. Private room for $580.
It's not just slower than flying, it's slower than driving in most cases.
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United States will never be able to achieve something like this because tiny ass governments of little weird counties all across the country will complain about having tracks run through their stupid shit hole
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USA will invest in high speed train to... Return on investments made by lobbyists.
Will it though?
Wow. I’m so underwhelmed.
Hopefully they don't pick internal systems that lock the train if you take it to a 3rd party repair business😆
Wildly misleading title, USA has not made any concrete plans for the investment, and has a history of lying about everything.
Came to this thread for my daily dose of trite cynicism. Was not disappointed.
Anyone that's been on am amtrak knows exactly how well this will go.
Hasn’t this happened yet because of issues getting enough land in a relatively straight path between destinations? If the curves are too great either the G forces are too high for the passengers or the train isn’t able to travel at a high speed. Elon had his boring machine but I’m guessing the lack of news around that means it isn’t progressing as hoped?
Elon's hyperloop was just something to delay and boondoggle the whole California high speed rail project, he even admitted as much.
Musk's Boring Company was an ill-thought out vanity project that has far too many weaknesses and drawbacks (including too high construction and operating costs) to ever produce any truly usable routes.
Just an excuse.
Yes, it is more time consuming and expensive to acquire land than would be ideal, but protecting property owner rights is also important.
However most of the land needed was protected by freight rail and Amtrak. We already have most of the track right of way needed, at least in the Northeast and Midwest, and the expensive part is mainly little bits of land to straighten out curves. It could be worse
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😂
as soon as the Republicans are elected with a full house they can shut this down and throw away all of the money that was put into it
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this post was submitted on 09 Dec 2023
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