How does NSG feel about railways?

[Forsher]

But the real problem is how will commuter trains survive when most people are not commuting anymore?

Having had things go back to an approximation of 2016-2019 twice now... trust me, it only has to look remotely like normality and people go right back to normal.

Hell, things aren't even that normal since the rail network's currently crippled here so part of the commute's been bus based... the trains still fill up (the busses I've personally been catching? depends on time of day).

[Theberstan]

Idk, but trains are cool.

[Diarcesia]

I like trains. I am metrosexual.

[Novus America]

But the real problem is how will commuter trains survive when most people are not commuting anymore?

Having had things go back to an approximation of 2016-2019 twice now... trust me, it only has to look remotely like normality and people go right back to normal.

Hell, things aren't even that normal since the rail network's currently crippled here so part of the commute's been bus based... the trains still fill up (the busses I've personally been catching? depends on time of day).

I doubt that. Because office space is expensive, companies will not be jumping back to all in person. And people will stay terrified for years. Telework is here to stay, and thus the future of commenting is up for a serious question.
Besides this is not ending any time soon.

NYC will probably take decades to recover from its debacle.

I used to commute by train, but no longer do, but I can still do my job, so there is no real reason to change.

Telework and suburban offices over urban ones are not going away. They are cheaper than the traditional urban office.

Even the future of Japan’s famous trains are in doubt. https://ajot.com/news/no-light-in-the-t ... sses-mount

[Novus America]

Turns out the only efficient rapid transport yet invented is... the first one invented. Funny that.

It is not necessarily the most efficient. Sometimes it is, sometimes it is not. Or was. Here it is completely crippled by pandemic panic.

[Cordel One]

For freight? Sure, great idea! For people, not so much. I’ll never give up the freedom of my car, and I resent being taxed to pay for “light rail” boondoggles. The “elites” that think they know better than me how to run my life me sick. Authoritarianism sucks!

How dare the state provide cheap, efficient transportation to the masses, many of whom can't afford cars. No thanks, INGSOC.

What do you mean it's negligible compared to the enormous sums of money we spend on the military and corporate bailouts?

[Farnhamia]

Turns out the only efficient rapid transport yet invented is... the first one invented. Funny that.

Running?

[Forsher]

Turns out the only efficient rapid transport yet invented is... the first one invented. Funny that.

It is not necessarily the most efficient. Sometimes it is, sometimes it is not. Or was. Here it is completely crippled by pandemic panic.

I meant for intracity travel.

The standard measure used here is throughput... and nothing gets close.

For intercity or regional travel? No idea. International travel only stacks up in places like Europe where you have lots of countries next to each other. A tunnel between New Zealand and Australia, for example, would have to be 2,154 km if it was to go Sydney to Auckland. The chunnel is 50km long... and only 37.9km are underwater.

Having had things go back to an approximation of 2016-2019 twice now... trust me, it only has to look remotely like normality and people go right back to normal.

Hell, things aren't even that normal since the rail network's currently crippled here so part of the commute's been bus based... the trains still fill up (the busses I've personally been catching? depends on time of day).

I doubt that. Because office space is expensive, companies will not be jumping back to all in person. And people will stay terrified for years. Telework is here to stay, and thus the future of commenting is up for a serious question.
Besides this is not ending any time soon.

NYC will probably take decades to recover from its debacle.

I used to commute by train, but no longer do, but I can still do my job, so there is no real reason to change.

Telework and suburban offices over urban ones are not going away. They are cheaper than the traditional urban office.

Even the future of Japan’s famous trains are in doubt. https://ajot.com/news/no-light-in-the-t ... sses-mount

As I said... once things go back to looking like "normal" people bounce back quickly.

[Novus America]

It is not necessarily the most efficient. Sometimes it is, sometimes it is not. Or was. Here it is completely crippled by pandemic panic.

I meant for intracity travel.

The standard measure used here is throughput... and nothing gets close.

For intercity or regional travel? No idea. International travel only stacks up in places like Europe where you have lots of countries next to each other. A tunnel between New Zealand and Australia, for example, would have to be 2,154 km if it was to go Sydney to Auckland. The chunnel is 50km long... and only 37.9km are underwater.

I doubt that. Because office space is expensive, companies will not be jumping back to all in person. And people will stay terrified for years. Telework is here to stay, and thus the future of commenting is up for a serious question.
Besides this is not ending any time soon.

NYC will probably take decades to recover from its debacle.

I used to commute by train, but no longer do, but I can still do my job, so there is no real reason to change.

Telework and suburban offices over urban ones are not going away. They are cheaper than the traditional urban office.

Even the future of Japan’s famous trains are in doubt. https://ajot.com/news/no-light-in-the-t ... sses-mount

As I said... once things go back to looking like "normal" people bounce back quickly.

And I doubt that. Things change. Many people now teleworking will continue to do so. The fear will last. People will be still sacred, and businesses needing to save money.
The damage done all take decades to repair as well. It will be a new normal.

[Forsher]

And I doubt that. Things change. Many people now teleworking will continue to do so. The fear will last. People will be still sacred, and businesses needing to save money.
The damage done all take decades to repair as well. It will be a new normal.

I repeat... we've done this twice now. I'm not talking hypotheticals... I'm talking lived experience (note, technically, we've only gone back to 60% of prior stats but, again, the train network is currently crippled here).

[Novus America]

And I doubt that. Things change. Many people now teleworking will continue to do so. The fear will last. People will be still sacred, and businesses needing to save money.
The damage done all take decades to repair as well. It will be a new normal.

I repeat... we've done this twice now. I'm not talking hypotheticals... I'm talking lived experience (note, technically, we've only gone back to 60% of prior stats but, again, the train network is currently crippled here).

Things change. That is simply a fact. The reality today is not the reality 10 years ago. And the reality tomorrow is not going to be what it was 10 years ago. And money talks. Companies are not going to want to buy expensive urban office space again if they do not need as much. The move away from traditional urban offices and the population decline in NYC and LA started BEFORE this, this accelerated problems that already existed.

Things will not be as severe as they are now forever maybe, but they will never be the same again either.
Rail user numbers will go up from what it is now, sure, but probably not back to where it was.

[Freiheit Reich]

This is what worries me when they talk about adding more rail lines in the USA. Other countries could build this in less than half the time and for a much lower cost as well.

Honolulu Rail Project Struggles to Stay on Track

https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states ... f-schedule

HILO, HAWAII — THE trains may one day run on time, but the construction of the track certainly hasn't.

At $8.3 billion, not including finance charges, the Honolulu rail project is the largest public works project in Hawaii history and, according to a policy analyst at the conservative think tank Cato Institute, "the most expensive per capita of any publicly funded rail project in the modern age."

The City and County of Honolulu agreed to pay 70 percent, with the Federal Transit Administration kicking in 30 percent. Now, the Hawaii Legislature has joined the action, throwing in $2.4 billion in state funding and pushing for more oversight in what had been a local project.

Proponents of a mostly elevated, rapid-rail transit system for Honolulu say it's the best solution for a state that, according to one study, rivals only California as a traffic nightmare.

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But that solution, fraught with political pitfalls, delays and budget overruns, has been struggling to stay on track. What was a $4 billion project to be partially usable by 2018 and completed by 2020 has more than doubled in price and won't be completed until, at earliest, 2025.

Commuters who've endured four-hour-plus traffic jams agree that Honolulu needs to do something. With few parallel roadways and plenty of extra-short on-ramps, there aren't many alternatives to the island's three expressways, leading to consistently dismal grades from those who rate traffic.

The most recent study finds Hawaii the second-worst state in the nation for drivers. Another study estimates Honolulu drivers spend 11 percent of their driving time sitting in traffic, amounting to some 37 extra hours of driving time a year.

"Honolulu traffic is now more than an inconvenience, it's a serious public safety hazard," says commuter Danny De Gracia, who writes a column for Honolulu Civil Beat. "Accidents or natural disasters can easily shut down the entire island of Oahu and delay vital government and commercial activities. Whatever solutions have been offered are still years away, and right now, the Aloha State is in nothing less than a traffic state of emergency."

Construction on the 20-mile elevated rail project hasn't helped the traffic woes in the short term. But there will be huge benefits in the long term, says Bill Brennan, spokesman for the Honolulu Authority for Rapid Transportation, the semi-autonomous public transit authority responsible for the planning, construction and expansion of the fixed guideway transit system.

"We hear from people saying, 'I'm not going to take it so it won't benefit me.' But if we take 40,000 cars off the road every weekday, it will benefit drivers," Brennan says. "And there's zero congestion for anybody that's riding (the rail), up to 120,000 each weekday. For the first time on this island, there will be people experiencing zero traffic congestion."

There's still a long way to go before Brennan's dream becomes reality. The project is entering what some see as its most difficult stage, the Honolulu urban core, where relocation of utilities will slow construction.

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"HART's commitment to the residents of Honolulu is to complete the Project at a cost no greater than $8.165 billion and open for full revenue service by December 2025," says HART CEO Andrew Robbins in a Nov. 19 revised recovery plan sent to the FTA.

That's a lot more and a lot later than first anticipated. The project was estimated at $4 billion when voters approved it on the ballot 10 years ago with a slim, 53 percent positive vote. The Honolulu City Council in 2006 passed a measure assuring constituents the project would be financed strictly with federal funding and a city surcharge on the state general excise tax.

Much has changed since then. The Honolulu City Council in October passed a bill allowing up to $26 million annually, or $214 million total, in local property taxes to be added to the mix.

Bogged down in budget and time overruns, the city came to the state Legislature last year and successfully lobbied for an additional 1 percent tacked onto the statewide transient accommodations tax on hotel rooms and short-term lodging earmarked specifically for rail. The Legislature also reduced a 10 percent administrative charge over the entire proceeds of the tax, freeing up millions more for the rail project.

Many constituents from outer islands such as Maui, the Big Island and Kauai, howled that they shouldn't be forced to contribute to a tax on a project that would never reach their island.

Former Hawaii Island County Council Chairwoman Valerie Poindexter attended the 2017 legislative hearings on the rail tax issue, saying her constituents were upset.

"I shared my concerns of having to raise our property taxes to take care of our county's expenses, yet Oahu is allowed to have a state-ordered bail-out that impacts the neighbor islands and legislators fast-tracked it without any input from taxpayers before they crafted the bill," Poindexter said at the time.

Another of the powerful lawmakers pushing for the rail bailout thinks the city isn't keeping its part of the bailout bargain. House Finance Committee Chairwoman Sylvia Luke, a Democrat representing part of Honolulu's urban core, thinks more legislation will be needed in the upcoming session to force the issue.

"There is a lot of skepticism and doubt in the rail project from the public and I think there should be some kind of oversight," she says.

Adding to the outrage: The city was using some of the rail money to supplement its own operations such as staff time not readily attributable to the rail project, says Senate Ways and Means Committee Chairman Donovan Dela Cruz, a Democrat representing central Oahu. Money was also going for expensive brochures and public relations campaigns that didn't advance the project, he says.

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"We wanted to make sure we're only paying for construction," Dela Cruz says. "The rail money is not to subsidize the city's budget."

Brennan says many of the initial problems were outside HART's control. A recessionary economy from 2009 to 2011 had bids coming in under budget by contractors eager to work. Then the city was sued in federal and state court on environmental, cultural and historical grounds, forcing a 13-month delay.

Once the project resumed, it was in the midst of a construction boom in Honolulu, making it the most expensive city in the nation for construction costs, Brennan says. All the earlier budgets went out the window.

Dela Cruz, who served on the Honolulu City Council from 2003 to 2010, says the city needs to "put meat on the bones" of the rail project by installing infrastructure such as sewer lines near the project's 21 rail stations. That will encourage the transit-oriented development that's part of the city's stated long-term plan that's unrelated to the federal agreement, he says.

Adding infrastructure around the train stations, a process known as "transit-oriented development" could stem urban sprawl, create walkable communities and allow more affordable housing to resolve the island's housing crisis and protect farmland from development pressure, Dela Cruz says.

"It's not just a transportation tool, it's a planning tool," he says. "If it's going to be a train by itself, then it probably is way too expensive ... but if it's going to be smart growth, this is our opportunity to provide that."

[Merrill]

For freight? Sure, great idea! For people, not so much. I’ll never give up the freedom of my car, and I resent being taxed to pay for “light rail” boondoggles. The “elites” that think they know better than me how to run my life me sick. Authoritarianism sucks!

How dare the state provide cheap, efficient transportation to the masses, many of whom can't afford cars. No thanks, INGSOC.

What do you mean it's negligible compared to the enormous sums of money we spend on the military and corporate bailouts?

The military protects Life Liberty and Property. Literally the only purpose of government. Corporate bailouts are wrong. The State should not pick winners and losers.

[The Black Forrest]

I like them. Road them in the UK and Italy. Road the bullet in France.

[Greed and Death]

I like them. Road them in the UK and Italy. Road the bullet in France.

Yes yes we are turning those trains into roads.
The bullet train will be a highway for sports cars soon enough.

[Cordel One]

How dare the state provide cheap, efficient transportation to the masses, many of whom can't afford cars. No thanks, INGSOC.

What do you mean it's negligible compared to the enormous sums of money we spend on the military and corporate bailouts?

The military protects Life Liberty and Property. Literally the only purpose of government. Corporate bailouts are wrong. The State should not pick winners and losers.

The military hasn't protected anything major since WW2. All wars since then have been illegitimate, and as for life, liberty, and property, well...

Wait, what does this have to do with railways?

[The Black Forrest]

I like them. Road them in the UK and Italy. Road the bullet in France.

Yes yes we are turning those trains into roads.
The bullet train will be a highway for sports cars soon enough.

Damn it. Well. You have always know me to be a bad writer.

[Merrill]

The military protects Life Liberty and Property. Literally the only purpose of government. Corporate bailouts are wrong. The State should not pick winners and losers.

The military hasn't protected anything major since WW2. All wars since then have been illegitimate, and as for life, liberty, and property, well...

I don’t know, what does it have to do with railroads? You’re the one that brought it up in your reply.

Might have something to do with the fact that there hasn’t been a properly declared war since WW2. Every use of the military since has been in violation of the US Constitution. The CIA is not the military.

There is an argument that the CIA is not Constitutional, and its functions should be split between the military and the State department.

As for hitting “civilian targets”, that happens in all wars. Mistakes happening is one of the reasons why declaring War should be so carefully decided.

[Cordel One]

The military hasn't protected anything major since WW2. All wars since then have been illegitimate, and as for life, liberty, and property, well...

I don’t know, what does it have to do with railroads? You’re the one that brought it up in your reply.

Might have something to do with the fact that there hasn’t been a properly declared war since WW2. Every use of the military since has been in violation of the US Constitution. The CIA is not the military.

There is an argument that the CIA is not Constitutional, and its functions should be split between the military and the State department.

As for hitting “civilian targets”, that happens in all wars. Mistakes happening is one of the reasons why declaring War should be so carefully decided.

Exactly, so why are you still in support of its rediculously high budget but not that of public transportation and infrastructure?

[The Thestral Directorate]

For freight? Sure, great idea! For people, not so much. I’ll never give up the freedom of my car, and I resent being taxed to pay for “light rail” boondoggles. The “elites” that think they know better than me how to run my life me sick. Authoritarianism sucks!

Roads aren't exactly free either and most of the highway system we have in the US today was built thanks to the Interstate Highway Act of 1956. You're not getting any freedom when your motor transportation is dependent on the government and auto companies...and you still have to pay taxes for using the roads. And even if you don't want to get out of your car, getting new public transportation whether it's a bus, light rail, or metro train is still a net benefit to all because those within those riders there are at least a few thousand people who would have been on the road who are instead taking the train or bus for their commute.

[Merrill]

I don’t know, what does it have to do with railroads? You’re the one that brought it up in your reply.

Might have something to do with the fact that there hasn’t been a properly declared war since WW2. Every use of the military since has been in violation of the US Constitution. The CIA is not the military.

There is an argument that the CIA is not Constitutional, and its functions should be split between the military and the State department.

As for hitting “civilian targets”, that happens in all wars. Mistakes happening is one of the reasons why declaring War should be so carefully decided.

Exactly, so why are you still in support of its rediculously high budget but not that of public transportation and infrastructure?

The military budget could certainly be smaller, more efficient. However, the government should not be involved in “Public Transportation.”

[Disgraces]

They're... good? What do you want me to say about trains?

[Broader Confederate States]

The military hasn't protected anything major since WW2. All wars since then have been illegitimate, and as for life, liberty, and property, well...

I don’t know, what does it have to do with railroads? You’re the one that brought it up in your reply.

Might have something to do with the fact that there hasn’t been a properly declared war since WW2. Every use of the military since has been in violation of the US Constitution. The CIA is not the military.

There is an argument that the CIA is not Constitutional, and its functions should be split between the military and the State department.

As for hitting “civilian targets”, that happens in all wars. Mistakes happening is one of the reasons why declaring War should be so carefully decided.

i literally picked the topic of trains specifically to have a topic that wouldn't devolve into a political slapfight and here we are. stay classy nsg.

[Cordel One]

I don’t know, what does it have to do with railroads? You’re the one that brought it up in your reply.

Might have something to do with the fact that there hasn’t been a properly declared war since WW2. Every use of the military since has been in violation of the US Constitution. The CIA is not the military.

There is an argument that the CIA is not Constitutional, and its functions should be split between the military and the State department.

As for hitting “civilian targets”, that happens in all wars. Mistakes happening is one of the reasons why declaring War should be so carefully decided.

i literally picked the topic of trains specifically to have a topic that wouldn't devolve into a political slapfight and here we are. stay classy nsg.

Everything is political and will result in political arguments here, but I'll stop so people can enjoy the train discussion in peace.

[The Alma Mater]

Hmm, this topic made my antivirus whine.
*backs away slowly*