USA Will Invest in High-Speed Train to Fight Climate Change::The USA Will Invest in High-Speed Train to Fight Climate Change - US President Joe Biden announced in a speech on December 9, 2023 that they are carrying out the first high-speed train projects in US history. These projects are across America
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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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empires falling, history on repeat
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.
There’s the issue. The US has a nasty habit of constant false-starts. The way things are set up, it’s really hard for anything to stick. Not impossible, mind you. But as soon as a Republican gets involved, projects tend to die. It’s a cycle of frustrating futility.
This grant amount is enough to build 39 miles of HSR based on California’s project costs. That’s 39 miles of rail for the entire nation. I’m not sure you can qualify this as a ‘start’. More than likely, this money will be completely wasted as it isn’t enough to do anything especially when you spread it out over 50 different states, which would equate to 4,000 feet of track, or 3/4 mile, per state.
Even then it’ll probably just be from one town to another very close by thus really only useable for a small subset of people. We need trans continental high speed railways not puddle jumpers
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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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.
Thank you, thats a lot more exciting to see!
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.
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.
Will he cancel it though? Or will “Trump Trains” become a thing?
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
inventedtrains, 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.
The US was the first to truly master trains on a large scale I’d argue, but you’re right they absolutely did not invent them.
We invented the steamship though, and we also arguably invented the modern submarine.
They also did not invent cars. That were the Germans and the french
We also invented beer, picking your nose, and whatever you think your country invented. USA USA USA /s
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.
I keep saying that about almost everything. But yeah, “Oh cool we’re where we should have been!”
Who wants trains when you have brown people to bomb?
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.
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?
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.
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.
Until the Republicans shoot it down and instead use that budget to give their rich chums more tax breaks
Deregulation of high speed rail sounds pretty good ngl
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?
It’s a joke.
You know, because it’s a god awful idea.
No.
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.
Climate change doesn’t matter when it’s lawyers and economists in charge, there’s money to be made… unfortunately.
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.
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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Acela is useful. We have one intercity rail line that is useful, has high ridership, is profitable, people choose to use, arguably faster than driving or flying, demand far outstrips supply. also the fastest but it’s not really fast enough to be called “high speed”
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.
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
Run the tracks through your backyard then.
I don’t have a backyard because I’m not a pussy
Manifest destiny.
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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.
