Could you imagine what we could do with $250 billion?

Just now I see that President Bush is going to ask for another $100B for 2007 and $145B in 2008 to fund our (whatever adjective you want to use) in the Middle East and Afghanistan.

Why do no politicians have the courage to suggest a real investment in infrastructure here where we can fund thousands of real jobs and build a system that is fuel efficient, not dependent on oil prices, fast, and reliable? The gobs of money that we are expending over there will bring little or no return on our investment.

For that kind of money we could really build a decent system.

VikingNik wrote: The gobs of money that we are expending over there will bring little or no return on our investment.

And that's a point, like about everything else involving national security, that can be debated <i>ad infinitum</i>.

The Amtrak detractors out there repeatedly claim that there has been zero return on the billions invested in Amtrak. I disagree with that (especially regarding the NEC) but I don't have any data that proves them wrong.

To stray a touch off topic, I think the majority of the world views at the least the Iraq part of our adventure an epic mistake and the only people who have profitted are private contractors.

I would like to hear what people think we could get HSR-wise for $250 billion.

I would like to see a line of TGV speed from Boston to Atlanta, a line from NYC to Chicago through Philly and Pittsburgh and Cleveland, and a line from Chicago to Atlanta via Louisville & Nashville and then down to Florida. That would be a good start.

Full NEC HSR, extended via the silver service and Crescent
NY-Chicago HSR via Philly
NY-Montreal HSR
LSL HSR(including Boston spur)
NY-St Louis-Dallas-mexican border HSR(to be tied in with a HSR line to atleast Monterray, MX) via Pittsburg, Indianapolis, Tulsa, San Antonio, and Laredo
Crescent East HSR to San Antonio
Heartland Flyer HSR extended to Chicago via Tulsa and KC
Midwest HSR
Chicago-FL HSR
Midwest HSR
Denver-Chicago HSR
CA HSR

I'd love to draw two boxes and play connect-the-dots.

The eastern 'box' would be bordered by NY/Boston, Miami, New Orleans and Chicago.

The western one would be Chicago and New Orleans connected to LA/SD and Seattle.

Each 'box' would have an "X" drawn through it (routes CHI-MIA, N.O-NY, SEA-N.O., SD/LA-CHI)

That's for starters.. Work corridors and connectors out from there.

For one, I made a similar comment and it was nixed by the adminstrator
as being a politcal statement. Secondly, there are a lot of airline, trucking,
and highway lobbyists (not to mention Big Oil Companies) out there.
We may not see it, but they carry a lot of influence in DC and whereas
these lobbyists stifle any legislation to bolster mass transit (read Amtrak,
commuter rail, etc) with more $$$.

Yes, the amount of money spent in/on Iraq/Afghanistan could fund Amtrak
for over 100 years (at current rates) or be used to build many HSR rail lines in the US. A large majority of the electorate lives outside
of the Northeast, California, and the Upper Midwest. These people
do not or cannot relate to a need for public money for mass transit/Amtrak. So this portion of the electorate puts men in the White House who are generally unsympathetic or hostile to Amtrak and mass transit. Furthermore this has been going for nearly 20 years (GW Bush,
WJ Clinton,& GHW Bush!)

P.S. It also doesn't help when the congress has been controlled
by the GOP for 14 years as well.

With the Democrats taking control of Congress, I think that the US is going to have slightly more focus on high-speed rail, and probably rail in general. We could have a European-standard high-speed rail network with $250bn.

There are a number of groups that would have their hands out if $250B suddenly became available..

Old topic I know, but don't you think that if we had 250 billion dollars we should start off by first improving the only high speed rail system (or whatever you want to call it) in North America? The Northeast Corridor is one of the most populated area in the United States. Imagine if we had 200 mph trains running every 30-60 minutes, think of the $$$ that would bring. Im sure those who are pro rail and anti rail would both be in awe. Now only if we could get 250 billion dollars.

extend from the nec would be the logical way . perhaps to Richmond as a first step .

And yes , apart from the cost of the Iraq invasion , the USA lost a huge amount of standing with the rest of the world .

You'd have the money for the next logical HSR steps - building out corridors.

Extending the NEC to Richmond makes only TOO much sense.

Chicago could be the next "hub", having spokes electrified out to Milwaukee, St. Louis, Indianapolis and Detroit.

Longer-term, you electrify an east-coast corridor so that you can do Boston to Miami.

Piece by piece you build these corridors so that you can stitch them together for LD service for little additional cost.

Not that *I'll* ever live to see it - and I'm only 45.

If I had $250 billion for hsr I would use $100 billion to do the best I could to make Boston-Orlando HSR , use $70 billion to build the California plan with the link to Las Vegas but probably not the one to Phoenix, and I would put the rest into an operations trust fund.

Why stop there? There's enough there to build 60,000 route-miles of HSR and still have half left over for the trust fund, which could subsequently be replenished via passenger ticket tax.

one small problem though while i realize this is a "what if" question, $250 billion isnt exactly pocket change?

then again we could just add it to the deficit afterall its free money

seriously though i am really concerned that our country has so many important things that large amounts of money need to be spent on (existing infrastracture, education, social security, homeland security, etc.) combined with the huge deficit and enormous sums of money spent on the wars (who knows when they end), that would there ever be money left to spend on future new infrastructure like HSR? plus there is a real aversion to paying any taxes.

i really dont think the answer is to parallel the interstates with high speed passenger rail particularly in the interior west where there is low density and few large cities in close range to each other. i think this is pretty much what we want...


but of course theres some logical missing links that i would say are needed on this map such as connecting cleveland to buffalo, pittsburgh to cleveland, kansas city to tulsa, little rock to st. louis, houston to san antonio, houston to dallas, jacksonville to orlando and possibly louisville-nashville-atlanta.

its not that someone would necessarily travel from end to end, say kansas city to boston by HSR (though could) but that within that route it would serve many short trips of riders traveling to the next major metro area down the track (i.e. from chicago to cleveland). as much as i dislike flying one would still likely fly from new orleans to new york even if there is a continuous HSR line the entire way.

the only other real seperate HSR corridors i would think could be added to this map would be las vegas to los angeles (and the whole CA HSR system) and a route into Toronto.

ideally i see feeder lines (tying into HSR hubs) as important as the HSR lines themselves. the slower speed feeder lines going into smaller cities away from the main HSR corridors help provide full blanket coverage of a region. plus they also would cater to rural communities which is needed to provide transport to these areas and for poltical support whereas HSR alone entirely caters solely to large cities.

maybe a route to phoenix connecting to the CA corridor (possibly just connect in with the route to Vegas, thus 2 birds with 1 stone). A lot of those midwest routes look like it would be money not well spent however, I don't think there would be near enough ridership, say from Kansas city to St Louis. Maybe decent intercity service, but not HSR. If by chance it was somehow made to kansas city, why not go the extra few hundred miles to denver?