Doubling the French TGV network?

[Chessie Hokie]

On Wednesday the French Minister of Ecology announced the intent to introduce legislation (Loi Grenelle de l'environnement ), to be debated this summer in the National Assembly, calling for an additional 2,000 km (~1,242 miles) of high-speed lines nationwide by the year 2020 (the current high-speed network is about 1,700 km). The program calls for an investment of 70 billion euros (about $105 billion), of which the French government expects to directly invest between 20 and 25%, or 14 to 17.5 billion euros ($21 to $26.25 billion). The remainder of the funding will come from local/regional governments, the RFF (Réseau ferré de France...the company responsible for all rail infrastructure) and, in certain cases, the European Union.

It is interesting to note that this ambitious program is driven by environmental considerations...apparently the French Government is taking climate change and oil supply forecasts to heart and is planning to position the country for the future.

Is anyone in Washington watching this? I am doubtful...

 

[gswager]

Or in that case, keep bugging California.

 

[Green Maned Lion]

We should have the AmDollar, a dollar tax for every gallon of gasolene, which would go to Amtrak for investment in rail.

 

[George Harris]

I feel like this sort of thing is an excellent idea, which is no different that the way I have felt about it for over 40 years. We need to drastically reduce our oil consumption for two main reasons:

1. It is not going to last forever.

2. It is a major drain of money out of the country, and even worse is funding a lot of people that not only hate us but will do something about it when they have the ability to do it.

Notice that there is no mention of global warming, climate change, or any other current fad of the moment. We should reduce oil consumption whether or not there is any reality to either one of these events.

I do not like to ride the "Climate Change" horse. What happens when that horse stumbles or falls? I am first of all skeptical that what we do in this area will make any real difference in the climate, and second if the whole "Global Warming" thing proves to be phoney, and it could, then a necessary change could be delayed or lost due to use of an invalid reason.

 

[Joel N. Weber II]

If the cost per mile is the same in France as it would be in the US, that means upgrading the California Zephyr's route in the same fashion would cost roughly $200 billion. Same for the Empire Builder route and the Southwest Chief routes.

The US spends something like $500 billion a year on the military. I'm pretty sure I've heard that we spend something like ten times more on our military than any other country (though I'm not sure if that's in absolute amount of money or per capita). So if we scaled back to only having twice as expensive a military as anyone else, the savings in a single year would probably pay for upgrading the Zephyr and the Empire Builder to mostly 200 MPH track, and then the year after that we could upgrade the Southwest Chief and a bunch of shorter routes.

But it's probably crazy to account for it as a one time operational expense; if we amoritze those costs over many years, they start to look even more affordable.

Plus, having skilled labor converge to build all the railroad we need in the space of a few years doesn't work especially well as a job creation policy. Boston's Big Dig seemed to have no great difficulty absorbing all the available skilled labor for about ten years.

 

[Green Maned Lion]

Currently, cutting our military would be impossible. We may have the largest military, but we are also the only country who goes galavanting around the world attacking third world countries, seemingly at random.

 

[Joel N. Weber II]

But if we had an investment in lots of high speed track that could reduce airplane and automobile usage, and got organized about building huge wind farms, maybe we'd have less need to randomly attack small countries that have lots of oil.

One of the passengers I talked to during the wine and cheese tasting on the eastbound LSL also mentioned that the current war is causing some serious problems with the military retaining people; he said that a typical military person has a 12 month deployment followed by a few months back in the US followed by another 12 month deployment. He was saying that in a few years when we need officers who have 5-10 years of military experience, we're going to have some real problems.

It sorta sounds like we need to be planning on having a scaled back military in a few years, because the half a trillion dollars a year isn't actually the hard problem.

 

[Green Maned Lion]

But if we had an investment in lots of high speed track that could reduce airplane and automobile usage, and got organized about building huge wind farms, maybe we'd have less need to randomly attack small countries that have lots of oil.
One of the passengers I talked to during the wine and cheese tasting on the eastbound LSL also mentioned that the current war is causing some serious problems with the military retaining people; he said that a typical military person has a 12 month deployment followed by a few months back in the US followed by another 12 month deployment. He was saying that in a few years when we need officers who have 5-10 years of military experience, we're going to have some real problems.

It sorta sounds like we need to be planning on having a scaled back military in a few years, because the half a trillion dollars a year isn't actually the hard problem.

We'll have a big enough military if we allow felons into it more. What other choice do they have? But really, us having our military scaled back to have our bite match our intelligence for using it would not be a bad thing.

 

[track-toy]

But if we had an investment in lots of high speed track that could reduce airplane and automobile usage, and got organized about building huge wind farms, maybe we'd have less need to randomly attack small countries that have lots of oil.
One of the passengers I talked to during the wine and cheese tasting on the eastbound LSL also mentioned that the current war is causing some serious problems with the military retaining people; he said that a typical military person has a 12 month deployment followed by a few months back in the US followed by another 12 month deployment. He was saying that in a few years when we need officers who have 5-10 years of military experience, we're going to have some real problems.

It sorta sounds like we need to be planning on having a scaled back military in a few years, because the half a trillion dollars a year isn't actually the hard problem.

We'll have a big enough military if we allow felons into it more. What other choice do they have? But really, us having our military scaled back to have our bite match our intelligence for using it would not be a bad thing.

I think this is what we need:

 

[Guest_Birdy_*]

But if we had an investment in lots of high speed track that could reduce airplane and automobile usage, and got organized about building huge wind farms, maybe we'd have less need to randomly attack small countries that have lots of oil.
One of the passengers I talked to during the wine and cheese tasting on the eastbound LSL also mentioned that the current war is causing some serious problems with the military retaining people; he said that a typical military person has a 12 month deployment followed by a few months back in the US followed by another 12 month deployment. He was saying that in a few years when we need officers who have 5-10 years of military experience, we're going to have some real problems.

It sorta sounds like we need to be planning on having a scaled back military in a few years, because the half a trillion dollars a year isn't actually the hard problem.

We'll have a big enough military if we allow felons into it more. What other choice do they have? But really, us having our military scaled back to have our bite match our intelligence for using it would not be a bad thing.

I think this is what we need:

I looked on a map, and it looks to me given French and California construction figures, you could hook up all of the big cities in the upper midwest (Minneapolis, Milwaukee, Chicago, Cleveland and Detroit) for maybe $45 billion. I live 2,000 miles away. I say: Do it. To put it in perspective, you could pay for most of the project through the dividends supposedly being paid to us through the TARP program. Or the cost of five and a half months of the Iraqi war.

As far as the veterans situation goes, that is another thing that bugs me. We are one of the few countries in the world where those less than 35 years old have less education than those who are older. Its worrisome and its a disgrace. I've never served in the military, but I would pay all of those guys real education benefits that represents the cost of a college education. $25K per year (about $7 billion per year) for tuition isn't too much for someone who volunteered to run the gauntlet of IEDs in Iraq or Afghanistan while the rest of us stayed home and shopped at the mall.

I'd rig it though, so that the schools that exceeded the inflation rate in their tuition rates would see the reimbursements for their veteran students shrink by an even faster rate, giving them an incentive to hold the line for everyone.

I'm just so sick of this "no can do" attitude of our politicians anyway. 60 years ago, if we heard the French made a train that went 280 mph, we would automatically figure out a way to make a train go 300 mph as a matter of general principles. Nowadays the politicians act like 35 miles at 125 mph on the Acela is some kind of a magic trick. They make me want to barf.