$98 per barrel oil

Bob Noel writes:

Perhaps not impossible, but just the environmental impact analyses required
would result in decades of delays.

plus think about the carbon footprint from the actual process of
building an electricl rail system.

It's almost trivial compared to the impact and footprint of a highway system,
so that argument doesn't work, either.

Americans don't have such a system because, for various reasons, they simply
don't want one. But it's entirely feasible, efficient, and practical.

Morgans writes:

It is good to know you are as geographically challenged, along with your
other challenges.

New York to Los Angels is 2,778 miles, and expedia lists it as 39 hours 55
minutes.

Twenty-four hours multiplied by 65 mph is 1560 statute miles, or roughly 56%
of the cross-country total distance.

So in round numbers, driving that distance means you will be averaging 70
miles per hour.

See above.

Somewhere in there, you have to eat, take restroom breaks, fuel the vehicle,
and deal with traffic.

Yes, so? Add an hour.

Most people on a long trip can average no more than 60 mph, for stops, not
including sleep.

That takes the drive time up to over 46 hours.

So you only need to sleep for 2 hours out of the 48 hours to drive across
the country. What a man!

All you need is more than one driver in the car. People do this all the time.

Why don't you take that trip sometime?

Driving long distances is boring.

Oh, never mind - you don't drive.

Where I live, we have mass transportation that makes driving unnecessary.

Mxsmanic wrote in
:

Morgans writes:

It is good to know you are as geographically challenged, along with
your other challenges.

New York to Los Angels is 2,778 miles, and expedia lists it as 39
hours 55 minutes.

Twenty-four hours multiplied by 65 mph is 1560 statute miles, or
roughly 56% of the cross-country total distance.

So in round numbers, driving that distance means you will be
averaging 70 miles per hour.

See above.

Somewhere in there, you have to eat, take restroom breaks, fuel the
vehicle, and deal with traffic.

Yes, so? Add an hour.

Most people on a long trip can average no more than 60 mph, for
stops, not including sleep.

That takes the drive time up to over 46 hours.

So you only need to sleep for 2 hours out of the 48 hours to drive
across the country. What a man!

All you need is more than one driver in the car. People do this all
the time.

Why don't you take that trip sometime?

Driving long distances is boring.

You're an idiot.


Oh, never mind - you don't drive.

Where I live, we have mass transportation that makes driving
unnecessary.


What, you have a shuttle bus to the bathroom?

Bertie

Mxsmanic wrote in
:

Morgans writes:

Is that you, MX?

No. Wolfgang Schwanke has been posting under that name for some
twenty years, and he disagrees with me more often than not.

As hard as it may be to accept, it's possible for more than one person
on USENET to disagree with you.


But for impossible to find one who agrees with you.


Bertie

Mxsmanic wrote in
:

Bob Noel writes:

Perhaps not impossible, but just the environmental impact analyses
required would result in decades of delays.

plus think about the carbon footprint from the actual process of
building an electricl rail system.

It's almost trivial compared to the impact and footprint of a highway
system, so that argument doesn't work, either.


Wrong diillhole

Bertie

Mxsmanic wrote in
:

Bob Noel writes:

Another consideration is population density. There are large areas
of the USA where there are so few people that a rail system can't
achieve the efficiencies enjoyed by big cities.

But exactly the same thing can be said of a highway system. An
interstate leading to some tiny village is just as much a waste as a
railway passing through it, only the highway is (much) more expensive.


How would you know, did you try it with your micro machines set?


Bertie

Mxsmanic wrote in
:

Morgans writes:

Yes, but you still probably need to use a car to start the trip from
the suburbs into the cities, because there is no rail feeder system
to get the people collected from wide and far to take the lines into
the cities.

Railways can serve city centers _and_ suburban stations.

But yet, the rail freight needs to be subsidized, to stay
competitive.

No, it does not. Rail freight is very profitable. Ask the Union
Pacific, which has been making big money at it for decades.

What, you friends with the union pacific, or did you just get a new Thomas
th eTank engine set?

Bertie

Mxsmanic wrote in
:

Morgans writes:

You just don't get it.

To put enough railroad tracks in the US to have even half the density
of tracks per square mile as the railroads have in Europe, or half
the tracks per population density in Europe, or half the _any_ way
you want to measure it, would take the gross domestic product -the
ENTIRE- gross domestic product of the WHOLE US for a whole decade,
and still not have put a dent in the project.

This country IS BIG......WAY ****ING BIG ! ! !

Why can't you Europeans get that through your damn heads?

Perhaps because it isn't true.


You wouldn't know true if it bit you in the ass.

if you know half about railways what you know about flying you know zip.


bertie

Wolfgang Schwanke wrote:
wrote in :

OK your're writing from a European perspective.

You do realize most of our states are bigger than most of your
countries?

How does that make efficient rail services impossible?

Also, cities here are a bit different too.

In some ways yes, in others not so much. I don't dispute that a rail
network has to be adapted to the local conditions.

It is all "city" from Santa Monica to San Bernardino, for example,
but they are about 60 miles apart.

Europe has several "cities" of comparable sizes, for example Randstad,
the Ruhr conurbation, and some of the large metropolis like Paris,
London, Moscow come close.

Both my wife and I commute over 50 miles one way. My next door
neighbor commutes 60.

So?

But we can shift the weight a lot if we want
to. Private cars can become mostly leisure toys.

Not with 30 to 60 mile commutes being common for most places.

Why not?

Regards

Because the US isn't a large number of people going to a small number
of places, it is small numbers of people going to a huge number of
places.

There are no major hub sites.

The highway system is a giant web with an enourmous number of branches
and more than just freeways.

As a matter of fact, both the wife and I could take public transportation
to work. The only problem is the trip would be about 4 hours each way.

To work, public transportation has to go everywhere the public wants
to go, which means it has to stop a lot.

And again, there are virtually zero hub points where you could go
quickly.

There is a reason the freeways have on/off ramps at about a mile apart.

Los Angeles does have light rail along the few high traffic corridors
where it makes some sort of sense.

For most of California, and most of the country, such a system makes
no sense.

Just because something works in one place does not mean it will work
in another.

This is the problem with all the one-size-fits-all thinking by
people that are going to solve all the worlds problems if only
their pet scheme were implemented.

Public transportation works in the New York area, many parts of
the east coast, and in small areas of the west coast.

It doesn't in the majority of the country other than local, urban
buses.

Heavy rail works to get bulk cargo between major hubs. It doesn't
work to get all the stuff that needs to be transported everywhere.

Solar power works pretty well in Arizona, not for crap in North
Dakota.

Tidal power generation doesn't work in Colorado, though it might
in Alaska.

The bottom line is if some system were economically practical, it
would already exist or someone would be working on building it.


--
Jim Pennino

Remove .spam.sux to reply.

On Sat, 10 Nov 2007 08:43:42 -0500, "Morgans"
wrote:

Yes, but you still probably need to use a car to start the trip from the
suburbs into the cities, because there is no rail feeder system to get the
people collected from wide and far to take the lines into the cities.

There are busses, and some folks get dropped off by a spouse. The
lines that serve my area, Metro-North and Shoreline East, have
extremely heavy ridership.

Unless it is a pretty long distance from the suburb to the city, it makes
less sense to drive to the station, find a place to park, walk to the
station, and wait for the train. After doing all of that, it almost is
faster to stay in the car for the entire trip, unless like I said, it is a
pretty long distance.

Unless it's NYC traffic and parking fees. It's not the distance that
matters.

But yet, the rail freight needs to be subsidized, to stay competitive.

In some areas, with underused branch lines, that is certainly true.
Rising fuel prices and increased highway congestion, and their effects
on trucking costs, may change that.

That is a new piece of trivia, to me! Sounds like a perfect job for trains;
hauling a bunch of ****! g

It's a crappy job, but someone has to do it. G