The construction and development of high-speed rails brings great convenience to people’s life. The fast speed and efficient transportation not only save time and energy for the passengers, but also provide a comfortable transportation for the riders. So most people favored this transportation tools and they are willing to choose high speed rails for their traveling. The HSR also promotes the development of tourism and economy. The cities that have HSR are more easily to attract business, tourists, jobs and talented personnel. As a reliable transportation, HSR provides more chance for people. In the long term, HSR reduces environmental damage, so it is a trail system solves many environmental problems.
Environmental Benefits of High-Speed Rail
High speed rails reduce the cars on roads and reduce the flights between two cities, especially on holidays. Fewer cars on the road means improved air quality. People would rather to take high speed rails than cars to travel due to the safety factors.
A classic study shows that it produces 0.545 pounds of carbon dioxide for each passenger mile, that is, a 240-mile car trip produces 157 pounds of carbon dioxide. And a 240-mile plane trip produces 133.7 pounds of carbon dioxide. If one half of car passengers and one half of the air line passengers all take the high speed rails, it will eliminate 113 pounds of carbon dioxide on a 240-mile trip.
Economic Benefits of High-Speed Rail
High speed rail accelerate the mobility of people and create more chance for young people. HSR can links the cities together along the train route and fosters the economic development
A corporate ad, by a Chinese rail supply company. However, it is telling that the responders can only attack the OP’s credentials. And the anti-HSR tendency of posters seems linked to other attitudes held in common.
Why must we always limit an analysis to direct costs and revenues? The economic benefits of an appropriately built HSR network* extend far beyond a narrow and thus unrealistic P&L perspective. Ditto with most infrastructure in any nation.
HSR (125-175 mph) corridors in NE, Mid-Atlantic, SE, Midwest, TX and Pacific Coast. Most would be <500 miles, though some would interconnect. HSR is inappropriate at greater distances because it is not time-competitive with air total time.
“About high-speed TGV 3,000 passengers arrived between 45 minutes and four hours late at Paris’s Montparnasse station between 11.15pm Friday and 00.30am Saturday due to two weather-related incidents.”
“Overhead power lines sway in high winds and can tangle around a train’s pantograph (the part connecting it to the overhead lines), pulling the lines down. When this occurs trains are unable to run and services may be re-routed”
Why don’t we limit the scope of who will be expected to foot the bill to those who actually intend to ride on the thing. That way all other economic considerations become moot.
You have to consider those who will otherwise be affected by HSR. F’rinstance, if 1000 people per week (just to pull a number out of the air) ride between endpoints A and Z, that means 1000 less people will be using the highways or airports. This may reduce congestion for both, which would then reduce the need to increase capacity for either. This can be a factor for enroute stops as well.
Thus, a benefit accrues to people not riding HSR, and it could be argued that said benefit might come at a cost as well.
I wonder if anybody has done a comparative cost analysis to building new regional airports at the main HSR stops and substituting regional air service instead of HSR.
And don’t forget all the nu-wave millenials who will want to relocate to all towns served by HSR, and bring their high paying careers with them. They’ll buy tons of hotdogs from all the failing restaurants in town so everybody WINS!!! (yes, this is sarcasm)
Don’t forget the tax burden to all of us who know how well or poorly the federal government utilizes our tax dollars. Of course they could get Obama to tell us our tax bill will go down.
You wouldn’t do it that way; you’d put the regional facilities at the best ‘center points’ for ground transportation (analogous to what Sanford and Lorton represent for the Auto-Train) and then use small aircraft for regional-to-major transport.*
At one time a few years ago, the FAA had a plan to expand the regional hub network to some 4000-odd facilities, with things like widespread access to GPS for short-final guidance and closer to all-weather operation. (I read about this in the AOPA “Pilot” magazine, where I suspect it was discussed more than once!)
… and yes, connections to any corridors or actual HrSR/HSR that provided service quality better than air carriers in the same lanes. No need to be bigoted about aircraft-only.
Note that a set of comparatively small feeder planes can be scheduled between any two destination pairs of these airports, responsive to demand up to considerable ‘regular’ traffic, and this among other things gets around much of the problem with scheduling a ‘reasonable’ number of trains that serve all the interested communities at reasonable hours. Many of the arguments advanced by GM in the Fifties for substituting diesel buses for streetcars also apply fairly accurately to such a scheme on the larger distance scale.
We have an instance in which a participant’s first post is a PR piece obviously produced by a group effort with commercial motivations.
We have some (perhaps many) posters with whom I disagree. Nevertheless, I pay a good deal of attention to what they have to say; I try to understand their point of view.
However, the claims presented by this poster are just a rabbit I’m not going to bother to chase.
I believe that the roads ARE paid for by their end users, aren’t they? I believe that is where my “wheel tax” goes to anyway.
“Pay to play” wouldn’t bother me one bit with many of the other services you mention, but the Bernie supporter trapped inside this anti-government right wingnut makes me a staunch supporter of public education. It makes future tax payers more productive.
What does this have to do with the point he was making, which is that the cost of HSR, in the United States largely a service for the rich who have a reason to shave a few hours off a ground-transportation trip, ought to be borne by the group or the interests that will likely benefit so disproportionately. (And yes, I think that should include at least some of the externalities.)
In Memphis we were considering a trolley extension to the airport. Now, most cities that have transit to airports presume the service will be rapid and convenient, an alternative to taxis and cars. Memphis turned it into public transit for people living in the areas between ‘downtown’ and the airport, winding up with something very little if any faster than existing bus service, with no luggage service or amenities to speak of … for about a $4 billion (not a misprint) expected cost. This was justified in the planning-options discussion as a way for underprivileged airport employees to reach their jobs … something. Less expensively? More expediently? Riding a big air-conditioned LRV instead of a big air-conditioned bus? At least if you built a minimum-time connection with less grand infrastructure, you might get a sizable number of air passengers to ride it … but there again, if you get the rich to pay for their convenience it’s likely to price itself out of interest, compared to the alternatives, and in my own opinion it just isn’t fair to soak the taxpaying base here for the long-term cost of something that disproportionately benefits a relative small number of people… be they rich or poor.
I have to worry that soaking the entire Amtrak network to build out a faster NEC … and at this point much of the cost is for just a couple of minutes of travel time, or getting aroun
That’s the thing with a great deal of these public works “landmark” projects. The supporters try to stuff you full of how wonderful things will be once their pet gets up and running. But the true beneficiaries seldom go beyond the contractors and special interests that profit directly from the building of said dream.
