MaxZIP Posted January 2, 2011 Report Share Posted January 2, 2011 Gas prices slowly rose to over $3 per gallon in 2010, and are predicted to go over $4 this year. I see the same thing. The last time gas prices got real high was right before the recession. You can't take that much money out of the economy and expect anything good to happen. 2011 is going to be a tough year for this country. The price of gas is nothing more than a tax...the more you pay, the less money there is for the real economy. Oil companies will do well....how many of you work for oil comanies? I do some consulting work for a guy who ran a major oil company. He worked in the oil industry for 35 years and has a Masters Degree from MIT in Geophysics (BS from Texas A&M). He is convinced the world is quickly running out of cheap oil. There is plenty of oil out there...if you want to pay $6.00/gal. for it. Everything has a cost and just saying drill baby drill is a childish way of avoiding a real problem. The solution isn't urban rail systems either. We need electric cars and quickly. In order to keep them running, we need a lot of nuclear power plants built asap. Americans like to drive and the electric cars do that with little polution. Right now, we just need the power plants. If your friend is so smart...why does he need your help? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wally B Posted January 2, 2011 Report Share Posted January 2, 2011 I wasn't referring to when we run out of oil, but rather when the expense of oil increases in the next 2-3 years that it becomes prohibitive for many people to drive and drastically increasing rail ridership potential. It will happen, and once again, Ohio will be behind the times. Sad. Your budget argument doesn't work either because the money will definitely be spent. It is just that the money is now going to other states. HSR is a necessary INVESTMENT. If we wait for demand to dictate building, it will already be years late when it is finally built and operating. +1 With a type of infrastructure like HSR, you can't wait for demand to be there to begin working on implementing it. It takes forward-thinking to see mass-transit becoming increasingly in demand and putting yourself in position to best capitalize on the demand. Ohio definitely doesn't have people in charge who are capable of thinking that far ahead. And that goes for areas outside of HSR. To Quote Bart Simpson in his remedial class: "You want us to catch up by going slower?? Cucko, cucko..... " (From early episode "You Only Move Twice" w/ Hank Scorpio as Homers boss) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GP1 Posted January 2, 2011 Report Share Posted January 2, 2011 If your friend is so smart...why does he need your help? Because he is the majority shareholder in a company, in an industry, he is not familiar with and needs help from someone who has been around the block at extremely large building products companies. He also needs an HONEST opinion. I think we all know on this board I'm an honest opinion type of a guy. At this point, he needs to decide whether his investment is toy or a business. If it is a toy, he should dump the company and sell it to someone who wants to turn it into a business. If it is a business, he needs to put more of the $35 million he got on the way out the door at his company to really get it going. My guess is it is a toy for him and he wants to protect his fortune. He owns a large part of an oil exploration company in Houston and that is really his passion. No matter how old you get, always do something you are passionate about. He loves the oil business. If you find oil 10% of the time, you are considered great at what you do....his record was 13% over 35 years....He was in Dubai years ago when there were no roads and they had to land equipment on the beach and then make the roads to the oil fields....Very interesting guy. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MaxZIP Posted January 2, 2011 Report Share Posted January 2, 2011 If your friend is so smart...why does he need your help? Because he is the majority shareholder in a company, in an industry, he is not familiar with and needs help from someone who has been around the block at extremely large building products companies. He also needs an HONEST opinion. I think we all know on this board I'm an honest opinion type of a guy. At this point, he needs to decide whether his investment is toy or a business. If it is a toy, he should dump the company and sell it to someone who wants to turn it into a business. If it is a business, he needs to put more of the $35 million he got on the way out the door at his company to really get it going. My guess is it is a toy for him and he wants to protect his fortune. He owns a large part of an oil exploration company in Houston and that is really his passion. No matter how old you get, always do something you are passionate about. He loves the oil business. If you find oil 10% of the time, you are considered great at what you do....his record was 13% over 35 years....He was in Dubai years ago when there were no roads and they had to land equipment on the beach and then make the roads to the oil fields....Very interesting guy. I was joking but your are welcome for the opportunity to talk about yourself. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
UAZipster0305 Posted January 4, 2011 Report Share Posted January 4, 2011 From Wikipedia: The U.S. Department of Energy considers Amtrak among the most energy-efficient forms of transportation. Proponents point out that the government heavily subsidizes the Interstate Highway System, the Federal Aviation Administration, many airports, among many aspects of passenger aviation. Massive government aid to those forms of travel was a primary factor in the decline of passenger service on privately owned railroads in the 1950s and 1960s. In addition, Amtrak pays property taxes (through fees to host railroads) that highway users do not pay. Advocates therefore assert that Amtrak should only be expected to be as self-sufficient as those competing modes of transit. Along these lines, in a June 2008 interview with Reuters, Amtrak President Alex Kummant made specific observations: $10 billion per year is transferred from the general fund to the Highway Trust Fund; $2.7 billion is granted to the FAA; $8 billion goes to "security and life safety for cruise ships." Overall, Kummant claims that Amtrak receives $40 in federal funds per passenger, while highways are subsidized at a rate of $500–$700 per automobile. Moreover, Amtrak provides all of its own security, while airport security is a separate federal subsidy. Kummant added: "Let's not even get into airport construction which is a miasma of state, federal and local tax breaks and tax refinancing and God knows what." According to the United States Department of Transportation's Bureau of Transportation Statistics, rail and mass transit are considerably more subsidized on a per passenger-mile basis by the federal government than other forms of transportation; the subsidy varies year to year, but exceeds $100 dollars (in 2000 dollars) per thousand passenger-miles, compared to subsidies around $10 per thousand passenger-miles for aviation (with general aviation subsidized considerably more per passenger-mile than commercial aviation), subsidies around $4 per thousand passenger-miles for intercity buses, and automobiles being a small net contributor through the gas tax and other user fees rather than being subsidized.[77] On a total subsidy basis, aviation, with many more passenger-miles per year, is subsidized at a similar level to Amtrak. The analysis does not consider social costs and benefits, or difficult to quantify effects of some regulation, such as safety regulation. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hilltopper Posted January 8, 2011 Report Share Posted January 8, 2011 Maybe the title of this thread should be State of ohio moves forward to the 1930's. I know you young guys haven't been around long enough to know that 75% of what comes out a politicians mouth is nothing more than hot air, but that $400 million dollars was not going to buying anything that would ever resemble high speed rail. The 3C Corridor train would have taken "an hour and 15 minutes longer" to carry passengers across Ohio "than it would have taken on a New York Central train in 1935." Ultimately, Plain Dealer columnist and former editorial director Brent Larkin wrote: "Voters never warmed to the idea of spending hundreds of millions on a passenger rail project that would have taken riders from Cleveland to Cincinnati over a period an hour and 15 minutes longer than it would have taken on a New York Central train in 1935." He referred us first to a year-old feasibility report on the proposed Cleveland-to-Columbus-to- Cincinnati Amtrak service. "This is the schedule Amtrak said it would run, and the schedule Ohio included as part of its application to the feds for the $400 million," Larkin said. "No other schedule was ever formally provided to the feds." The proposed schedule shows a 255-mile Cleveland to Cincinnati trip taking 6-1/2 hours. The first daily train would leave Cleveland at 6:30 a.m. and arrive in Cincinnati at 1 p.m. Larkin then shared a railroad timetable from New York Central Lines, effective Feb 3, 1935. It showed a departure time of 3:10 p.m. from Cincinnati and an arrival in Cleveland of 8:20 p.m., for a travel time of 5 hours 10 minutes -- an hour and 20 minutes faster than the 3C line. The Ohio Department of Transportation responded in September with a new average estimate of 50 mph and "speed up to 79." It shortened the Cleveland-to-Cincinnati trip to 5 hours 12 minutes. But, not so fast. As an October story in the Columbus Dispatch noted, ODOT itself had said a year earlier that the trip couldn't be made in less than 5 hours 20 minutes -- even if the trains didn't stop. ODOT’s revised schedule hadn't even been seen by the three freight lines that own the tracks the 3C passenger trains would use, putting its feasibility in serious doubt.And, no matter how weak or strong its support, the optimistic revision still comes up longer than the best rail time of 1935. "The schedules speak for themselves," Larkin said. We rate his statement as True. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ZachTheZip Posted January 8, 2011 Author Report Share Posted January 8, 2011 Maybe the title of this thread should be State of ohio moves forward to the 1930's. I know you young guys haven't been around long enough to know that 75% of what comes out a politicians mouth is nothing more than hot air, but that $400 million dollars was not going to buying anything that would ever resemble high speed rail. The title of this thread has nothing to do with trains. It has everything to do with raising the speed limit to 70mph, however. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hilltopper Posted January 8, 2011 Report Share Posted January 8, 2011 Maybe the title of this thread should be State of ohio moves forward to the 1930's. I know you young guys haven't been around long enough to know that 75% of what comes out a politicians mouth is nothing more than hot air, but that $400 million dollars was not going to buying anything that would ever resemble high speed rail. The title of this thread has nothing to do with trains. It has everything to do with raising the speed limit to 70mph, however. The thread title is still wrong. Ohio had 70mph speed limits in the 60's and 70's, until Jimmy Carter decided we all couldn't go faster than 55mph. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hilltopper Posted February 28, 2011 Report Share Posted February 28, 2011 George Will Randal O’Toole of the Cato Institute notes that high-speed rail connects big-city downtowns, where only 7 percent of Americans work and 1 percent live. “The average intercity auto trip today uses less energy per passenger mile than the average Amtrak train.” And high speed will not displace enough cars to measurably reduce congestion. The Washington Post says China’s fast trains are priced beyond ordinary workers’ budgets, and that France, like Japan, has only one profitable line. So why is America’s “win the future” administration so fixated on railroads, a technology that was the future two centuries ago? Because progressivism’s aim is the modification of (other people’s) behavior. Forever seeking Archimedean levers for prying the world in directions they prefer, progressives say they embrace high-speed rail for many reasons—to improve the climate, increase competitiveness, enhance national security, reduce congestion, and rationalize land use. The length of the list of reasons, and the flimsiness of each, points to this conclusion: the real reason for progressives’ passion for trains is their goal of diminishing Americans’ individualism in order to make them more amenable to collectivism. To progressives, the best thing about railroads is that people riding them are not in automobiles, which are subversive of the deference on which progressivism depends. Automobiles go hither and yon, wherever and whenever the driver desires, without timetables. Automobiles encourage people to think they—unsupervised, untutored, and unscripted—are masters of their fates. The automobile encourages people in delusions of adequacy, which make them resistant to government by experts who know what choices people should make. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
UAZipster0305 Posted February 28, 2011 Report Share Posted February 28, 2011 George Will Randal O’Toole of the Cato Institute notes that high-speed rail connects big-city downtowns, where only 7 percent of Americans work and 1 percent live. “The average intercity auto trip today uses less energy per passenger mile than the average Amtrak train.” And high speed will not displace enough cars to measurably reduce congestion. The Washington Post says China’s fast trains are priced beyond ordinary workers’ budgets, and that France, like Japan, has only one profitable line. So why is America’s “win the future” administration so fixated on railroads, a technology that was the future two centuries ago? Because progressivism’s aim is the modification of (other people’s) behavior. Forever seeking Archimedean levers for prying the world in directions they prefer, progressives say they embrace high-speed rail for many reasons—to improve the climate, increase competitiveness, enhance national security, reduce congestion, and rationalize land use. The length of the list of reasons, and the flimsiness of each, points to this conclusion: the real reason for progressives’ passion for trains is their goal of diminishing Americans’ individualism in order to make them more amenable to collectivism. To progressives, the best thing about railroads is that people riding them are not in automobiles, which are subversive of the deference on which progressivism depends. Automobiles go hither and yon, wherever and whenever the driver desires, without timetables. Automobiles encourage people to think they—unsupervised, untutored, and unscripted—are masters of their fates. The automobile encourages people in delusions of adequacy, which make them resistant to government by experts who know what choices people should make. How profitable are your all tax subsidized highways that need replaced every 7 years in the north? This is a ridiculous measure for the value of high-speed rail. Also, automobiles are definitely not more energy efficient than rail. Just think about it in terms of common sense What would require the least amount of energy to roll: 1) a tire that undergoes deformation as it rolls, or 2) a non-deforming steel wheel rolling on a steel rail? There in lies the efficiency that a car/truck will never be able to overcome. The only thing I concede here is the convenience and independence a car provides. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dave in Green Posted March 1, 2011 Report Share Posted March 1, 2011 Obviously a train carrying one passenger gets much worse fuel economy than a car carrying one passenger. Where trains excel is in carrying large loads while consuming less fuel than other modes of transportation required to carry similar loads. For example, the average fuel economy of freight trains in the U.S. is cited as 436 miles per gallon per ton of freight carried. I haven't seen a similar statistic for passenger trains measured in terms of mpg per passenger carried. But it's unlikely to be as high as freight trains because passengers could not comfortably be packed in as densely as freight. A modern small sedan that gets 40 mpg on the highway would get 160 passenger mpg when carrying 4 people on a highway trip. Rail is not by itself the solution to the world's transportation problems. But it does make sense as part of a diversified passenger and freight transportation system that includes highway, air and waterborne transport. Finding agreement on what is an appropriate mix of rail service in the U.S. is difficult because it has become so politicized between the right and the left. Each side tends to believe only data presented by those who represent their own political view and tends to dismiss any claims made by the other side as propaganda. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sergeant Zip Posted May 9, 2011 Report Share Posted May 9, 2011 High Speed Rail Update Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hilltopper Posted January 4, 2012 Report Share Posted January 4, 2012 It looks like Kasich was right after all. Highspeed rail is too expensive and will require massive subsidies to keep it operating. Even free spending California has seen the light. State Panel Suggests Putting California High-Speed Rail on Hold The report criticized the authority for failing to identify a long-term funding source for the $25 to $30 billion needed to complete either of those segments. The authority also failed to specify which of the two segments should be initiated first, according to the report. The report also said the authority's business plan was incomplete and its staffing was inadequate to manage a large construction project. The total cost of the project has more than doubled to $98 billion since voters approved $9 billion in bonds in 2008 Whats really funny is the response from those who still want it built. The same kind of mind set as this. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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