Level of HSR funding over the next 10 years

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birdy

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Has there been any indication of the committment to HSR beyond the initial $8 bil?

I noticed that the tax plan of president Obama contemplates converting various airport taxes to user fees. In effect, this means actually using the various airport surcharges for actual airport improvements--how radical can you get? The budget puts this as a net $77 bil expenditure over the next ten years. Some similar expenditure would be a nice start to HSR.

I notice that one of the items was to raise capital gains tax to 20% for joint filers with AGI over $250,000, raising $117 billion over the next ten years. That sounds like the appropriate trade off for improved rail in my opinion.
 
birdy said:
I notice that one of the items was to raise capital gains tax to 20% for joint filers with AGI over $250,000, raising $117 billion over the next ten years. That sounds like the appropriate trade off for improved rail in my opinion.
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Using the government to make others pay for your toys is hardly appropriate, IMO.
 
Ooo - I wanna play.

"HSR" as seemingly defined by Mr. Boardman implies a non-steelwheel 220 MPH system. That is a toy, because it's way too expensive, way too exclusive, and way too far advanced for our brains. Think of the only maglev systems in the world - one in Japan that has been nothing more than a test bed for nearly 20 years, and one revenue system that is relatively short distance in Shanghai. Yes, these are toys.

However, if you consider "HSR" to mean HSRail, then you are talking potential. You're moving away from toys and considering something practical. Something that can carry up to 1,000 people every 20 minutes for great distances. If you're willing to accept 180 as a target, you can do that with derivative technologies that exist today and can be ready tomorrow.
 
I am taking the concept of MagLev, placing it next to Cinderella, dragons, and "happily ever after" in the realm of pure fantasy, and suggest we talk about the two realistic possibilities: dedicated rail alignments ala TGV, and upgrading existing mainlines as Boardman suggests.

MagLevs are a toy unless you are willing to unleash their full potential, and that requires, quite literally, operating them in a vacuum. Then we can talk about 4 hour travel times New York to LAX. Since we aren't going to spend something on the order of $2 trillion to construct such a line, lets talk about what will actually happen, rather than the political gobbledygook.
 
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I thank all the contestants for playing. Here's the answer.

Birdy said it would be appropriate to levy a tax against a certain group of people to fund the HSR roll out. I said I didn't think it was appropriate to use the government to force others to pay for your toys... the key message being that it's not appropriate to force this one group of people to pay for HSR even though they don't derive any particular benefit from it. I used the word toy not to trivialize HSR or specify impractical types of transit, but rather to hilight that these projects appeal to Birdy (and me and most of us!) personally, so on the whole it's a matter of using government to force others to pay for what we want.

HSR is good for HSR riders... thus we have ticket fees. It's good for townships with stops, hence we ask them to help pay for some of the associated costs like stations. And it's good for the whole society, so we should ask everyone to pay a share of the cost. But we should not point to some particular group and demand that they pay for our wants; that's simply unjust.
 
volkris said:
I thank all the contestants for playing. Here's the answer.
Birdy said it would be appropriate to levy a tax against a certain group of people to fund the HSR roll out. I said I didn't think it was appropriate to use the government to force others to pay for your toys... the key message being that it's not appropriate to force this one group of people to pay for HSR even though they don't derive any particular benefit from it. I used the word toy not to trivialize HSR or specify impractical types of transit, but rather to hilight that these projects appeal to Birdy (and me and most of us!) personally, so on the whole it's a matter of using government to force others to pay for what we want.

HSR is good for HSR riders... thus we have ticket fees. It's good for townships with stops, hence we ask them to help pay for some of the associated costs like stations. And it's good for the whole society, so we should ask everyone to pay a share of the cost. But we should not point to some particular group and demand that they pay for our wants; that's simply unjust.
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HSR is improved infrastructure, and that, regardless of what your libertarian mind might think, benefits everyone, either directly or indirectly.
 
Green Maned Lion said:
MagLevs are a toy unless you are willing to unleash their full potential, and that requires, quite literally, operating them in a vacuum. Then we can talk about 4 hour travel times New York to LAX. Since we aren't going to spend something on the order of $2 trillion to construct such a line, lets talk about what will actually happen, rather than the political gobbledygook.
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In a vacuum tunnel, why stop at 4 hours from New York to LAX? You probably only have to go 4-5 times the speed of a typical jet airplane to cover that in an hour.

I'm not sure even there maglev makes sense. What if inside the tunnel you build a viaduct that supports the track and catenary structure, and attach the viaduct to the floor of the tunnel via sound absorbing material? For that matter, do you really need the catenary? A lot of model trains operate just fine on a two rail system. There might be some more engineering work to get a reliable signal system, but I bet it'll be cheaper than the catenary.

And if your goal is five hours from New York City to Los Angeles, I bet a train operating at 550 MPH for most of the miles will work just fine without a vacuum tunnel with a bit of engineering effort.
 
I sure understood Mr. Boardman's remarks to be directed at conventional HSR rather than maglev.

Anyway, a few million bucks expended on an annual basis on "advanced" transportation research seems perfectly reasonable to me.
 
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