Comment on Construction Begins on High-Speed Rail Line Between SoCal and Las Vegas

sirico@feddit.uk ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

• gravitas_deficiency@sh.itjust.works ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  I mean, the American people didn’t abandon them. GM used monopolistic practices and corporate collusion to basically make most major cities an offer they couldn’t refuse. The gotcha, of course, is that they were being offered a “sweet deal” on a transit mode that is overall less effective for major passenger corridors in large cities, and have shorter average service lives, and use consumable parts much more heavily:

  The General Motors streetcar conspiracy refers to the convictions of General Motors (GM) and related companies that were involved in the monopolizing of the sale of buses and supplies to National City Lines(NCL) and subsidiaries, as well as to the allegations that the defendants conspired to own or control transit systems, in violation of Section 1 of the Sherman Antitrust Act. This suit created lingering suspicions that the defendants had in fact plotted to dismantle streetcar systems in many cities in the United States as an attempt to monopolize surface transportation.

  Between 1938 and 1950, National City Lines and its subsidiaries, American City Lines and Pacific City Lines—with investment from GM, Firestone Tire, Standard Oil of California (through a subsidiary), Federal Engineering, Phillips Petroleum, and Mack Trucks—gained control of additional transit systems in about 25 cities. Systems included St. Louis, Baltimore, Los Angeles, and Oakland. NCL often converted streetcars to bus operations in that period, although electric traction was preserved or expanded in some locations. Other systems, such as San Diego’s, were converted by outgrowths of the City Lines. Most of the companies involved were convicted in 1949 of conspiracy to monopolize interstate commerce in the sale of buses, fuel, and supplies to NCL subsidiaries, but were acquitted of conspiring to monopolize the transit industry.

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  • HobbitFoot@thelemmy.club ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Kind of, but you also have the issue that a lot of streetcar networks were built at a loss to support land development. When these networks went bankrupt, local governments didn’t really want to fund the subsidy to keep them running, so these systems either collapsed quickly or slowly.

    It is obvious that car companies pushed for cities to change in a war to accommodate cars and sell buses, but you also have the issue that a car dependent lifestyle was considered a symbol of wealth for over a generation, people wanted to move out to the suburbs, and politicians were elected to do so.

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  • sgibson5150@slrpnk.net ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    This is fascinating! Thank you.

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• BackOnMyBS@lemmy.world ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  I’d love to do the Am track one day looks like a great way to see it all.

  I have wanted to AmTrak the country for like 18 years now. The thing is it’s just not an appealing experience for the cost. A trip from Florida to California would take 120 hrs/4.25 days one-way. That means that someone would need to take 9 days for a round trip if things match up perfectly. The other thing is that tickets can be quite expensive. The same trip is ~$550 one way. So, we’d have someone spending 7 vacation days and $1100 on transportation alone to sit on a train in coach for nearly the entire time without even getting to see their destination. Say you wanted to stay a week in California. There go another 5 vacation days for a total of 12 vacation days spent, with about half of them spent on a train in coach. You’d also have to add in the costs of staying and touring California, which can be fairly cheap if you know someone there or very expensive if you don’t.

  Very few people in the US have the time off and the financial means to make this an appealing trip.

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  • BubbleMonkey@slrpnk.net ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    I made a similar comment to this several days ago.

    It takes 46 hours to go from Chicago to Seattle by train, and only 30 by car, for a difference of a whopping 16 hours. Even stopping to sleep for the night, you can get there faster driving. If you don’t get a sleeper, it’s decently cheap at like $120. But still, double the time isn’t appealing to most anyone, especially when actually comfortable accommodations for 2 days are wildly more expensive.

    I’d love to travel by train, but it’s just too slow to be practical, even if you really don’t have much going on (if you have pets, for example, that extra week for travel can really get cumbersome). If it was equivalent time to driving (or faster would be great) I think you’d see a lot more people adopting it. Even if it doesn’t replace all the air travel, to just have it cut down cross-country driving would be great. Unfortunately that means a huge investment in rail infrastructure, and a lot of time, to bring the network up to speed.

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    • whoreticulture@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      It’s pretty comparable to a car in medium distances. SF to LA is about 7 hours by car, maybe 10 hours by train. The extra time is well worth the benefit of being able to just relax the whole trip.

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  • whoreticulture@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Amtrak is really nice for medium-distance trips. I’ve gone from San Francisco to LA, to Seattle, to Denver. You get one overnight, no boarding hassle, can bring on a TON of luggage, and if you’re a geography nerd like me you get great views of the landscapes. I work on the train when I do this, so I don’t lose vacation days.

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  • rdyoung@lemmy.world ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    They used to have a decently priced unlimited ticket that you could use to see the country during summer break. Get on/off the train whenever/wherever you want.

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