USA Will Invest in High-Speed ​​Train to Fight Climate Change

Comments

• nobleshift@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  I’ll believe it when I see it …

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  • GiddyGap@lemm.ee ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    The US is extremely far behind the rest of the developed world and even much of the developing world at this point. It will take decades to catch up, let alone become a leader.

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    • Yearly1845@reddthat.com ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Who cares how long it’s going to take, it still needs to be done. And the only way to do it is to start.

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  • ColonelSanders@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Even then it’ll probably just be from one specific town to another close by thus really only useable for a small subset of people

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    • AA5B@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      No, really not. It would be great for those of us who prefer that solution but let’s pick the right tool for the job. I believe the current rule of thumb is high speed rail beats flying for cities up to 500 miles apart. Let’s focus on those. Hopefully we end up with an interconnected system as the preferred way to travel between those cities and so some of us can do long distance rail, but there will always be a threshold where flying is cheaper, easier, faster

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• BombOmOm@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  These projects are part of an $10 billion investment

  California’s HSR system come in at $80 billion for 520 miles, or $154 million per mile. Amtrak estimates that it would cost $500 million per mile to turn its Northeast Corridor route into a true high-speed system. source

  For $10 billion, we are talking an additional 20 to 65 miles of high speed rail to be built. This is basically nothing…

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  • ExLisper@linux.community ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    The worst part is that it usually follows well known cycle of:

    • project is estimated at $10b, government assigns $10b
    • private companies spend it on consultants and analysis, little gets built
    • government agrees to invest another $5b but requires cuts to the initial scope
    • with reduced scope projected passengers numbers drop, project is less attractive
    • repeat until cost is 1000% of the initial estimate and usefulness is 0. cancel project

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  • pelespirit@sh.itjust.works ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Most of this is to fund studies and the rest is probably to cover overruns. Is it political for election season? Yes, but still a step in a positive direction. We’re not talking infrastructure week here.

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    • BearOfaTime@lemm.ee ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      It’s squandering billions. End.

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  • qooqie@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Drop in the bucket, I’m curious how much it would take to make most of the US/NA traversable by high speed rail

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    • AA5B@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Depends on what you mean by most.

      • most of the population is quite achievable. Send a little time at www.ushsr.com

      • most of the geography, trillions, and we couldn’t afford to keep it operating

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    • BearOfaTime@lemm.ee ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      What’s after “trillions”?

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  • sic_semper_tyrannis@feddit.ch ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Think if we instead of giving trillions of dollars to the Ukraine, spent it on our own country. If we spent all that money on this project alone it might actually be beneficial to our people

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    • BombOmOm@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Allowing Russia to conquer our allies will hardly get us high speed rail. Not to mention, the vast majority of the money spent for Ukraine actually goes to US industry and US jobs. Congress approves money for Javelin missile production, US contractors produce the components and assemble it, then the Javelins are sent to Ukraine to blow up Russian invaders.

      There is visual confirmation of Ukraine destroying over 13,000 Russian vehicles, including over 2,500 Russian tanks. Click the link, every single example has a picture or video showing Russia’s devastating losses.

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  • dezmd@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Jacksonville FL to Mobile AL is not included even though old rail and established railway right of way is already in place. Its an incomplete plan out of the gate before even looking at the realities of the funding equating to near goddamn nothing. We need real Trillion dollar funding plans at this point for high speed rail on a national level, use the long range east west/north south interstate cooridors to build over/under to connect coasts and Mexico to Canada on 4 or 5 major lines each.

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• andrewth09@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  What a piss poor article. It’s barely a paragraph and contains basically no details. Here is the press briefing from the Dept of Transportation.

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  • ChillPenguin@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    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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  • fruitycoder@sh.itjust.works ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Thank you, thats a lot more exciting to see!

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• onlinepersona@programming.dev ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  I wish them all the best! May this decision carry through administrations and the USA embrace fast, public transport once again.

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  • laurelraven@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    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

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    • onlinepersona@programming.dev ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      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.

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    • linearchaos@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      It’s incredibly hard for the government to get anything done that takes more than 8 years. Even if you don’t end up changing presidential parties, trying to keep the house and senate out of the budgets is a serious challenge.

      Even if they can keep people out of the piggy bank trying to get the corporations to follow through with their end of the deal It’s like herding cats.

      Billions have been sunk into rural broadband with almost no penetration.

      As much as I hate musk, The only way we’re going to get people back on the moon and out to Mars Will be because of government leveraging private industry.

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    • ccunix@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Will he cancel it though? Or will “Trump Trains” become a thing?

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• grasshopper_mouse@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  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.

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  • ieightpi@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    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.

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    • PopOfAfrica@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      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.

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• opulentocean@lemm.ee ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Cool. It’s just like, more than 20 years late, but cool

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  • makyo@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    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.

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  • RGB3x3@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    It’s like a hundred years late. The US 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.

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    • MrScottyTay@sh.itjust.works ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      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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    • trex@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      They also did not invent cars. That were the Germans and the french

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    • ccunix@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      The US invented neither trains nor cars.

      It is true the US was basically built on railroads, so I agree that it should have an awesome network, but it is just too big. Even if France ships you all a bunch of TGVs it will take days to go from NYC to LA. Something that takes hours by plane.

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  • Reality_Suit@lemmy.one ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    I keep saying that about almost everything. But yeah, “Oh cool we’re where we should have been!”

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  • Blackmist@feddit.uk ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Who wants trains when you have brown people to bomb?

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• AllNewTypeFace@leminal.space ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  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.

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  • Trollception@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    So, should we just give up then and not bother?

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  • TheSanSabaSongbird@lemdro.id ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Oh good! I was hoping for some defeatism in the face of a relatively positive bit of news.

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  • Cethin@lemmy.zip ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    You’ve got to love internet negativity. Nothing can ever be good.

    There are plenty of issues to deal with, but this is a huge improvement over the existing status-quo. Can we be happy that the Biden Administration has done something to move things in the right direction on this issue?

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  • Katana314@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Let’s say, ten years in the future, a brilliant scientist invents a magic box that drastically reduces some of the biggest inflictors of CO2, and/or even repairs some of the previous damage. Such a marvelous invention would only be valuable in saving the human race if there were simultaneously other improvements on efficiency and CO2 generation to improve the overall reductions.

    Movies get us used to one person/initiative saving the world. What’s more practical is a whole bunch of little initiatives - even if each one doesn’t do enough on its own.

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  • CmdrShepard@lemmy.one ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    I’m betting this money will just go to bribe some political donors. Take note that the amount of investment here is less than what was outlayed to increase the number of EV chargers in the US (which hasn’t happened) for something that is orders of magnitude more expensive and complicated than installing battery chargers. California is working on a 171-mile stretch of HSR, and the estimated cost is projected to be around $35 billion in a state with tons of open, undeveloped land. Imagine the cost of doing this along the densely populated eastern seaboard. $8 billion in grants is a joke.

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• Clbull@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Until the Republicans shoot it down and instead use that budget to give their rich chums more tax breaks

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  • INHALE_VEGETABLES@aussie.zone ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Deregulation of high speed rail sounds pretty good ngl

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    • StenSaksTapir@feddit.dk ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Yeah, why should such a thing be regulated?

      We all probably still remember the East Palestine accident, but all that turned alright in the end didn’t it?

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    • violetraven@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      No.

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• Colorcodedresistor@lemm.ee ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  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!

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  • jordanlund@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Amtrak is still a thing for passenger trains. It’s just that it’s slower than flying and just as expensive.

    www.amtrak.com

    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.

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    • BombOmOm@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Amtrak is still a thing for passenger trains. It’s just that it’s slower than flying and just as expensive.

      This is the core reason passenger rail has not become dominant in the US. The country is so physically large that planes do passenger rail’s job, but faster and at the same price point.

      Instead, rail in the US is almost entirely bulk cargo as that makes a ton of sense. Cargo trains are cheaper than trucks/aircraft and the slower speed can be easily planned for.

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    • DrMango@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      It’s not just slower than flying, it’s slower than driving in most cases.

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    • AA5B@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      And Acela is useful. We have one intercity rail line that is useful, has high ridership, is profitable, people choose to use, demand far outstrips supply. And it’s not really fast enough to be called “high speed”

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    • CmdrShepard@lemmy.one ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      My parents once bought a private room on Amtrak. When they were shown to it, they literally thought it was a closet to store their bags not their room.

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• nutsack@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  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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  • spyd3r@sh.itjust.works ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Run the tracks through your backyard then.

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    • nutsack@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      I don’t have a backyard because I’m not a pussy

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  • chitak166@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Manifest destiny.

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• roofuskit@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Will it though?

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• linearchaos@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  USA will invest in high speed train to… Return on investments made by lobbyists.

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• MyDogLovesMe@sh.itjust.works ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Wow. I’m so underwhelmed.

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• Thief_of_Crows@sh.itjust.works ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Wildly misleading title, USA has not made any concrete plans for the investment, and has a history of lying about everything.

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• TheSanSabaSongbird@lemdro.id ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Came to this thread for my daily dose of trite cynicism. Was not disappointed.

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• LainOfTheWired@lemy.lol ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Hopefully they don’t pick internal systems that lock the train if you take it to a 3rd party repair business😆

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• Oaksey@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  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?

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  • realitista@lemm.ee ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Elon’s hyperloop was just something to delay and boondoggle the whole California high speed rail project, he even admitted as much.

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  • Halcyon@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    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.

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  • AA5B@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    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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  • Pacmanlives@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    The Boring Company is stating to sound like they will just use Teslas in the tunnels not any other form of transportation. So it’s a very lack luster project to say the least

    www.boringcompany.com/loop www.boringcompany.com/products

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• grayman@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Anyone that’s been on am amtrak knows exactly how well this will go.

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• nutsack@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  as soon as the Republicans are elected they can shut this down and waste all of the money that was put into it

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• penquin@lemm.ee ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  😂

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• ChrislyBear@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  What about rails? You need rails first. Who is providing the land where rails will be built on?

  But yeah, trains it is!

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• BmeBenji@lemm.ee ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  “Microsoft has just announced it’s brand new, innovative music experience: the Zune!”

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• Barack_Embalmer@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Why no superconducting maglev tho?

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• flathead@lemm.ee ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  pull the other one.

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