We need a National Rail system...

[slor]

a new and improved one. With a Dem Prez, do you think we can get one?

[enlightenment]

1. Nope.

It's too low of a priority for Congress (and sooo scary, too - a National system? my oh my):sarcasm:

[Richardo]

2. No.

Country's too big, highways too convenient, air travel too cheap. The reason there are no railroad companies offering passenger service is because its a huge money loser.

Except in the Northeast Corridor, Amtrak does not own any rail right-of-way of its own and has to operate over private companies' tracks, which were loaded down with over 30 million railcars of freight in 2006. Schedules are therefore very slow and unreliable - no one would stand for it.

I'd rather they spend the money on health care.

[frazzled]

3. Nice as it would be: NO

Our bridges are falling down and our major urban transit systems are in trouble; our roads and schools are crumbling; our airports are overcrowded. Just getting the existing infrastructure back to standard is going to be a struggle, especially with the debt any president will have inherited.

AMTRAK was privatized during the Bush administration. I'm afraid all the king's horses and all the king's men won't be able to put that Humpty Dumpty back together again.

We will have to wait for the next technological, green transportation revolution: and then a Democratic president can sell the American people on being no. 1 in this area. Probably not in my lifetime.

(PS: I am a train user--when I lived in Boston I took Amtrak frequently; I just returned from several weeks in Europe, where I traveled by rail between a number of cities Belgium and Holland. )

[phantom power]

4. I have a sort of theory about that.

The last time we had an active government dedicated to public infrastructure, that government grew out of the Great Depression. It required the Great Depression to break down the Gilded Age government. It took three generations or so, for people to forget why government matters, and drift back toward a Gilded Age. We are more or less where we were during the Hoover admin, on the cusp of the Depression.

We are not yet ready for major public-works project. First, we will have to endure a more total collapse of the existing economic and political regime.

A question on my mind is: once our system has collapsed, will we go the direction of New Deal and elect a new FDR, or will we go the direction of Weimar Germany and elect a new Hitler?

[blues90]

5. Never , people are too much in love with their damn cars

[Ichingcarpenter]

6. Only if Neo-Cons are chosen

to test the third rail.

[Captain Angry]

7. It needs to be built sooner rather than later.

Laying a new rail infrastructure would be immensely expensive, and will require huge quantities of resources and labor.

As those resources become more expensive, it will be harder and harder to implement. The Feds will never do it unless the military says they need it and can contract it out to civilian companies to design and construct it.

It's silly that someone in LA can't get on a train, stop in Salt Lake, Denver, Omaha, Chicago and be in NYC for a very low price.

If I could hop a train inexpensively and get halfway across the country in a reasonable amount of time, I'd do that instead of driving. It would be even better if you could load your car onto the train so that you have mobility on the other end without having to rent a car.

[Warpy]

8. Richardson has gotten a north-south commuter rail system going

here in a state that has little experience with mass transit of any kind. Every time the gas prices go up, ridership increases. It's ahead of construction schedule, almost all the way up to Santa Fe.

Richardson will be seen as a visionary in the future, although I know a lot of native New Mexicans who don't quite get it now.

It's a pity he's not pretty enough to have gotten more votes in the beauty contest we call a political primary.

:evilgrin:

[ThomWV]

9. I think that one will be inevitable, probably following the existing interstate system