Re: Passenger rail is for adventurers and bums
On Friday 31 January 2003 12:40, Tim May wrote: On Friday, January 31, 2003, at 07:58 AM, Harmon Seaver wrote: (snipped) I understand your politics is lefty...this has been shining through for years. But your analytical skills are lacking. That's redundant in the modern US. Too bad; there needs to be a counterbalance to the right-wing control freaks, but the left just isn't up to it. -- Steve FurlongComputer Condottiere Have GNU, Will Travel You don't expect governments to obey the law because of some higher moral development. You expect them to obey the law because they know that if they don't, those who aren't shot will be hanged. --Michael Shirley
Re: Passenger rail is for adventurers and bums
That's redundant in the modern US. Too bad; there needs to be a counterbalance to the right-wing control freaks, but the left just isn't up to it. Good comment. Indeed, the only thing the Democrats seem to stand for is that they aren't republicans. Meanwhile, the economics of the 'real' left leaves them with a big fat credibility hole right in the center, so no one listens to their politics either. -TD From: Steve Furlong [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: Passenger rail is for adventurers and bums Date: Mon, 3 Feb 2003 18:31:03 -0500 On Friday 31 January 2003 12:40, Tim May wrote: On Friday, January 31, 2003, at 07:58 AM, Harmon Seaver wrote: (snipped) I understand your politics is lefty...this has been shining through for years. But your analytical skills are lacking. That's redundant in the modern US. Too bad; there needs to be a counterbalance to the right-wing control freaks, but the left just isn't up to it. -- Steve FurlongComputer Condottiere Have GNU, Will Travel You don't expect governments to obey the law because of some higher moral development. You expect them to obey the law because they know that if they don't, those who aren't shot will be hanged. --Michael Shirley _ The new MSN 8: smart spam protection and 2 months FREE* http://join.msn.com/?page=features/junkmail
Re: Passenger rail is for adventurers and bums
Bill Stewart wrote: Tim commented about railroad stations being in the ugly parts of town. That's driven by several things - decay of the inner cities, as cars and commuter trains have let businesses move out to suburbs, and also the difference between railroad stations that were built for passengers (New York's Grand Central, Washington's Union Station) and railroad stations that were built for freight, where passengers are an afterthought (much of the Midwest has train stations surrounded by warehouses and grain silos, not houses or shops). That's an important point. Railway systems are bistable - they want to be either all-passenger or all-freight. They have completely different requirements. Freight moves slowly, but takes up a lot of space. Also it isn't amenable to timetables. Passenger trains move fast and need timetabling. Passenger trains, especially in urban areas, go for cheaper trains more expensive infrastructure - better rails for a smooth ride, electrification. Goods trains are much more likely to slam big diesels on and move over crappy old rails. Different economics. They tend to exclude each other. Rail systems dominated by goods people, like mast of US, see passenger trains as a sort of flashy parasite, denying them use of their network at irritating times. And vice versa. One of the reasons that the UK railways are having a harder time upgrading these days than the French or German is that they tried to share tracks. The railway beside my house has to pass about 20 passenger trains an hour each way. When some huge long thing hauling 50 trucks of gravel comes along, it gets in the way.
Re: Passenger rail is for adventurers and bums
Eugen Leitl wrote: On Fri, 31 Jan 2003, Thomas Shaddack wrote: I don't know how it works in the US, but railroads are both comfortable and pretty reliable in Europe. A bit too expensive, especially in Germany. I also like being able to work on the train -- given that here cities are only a few kilotons apart and ICEs are pretty speedy flying can take longer. Otherwise I agree, bahning beyond 5-6 h starts to become tedious. ICE trains bloody good. Returning from a holiday once I went from my hotel in Berlin to my local pub, 50m from front door, in London, by train, in 12 hours. The first half of the journey, ICE to Koln, was only about a quarter of the total time. Koln to Brussel was slw but I got to see some beautiful scenery. Then Eurostar - fast on mainland, semi-fast in Britain. When the Channel Tunnel Rail link is finished (15 years late - pah - the only reason British government agreed to build tunnel in first place was French said they would pay for, won, all of it, Thatcher might have been a free marketeer but she was a nationalist first and was shamed into agreeing - same as the USA is going to stay in manned spaceflight because of China) when fast link to Koln complete (maybe already?) the trip would be perhaps 8 or 9 hours. OK. flight is maybe 2 hours. But it would have taken half an hour to get to Berlin airport, for international flight they'd want you in an hour early, planes are even worse timekeepers than trains, and it would take me an hour to get out of the airport at the other end with baggage checks customs passports, then 2 hours to get home from Heathrow, or just over an hour from Gatwick. And so *much* less comfortable than train. And you have to book - train you just turn up and walk on. But really I like the ICE train for the same reason I like rockets and big buildings and bridges with cables in funny places and large shiny objects in general GOSH! WOW!
Re: Passenger rail is for adventurers and bums
At 02:21 PM 01/31/2003 +0100, Eugen Leitl wrote: On Fri, 31 Jan 2003, Thomas Shaddack wrote: I don't know how it works in the US, but railroads are both comfortable and pretty reliable in Europe. A bit too expensive, especially in Germany. I also like being able to work on the train -- given that here cities are only a few kilotons apart and ICEs are pretty speedy flying can take longer. Otherwise I agree, bahning beyond 5-6 h starts to become tedious. Short distances make trains much more attractive, and most of the big cities in Europe _are_ pretty close together. The train was a great way to get from Berlin to Hamburg; 2-3 hours, and flying distances like that is mostly hurry-up-and-wait. It's a nice way to be a tourist, as well - you can see scenery as you drive by, so taking the trains and ferry boats around Scandinavia was nice too (as adventurer or bum, depending on whether you saw me before or after I got to the hotel with a washing machine :-) But the train from Berlin down to Munchen took about 8 hours; that's about how long it takes me to get from San Francisco to New York by plane, which is slightly farther. Tim commented about railroad stations being in the ugly parts of town. That's driven by several things - decay of the inner cities, as cars and commuter trains have let businesses move out to suburbs, and also the difference between railroad stations that were built for passengers (New York's Grand Central, Washington's Union Station) and railroad stations that were built for freight, where passengers are an afterthought (much of the Midwest has train stations surrounded by warehouses and grain silos, not houses or shops). Here on the Peninsula between San Francisco and San Jose, the train stations are mostly central to downtown or on the edge of downtown, in areas that are nice (though the train stations themselves are either minimal commuter stops or else pretty mostly-abandoned stations that were built because the government-subsidized train system thought they should.
RE: Passenger rail is for adventurers and bums
Bill Stewart Tim commented about railroad stations being in the ugly parts of town. That's driven by several things - decay of the inner cities, as cars and commuter trains have let businesses move out to suburbs, and also the difference between railroad stations that were built for passengers (New York's Grand Central, Washington's Union Station) In the UK at least railway stations tend to have been built in the ugly parts of towns for good reason -- simply because land is a lot cheaper in the low rent parts of town. Also railways stations and the associated cheap hotels with a large transient population tend to attract undesirables such as drug dealers, muggers and hookers and the sort of thing which pushs the value of your house down and nice middle class people don't want on their doorstep. The people in richer areas tend to have more political clout and more effectively oppose development of this sort. -- Steve
Re: Passenger rail is for adventurers and bums
On Sat, Feb 01, 2003 at 12:12:16PM -0500, Declan McCullagh wrote: On Fri, Jan 31, 2003 at 10:44:50AM -0800, Tim May wrote: I don't know if this is your reason for expecting not to fly commercially again, but for anyone who thinks trains will somehow be exempted from the national security police state, think again. Right. One Democratic anti-terror proposal would link police to Amtrak databases: http://www.politechbot.com/p-02715.html Even before Sept 11, Amtrak was sharing passenger info with the DEA for drug prosecutions: http://www.politechbot.com/p-01909.html Come on, folks -- Amtrak is a federal government entity. It will be in the vanguard of the next big push to advance the national security state. Of course. I have no doubt whatsoever that we'll soon see checkpoints at every entrance and exit to all cities where they search the cars and passengers. It's only a matter of time. And probably require visas to travel anywhere, or at least pre-trip filing of travel plans. -- Harmon Seaver CyberShamanix http://www.cybershamanix.com
Re: Passenger rail is for adventurers and bums
On Fri, Jan 31, 2003 at 10:44:50AM -0800, Tim May wrote: I don't know if this is your reason for expecting not to fly commercially again, but for anyone who thinks trains will somehow be exempted from the national security police state, think again. Right. One Democratic anti-terror proposal would link police to Amtrak databases: http://www.politechbot.com/p-02715.html Even before Sept 11, Amtrak was sharing passenger info with the DEA for drug prosecutions: http://www.politechbot.com/p-01909.html Come on, folks -- Amtrak is a federal government entity. It will be in the vanguard of the next big push to advance the national security state. -Declan
Re: Passenger rail is for adventurers and bums
Railroads are for hoboes and untermenschen. I don't know how it works in the US, but railroads are both comfortable and pretty reliable in Europe.
Re: Passenger rail is for adventurers and bums
On Fri, 31 Jan 2003, Thomas Shaddack wrote: I don't know how it works in the US, but railroads are both comfortable and pretty reliable in Europe. A bit too expensive, especially in Germany. I also like being able to work on the train -- given that here cities are only a few kilotons apart and ICEs are pretty speedy flying can take longer. Otherwise I agree, bahning beyond 5-6 h starts to become tedious.
Re: Passenger rail is for adventurers and bums
On Fri, Jan 31, 2003 at 02:21:20PM +0100, Eugen Leitl wrote: On Fri, 31 Jan 2003, Thomas Shaddack wrote: I don't know how it works in the US, but railroads are both comfortable and pretty reliable in Europe. A bit too expensive, especially in Germany. I also like being able to work on the train -- given that here cities are only a few kilotons apart and ICEs are pretty speedy flying can take longer. Otherwise I agree, bahning beyond 5-6 h starts to become tedious. I'd love to see more and better train service in the US. Great way to travel, work, read, watch the scenery. I don't mind at all taking a few days, and, unless it's a real emergency, I'm very sure at this point I'll never fly a commercial airline again. Trains seem to work quite well in the rest of the world -- why not here? I'm not in favor of gov't subsidies for anything -- but, as I said before, we don't live in a libertarian fantasy world, so if transport is going to be subsidized, the trains should get their fair share. In fact it wouldn't bother me one iota if the airlines went under, the greatest share of the business travel is non-essential. Meetings can be teleconferenced much more efficiently. -- Harmon Seaver CyberShamanix http://www.cybershamanix.com
Re: Passenger rail is for adventurers and bums
On Friday, January 31, 2003, at 04:55 AM, Thomas Shaddack wrote: Railroads are for hoboes and untermenschen. I don't know how it works in the US, but railroads are both comfortable and pretty reliable in Europe. Yes, and I spent 7 weeks traveling around Europe with a Eurail Pass. Except in Italy, where the trains were noticeably grubbier and Americans were warned that armed robberies of passengers are common, the trains were well-run, clean, and they ran on time. Reasons for this are historical, political, social, geographical, and are well-known. We're discussing here the situation where 95% of the frequent posters live, the U.S. To a European traveler in the U.S., I would never recommend that that make Amtrak (our national socialist rail system) their means of getting around the country. Here in California, for example, as I said, the train stations are usually in the inner city urban ghettoes. Not a lot of Europeans would be comfortable disembarking from trains with their families and finding themselves in a negro neighborhood with negroes yelling insults at honkies and whiteys. Or in a Mexican barrio with cars sitting on their rims, with crack pipes littering the restrooms, with 15-year-old boys selling their 13-year-old sisters. And there are very few decent hotels within easy traveling distance of the rail yards in American cities. All of my European friends who visit California either rent cars or have friends driving them around (several have been driven to my house for stays, for example). None of them rely on trains and buses to move them around...at least I have never been asked to drive to darkest Salinas to pick up a friend from Europe before he vanishes forever. (I'm exaggerating slightly, of course, about the inner city dangers. But it is fact that in Europe the inner cities have tended to remain safe, and places where the museums and cultural attractions are. The inner cities in America are not like this at all, for the most part. In the U.S., many inner cities are welfare havens, where people collect money stolen from the suburban workers. And most European tourists come to see the Yosemite, Yellowstone, the Grand Canyon, the Golden Gate Bridge, the redwoods, the mountains, the rivers, Disneyland, Hollywood, etc. Few of these sites are reachable by trains. Tour buses are one popular approach, but not the subsidized mass transit system.) --Tim May Extremism in the pursuit of liberty is no vice.--Barry Goldwater
Re: Passenger rail is for adventurers and bums
On Friday, January 31, 2003, at 07:58 AM, Harmon Seaver wrote: On Fri, Jan 31, 2003 at 02:21:20PM +0100, Eugen Leitl wrote: On Fri, 31 Jan 2003, Thomas Shaddack wrote: I don't know how it works in the US, but railroads are both comfortable and pretty reliable in Europe. A bit too expensive, especially in Germany. I also like being able to work on the train -- given that here cities are only a few kilotons apart and ICEs are pretty speedy flying can take longer. Otherwise I agree, bahning beyond 5-6 h starts to become tedious. I'd love to see more and better train service in the US. Great way to travel, work, read, watch the scenery. I don't mind at all taking a few days, Great, and when you can find enough other people who also wouldn't mind taking a few days, including the business travelers who make up the bulk of travelers, then you should have no problem creating the demand for such travel. But of course you are in the minority. Very few families, even fewer business travelers, are willing to spend a few days on a train. You may be, but clearly others are not. (The logistical and safety issues of children on a train are interesting to contemplate.) and, unless it's a real emergency, I'm very sure at this point I'll never fly a commercial airline again. Trains seem to work quite well in the rest of the world -- why not here? Asked and answered. You clearly are either not reading, or not agreeing with, the several posts which have already addressed this issue. Which is OK, that you don't agree. But asking the question yet again will not help. I'm not in favor of gov't subsidies for anything -- but, as I said before, we don't live in a libertarian fantasy world, so if transport is going to be subsidized, the trains should get their fair share. They do, for good transport. This is why there are so many railroad tracks in the U.S. However, people, for the various reasons discussed in posts here recently, choose not to travel by train. Lots of reasons. Both railroads and highways have logistical and national defense reasons they have been subsdized: trucks and freight trains, obviously. However, for very obvious reasons, once highways have been built they can be used by automobiles as well as trucks. The same sort of thing cannot happen with trains. (Though there are a few specialized trains which transport passenger cars between New York and Florida, for example, thus allowing snowbirds and vacationers to have their own cars in Florida.) The mixed use of roads--passenger cars, motorcyles, buses, freight trucks, delivery trucks, emergency vehicles, etc.--is why roads and highways are generally so much better a solution than fixed path rail lines are. I understand your politics is lefty...this has been shining through for years. But your analytical skills are lacking. If you wish to persuade us that the world should be different than it is, you need better arguments than I would be willing to spend several days traveling by train. --Tim May
Re: Passenger rail is for adventurers and bums
On Friday, January 31, 2003, at 07:58 AM, Harmon Seaver wrote: I'd love to see more and better train service in the US. Great way to travel, work, read, watch the scenery. I don't mind at all taking a few days, and, unless it's a real emergency, I'm very sure at this point I'll never fly a commercial airline again. By the way, if this has anything to do with the security hassles of air travel (someone, maybe you, mentioned it as well a day or so ago), don't count on this difference lasting for long. Already there are calls to use positive identification for all train travelers. Amtrak also requires that each person buying a ticket has photo identification. Passengers traveling between Boston and Washington DC can no longer purchase their tickets on board the train. http://www.wokr13.tv/news/local/story.aspx?content_id=6D384AE3-F23C- 4E18-BACD-12A5E4A2F563 Expect more such moves. Expect much tighter security if and when a train is seized in the U.S. or Europe the way peace-loving Indians have been seizing trains and killing the occupants in peaceful India. (Securing entry points to trains will be even more difficult than with airplanes, for the obvious reasons. Ditto for securing transfer of weapons onto trains--in large amounts of baggage, through open windows, when people step off trains at many intermediate whistle stops, etc.) The police state will extend to trains. Count on it. I don't know if this is your reason for expecting not to fly commercially again, but for anyone who thinks trains will somehow be exempted from the national security police state, think again. --Tim May
