Amtrak's 2035 map has people talking about the future of U.S. train travel

Re:Amtrak's 2035 map has people talking about the future of ... by chrisco255 on Sunday April 25, 2021 @12:15PM (#26933855)

No. The fact the government can and frequently does make failed investments and wasted capital expenditures is precisely why people don't trust the government. California set out to make a single high speed rail line between San Francisco and LA 12 years ago and it's still not complete and it's run over what, $70B so far? And it's still going to be a slow rail not much faster than a trip by car after it's complete? This is what happens when you let inept bureaucracies spend money for which they never have to feel the effects of cost/benefit trade-offs and for which the opportunity costs are completely dismissed.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Amtrak's 2035 map has people talking about the future of ... by acdha on Sunday April 25, 2021 @02:27PM (#26935200)

Kind of like how U.S. telecom providers were given something like a hundred billion to deliver broadband around the country but didn’t hit the promised performance or coverage? The private sector includes Comcast, Verizon, and AT&T, not just Apple or Amazon, and you have about as much choice not to pay for them as you do the local government.

The key thing is not the sector but whether there’s an effective oversight mechanism. It’s a lot more productive to focus on those feedback loops than trying to assume any sector comes in exactly one universal quality level.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Amtrak's 2035 map has people talking about the future of ... by chrisco255 on Sunday April 25, 2021 @10:50PM (#26938766)

Problem with local telecoms is that too often, there is a local monopoly. The problem with the government is its always in a de facto monopoly position. It has little incentive to change except during a voting cycle turnover, and at most voters can focus on a handful of issues at a time.

Funny enough, it seems like SpaceX has the solution for this and it's rolling out as we speak: https://www.starlink.com/ . Space-based internet that actually works and is actually fast is a game-changer.

Let's see how the telecoms respond to competitive pressure. If anyone can get 100Mbps within a year, I'm willing to bet Gigabit fiber/cable will be available nearly everywhere soon.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Amtrak's 2035 map has people talking about the future of ... by throwawayboise on Sunday April 25, 2021 @03:18PM (#26935681)

> effective oversight mechanism

Hard to do when the people who really understand broadband networking are working for ATT, Comcast, and Verizon and not for the government.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Amtrak's 2035 map has people talking about the future of ... by adventured on Sunday April 25, 2021 @05:05PM (#26936677)

The US telecom companies were not given something like a hundred billion dollars. They were never paid those sums and they were also not given tax breaks in that amount either. That's one of the great forever repeating myths on HN (it's useful as a propaganda item, thus the repeating). There is even an HN member that has been repeatedly correcting the myth for years, here you go:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7709556

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Amtrak's 2035 map has people talking about the future of ... by zapita on Sunday April 25, 2021 @01:52PM (#26934814)

I don’t understand anti-government zealots any more than I understand anti-capitalism zealots. Both try to cherry-pick facts in support of an obviously flawed theory: that one is the pinnacle of civilization while the other is an evil to root out.

This kind of purist thinking is dangerous because it prevents you from observing the facts as they are. For example whatever the root cause of California’s high speed rail problems, it’s probably more complex than “public government is bad”. But you will never find out because you have ideological blinders on.

[ Parent | on HN ]