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Deutsche Bahn, German government at odds over stalled rail project
Run that into the word processor and replace “Germany” with “America” and the results are still the same. High speed rail is nothing more than massive amounts of taxpayer money used to pay for waste, fraud, corruption, and abuse. All in the name of making a passenger train go from City A to City B at the same speed as the average Peterbilt. If high speed rail was such a good idea, the private sector would have built it by now. It’s an idea so good, it has to be made mandatory by law. Just like every other socialist idea. Of course, the standard canned response from the socialist will be something on the order of how the private sector is too greedy to build it.
Ask Schneider, UPS, and other firms why they put their containers on trains to cross large parts of the United States - it’s faster and they often can’t find sufficiently qualified truck drivers - issues with drugs, driving records, etc. Trains obviate these problems.
In Europe, there are many current initiatives to move more trucks to rail (in England and Switzerland especially). Passenger traffic in the UK is growing at 8% a year, despite high and increasing fares. Why? It’s faster than automobile and in many cases vastly more convenient. It could easily be the same for many city pairs in the US and makes sound social policy in many cases.
Those with a cramped view of the role of government would likely still be happy if people in cities like Pittsburgh still enjoyed the smog levels of Beijing (for example). Good government isn’t necessarily socialism!
I think we can all agree that through stations are more efficient than stub stations by removing the need to wye trains after backing out, or backing them in. This project is complicated by the need to keep the station operational for existing passenger intercity and commuter trains and subway service while also not disturbing the historic heart of the city or any of its underground utilities. Tunnel boring is expensive, and any unforeseen problems, while not insurmountable, add to the cost. Sorry, Mr. Guse, but the HSR to Ulm is not the meat of the project, just a side dish.
I’ll bet they wouldn’t be having these problems if Juniatha or Sir Madog were running it! (Check the Forum if you’re scratching your head over this.)
I like the way Guse is an expert on European High Speed Rail, even though he has never ridden on the TGV or ICE. Ride it, then we’ll talk!!
Stuttgart 21 is not stalled. Work on the project continues. What has changed is that an internal study prepared by the Bundesministerium fuer Verkehr, Bau und Stadtentwicklung (Federal Ministry for Transportation, Construction and Urban Development) was leaked to the press. In addition to showing that the completion date has slipped again and that the cost estimate has risen as well, the paper provides evidence that support for the project in the ministry has weakened. The minister, Peter Ramsauer, has tried to minimise the importance of the report in statements to the electronic media. Note that other large construction projects in Germany, notably the new international airport for Berlin (BER) and the Elbe Philharmonie in Hamburg have encountered similar problems. All three have in common that they are government projects, they are very large, they require long periods for their completion and they involve complex engineering. The connection with high speed rail is coincidental. Rather, the issue is the difficulty of estimating costs and technolgical developments over long periods. The uncertainties are probably beyond human ability to prognosticate.
Obviously Mr. Guse has not been paying to much attention to what is going on. He must not have heard about the PRIVATE trains running in Italy and Germany. And he probably doesn’t read up much on the $1 BILLION PRIVATE investment going into the start up of rail passenger service on the FEC. Or the PRIVATE money going into the resumption of LA- Las Vegas service. A lot of the reason private money doesn’t go into rail passenger is due to government regulation, NIMBY’s and resistance of the bigger freight railroads. The Florida service is proceeding with the full blessings of the FEC. The LA-Vegas service is getting the blessings of UP because they are receiving track upgrades using PRIVATE funds in exchange for allowing the trains to use their tracks.
I liked the Stuttgart Station the way it was.