498
High-speed rail construction since 2008 (lemmy.world)
submitted 1 year ago by to c/fuckcars@lemmy.world
75 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] 14 points 1 year ago* (7 children)
  1. Comprehensive transportation systems have huge indirect benefits for a society. While they lose money in direct fees, they support large economic improvements. For any transportation systems. Cars are good for widely dispersed populations, aircraft are good for long distances, trains are good for large groups of people and medium distances. Why can’t we invest in the right transportation for each use, give people access to the best choice? Instead we limit our choices, limit our options, even when they’re not the right choice
  2. Adding gas taxes and tolls together, typically covers less than half a highways cost, and most roads don’t have tolls. Roads are not profitable or taxes are not sufficiently high.
  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 7 child comments
    •
  • [+] -11 points 1 year ago (6 children)

    1. By your own outline a high speed rail is not the right fit, the already existing rail lines/ long term busses already met the needs of the areas! As for your second question countries limited resources, china could have spent all that money that it is currently burning maintaining the lines at a loss + astronomical amounts it burned to construct the lines to say transition to renewables

    2. Cannot imagine where you live, but thats not true in Hungary, and I very much so doubt it as its not true for the 2 examples I looked up (germany and england)! Its so not true in fact as the treasury of hungary treats as income (usable for any and all purposes)

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 6 child comments
    •
  • [–] 5 points 1 year ago (5 children)
    1. Apparently you’ve never seen traffic in the US. We have a great highway system and a great airport system with many travelers. Too many. Way too many. Not only huge amounts of congestion for cars but huge amounts of congestion for flights, both in the air and on the ground. In the US, only a few cities have widely used transit and only one corridor has practical intercity rail. There’s lots of room for more. It needs to have regular service and be faster than cars to be useful. And it would be perfect everywhere there are two cities up to a few hundred miles apart …. Which covers like 80% of our population
    2. In the US, highways do not pay for themselves in direct costs. Gasoline taxes haven’t gone up in decades, most roads don’t have tolls, and even those who do don’t cover their costs. Roads aren’t directly profitable so why do we have a different standard for rail?
  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 5 child comments
    •
  • [–] -2 points 1 year ago (4 children)

    On average, state and local governments collect roughly 10 percent of oil and gas of their revenue (https://www.rff.org/publications/journal-articles/us-state-and-local-oil-and-gas-revenue-sources-and-uses/)

    If facts are not on our side lets make them up

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 4 child comments
    •
  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago* (3 children)

    How is this relevant? Sure the states that are oil producing collect taxes from oil producers. It’s a huge benefit especially to Alaska since they can support a soverigb wealth fund but others as well.

    However that is not relevant to whether highways are directly profitable

    Note that many US trains are diesel, so if you think oil production is a big enough benefit to the economy, it’s also thanks to rail

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 3 child comments
    •
  • [–] -3 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    How is you and 48 other people asking whether high ways are profitable relevant? I said I used profitibility as a metric of its usage as trains meant to transport an absolute fuck ton of people

    And why do you only have an issue with the topic you started when it turns out that you lied?

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 2 child comments
    •
  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    And you don’t see the hypocrisy of using profitability as a metric for trains yet claiming profitability of highways as irrelevant? This inconsistency is exactly my point.

    And no

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 1 child comment
    •
  • [–] -3 points 1 year ago

    No, the two are not comperative! Roads are not necessarily high ways; comparatively expensive (tho not nearly as so) and meant to conduct large traffic! Though I am sure you could make a comperative example if you even pretended to be good faith! Though fucking again, if a high way was constructed into the fucking nowhere, running through nowhere I would be angry for wasting so much money… Which, fucking again, is my problem

    Thats not a yes or no question! Once again, why do you suddenly have an issue with a topic YOU started once it turned out that your assumption, for which you again LIED, was proven to be false?

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent