U.S. is paying the price for not investing in trains, and it's stupid

[Panich52]

Daiky Kos

U.S. is paying the price for not investing in trains, and it's stupid

House Speaker John Boehner may think it's "stupid" to suggest that the recent fatal Amtrak crash had anything to do with lack of funding, but the evidence keeps piling up that Boehner's the stupid one here. The United States spends far less than its peers on rail, and:

As a consequence, industry experts say, despite having some of the least-extensive passenger rail networks in the developed world, the United States today has among the worst safety records. Fatality rates are almost twice as high as in the European Union and countries like South Korea, and roughly triple the rate in Australia.
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As a percentage of gross domestic product, the American investment in rail networks is just a quarter of that in Britain and one-sixth that in France and Australia, while Japan spends nearly three times as much per person as the U.S. does.
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We're looking at a consequence of Republican refusal to invest in American infrastructure. It's played out not just in less safe trains but in slower trains and fewer trains. If Republicans hadn't stood in the way all these years, we could have had a speedy, energy-efficient, safe rail network and thousands of jobs creating and maintaining it. Instead, we have a desperately underfunded, inadequate rail system and John Boehner saying it's stupid to see the facts for what they are.

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http://www.dailykos.com/story/2015/05/25/1386228/-U-S-is-paying-the-price-for-not-investing-in-trains-and-it-s-stupid?detail=emailtest

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I get the security wand just going to an amusement park because of my prosthetic leg. I can't be the only one that refuses to put up with invasive groping of airport security. That makes trains and driving my only other options and the older I get, the more difficult those long drives get. Improving train safety and infrastructure would be as beneficial to freedom of movement as DDE's interstate highway system. Maybe more.

[Old Codger]

1. I have said

Foe many years now that one of the stupidest things I have seen in my life has been the way we went to trucks and highways for hauling instead of building our rail system. Instead they all but abandoned it....Makes no sense at all.

[Major Nikon]

2. It would be pretty stupid to invest in trains at the rate some countries do

The countries mentioned are very population dense and trains make a lot of sense. Compare this to the western US and a large scale investment in rail would be very stupid. That doesn't mean it doesn't make sense to invest heavily on trains in certain markets and money spent on safety is always going to be important, but that's not the argument this article is trying to make.

[Pooka Fey]

3. It was REALLY stupid for the USA to have abandoned passenger rail

Last edited Sat May 30, 2015, 02:13 PM - Edit history (1)

I would love to see the USA have the same quality passenger rail system that we had in the 1920's. The whole Western USA was linked up, and the train travel experience was glamorous. Sigh...

I would settle for just having a decent system that works.

Train station in Barstow, CA

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A Super Chief in Albuquerque, New Mexico, 1943:

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Examples of Fred Harvey china service

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Cajon summit and the Santa Fe Railroad, c. 1919. From a Fred Harvey Co. tourist brochure.


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[Cha]

4. Yeah, and we can thank the stupid republicans.