Well that's the point, short-term it's probably not a good investment so no private company will ever do it.

No, countries like Japan (I wouldn't really count India) invest. They invest in technology, thereby promoting its usage, thereby increasing the need and the tech level of the country.

Did someone tell you yet the world oil supply is running out? And clean coal doesn't exist. Natural gas will run out sometime as well. And nuclear energy produces tons of waste.
Solar, wind and water energy don't produce waste and are completely free.

That's the normal train system. Using the high-speed train system, you can get from Amsterdam to Paris in just 3 hours, way faster than any car can do.

Dark,

If a private firm can't do it with profit, the government certainly couldn't, short term or long. Again, where it can be made to work in areas run by the private sector, a combination of federal and private money should make it happen as a non profit.

Right now America is broke, it's infrastructure crumbling, SS and medicare 60 trillion in debt and millions of Americans falling into poverty every month. SS nor medicare should be broke, but government spent it and mass cuts are coming that will devestate those already in poverty. The last thing we need is more government waste. The world is debating and no doubt will eventually drop the US dollar if we don't control spending. When in crisis you only spend on what's needed.

The first thing you must have to create technology is the educated people to invent it, make it, market it, run it and make it profitable why affordable.

The US has no energy plan. I agree we need to turn to other resources, but it will take time and we won't be able to transition from oil to solar for decades. We will need other forms of energy. Eventually the natural process of oil will become more expensive and the markets will seek to mass market better solutions. We're certainly headed for a energy crisis, so I'm in the camp...Do everything. If we have a failed economy, we won't have the money for any investment.

I think the world will face major crisis in the future. Many think it will have to be solved by a global government takeover of the worlds resources, but my guess is the problem will resolve itself the normal way...war, famine, disease, ect....and this time it will set us back 100 years.

TB Pickens failed in the wind business, now he is pushing natural gas.



Just read the difference between the US and Japan. If the US has any chance to hold a tech advantage in the future, we'll have to continue to import higher education. We've created a generation of lazy youth that have no discipline that will be a health care crisis in cost due to so many overweight.



"By the graduating age of the average American high school student, a substantial number of these students have little knowledge of geography or relative historical events (Hirsch 8). Of the 2.4 million Americans who graduate from high school, 25% cannot read or write at the eighth-grade or "functionally literate" level. http://eserver.org/courses/fall95/76...ssWeek-Kim.JPGMost 17 year olds in school cannot summarize a newspaper article, write a job request letter, solve real life math problems, or even follow a bus schedule (Ehrlich 129). About 33% of American high school students drop out every year and after 12 weeks of summer vacation, the average American student forgets 33% of what he had learned the previous year (Trudeau 1).
A typical Japanese student spends 6 hours every night doing homework during a school year that is 60 days longer than America's (Trudeau 1). Following a regular school day 18.6% of elementary school children and 52.2% of middle school children attend Juku cramming schools bringing them home at midnight from an 18 hour work day (Weisman A8). At the age of 18, 98% voluntarily seek higher education in a university. In early adolescence, Japanese students are 2 to 3 years ahead of their American counterparts and by the age of 18, 98% of Japanese students far surpass that of Americans of the same age. It's no surprise then that a 10th grade Japanese student is envious of the leisure time enjoyed by American college sophomores, his academic counterpart"

One only needs to read these boards to know that's true.

How many times a day does it make the trip? What's the cost of a ticket? How much baggage can you carry with you? Does it cost extra for baggage? Can you bring pets aboard? What would be the cost to get from Paris to Meaux? What would be the cost of getting from, Nijmegen, to Amsterdam? How much time would those legs add to the trip?

As you can see there are a lot more factors involved than just the speed of one part of a journey.

And I won't deny that. A high speed railway would be a huge investment, and I don't know if it would repay itself. But neither do most people here, yet I see loads of people claim investing in it is a bad idea. While they don't know half the story.

Not directly, no. In fact, I think the short-term costs would far outweigh the short-term profits.
But the development of one high-tech system promotes the development and usage of other high-tech systems. Which could bring back the US as a world leader in technology, thereby improving the economy. Which would give profits. Long term profits. Not directly, the railway itself might make losses until eternity, but indirectly there is a very real chance it would turn out positive.

True. But there are some things you shouldn't stop spending money on. One of those is development and education. Without those you'll inevitably come into technological stagnation, which will lead to economic stagnation. Which is what is happening right now.

And BTW, the US dollar will be eventually dropped if you don't increase spending on development.

Which proves my point. You don't have the people, so you don't invest in it, so you don't have the people. A vicious circle, isn't it?

Exactly! So you must invest now that you still have *some* money. Because there will be a time when it's too late, and I promise you don't want to be in the losing camp then.

:agree:

Couldn't agree more (I don't know/think the Japanese universitary education is so much better than the US, but generally speaking the Japanese education is indeed better AFAIK)
How hard it may seem, you have to keep spending on development (which includes education). Cause if you don't, you'll face the consequences later. It's either "lose some money now" or "lose a lot of money later".

Ok - now no offense to Gargamel, but this just proves that "infrastructure" investment like this for economic development does NOT work. Yes, Europe has spent untold sums on high speed rail. The overall European economy sucks even worse than the US one does right now. You have whole countries begging for bailouts. High speed rail did nothing to help them develop economically. If anything, it was one more mega-spending idea that sucked up good money for very little return.

I love railroads. I have a weakness for trains and have since I was a kid. But simply put, people don't use the train. The day where trains are a significant factor in moving people has long passed, and will not return. Trains are suited now for moving STUFF - they excel at it. But no one wants to live beside train tracks. Just like people don't want to live next to an airport.

There are a lot of reasons passenger trains are not the answer for the US. For a day trip maybe, but if its longer than a that, people want the freedom that their automobile gives them - in a "new" place they want to explore - and not from the back of an expensive cab! Ultimately, there isn't enough people traffic to make a passenger train viable without governmental support long term. We may not like it, but that is simply the fact. Let the trains do what they do best - haul stuff.

Don't ya just love how haplo can relate unrelated points and think it makes a point.
So some countries in Europe spent money on high speed rail and transport infrastructure, some didn't, some countries in europe are buggered financially some are not.
So unless its the countries that spent on high speed rail that are the ones that are buggered haplo has no point at all.
So the buggered countries
Greece.
Damn they didn't get it started.

Ireland spent some money on rail, not quite high speed investment but it bought a few trains that can go nearly as fast as a slow car on a bad road and it reopened an old line that was built in 1800s ....its one of the countries that is buggered

Spain is buggered financialy and has high speed rail so maybe haplo has a point there....but Spains problem started with a large amount of very dodgy private ventures that make Ireland look like a bastion of honesty in business and politics with sound application of the laws and absolutely no corruption at all.:rotfl2:

Portugal ...oops hasn't started.

Italy...private venture so thats outside the scope of government run.

So out of the PIIGS in europe only one has the state doing high speed rail and its finacial problems stem from a dodgy private sector and complete lack of regulation not transport.

That does suggest that Haplo has no point at all:up:

Better tell that to the chinese, that emerging superpower that is going to be the next top dog is spending a fortune on a comprehensive high speed rail network...then again they do have a lot of people to move over large areas and everyone knows that you use planes to do that:88)

Yet there are some goof balls, that still want to push this down our throats. Latest update now they want to put in a 20 mile stretch from the airport to the convention center that's just retarded.