Also as an aside. Japan is this weird example of a country with a good education system, hard workers, excellent infrastructure, and yet a totally stagnant economy. I mean I understand a lot of the reasons, but it's still weird.

That isn't the real kind of growth that makes peoples lives better. Look at per-capita instead. Since the 08 recession Japan has had consistent 1-2% per-capita growth, despite their population shrinking. They have problems, but none of the end of the world nonsense economists have been throwing around since the 80s in response to Japan not continuing the global fiction that we can just keep adding more people to fake growth numbers like that is guaranteed to lead to real quality of life improvements, especially in the information age when it is much more important to have the resources to educate and maximize the potential of the people you do have rather than try to spread resources out over more people who can possibly outright lose access to the higher degrees of technical knowledge needed to truly advance society at this point.

Totally explainable by the fact that Japan has the world's fastest aging (and now shrinking) population. [1]

1950: 84 million

1975: 112 million

2000: 127 million

2025: 124 million

2050: 110 million

[1] http://www.un.org/esa/population/publications/worldageing195...

TBH virtually all developed economies have slowed down over the past 10+ years, I often wonder if this is the real reason, more than just the financial criss. The only spurts of growth seem to be either sudden windfalls from resource extraction booms or big credit runups that tend to leave a big hangover.

An aging population is only a problem if you are broke and have no capital to use to finance your lifestyle. Japan is nothing like that - they are a rich country with divested interests in many industries that all output world class goods and services. Built by the people now entering retirement.

Worry about Japan when their per-capita starts slipping dramatically.

A still-shrinking working-age population will have to look after a still-expanding retired population.

IIRC (no reference), Japanese pensioners on aggregate have lots of savings. However, they will surely be competing with one another for services rendered by the shrinking labor pool, so one would expect the costs of those services to rise, negating the effect of having lots of savings.

I live in Japan now and, unsurprisingly, the retirement home business appears to be booming, especially in and around Tokyo. But even if there are lots of retirement homes, they will have to be staffed. By robots perhaps?

For one, the people buying those sports cars and big tvs are productive citizens and have decades of work and payments ahead of them...

Compared to the US military spending for example? For a country that's geographically so remote and already so powerful that no other country even thinks of ever attacking?

That's a myth that Americans seem to believe firmly.

Like they're like parent figures to the world or something, exceptionalism at its worst, and the 21st century analogue to the "White Man's Burden".

As if any country would attack the EU for example, or even e.g. Germany alone.

In fact, most of the mess the planet is in (the middle east for example) is because of US intervention and fucking things up. In the past 2 decades, new training grounds for terrorists created in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and now Syria, all thanks to breaking up stable regimes there.

America also contributes to international military endeavors more than any other countries, like the UN peacekeepers. I'm not an expert by any means.

And really, you can't think of countries with more moral responsibility for the planet's current state? Not China, not the Soviet Union, none?

And I strongly suspect that Europe has absolutely nothing to fear from both Russia and China.

>And really, you can't think of countries with more moral responsibility for the planet's current state? Not China, not the Soviet Union, none?

China absolutely none at all. USSR a little, but that ended in 1991 (so close to 3 decades now), and most of it was a piss match with the US in the first place.

This is most certainly not True, as the Russian annexation of Crimea and the Troubles in Ukraine have so clearly demonstrated. Even if Russian might not want to annex more territory, without the backing of NATO, Russia could bully Western European countries more easily.

You mean the Russian annexation of a part of Ukraine (a country in their border), namely the part with a majority of ethnic Russian citizens, who had a referendum in favor of it, and that only happened when the democratically elected government of Ukraine was overthrown by a sketchy coalition including bona fide Nazi sympathizers? I'm sure this proves that France, and Romania, Germany, Portugal, Malta, Albania, Greece, Italy, and all have a lot to fear from Russia...

It's especially funny considering US as some protector of Europe from Russia, considering that unlike the above very tame example, the US has occupied 2 countries in the past 2 decades, bombed in Eastern Europe, helped form a protectorate there, and helped destabilize a few more (e.g. Syria, Libya), taking Europeans in the NATO to along for the ride and boosting terrorism support in those areas (including against Europe).

>Even if Russian might not want to annex more territory, without the backing of NATO, Russia could bully Western European countries more easily.

Ever past the Cold War it has been the opposite: the NATO (a Cold War formation if there ever was one) instead of dismantling, got into expanding ever more into Eastern Europe and Russia's neighbors, and forever bully Russia into submission with sanctions, diplomatic pressure, etc.

  immigrants are not being allowed in

See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states_and_d...

As a fraction of the total, many economically very roughly comparable countries are fairly similar:

  Ireland:       15.9
  Austria:       15.2
  Germany:       14.9
  United States: 14.3
  Sweden:        14.3
  Spain:	 14
  Norway:        13.8
  United Kingdom 13.2

  Saudi Arabia: 31.4
  Switzerland:  28.9
  Australia:    27.7 	
  Israel:       26.5
  Canada:       20.7

  United Arab Emirates: 83.7 (even in absolute numbers, this is an impressive number)
  Kuwait: 70

  China:     0.1
  Indonesia: 0.1
  India:     0.4
  Brazil:    0.9
  Japan:     1.9
  Pakistan:  2.2

Visa overstays alone can exceed a half-million per year (over 527K in 2015 alone[0] for the most recent numbers available), and that number omits those known to have left later.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illegal_immigration_to_the_Uni...

However, even if this is an exception, the number of illegal immigrants is still too small to catch up to countries such as australia (under the unrealistic assumption that australia has 0 illegal immigration).

Also you're implying that immigration is good and desirable. That's certainly up for debate.

(I'd say it's obvious immigration has huge potential but also considerable risks to the host country). In the long run, I suspect immigration is almost always a positive.

But the argument goes as follows:

- Long term immigration tends to happen where the it's supportable. People don't usually go somewhere they're likely to starve. (So there's generally going to be some feedback loop that prevents really crazy immigration excesses - at least usually, I'd guess).

- Countries/regions/whatever with greater population tend to in the long run have more influence and greater development that those with less.

- Diversity is a strength to a society (but not necessarily it's citizens!) for various reasons, but e.g. creativity and resilience in the face of a changing world are likely higher simply because you've got a better shot of finding the right person(s) at the right time for the right task. This is a bit speculative; but there are parallels in evolutionary biology and business, so it appears plausible to me.

- Choosing to migrate is a non-trivial affair. Migrants tend to therefore be more enterprising. At the very least, the ability to successfully migrate, stay, and raise the next generation is a kind of test of capacity. This is the converse of a brain-drain if you will. Having said that, just because somebody is "smart" doesn't mean they'll achieve much in their new life; after all, needing to adapt just isn't that easy, and the deck is stacked against them. But over generations at least you'd hope for sufficient integration to overcome that.

To be explicit: This is mere speculation; and even as far as that it only suggests general patterns. Not all migration might be positive; and it might take a long time for the benefits to materialize, and even if society is better off doesn't mean that those that lived through the integration process are better off; and even then it doesn't mean the old population is better off either (though you'd hope so). And of course it's all a little hypothetical since you won't be able to stop migration no matter what, so the interesting question is whether the way you manage it (or not) matters, and what those choices might be.

You brought up the interesting question of whether immigration is good (at least, I hadn't considered it quite like that before), so this is just my best guess.

Caveat lector and all ;-).

Cheers!

A lot of rail commuters find that their commute is an unusually productive time. You've got all the resources you need to work but relatively few distractions, especially in the quiet carriage. It's a little slice of time that's entirely your own. It's like working in a cafe, except you're travelling at 125mph.

Here in the UK, the railways are too successful for their own good - passenger volume has doubled in 20 years, so the infrastructure is creaking under the sheer weight of passengers. We're building a new cross-country high-speed route, two major commuter routes across London, upgrading vast swathes of the network and it's still not nearly enough to keep up with demand.

I used to commute Brighton to London, the trains are nice and I could get a seat. However anyone getting on at any intermediate stations usually had to stand.

We definitely need more high speed lines to free up space on the other lines.

Edit: For a more US kind of distance look at London to Paris, 2h15m (883 miles as the crow flies) from city centre to city centre.

Paris is not 800 miles, or even 800km.

You're right that a car is unlikely to be the better choice for Manchester-london when ignoring costs (£124 each way on the quiet trains)

To a certain extent you’re right in that it’s all just a question of where you live. But for me recently all the trains I have been taking are in Japan or UK, and if I need to get to somewhere that’s more than a short walk from the central train station there’s been a light rail or underground system for me to transfer onto.

Not to mention that bus fares in the area, in most situations, are cheaper than the metro for same distance covered

Where Metro wins is on capacity. When the trains are full, one track of Metro carries an amount of people that would fill up 10 lanes of freeway. Of course, one major problem is that building mass transit is sold to the public as a way to 'reduce congestion' i.e. "other people will ride the subway so that my freeway will be clear". Due to induced demand from other people shifting their travel to the highway, this is not really truthful advertising.

It's more accurate to say that the mass transit provides an alternative for people who are fed up with traffic jams and want a more predictable way of getting downtown. Buses fail to provide that alternative, because unless the transit agency manages to get a dedicated bus lane along the whole route (it's probably not), they are going to be stuck in the same traffic that an ordinary car is stuck in.

Have you been to Japan?

so all these people either secretly prefer driving cars, or just have no other choice?

you know, you're talking about me among others[1], and the arrogance of your "I don't think so" is just... annoying.

[1] i haven't commented on this thread before, but i do commute to work by train, ~80km each way. i've been doing that for over a decade, and my employers have let me count the time spent on the train toward my on-clock time because i can and do work on the train. driving a car would mean wasting my time, and it would cost me more. not to mention that public transport is way safer than individual automotive transport.

Mostly because businesses demand every minute of it.

Time is ample if you're not stressed to the point of collapse all the time.

http://www.bbc.com/culture/story/20170613-striking-photos-sh...

"Wolf ... visited a publisher in Tokyo with a portfolio of the images. “He just flicked through them in about 30 seconds, and he said ‘so what?’,”... “I said ‘what do you mean “so what?” – it’s a nightmare, don’t you see that?’ He said: ‘what do you mean it’s a nightmare, I’ve been doing this for 40 years of my life every day – it’s normal.’”

Plenty of videos available https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=japan+train+pus...

"Next train, buddy..."

Notice developing economies are going wireless/fiber and skipping the "legacy" generation, the US should be doing the same with MagLev/hyperloop.

The issue is we spend our money policing the world/blowing up countries then paying to rebuild them. If we weren't so hell-bent on global hegemony we could spend more on infrastructure at home.

A 25% cut in the US military would leave around 165bn for infrastructure and they'd still be spending more than the next 4 countries.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_budget_of_the_United_...

You can hire 100 people to make 100,000 needles a day by hand tools or instead build a $200,000 plant that make 10 million needles a day with three guys operating the machines. In both cases the profit goes to the plant owner, while in the second the cost of labor will be less than 3% of the receipts.

the wages in economy are well documented. as well as returns on capital. Actual data matters. Don't take my word for it. read up an actual economist.

http://voxeu.org/article/reducing-inequality-deconcentrating...

The rich aren't rich because they put in more labor and got more salaries.

http://www.cnn.com/2016/08/23/politics/us-army-audit-account...

That article is rehashing the same bogus premise that has been thrown around for decades. Here's how it works:

https://www.metabunk.org/debunked-8-5-trillion-missing-from-...

https://davidlandy.net/no-the-pentagon-didnt-lose-8-5-trilli...

Basically: within $N trillion in spending, there is a combination of non-audits and accounting irregularities, so therefore CNN throws up a click-bait article claiming the entire amount of spending is unaccounted for.

Pretty idiotic when you consider the sums being claimed vs the known expenditures in question. The premise is: every dollar that wasn't audited was stolen; logically, even if one were to assume theft (etc) happened, it's likely to be a dramatically smaller sum of the whole.

The total education spend is 3%.

So you could double spending on education and nasa and still pocket savings...

By cutting the US military by 25%.

Just an example.

I happen to agree with slashing the US military, however your premise is incorrect. It's also worth noting that China aggressively lies about their military spending - under counting - and has been doing that for decades. The US is also now spending less than Russia per dollar of GDP.

Further, the $165 billion wouldn't accomplish anything in terms of infrastructure, or healthcare, or anything else. For example, take a look at the estimate that California Democrats recently ended up with for their single-payer system (it's so expensive to do in the US, it'd instantly bankrupt California; not even a small, somewhat well run state like Vermont can pull it off). You can't even fix California's infrastructure problems for $165 billion per year. Right now, with the US budget what it is, you'd need more like a $400 billion cut to the military to even scratch the surface (we have nukes, it'd realistically be feasible, but we'd have to dramatically disengage from dealing with Russia in Europe and China in Asia, requiring those regions to significantly lift their military spending).

That's an absurd statement to make. Total spending on highway and street construction in the US is around $90 billion annually: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/TLHWYCONS . You are honestly arguing that adding an additional ~185% of what we spend on roads today wouldn't accomplish anything?

We have immense problems everywhere from dams to grid to schools to bridges to healthcare (we could use to spend tens of billions in additional money just on the VA healthcare system), that are not present in that $90 billion and would not be dented by $165 billion per year.

We spent hundreds of billions on the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act and it barely made any difference.

The cost to redo a bridge in the US and then properly maintain it, is far beyond the cost to presently barely maintain it properly as we're doing.

That $90 billion you're quoting, is a vast under-outlay versus what we should be spending. Which is another way of saying, we need to be spending dramatically more just to break even on our current maintenance requirements. The US is facing trillions in spending just to replace our failing/failed infrastructure, and then all that newly replaced infrastructure needs to be maintained properly - so take that $90 billion and increase it upwards of 3x; 2x is what we should be spending now and are not; 3x is what we'll need to spend after we spend trillions on replacement to maintain the new infrastructure properly. That's just for our existing roads / highway infrastructure (which is merely one subset of our infrastructure spending needs).

https://www.infrastructurereportcard.org/wp-content/uploads/...

Even not looking at those numbers saying that amount 'wouldn't accomplish anything' is ridiculous. Hundreds of billions of dollars a year is a huge amount in any sector of the economy, even for the US. You can try and defend it as much as you want but that is a hyperbolic statement completely disconnected from reality.

Second US gets almost nothing per dollar from it's military spending due to inefficiencies. Slashing the budget for a few years is a critical step to separate the useful from the useless spenind. And realistically a 70% cut followed by a slow ramp up would eliminate vast amounts of redundant waste, and reduce many long term obligations. But, that waste is making people rich and 'bringing home the bacon' making such cuts untenable.

> Second US gets almost nothing per dollar from it's military spending due to inefficiencies

Most US military spending is on human soldiers, not on weapons programs. The waste you're referring to is a few tens of billions of dollars per year. It's not hundreds of billions. Your premise of somehow saving a lot of money by reducing waste, doesn't pan out under any scrutiny accordingly. Unless your plan is to slash hundreds of thousands of soldiers and their associated costs (even if we close half our foreign bases, which would save tens of billions of dollars, we would then need to significantly increase the spending on our domestic base capabilities to handle those soldiers; or we have to dramatically slash our soldier numbers).

As I said in another comment we could slash Medicare spending by 40+% without reduicing care. But, as you did not bother to read my comment I can't help but think your being disingenuous.

PS: I don't run the country so any change I or you suggest has the same problem of never going to be implemented. Stopping rational discussion at that point kills all political discussions period.

Concluding disingenuous is more than a stretch. I'm reading & responding to more than a dozen posts in this same thread.

Claiming we could reduce Medicare spending by 40% is a very, very dramatic claim. We could reduce general healthcare spending by a similar amount: the consequences of doing so are profound, involving vast job loss, pay cuts, and tax base loss. What's your near-term fix for that immense dislocation that would take decades to play out? Just tell the millions of people that will be negatively affected by it to suck it up and deal with it? Or do you plan to significantly boost welfare programs, unemployment benefits, retraining spending, etc. - and how do you plan to pay for that (cutting Medicare spending by 40% wouldn't even balance the budget deficit, which is set to balloon massively due to entitlement costs)?

Yes, all the inefficiencies would have to go, and that would mean people would have to get jobs that are more efficient and produce more bang for buck. That's life.

I'm not aware of any cases when people are denied chaemotheropy on the NHS, yet I am aware of people in the Us struggling to pay $50k a year for something as basic as insulin.

The Texas triangle (Houston, Dallas, Austin and San Antonio) has a combined metropolitan population of 17 million.

However, once the northeast networks expands eventually adding Texas would be reasonable, just not from day 1.

And keep in mind that the terrain between Dallas and Houston is basically all flat and sparsely populated, so building rail there would be a lot cheaper than the northeast.

Sure, if Texas wants to spemd their money go for it, but this would be a relative ware of federal funds.

The big problem is that whole categories of the military budget are waste. They are job programs in the shape of a weapon, but are overkill in our current asymmetric wars and likely useless against an equal adversary. The LCS & F-35 are trillions of dollars in waste.

Even when you are talking about a decent system, the internal level of waste is insane. I was an engineer for nuclear submarines. We were cited as an example for all other programs because we were on time and under budget. There was still a waste in every direction I could see.

I think things would get better with a switch to fixed priced contracts instead of cost plus. It requires the service to nail down their requirements up front, but at least you get the cost incentives right. Until then, the saying "first time half time, second time overtime" was pretty apt.

I don't know how many troops one needs to defend the country and fulfill our obligations abroad (though I wish it were zero), but a military job lost surely pays for a civilian job building infrastructure. Especially considering overhead for the two relatively, the civilian job could certainly even pay better.

I'm sure there is a balance in there, but I don't think jobs would be one -- rather readiness requirements alone. And god knows I'm not qualified to guess as to that one, but it does seem likely we're going a bit overboard at present.

The single-pay system can be made to work. Others make it work, and a lot cheaper, but you have to accept that you need change. US health care is imo absurdly expensive and not that good (I have experienced it). But that discussion seem to always fall into the realm of doctrine rather than what is good and possible when it comes under discussion.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_military_...

To put it differently, if the Swiss, population 8M, can figure out how to transport 1.8x the amount of rail passengers compared to the entire US (no, not by capita, in absolute numbers [1]), it could also happen that a smaller budget military outmaneuvers US army, navy and marines. That being said, conventional armies made for symmetric warfare seem just about as useless now as at the height of the cold war. But not even the security of the nuclear arsenal seems a high priority in US politics today.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_rail_us...

The US isn't spending $1.5 trillion on the F35. First, the costs will be spread over decades; second, the US will never order even half the planes in question; it never does when it comes to large systems orders. In 10-15 years they'll be slashing the buying down toward zero as with the F22 (as the military chomps at the bit to move on to new programs), the F35 program will cost half as much as claimed presently, as most of the cost projections are based on maintenance costs over 30 years for thousands of planes that will never be purchased (we're going to buy thousands of F35s over decades? yeah right).

That aircraft carrier will launch. Every country that has ever built one has had significant problems doing so, the US has a long successful history of building & deploying aircraft carriers, the latest one will be no different regardless of temporary problems.

The carriers are not hard to sink; they never really have been for a major opponent. China and Russia have been able to sink them for a long time. They're not for fighting adversaries that can sink them. They're force projection, intimidation, and for fighting countries that aren't Russia or China. Carriers will be useful in their present role for a few decades to come yet (their current role is not for potentially fighting Russia or China; anyone that thinks that is seriously confused). Military tier nations in the capability realm of Iran, might pose a real threat to carriers in 15-20 years. The trick with US carriers, is that anyone (again, not named Russia or China) that actually sinks one has a full scale war with the US on their hands. In that sense, carriers are a taunting device: you can try to sink one, but if you succeed, your country is going to be massively attacked (you're going to trade sinking a carrier for losing all your airports, your power grid is going to be taken down, your airforce is going to be neutralized, your economy is going to grind to a halt, etc).

Texas: 268,597 mi²

U.S.: 3,797,000 mi²

So.. how does size exactly stop the US from having the to-date most efficient mass transport? I'm not talking LA-NYC, noone is gonna do that until someone builds vacuum tubes. First you need good local and regional travel.

You of course didn't support that claim at all. Most US military spending goes to soldier-related costs. How do you propose to slash that given how dramatically higher the US median wage is compared to Russia? Other than of course to perhaps cut the number of US soldiers in half.

> The single-pay system can be made to work. Others make it work, and a lot cheaper

Of course it can work. It can't work with US costs what they are. You need to go tell US nurses they have to take a 1/3 pay cut, to match up with what nurses in France and Germany are making. Then you need to go tell radiologists that they have to take a 70% pay cut to match up with French radiologists. Then you have to go tell pharma they're getting a 2/3 cut. Then you have to tell average hospital workers they're getting a 20% pay cut. Then you have to close 1/3 of all hospitals. Then you have to substantially expand wait times to match eg Canada, aka rationing the care. Then you have to tell hospital admin they're getting a 50% cut in their budget. Then you have to fire 500,000 people that are employed directly or indirectly in the health insurance industry. Then you have to slash the payouts for all sorts of highway robbery prices in medtech / devices / supplies related to the healthcare industry, which will can hundreds of thousands of more employees. You have to successfully adjust all of that, lower the costs, then figure out how to create new economic growth with the cost savings to re-employ all those lost jobs, wages, taxes (all that lost income tax, which will shoot a hole in the side of social security & medicare/medicaid).

IE you have to find a trillion dollars in savings across dozens of economic segments. Which is another way of saying: a lot of people are going to lose a lot of jobs and income. It's an extraordinarily complicated and expensive problem to resolve without rattling the entire economy to its core.

Oh yeah, then you have to dramatically raise taxes on the US middle class (which pays very little in taxes vs most developed nations) to match up with what countries with single payer systems do; and explain to the middle class that they're going to be better off with socialized healthcare, and that the increased taxes will be off-set by the government healthcare vs the old private insurance approach. Then you also have to significantly raise taxes on the top 25%, which pay most of the taxes in the US.

No problem eh.

* even more locally organised. County sized administrations have about the same independence as US states.

* instead of spending our (similar) tax rates on the military, it is spent on superb health care (imagine a souped up version of Obamacare with regulated prices), schools and a social net. Look at the numbers though - I think it works, that is, innovation and the economy in general are strong thanks to a more stable middle class (that doesn't experience negative social mobility due to health care problems and overpaid schools plus gets an influx from people at the poor end that make it by means of a helping hand at child age).

* and no, I would argue Switzerland is not significantly less diverse with about 30% immigrant population. We have about the same proportion of backwards rightwing pseudo conservatives as a counterreaction, but they are bound to a political system that makes getting absolute majorities in the parliament near impossible (and also relatively useless alone thanks to referendums that serve as a moderation tool). See also again the difference in how middle class is kept going, which makes a Populist power grab much less likely.

I agree, there are better systems than France. My only reference to France, is about competitive salaries in the healthcare industry. Wages in that industry have to come down by a lot to match comparables in eg France, Germany, UK.

When people talk about single payer re the US, they focus on drug prices and insurance industry costs. They ignore that essentially every cost in the US system is inflated, including routine labor and dozens of side connected feeder industries (everything from saline supply to the cost of hospital beds to labor costs in elderly care). Most of the cost bloat in the system is made up of salaries for workers such as nurses, doctors, hospital workers, admin and health insurance employees. You could slash pharma costs nearly in half in the US and only save ~$150 billion of the $1 trillion we have to cut out of our costs to get cost competitive again. Every one of these cuts will have substantial economic consequences; cut pharma in half, lose a million high paying jobs directly & indirectly that support the tax base that pays for the single payer system (ie you have to figure out how to replace that; which would occur, but it'd take lots of time).

That said, the way the US is actually going to go, is we're going to do a slow mediocre drift into single payer, through gradual expansion as the existing convoluted system fails one tier after another (essentially failing up the economic chain; the middle class will gradually all be pulled into government healthcare by necessity as the system collapses). Maybe out of desperation they'll use medicare as the platform, since the politicians in Washington DC can never agree on anything it's most likely our result will be to use something that already exists and just enlarge it.

The VA hospital system is a US example demonstrating vastly lower costs with similar outcomes. Scale that to say all of Medicare + all government workers and costs drop enough to cover vastly more people. Now add in other programs like the Ryan White AIDS program which covers ~300,000 people with very high cost care and the supliments to Rural heathcare systems etc and heathcare would look very different and cheaper.

I've made that point numerous times in this thread. I think you're missing my point: the US has to slash a trillion dollars in expenses out of its system. That trillion dollars consists of jobs & people's income & tax base loss. It is not a zero cost transition, it's a massive cost transition. You're talking about it as though it would occur in a vacuum, it would not.

The VA system is not an example of lower costs. You're wrong, it's more expensive than both the private sector and medicare:

http://dailycaller.com/2014/06/02/report-va-health-care-has-...

Further the UA is often covering the most expensive care such as hip replacements, the fact that it's a lower percentage of costs is a result of efficiency of the VA and waste in the rest of the system.

As to lowering costs, economically spending money on heathcare billing vs Rail is only different because Rail provides long term value. As long as total spending is unchanged there is no reason to suspect economic harm.

> As long as total spending is unchanged there is no reason to suspect economic harm.

You mean other than the vast dislocation that health industry labor - and two dozen other industries reliant on that spending - would suffer? People taking pay cuts in healthcare, workers losing jobs in pharma & health insurance by the hundreds of thousands (high paying jobs at that). Your premise would only actually work that way in a simulation (and it'd be a really bad simulation, not accounting for anything in the real world), not in reality. In reality, there is dramatic economic friction that occurs when you fire someone and they have to retrain / find a new job, or when you cut their pay to bring costs in line. There are immense short-term and long-term costs to that upheaval, in reality. Such costs include: unemployment costs, job training, long-term unemployment costs, welfare benefit costs, tax base loss until jobs & incomes are recovered. The US economy is growing very slow, where's the evidence it can absorb such losses and then create a million new high paying jobs (simultaneously while automation is about to bear down on just about every category of employment)?

If the VA spent 1/2 as much money and covered 1/6 of the costs while provoviding the same benefit that would be a good thing. This analysis ignores survives provided because the only way to make them look bad is to pretend spending more money is somehow a good thing.

In what way is hyperloop better than high-speed rail? I've never seen any credible study or report that argues it. Hyperloop also has massive unsolved (and potentially unsolvable) technical issues - like building a vacuum chamber of unprecedented size.

The Swiss did study something similar (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swissmetro) but their proposal looks a lot more expensive and is entirely in-tunnel.

Opponents of HSL will not only rally against it, but also kill it by promoting a more expensive solution via another channel. The US isn't going to cut military spending so it can build hyperloop instead of HSL.

Both are old vs the shiny 7700k maglev, but if you're gonna buy the 2600k just doesn't make sense.

"high speed rail" is an oxymoron. There are no high speed rail transport methods. 200MPH is not high-speed.

Says who?

Originally anything over 125mph was "high-speed rail" simply because it required new engineering techniques to be developed (existing trains and tracks were physically not engineered to withstand those speeds). As the engineering was developed further, 125mph became old news and the 'typical' definition became more like 160mph [1].

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-speed_rail

If you compare to highway travel, even 100mph would be "high speed" because people aren't going to drive 100mph on the Interstate. If you compare to airplanes, nothing is high speed, not even maglev. No one is planning to build maglev with a cruising speed of 550mph.

Another important point is that high speed rail is still rail, whereas maglev requires a custom alignment. This could be important or it might not matter at all, depending on where you're building -- e.g. France's system relies heavily on the TGVs being able to use existing conventional tracks (to reach the centre of Paris, and to branch out into smaller cities that don't merit constructing a dedicated line), Japan's doesn't (because the conventional railways in Japan are narrow-gauge).

Likewise, California HSR plans to share most of the peninsula rail corridor with Caltrain. Theoretically it's a win-win (HSR doesn't have to tear a completely new alignment through a heavily-built-up area, Caltrain gets financial support for upgrading its corridor) -- you couldn't do that with a maglev. In practice, the project is not well-coordinated, but see what I said above about Brezhnevian stagnation.

All that said, a train that can travel on both maglev and conventional track would actually be an interesting next step for high speed rail. It doesn't seem impossible.

I'd like to see a study thay analyses whether tge whole train-in-Europe vs airports-in-USA might even be explained by this sole ability of US landowners to defend themselves.

However, remains one question: If Europeans can travel by train without being searched, isn't the USA violating the freedom of movement by using planes instead of trains, then imposing the TSA and other no-fly-list laws?

When the alternative is nothing, as is the case in 99% of the US today, I'd still call that a win.

I'd personally be completely overjoyed if the US "only" got 200mph train lines between all major cities.

George W. Bush was elected on a platform of no more nation building (and secured his second term in an atmosphere of fear and war), as was Donald Trump. It's very clear that the majority of Americans do not want more war & nation building (the only ones that do, are a contingent of conservatives like McCain and even fewer similar hawks on the other side).

The globalists + military industrial complex go ahead and do what they want anyway, against the wishes of the American public. They've been doing so for a long, long time now. Vietnam was not a very popular war, they did it anyway. The notion of no longer blowing up the Middle East and treating Russia as a villain, was impossible for them to stomach re Trump, so the CIA & fellow globalists (aka the deep state, media, etc) immediately went on hyper attack (oh the consequences of going against the machine).

It was extremely popular when LBJ started the war. Less than 25% of the public thought sending troops to Vietnam was a mistake. Similarly, only 23% of Americans thought sending troops to Iraq was a mistake at the outset of that war. Popular opinion overwhelmingly supported both of those wars. The notion that "it's very clear that the majority of Americans do not want more war & nation building" and "the globalists + military industrial complex go ahead and do what they want anyway" isn't just misleading, it's false -- if not an outright lie.

>The notion of no longer blowing up the Middle East and treating Russia as a villain, was impossible for them to stomach re Trump,

Ah, yes, which is why he's threatening North Korea, attacking airfields in Syria, selling weapons to Saudi Arabia (which is currently in a war with Yemen), bombing in Afghanistan, in his own words giving the military "total authorization", authorized a raid in Yemen, and the list goes on.

You were _sold_ no more nation building, by a man who has interests in having his fingers everywhere in the globe. That you bought it hook, line and sinker is yet another problem.

In the same way, the Vietnam war was reasonably popular at first. It was barely around 67 and after countless deaths that the opinion was overwhelmingly negative, forcing the US to go back tail between its legs.

Maybe Americans no longer want war. Every single leader they are electing certainly doesn't share that opinion though. So, either they actually quite enjoy playing world police, or they're quite frankly so manipulable it becomes scary. But go on ahead and blame "the globalists" and "the deep state" (which, intended or not, is very much an InfoWars term, not exactly a reputable source), I am certain that'll do a lot of good.

‘Both’ is also an option.

Generally the passenger rail proposals are illegal because they fail some now 100+ year old laws on cost/benefit analysis originally enacted to throttle bankrupting the US from building water projects to make the deserts bloom when the US had lots of blooming land not in deserts. If you own some desert and can talk the Federal Government into a big water project to make the desert bloom, then you can get rich, but the US could go broke doing that.

Well, continually, any honest cost/benefit analysis dooms any Federal subsidies for passenger rail.

There was a big example in Baltimore: They built a subway. Big subsidies. The system was done but not quite carrying passengers yet. I went to a lecture on the economics. The cost/benefit solution, even counting the construction cost as $0.00? Sure: Brick up the openings of the subway and just f'get about it. Why? No way could ticket prices pay even for routine operating costs.

Urban centers are more productive than suburban sprawl due to network effects. Effective passenger rail allows higher density, resulting in a productivity dividend to everyone in the area.[1]

Economic analyses along these lines are often used to sell highway expansion -- since of course highways don't pay for themselves directly -- but research does not support claims that adding highway capacity has any significant economic impact.[2]

Research in this area:

[1] Transit service, physical agglomeration and productivity in US metropolitan areas [2014] Paper: http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0042098013494426 with 38 citations: https://scholar.google.com/scholar?cites=1548440332983701258...

[2] Highways and economic productivity [1997]: http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0885412297011004... with 110 citations: https://scholar.google.com/scholar?cites=4909135167466840847

To me, not focusing on ticket prices looks in conflict with the law on cost/benefit analysis, inviting waste, and shortsighted.

For US cost/benefit analysis 101 (at one time I was forced to take a grad course in that and still have the text) the main idea was to add all the (A) costs, capital, operating, etc. and (B) benefits "to whosoever they may accrue". Then the benefits had to exceed the costs. Amazing concept.

So, if are building a national park in Wyoming, then the main benefits are to the visitors to the park. Tough to say that I get a benefit if I live in NY and never visit the park. For the benefit of the people who do visit the park, add up ticket revenue or, if want park admission to be free, estimate what the ticket revenue would be worth.

Then according to the law, the benefits have to exceed the costs. That was aimed first at water resource projects but was also applied to public parks and maybe dams, highways, etc.

For the Baltimore subway, the obvious benefits went to the riders. Then the obvious way to measure the benefit was to add up revenue from ticket sales. If want the subway to be free or run at a loss, then okay, but still have to add up the benefits and they have to exceed the costs. Well, IIRC for that subway, no way could benefits to the riders pay even for the on-going operating costs. So, the optimal cost/benefit solution was to brick up the entrances and shut down the project. The capital expense? Wasted money.

Saying that the subway would have a benefit because some employers could get some workers for less money, there would be fewer cars on the roads, etc. IIRC was far-fetched and didn't count.

Yes, we could do the dreamy analysis: Just imagine a really, secure, productive, beautiful city with lots of happy people with beautiful art, statues, vistas, boulevards, walking trails, nature walks, roof top organic vegetable gardens, pet friendly, free dial-a-ride transportation, free bicycles, fast, quiet, clean, safe subways, lakes, parks, free concerts at noon, dinner time, and evening, fireworks each Saturday night, all carbon-free, renewable energy, phosphate free detergents, CFC free air conditioning, "top of the line, totally non-polluting" electric taxis, group singing Kumbaya every afternoon, a norm of group hugs all the time, full gender equality, fluidity, and ambiguity, sidewalk cafes with no paper products, sidewalk artists, farmers' markets in the streets Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays, an open air theater, a music and arts school, a performing arts center, lots of art galleries, free 24 x 7 walk-in medical clinics, etc. Just add up the benefits. Clearly they would be astronomical, beyond any costs. So, any and all cost/benefit analyses have already been passed! Let's get to work and pick the hand-formed, artisanal, multi-colored pastel paving stones for the sidewalks!

Long ago I got a strong impression that people who have that dream city in mind, in particular a lot of people in NYC, really hate private cars.

I live 70 miles north of Wall Street out in the sticks, deer in the backyard, etc., and I was torqued and pissed when for my car registration I had to pay a sur-tax to support the MTA, that is, some trains to NYC. I never ride those trains. If the trains need more money, then they should raise the ticket prices, that is, have the people who benefit from the trains pay what the trains cost, at least the on-going operating costs. It's far-feteched and wildly indirect to say that I get a benefit when I don't ride those trains.

But some people really like trains and other public transportation and really hate cars and private transportation. There are a lot of people like that in NYC.

I don't think that Kumbaya city is what the cost/benefit analysis had in mind, but I do get the strong sense that it is what a lot of people looking for Federal subsidies have in mind.

A highway and gas taxes? Sure, if gas taxes can pay for a highway, then the benefits clearly, necessarily do exceed the costs: People liked the driving enough to pay for the gas and the gas taxes, so no question.

The public transportation lovers, the train lovers, and the subsidy takers are all coming out of the woodwork again. I smell a fad, a bubble. IMHO, this too, will pass. We're not going to have a lot Federal subsidies for a lot of new passenger trains or Kumbaya cities springing up.

It's really simple: Anything like passenger trains mostly just do not work. Sure, NYC is built on top of a lot of subway lines, and they are now crucial to that city. So, that's NYC. So be it.

Why NYC? A good seaport between (A) the US Midwest, the Great Lakes, the Erie Canal, and the Hudson River and (B) much of the rest of the world, especially the US east coast and Europe. So, it was geography.

But, back to trains. The people have lots of origin-destination pairs so try to have lots of stops. Then on average at each stop usually take on or let off only a few people and for those few people have everyone else on the train wait and have the many tons of the train itself slow down, stop, and accelerate again. Bummer.

So, really, don't want so many little stops and, then, come up short on origin-destination pairs. E.g., my car is downstairs, under my family room, just off the basement. It's just a few steps to the car, and when I get back with groceries, etc., it's just a few steps to move the stuff from my car, an SUV, to my appropriate storage shelves for that stuff. When I start, accelerate, and stop my car, that's about 4000 pounds, not 100 tons, and only my time is involved, not also the time of hundreds of other people. Indeed, if I have much stuff, I back the SUV into the garage to save a few steps hauling the stuff. A train? To replace my SUV? A really bad joke. There is no way a train can stop close to all the houses in my neighborhood. That is, again, a train is very short on origin-destination pairs.

That's an old and very obvious and clear story: About 100 years ago, the US had passenger train service to essentially every cross-roads or larger in the whole country. But as soon as private cars were available, to heck with the horse drawn buckboard from the house to the train station, and to heck with the passenger trains. That is still the case.

Even if the trains were infinitely fast, to do well serving lots of origin-destination pairs, the delays for all the needed stops and connections would take too long.

The fact of life is that in nearly all the land area of the US, and for nearly everyone in the US not in one of the top 10 largest cities, the main means of people transportation is their private car, yes, on highways funded by gas taxes.

I know; I know; the Kumbaya city people want Federal subsidies to get rid of private cars, gasoline, suburbs, highways for private cars, etc. and have everyone in their own 500 square foot per person flat in a high rise in Kumbaya city with lots of trains and, soon, self-driving taxis, food delivery via drones, ordered by talking into a friendly AI appliance, etc. That fad, bubble will also soon go away.

Gee, and remember, we will need really good train service to Woodstock, NY!

Folks, again, follow the money: The people who want the subsidies want to give you a lot of dreamy stuff and then get your money and put a lot of it in their pockets. They want to have you dream about 100% all-natural, carbon-free, CFC-free, phosphate-free, anxiety-free, totally free, organic, pure, renewable, with no harm to the 100% all-natural, pure, pristine, delicate, sensitive, environment, the climate, the coral reefs, the whales, the birds, Antarctica, etc., or was that the last such scam? Uh, and the birds, well, there has been some compromise there!

Here is one: On the Great Lakes, have a nice paddle wheel boat. Big enough for several hundred people. Pick people up at some ports and take them on a beautiful, scenic evening cruise with all the best people.

Here's another idea: Notice that a lot of people want to have a private boat of 40 feet or so, say, on the Great Lakes. As everyone knows, to own such a boat usually has a cost per hour actually on the water too high to believe. So, have some such boats and rent them. Do a really nice job. E.g., have the boats in top condition and squeaky clean. Have very helpful staff of young people, usually college students off for the summer, in nice, crisp uniforms.

These ideas sound good, right? Make lots of money, right? Would be candidates for Federal subsidies based on cost/benefit analysis? Right?

Wrong! The ideas flopped. They lost money. Actually, the first idea, the cruise ship, did work for some years about 100 years ago and then trailed off. For whatever reason, those ideas didn't work.

For the free enterprise system, people learn that (A) there are lots of really nice products which, however, cost so much too few people can afford them and (B) lots of cheap products lots of people can afford except nearly no one wants them. Free enterprise has to make money in this world of (A) and (B). Public projects? With just cost/benefit analysis done in some dreamy ways, we're looking at a lot of projects that wouldn't work in free enterprise. I.e., the projects are losers in that charging what the real costs are, too few people would buy. It's their choice to buy or not, and too often they would not. But, with a public project, they have to pay for the thing whether they want to or not!

I have an idea: Why don't we get back to rationality and reality, wise up, and stop the scams and their waste and ripoffs? Remember Solyndra?

Or are we so rich we can ignore reality and rationality and indulge ourselves in goofy nonsense and dream of smoking funny stuff?

To me, not focusing on ticket prices looks in conflict with the law on cost/benefit analysis, inviting waste, and shortsighted.

It's not.

Public goods, a term of art in economics, refer to those for which market transactions alone fail to capture the full benefits. There may be additional factors as well including nonrivalry or nonexcludability. Even on a transit system where it seems that the beneficiaries are well-defined -- passengers -- there are nonexcludable beneficiaries: drivers who experience less congestion, the families of workers or children who can commute by transit rather than requiring private auto trips, employers who have an increased employee pool, retailers who benefit by increased foot traffic and patronage, reduced air pollution, etc., etc., etc.

So, no, farebox revenue, of and by itself, doesn't tell the full story.

The basic principles were layed out some time ago:

"The third and last duty of the sovereign or commonwealth is that of erecting and maintaining those public institutions and those public works, which, though they may be in the highest degree advantageous to a great society, are, however, of such a nature that the profit could never repay the expense to any individual or small number of individuals, and which it therefore cannot be expected that any individual or small number of individuals should erect or maintain. The performance of this duty requires, too, very different degrees of expense in the different periods of society."

-- Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations, Book V, Chapter 1, Part 3.

https://en.m.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Wealth_of_Nations/Book_...

Much of the rest I wrote is a parody of your ideas.

NYC is there and exists, and we have to live with it. But what is in practice and reality necessary in the commons, public, etc. in NYC need not establish a principle to apply elsewhere. I explained why NYC is there -- it's some geography. Maybe that geography is still important; maybe not. But that geography is rare: In the whole east US, there is about Boston, NYC, Philly, Baltimore, DC, Charlotte, and New Orleans. And NYC has the advantage that it is not blocked by the mountains that run from about Maine to Florida. That is, due to the Erie Canal, NYC has a water path to the US Midwest.

NYC is there. It's done. It's not going away, and we're not going to build another one. That passenger trains and other public and commons expenditures are important in NYC does not extend to the rest of the country.

Curious that Adam Smith said some of that stuff.

But I tried to indicate that cost/benefit analysis as in the US law I studied does not include the highly indirect benefits you mentioned.

To me, you include so much that (A) no person or government process would ever be able to sort through and decide what to include versus reject and (B) the way would be wide open for way too much public spending as in my Kumbaya city parody.

Something happened in the DC Beltway: For some years, people kept trying to figure out the best routes. Finally it became clear that the routes didn't much matter because of the years between when the route was announced and when it was finished. During those years, lots of apartment and office buildings and shopping centers would locate to take advantage of the Beltway as soon as it was finished.

Well could do something similar with trains: Build them and let people move their apartment, office buildings and shopping, etc. to conform to the trains.

Maybe could go to some big, low density area of the US, just put in lots of trains, put up lots of buildings, and then let people move in. That is, design the area for trains instead of private cars. My understanding is that China has tried such things and the effort flopped.

Net, for the present US, passenger trains don't work. The main reason is that the way people live now, they need far too many origin-destination pairs, and trains can't serve that many. Private cars and highways can; trains can't.

We're not going to redesign and rebuild everything around trains or anything else. Instead we are going to be incremental. Where there is a need, business will try to find ways to fill it. An example is Amazon based on the Internet, Moore's law, and the Interstate highways. Based on the Internet, more people will be able to work from home and not commute. Maybe there will be a role for drones. Maybe there will be less commuting for education.

Sorry, net, in the US, once again, as has been fully clear since the end of WWII, passenger trains will flop. In particular, I don't see either Trump or Congress putting up the cash to change that.

The US does a lot with trains. E.g., recently Buffett bought BN. It carries coal, lots of coal. IIRC, trains are carrying lots of stuff for fracking.

Trump is doing a lot to get coal going again in the US. Then trains will have to be involved. The mine that just opened is for metallurgical coal. Okay, then, that coal will be used for making steel, and no doubt trains will also carry the steel. And Trump wants US steel to do better -- more trains. Generally Trump wants more US manufacturing: Okay, likely both inputs and outputs will be carried heavily by, right, trains. Trump wants to export coal: Okay, then, as that coal is loaded on ships, likely it will come from trains.

But, passenger trains and Kumbaya city? Nope.

False.

You write too much. Focus your fire and thoughts.

That situation just does not apply anywhere else in the US unless you insist on SF.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_New_York_City

Citing: "U.S. Metro Economies (note CSA 2012 GMP total includes sum of New York, Bridgeport, New Haven, Allentown, Trenton, Poughkeepsie, and Kingston MSA 2012 GMP values cited)" (PDF). IHS Global Insight, The United States Conference of Mayors, and The Council on Metro Economies and the New American City. November 2013. p. 9 through 18 in Appendix Tables. Retrieved July 29, 2014

"The economy of the State of New York is reflected in its gross state product in 2015 of $1.44 trillion"

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_New_York

Which is to say that New York State absent the NYCMSA is 0.11 trillion.

Or: NYCMSA is 92%+ of the economic activity of New York State.

The NYCMSA also exceeds the GDP of all but three of the remaining United States, and is nearly 10% of the overall total (California and Texas exceed it). It is greater than that of the smallest 18 states, combined.

As you were saying?

I was saying that at this point, NYC does need trains. And, suspicions confirmed, NYC is awash in money to pay for them, and for the new construction after 9/11, for the big water tunnels, for some subway extensions, for whatever renovation they want to do to Grand Central Terminal, and, really, for whatever they want to do to the Metro or whatever it is called to Upstate NY, Connecticut, Long Island, etc.

But, for all that money, recently I, who never ride trains, at least have not in about 15 years and rarely forever, had to subsidize the commuter trains to NYC. Bummer.

So, as you showed, NYC really should be able to pay for its own trains.

But: For a while nearly year 2000, I was working in the Wall Street area, that is, 70 miles south of me. I found that I could drive my car, park, and get to my office in less elapsed time than the trains took just to get me from my nearest station to Grand Central. Between gas, parking, and care maintenance, I spent a lot of money on the commuting, but the trains were not cheap, either. And I would still need my car to get to/from my nearest train station and, then, need a subway or taxi to get me to my office.

That's a curious data point. Sure, if everyone tried cars, then the roads would get clogged. Still it's curious that for all the screaming about traffic jams, my personal car was faster.

Fine, at this point, NYC has no alternative but to make trains and subways work, and they do. And taxis.

But, sure, NYC still needs roads, e.g., the 18 wheel trucks that queue up outside of NYC waiting for the selected time to drive into the city to pickup/deliver. E.g., I have a friend who killed 5000 hogs a day in Ohio and each day drove some number of 18 wheel trucks, his, with 40,000 pounds a truck, of fresh pork to spots in NYC and Manhattan. So, NYC still needs roads.

Here is a biggie point I omitted: Really, outside of a few big cities, nearly everyone needs a personal car. Then, for some one trip, when there might be a choice of what mode of transportation to use, for the car the cost is just the marginal cost for that trip since they still need the car, no matter how often they take a train. If the marginal cost of using the car is less than the train ticket, for the full cost of the train, and if the car is more convenient, then people will be using their car. That point is one of the main stakes in the heart of trains everywhere but NYC where the trains are necessary because NYC at this point has no choice.

And now there is a new stake in the heart of trains -- the TSA.

There is another biggie point: Last night I did two Google searches

Amtrak losses

Acela losses

I found lots of articles on lots of losses. Amtrak is for the whole country; they actually have some trains coast to coast. Acela is for the NE or some such and supposed to be fast? For Amtrak, apparently right along they have been getting about $1.5 billion from Congress. And from what I saw, Acela is also losing money.

These losses add fuel to the fire that in the US, passenger trains can't pay for themselves with ticket prices. And, for Amtrak, much of the track they use is not dedicated to Amtrak but is also used by other trains, including freight trains. So, some of the high speed rail proposals will have to build and maintain their own tracks, vacuum tubes, etc. thus further increasing their costs, both capital and operating. Obvious: High speed passenger trains will be big money losers.

Outside of NYC, passenger trains have been dying since just after WWII. They are not coming back.

We're also getting pretty late in the stage of an HN discussion. I don't know where else you comment on things, but I'm active on Reddit, and run a sub there. I've just created an open thread post: https://www.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/6l5nfd/open_th...

Some of the points you've raised:

* Failures of composition: what's logical for a single agent isn't beneficial on net for society as a whole.

* When you're driving into Manhattan, you are directly benefitting by the existence of the rail network as it reduces the congestion of the roadways you're on. That is, if your time, or transit flexibility requirements, make rail unattractive, you are an external beneficiary of that rail network. (Positive externality.) Ergo: you should pay for it.

* "NYC's GDP dwarfs that of the state as a whole, so it should pay for its own upkeep." Interesting perspective, one which could be further discussed.

* Not made, but possibly imputed: NYC's notional financialised GDP exceeds that of rural districts ONLY BECAUSE of favourable consideration NYC has been able to impose on the very notions of property, market price, and relative surplus value capture. You haven't gone there, but I will. It's an interesting argument and turns many economic core/periphery arguments on their head.

* NYC is a capability centre whose benefits spill out over not only all of New York State, but much of the US and world. To what extent does this justify various forms of tax in support of NYC?

* Transportation and explicit vs. implicit subsidies. Again: there's a vast literature on this topic of which you're evidencing little familiarity. I'm not saying you haven't read it, though you're not arguing in a way which suggests you have. Going back to Smith again, largely Book V, which deals with such matters, though I could point to many other elements -- the justifications for creation of canals, railroads, postal roads, post offices, libraries, schools, public universities, the aviation industry, highway systems, and publicly-managed ports, all come to mind. Simon Winchester's The Men Who United the States addresses many of these elements, though not from a principally economic perspective.

Keep in mind that the notion of trans-continental or inter-continental travel occurring within hours rather than days, weeks, months, or years is one that's only about 60 years old.

And again: if you want to continue this discussion, I invite you to Reddit, where it's easier to keep an exchange alive.

I don't take public transportation, I'm a car-commuter. But I have an issue with something you said and it irked my quite a bit. You called those riding the trains and what not "subsidies" but you don't look at our car culture and have the same view. This befuddles me. Highway construction is every bit the subsidy that public transportation construction is, perhaps more so. Not to mention the other impacts, environmental or otherwise, that cost us dearly. Whether it's the harm to the environment, the higher cost paid to maintain a car and the infrastructure to drive it on, or the fact that car accidents are the leading cause of death for our country's youth, picking on public transportation as a subsidy is not a fair characterization.

Well, first, my understanding is that the Federally funded roads are paid for from the Highway Trust Fund, that gets gas taxes and commonly shows a profit, that is, gets used for other than highways, but I don't have good data.

Second, on this thread the beginnings of this was cost/benefit analysis. There if benefits of roads exceed the costs, then it's okay to spend general tax money on the roads.

The reason I'm screaming subsidy is that I don't believe that passenger trains can pass traditional cost/benefit analysis anywhere in the US except in NYC, maybe SF, and that's about it. Or, for NYC they will do what they do because in some sense NYC needs it, to heck with cost/benefit analysis. But recently I did have to pay a surtax to support the NY MTA when I never use it -- apparently they are not charging enough for their tickets. I'm not part of the unique NYC thingy so should not have to pay for the MTA for NYC.

My view of the trains being pushed now is that no way will they pass cost/benefit analysis unless count all kinds of distant benefits that traditional analysis never did. So, to me, the only way the trains could roll would be just flat out subsidies taken from people by force via the tax laws. Bummer.

I'm less concerned about the bad aspects of private cars than you are.

I regard the trains as a scam intended to make a few people rich from money from the Federal government from tax money. E.g., supposedly Musk's businesses have gotten $1 B or more, or was it $5+ B. It's a lot. To me, Musk is sucking on the public teat.

I'm not familiar with your particular situation or how the NYC metro works, but typically we pay taxes for all sorts of things we don't use, and some thing we indirectly benefit from.

> I'm less concerned about the bad aspects of private cars than you are.

Which I find bizarre. Why are you so concerned that you might be subsidizing trains, but unconcerned about the environmental impact, the suburban sprawl and resource drainage, the insane amount of money spent purchasing and maintaining cars and highways, and the thousands of people who die every year in car accidents?

> I regard the trains as a scam intended to make a few people rich from money from the Federal government from tax money.

Well then you can just level that criticism at everything so unless you're an anarchist (and I am, actually), this isn't really a useful comment. Plus, if you think trains are a "scam" that are somehow screwing the American taxpayer, why would you not level the same criticism at the auto or fuel industry?

We could go on and on about that. Sure, ballpark, first cut, you are correct. But I don't see a better alternative.

And for the costs, IIRC, and again, this is not my job and I don't have good data, nearly cars pay for themselves from when people buy the cars, buy gas, pay for maintenance and insurance, when the gas taxes are used to build the roads, etc.

> environmental impact

From cars and truck on the roads, I'm no longer much concerned.

> suburban sprawl

I like the suburbs, much better than living in a large city.

> resource drainage

I'm not very concerned: We're using iron, aluminum, concrete, and oil. Someday we will run out of oil, and then we will make it from electricity, water, and CO2. We can recycle the iron and aluminum -- IIRC the aluminum is valuable enough to be eagerly recycled now. Concrete? It needs mostly only calcium carbonate, that is, lime stone. The planet is totally awash in lime stone. And the concrete on the roads can be recycled. Some people are concerned about concrete because making cement from lime stone releases CO2. My understanding is that CO2 from human sources is tiny compared with what comes from volcanoes.

> purchasing and maintaining

Yup, it's expensive, one of the major expenses, likely second only to housing. But I don't know of an alternative unless we are all going to live in small apartments in high rise buildings in dense cities. And we will still need roads for trucks, taxis, and likely busses.

But, a lot of people would rather live in the suburbs and drive a personal car and are willing to pay the costs. If they are in fact paying the costs, then fine with me.

> the thousands of people who die every year in car accidents

I don't like that. But I've driven maybe 800,000 miles without an injury. As a teenager I had some minor accidents, but the main cause was ice and no one was hurt and no cars were seriously damaged. In some parts of the country, when the roads are covered with glare ice, don't drive for 3-4 days.

I just bought auto insurance in NY: It was $370 for the year. That's a good measure of the costs of the accidents and injuries. Medical insurance for the rest of health care is much, much higher. So, auto accidents are not a biggie for medical problems. The old biggie was smoking, but we've made progress on that. Now a biggie is obesity. IIRC, then it's heart disease and cancer. My parents dies of smoking, via heart disease and cancer. Without the smoking the cancer would not have been there. Same for the heart disease except eventually Dad would have had that but now some simple pills for about $0.50 a day fixes that quite nicely. We're making progress in medicine, but, still, that $370 a year figure shows that the medical side of cars is tiny compared with the rest of medicine.

Cars are better than they used to be: Tires used to be gone in 10,000, 20,000 miles. Now it's common to get 70,000 miles. Brakes, ball joints, they last much longer. The engines are much cleaner due to electronic ignition and fuel systems and, thus, last much longer, commonly over 200,000 miles. We're getting more lifetime out of U-joints, wheel bearings, shocks, etc. My SUV has over 200,000 miles and the original shocks -- Bilsteins, from Chevy. Also original springs, suspension bushings, and ball joints. For much of the car interiors, the synthetic fabrics are nearly indestructable. In my 200,000 mile SUV, a lot of the interior looks new. And cars are getting better still, e.g., better protection against corrosion.

The US is a big country. Cars are working great. I see no better alternative. Passenger trains? NYC and DC for commuters. Secret? Both were awash in money and could buy whatever they wanted.

Well there is an alternative. You build more dense, mixed-use developments where people can walk, bike, or if needed take the bus to where they need to go. Have rentals like Car 2 Go and Lyft and whatnot. Trains aren't the only solution, they are part of a suite of available solutions. I don't advocate getting completely rid of cars, but building 6-lane highways is simply unsustainable and undesirable.

> And for the costs, IIRC, and again, this is not my job and I don't have good data, nearly cars pay for themselves from when people buy the cars, buy gas, pay for maintenance and insurance, when the gas taxes are used to build the roads, etc.

Ok so let's say that everybody pays for their cars and whatever. Yes you pay for the maintenance and yes you pay for the gas. I'll even submit that you pay for the tax and that directly funds roads. My question to you now is, whether or not that is an economically justifiable policy to maintain. Let's say you buy a cheap new car at like $15,000. Ok, so now you're out that money, + interest. Now you have to pay out of pocket for tires, gas, and insurance. All of that money is, as far as I'm concerned, wasted, because if we zoned better we could have situations where you work close to where you live, and you don't have to drive everywhere. Now what are you saving? All of that cost. On top of that, we haven't even broached the subject of teenager deaths (let along just general destruction of life and property from accidents) and the hospital costs associated with those accidents, nor have we discussed the health impact of pollution, sitting on your fat lazy ass everyday, nor have we touched on the environmental impact from extracting all these resources that aren't needed. You sitting here saying "I'm unconcerned" is kind of alarming. How can you be unconcerned with any of this?

> But I don't know of an alternative unless we are all going to live in small apartments in high rise buildings in dense cities. And we will still need roads for trucks, taxis, and likely busses.

The problem is that you have this picture of what urban means, (small apartment and idk, what else?) when it's not the case. I have no desire to live in a shoebox either. Yet I still live in the middle of a downtown in a large city in the US. How can you reconcile this? The fact is that urban sprawl is almost as undesirable as suburban sprawl. But mixed-use neighborhoods solve for both. Check out this TED talk: https://www.ted.com/talks/jeff_speck_the_walkable_city

> The US is a big country. Cars are working great. I see no better alternative.

Than you simply aren't thinking. I don't mean to sound rude here but it's pretty easy to imagine a far superior solution to gigantic unused parking lots, fiery deaths and destruction, and 45 minutes (each way) drives stuck in traffic. Why is it that every other first-world country on the planet can get along fine with public transportation, but we can't? If you want to say "America is so big" my reply to you is good, and we should keep the open space open for better uses than gigantic, poorly built homes. You can have the best of both worlds. Hell you can even still have a car. But you cannot have a world where everybody does the single-occupant commute to their 9-5 everyday, not for long at least.

> Passenger trains? NYC and DC for commuters. Secret? Both were awash in money and could buy whatever they wanted.

Hmm. I wonder why that's the case?

Also, I don't dispute that you are paying $370/year for car insurance, but you're far below average anywhere in the country, and nearly 4x cheaper than the average for New York. If you have any contrary stats by all means post them, but this is like the first thing I found: https://www.valuepenguin.com/average-cost-of-insurance

In the US, NYC is there and spends a lot of money on various public and commons projects. Passenger trains are an example.

We will not build another NYC, and how NYC spends money on trains, etc. does not generalize elsewhere in the US at all well.

For the US, for people, as they travel, for nearly all miles, say, commuting and shopping, to and from school, etc. there are lots of origin-destination pairs. Trains can't serve that many origin-destination pairs. First, can't lay that much track. Second, can't start, accelerate, and stop a 100 ton train with several hundred people just to pickup or let off just 1-4 people at a time, and that is what the many origin-destination pairs would require.

Also on a train, tough to carry all the stuff for shopping -- an SUV is much better. Also on a train, tough to carry all the stuff for a family visit to grandma's, either across the country or even just across town -- an SUV is much better. For a soccer mom with several kids, her own and some neighbors', an SUV is much better than a train for keeping all the kids, their sports equipment, etc. together.

As has been fully clear in the US since the end of WWII, nearly everywhere in the US, passenger trains flop.

Then, now there is another stake through the heart of passenger trains -- the TSA.

In nearly all the US, for nearly all their transportation, people prefer private cars and public roads paid for with gas taxes to trains. Otherwise they prefer airplanes.

Trump wants to do a lot on US infrastructure, but I don't think that will include more on passenger trains.

It's simple: Again, once again, over again, yet again, one more time, in the US, with rare exceptions, passenger trains flop.

For passengers, too many of the reasons for the flop also hold for high speed trains, maglev trains, trains in vacuum tubes, trains above ground on long legs, trains underground, trains on old style rails, small trains, long trains, trains through big cities, trains between pairs of big cities, trains in areas such as the Rust Belt. They all flop.

Why? They are not very attractive to the passengers who too often would rather take their personal SUV or an airplane. They cost too much per passenger served.

Sorry 'bout that.

I've explained here over and over, long and short.

There are people now who just came out of the woodwork again, once more, as off and on going back at least to 1950 or so, and are pushing passenger trains in the US -- high speed, in tubes, on magnetic rails, on traditional tracks, between cities, through cities, in selected areas, say, the Midwest Rust Belt, between selected pairs of cities, e.g., LA and SF, etc. They are all trains. In the US, they will lose big bucks. The only way to build or operate them is to use the tax system to force people to pay for them.

So, now the people who want trains, and their Federal $$$$$ subsidies, see Trump's infrastructure push, smell $$$$$, are out of the woodwork, and are pushing passenger trains. One of the last things pushed was Solyndra. Before that it was blocking CFCs and ruining the AC in two of my cars. Before that it was blocking DDT and, thus, increasing a lot of disease from mosquitoes -- killed a lot of people.

There are some people who view their careers as selling projects. They come up with a long list of emotional reasons, get a lot of publicity, get donations, lobby for Federal subsidies, and that's their job. They just want to sell their projects. They want to be on your back and in your pocket. They want to use the legal and tax system to force you to do what otherwise you would not do. They use NYC and SF as big examples, but those examples don't apply elsewhere in the US. The examples from Europe, Japan, and China don't apply in the US.

Again, again, again, again, the US had passenger trains, from each little cross road to each other little cross road. After WWII, private cars on roads paid for by gas taxes killed the passenger trains for a really simple reason: People didn't like passenger trains and preferred their cars or airplanes. That's just the truth.

Why did people not like passenger trains? I've explained here over and over and over, short, long, medium, etc.

In simple, blunt, bottom line terms, for nearly all of the current US or anything like it, passenger trains are just total junk engineering ideas -- junk. The trains try to force a lot of people to share some one track, but in fact in reality nearly none of those people want to be on that track because it isn't close to where they started or where they want to be.

Again, once again, it doesn't matter how fast the trains are because even if the high speed trains were infinitely fast, they would still flop because they just can't serve enough origin-destination pairs. People would waste time waiting for the first train, waste time for each stop of that train (to stop and start a 100 ton train is EXPENSIVE), and waste time between each change of trains, and still usually they wouldn't really get within even a mile of where the heck they wanted to go. Due to all the time stopping, the revenue per hour for the train is too darned small.

Look, passenger trains are just some pie in the sky, some emotional appeal, to force you to buy something you don't want. The people forcing you are after your money.

I can see it now: Trump wants some infrastructure plan and tries to get it through Congress. Yup, I-84 and I-684 are really rough and need new surfaces; I-84 likely needs more lanes.

So, some train lobbying effort gets to some Congressman and explains how the train subsidies will help his campaign finances and jobs and votes in his district. So, as part of legislative compromise, (that's where you should either not cross the street then or run as fast as you can to cross the street but compromise and walk across slowly) the Congressman goes along with Trump's proposal but only if the proposal includes some train pork for the Congressman and his district. That's not new. As part of this, the lobbying effort understands, as they have for may other projects, e.g., CFCs and DDT, that they need a big PR effort to get the public ready for the tax dollars for these trains.

Here's an example of how this works: Most Congressmen are desperate for campaign funds. Well, there is Speaker of the House Paul Ryan. For the Republicans to elect him to that position, part of his job is to raise money for the campaigns of Republican Congressmen. Ryan is expected to raise ballpark $30 million a year. So, when see what Ryan does, e.g., dragging his feet here and there, making one absurd statement after another, here's what he is really doing: He is adding PR his donors like, the donors who provide the $30 million. So, he is at least pretending to push the interests of those donors. So, Ryan won't even pick up a pencil with less than six weeks of posturing about writing instruments. It's all 99 44/100% total BS, but that's how he gets his $30 million. Then, after a lot of such PR posturing and total BS, nonsense statements, with a lot of public support to do the right things, with a lot of poorly publicized deals, out of the view of the headlines, then, often, maybe, Ryan will be able to do the right, obvious thing he knew about right away at the beginning. That's much of why often it takes Congress so long to act. It's the effect of money on politics as we know far too well.

There is a solution, a really fast, overwhelmingly powerful, never fail, 900 pound gorilla solution: Inform the citizens and have them inform their representatives in Congress. Without fail, when enough phone calls and letters arrive in Congress to say that high speed rail is a scam, that will be the end of high speed rail, and no amount of special interest lobbying and campaign donations, free trips to Aruba, etc. will have any effect at all.

And, how to inform citizens? Sure, now, the Internet, e.g., HN. Why am I doing this? Good government. I'm not being paid. I'm taking my time, getting down voted, etc. to shine a bright light on the scam.

Since 99+% of HN readers should agree with me, I should win. So far, I'm losing.

Gee, high speed rail is just so dreamy!!!

Here I'm calling BS, flim-flam, fraud, pork barrel, money wasting, subsidy, pay-off, kick-back, force you to buy something you don't want scam. I don't like scams. Fewer than 1% of US citizens should like it. Wise up: You are being had.

Such scams have happened too often in the past. Maybe with the Internet, we can cut down on the scams.

Recall the recent Sharyl Attkisson book and statement: IIRC, "Essentially everything you read in the media was put there by someone with a special interest who wants to influence your opinion." So, these scams via the media are not just the exceptions but the rule, the usual thing. Sure, in the media, we recognize the ads except Sharyl Attkisson is saying that essentially all the rest is also ads.

Well, here I'm not running ads. I've explained the passenger rail scam. If you can't understand, then that's sad for our country.

You asked

> Are you suggesting that a metro system, like MTA or BART, is the same as a high speed rail? They serve fundamentally different purposes.

and my answer started with

> They are passenger trains.

That's the answer directly to your question, in the first sentence and just four words. So, the answer is right there, right up front, the first thing, nicely "concise", in just four words.

Apparently you did not see those four words as answering your question. Well, then, my four word answer was too "concise". So, I went on with what you call a "wall of text" and explained just why being a "passenger train" is the problem, different "purposes" or not, fast or slow, long or short, etc. The answer to your question is right there, short, concise, right at the beginning, in just four words and, then, if that is too short, with lots of detail.

I typed it in. All you have to do is read it. If the four word answer is too "concise", then read the "wall of text".

So, I don't see cars as a scam. Passenger trains? Yes. Cars? No.

But for the NY and NYC MTA, they don't care because NYC needs the trains. For the rest of the country, they should and do care.

If you want my tax money for your new dreamy trains, then I will tell my representatives to vote no.

HSR is more of a more efficient airplane - spacious & can walk around & get a drink.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_density#/media/File...

(Or if you prefer something more recent, have a look at: http://www.newgeography.com/content/002808-world-urban-areas...)

Pretty obvious which areas are ripe for HSR. Except for the mid-Atlantic corridor and arguably coastal California, nothing in the US really is.

It's the same thing when people go abroad then come back and complain how backwards cell phone service is here. People really don't appreciate how underpopulated the U.S. is relative to the rest of the world. (Conversely, it's also why we could accommodate practically an unlimited # of refugees compared to Europe, if we really cared to.)

Even a train that drops you off in the middle of Los Angeles could leave you many hours from the actual place in Los Angeles you want to be.

This argument ignores the new and existing population clusters that form and grow along a transportation link. You only have to look at interstate highway system and how new population clusters formed and existing clusters grew along the links once interstate hwy were built. Just reviewing the I-35, I-10 in Texas will show you that. Same can be seen with local subways and light rails systems. The clusters near stations grow faster than rest of the city.

Also, when people in the US say "high speed rail", they usually seem to mean 180mph. That does not qualify as high speed rail overseas.

Upgrading the current low speed system to medium speed 180mph rail would mean that taking the train would actually be faster than driving (and for short air routes, faster than airport+flying).

My guess is that many existing routes would then become financially viable.

[1]: typical example -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horseshoe_Curve_(Pennsylvania)

[2]: For a detailed example of what's possible & what isn't with existing corridors, you can look at this independent engineer's study of how to upgrade a rail route through Northern California: http://zierke.com/shasta_route/

You mean "start a gold rush".

Nobody is traveling from Paris to Rome by high speed train, flying is cheaper and faster. But Paris to Lyon, Lyon to Milan and Milan to Rome, train wins. Why not in the USA?

Because of the distances involved, air travel is much more economical in much of the US. Almost all of my trips to random cities in the US are at least a thousand kilometers; I think there is only one major city within a thousand kilometers, and that is connected by rail which people use.

High density population centers separated by low density farmland and open space should be nearly ideal for high speed rail. There are huge swaths of land where there's nothing to tear down, there are fewer property owners to deal with, and there are usually fewer obstacles to route around.

Much as I love HSR and curse its absence when in the USA the economics are not quite as clear. Air routes are more flexible than rail routes.

Of course that flexibility isn't necessarily desired by all; the stations on a rail network provide hysteresis which can keep otherwise unprofitable cities alive and even vibrant. New York beat out Boston because the Hudson was more navigable than the Charles, Boston Harbor's benefits notwithstanding. Chicago grew because it was at a confluence (literally!) of cheap transshipment points near farmland. Both cities do well even though their original reasons for existing are lost (neither are major freight hubs but have a lot of other transit links).

And rail, even underground rail, can be abandoned.

Except for having to build an, uh, entire airport.

In fact airports can be / often are built far from urban areas where land is cheaper and space is available not just for the runways and terminals but parking, cargo etc. While you want rail terminals to be in densely connected locations which are more expensive and more difficult to network to.

But my point is that you can relatively easily fly from one airport to many others. For example, the under-construction California HSR goes from LA through Bakersfield in the Central Valley up to SF and then Sacramento. If Fresno in the Central Valley grew, you could expand its commuter airport and then it would be directly linked by air to Burbank, San Jose, San Franciso etc as well as points outside the state. While the cost of adding an HSR terminal in Fresno could be large, especially if the rail doesn't run nearby (as it happens a terminal appears to be planned in Fresno, but the point remains).

I'm still a big supporter of HSR but I recognize the trade offs.

Of course, the technology itself is still way more unproven than that of high-speed rail, but that is its promise at least.

Even with the best available rail technology, trips between them would take over 12 hours by rail.

All of these trips are currently frequently taken by car because flying is a nuisance and takes a lot longer than just the flight duration itself.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14679127

I don't dispute that there are pockets of the US that would be well-served by rail. Maybe SEA-PDX is one of them! Note, though, that neither Seattle nor Portland are in the top 10 economically most important US cities.

I'm not anti-train. I love HSR. I wish we had more of it. But I think there's a solid reason that we don't.

MPLS-Chicago has never really resonated with me, but there are some straight north south lines that I think make a lot of sense ...

Duluth-MPLS-DesMoines-KCMO would make a lot of sense.

Cheyenne-FortCollins-Denver-ColoSprings-Pueblo ... that would make a lot of sense.

Any conversations of car-vs-train have to account for the linear scaling cost compared to loading up 4+ people and/or a bunch of stuff in a car.

https://www.eurail.com/en/europe-by-train/night-trains

For America, the overwhelming shortcoming is ordinary commuter rail networks. Park-and-ride is a well-proven concept that can massively reduce traffic and local air pollution, while still serving very large areas of suburban sprawl. Many American cities could be completely transformed with a handful of well-planned commuter rail routes.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Park_and_ride

And a good nights rest, trying to sleep on those things is almost impossible for me and I have no sleep problems normally.

New York-San Francisco (for example) in 12 hours by train could be great: leave at 7pm, eat dinner, get a full night's sleep, wake up the next morning and you're there.

The night on the train shouldn't cost more than an extra night in a hotel room would've cost, and you've gone city center to city center and avoided the nightmare of air travel.

Sign me up.

As a historical timing thing, most of the US leapfrogged the need for urban density and big train networks with air travel and automobiles, and neither of them are expensive enough relative to national wealth now to make it easy to justify investing more in alternatives currently. Especially with self-driving electric cars and alternative energy sources potentially around the corner to plow through the biggest pain points we've encountered around our car-centric urban design so far.

It's amazing that other countries haven't solved this problem by inventing things like express trains.

Oh wait, they have. It's the literally same technology as a skip list.

"that does half of what you can do in air, at probably not a ton more comfort level at twice+ the length (I've not seen a lot of inexpensive long train trips in the US or Asia that beat domestic coach (let alone domestic first) by enough for me to want to put up with it for two or more times the amount of time), and at the end of the day you haven't solved SEA-NYC, LAX-NYC, etc, which are all already served in the status quo."

And yet, most people aren't traveling cost-to-coast. We don't need to solve SEA-NYC with trains. Solving SEA-LAX or NYC-ATL would be more than good enough.

Otherwise, your comment is completely counterfactual. I just spent a year in Japan. Trains there are cost-competitive with air travel, far better in terms of time and convenience, and vastly more comfortable. The only train segments that are "twice the length" of driving or flying are the segments that don't exist (i.e. you have to take a circuitous route, because the direct line isn't there). No rational person in Japan prefers to fly or drive if they can take a train. Even the local lines are preferable for trips under 4-5 hours.

And Japan is the size of the US west coast, with similar population distribution (a few big cities, with lots of smaller, rural towns between). There's no reason we can't have the same systems in America. We just don't, because we don't invest, and Americans insist on arguing about things they don't understand, based on little more than opinion and ideology.

Come on. You're a smart person. You can do better math than this.

San Francisco to LA: 383 miles. Seattle to Portland: 200 miles. Portland to San Francisco: 636 miles.

That extra 80 miles means it'll clearly never work, I guess. Because obviously, Japanese people would never ride the most heavily used shinkansen line in Japan if it took thirty minutes longer.

(Not incidentally: Tokyo to Kagoshima - 900 miles. Takes 7 hours by train. Costs less than $280. I've done it. Entirely pleasant, and time competitive with airlines, if you include the time you spend waiting, going through security, and so on. Which you must.)

I'm not arguing against west coastal HSR. PDX-SEA makes a lot of sense, if you can get Oregon and Washington to agree on how to fund it, as does SFO-LAX. But find the nearest city to SFO not directly on the west coast that's in the top 10 by population, and see whether HSR makes sense compared to commercial air. Chances are: no.

You keep repeating this "top ten cities" thing, as if it's important. But the only question that matters is: do enough people/things travel between X and Y to justify investment in a rail system at cost $Z? That's an actual debate we can have. Moreover, regardless of what you think of Seattle and Portland, if you don't count SF and Los Angeles (again, 380 miles) as important American cities, I don't know what to say to you.

"The people of Houston, Atlanta, Miami, and Phoenix hardly benefit at all from coastal HSR --- which is already happening anyways."

Atlanta to Miami: 662 miles. Houston to Dallas: 239 miles. Dallas to Denver: 800 miles. There are many, many regional connections in the US that make economic sense for HSR. Not just coastal lines.

But no, it's not already happening. We have a few projects that look increasingly likely to die. Because literally every time the subject comes up, naysayers are there to argue that the USA is just fundamentally exceptional to every similar place where HSR is working well.

This comment explains it pretty well:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14681704

Well, as long as you're being specific...

That comment says nothing new. It repeats the same stuff you've already said across this thread, and provides no evidence to back up the assertions. It does get the basic facts wrong, though: the vast majority of traffic on the "Tokyo to Kyoto" line goes between Tokyo and Osaka. Those cities are big (~9 million people each; Nagoya and Kyoto are comparatively small at ~2 million people each), but they're still only ~14% of Japan's population (17% if you include Kyoto and Nagoya).

Again: the only thing that matters is the number of people traveling between the points on the line. We know these things, and it's clear where high-speed rail would work. We don't need to have nebulous debates about "economic value". And arguing that "people don't buy Eurail passes" is absurd on its face. They certainly would, if Eurail actually existed.

Good luck.

We (WA) just had our 3rd special session and although we finally passed our $43bn state budget, our (admittedly smaller) capital budget is still up in the air because of water rights issues.

OR doesn't look much better right now—it's 8 days until sine die and it appears there's a chance they'll run into special sessions, too.

WA just pumped a massive amount of money ($8bn) into K-12 education because of the McCleary decision, and there's not much other money to go around. The Dems are wary about pitching an actual state income tax (this year they tried pitching a cap gains tax as an "excise tax" :-) because it's constantly been rejected by both the voters and state supreme court. The GOP just had to push a state-wide property tax and had to agree to a paid family leave act as part of budget negotiations, so I doubt they'll be down for any new taxes. Plus, ST3 was recently approved which jacks up taxes in the RTA zone, which includes big city centers like Seattle and Tacoma.

Long story short, I really, really doubt there will be any big infrastructure pushes in the near future. There's just not much money and outside of Seattle property it's not politically viable to run on "more taxes!" especially when the east side of the state will go berserk if they're forced to pay for more west side infrastructure.

Add to this the commute to and from the airports and you are looking at 12 hours.

Practically you would require a top speed of ~250mph, and current current generation of conventional rail trains max out at about 190-210mph. But they could easily do NYC to SFO in 13-14 hours.

The Shanghai Maglev Train reaches a top speed of 268mph (during it's short 7min trip to the airport), so it could do the trip in less than 12 hours. But I'm not sure it's theoretically practical over distances that long.

  NYC to SFO in 12 hours is an average speed of 215mph

And who is gonna pay for this magical high speed railroad that never breaks down and is never delayed?

High speed rail in California is costing around $90 million per mile. A perfectly straight line from NYC-SF is 2,572 miles. That's nearly a quarter of a trillion dollars. All to allow costal elites to increase their travel time? Sure.

And again, for this fantastical train, we're earning the privilege of doing in 12 hours what a plane will do in 6.

If you factor in all this extra stuff, it looks more like 9-10 hours.

You go to the train station, which is in the city centre. You use a subway, tram or bicycle to get there. You walk in, go to your platform and enter the train. You place your luggage in the luggage rack and take your seat. When the train arrives at your destination or interchange point, you grab your stuff and leave. Sometime in between, staff will walk the train and check your ticket.

No long transit to/from the station. No check-in, no security screening, no baggage drop-off/pickup. It's a train, not rocket science.

Lastly it's far easier to scale up with planes. You can't add more trains to one high speed track if another train is already on it heading towards you at high speed.

shanghai - beijing HST is 819 miles/5 hours @ 220 mph with stops and carries 130 million a year and is insensitive to weather unlike planes.

its not easier to scale up planes. Have you tried building a new 777 capable airport in SF or LA lately?

https://www.google.com/maps/dir/42.3649312,-70.997063/North+...

and this couldn't be done even though no houses need to go. in comparison the big dig tunnels under downtown boston were constructed just fine (slow and over budget but done)

Inside the cities rail use existing Rights of Way or build tunnels. Much easier to build a tunnel under a city than demolish 10 sq mi of cbd.

http://www.economist.com/news/china/21714383-and-theres-lot-...