I support High Speed rail for certain parts of the country - it is needed.

Not in this country...

Not in this country...

Why the dog in the manger attitude? elsewhere in the world these projects have proven very beneficial and cut the reliance on motor vehicles for distance travel. It is even a viable vehicle for private investment, in my country they now see joint rail and property development as a way of getting it done without government involment.

The project was initially projected to cost $4.6 billion, but that number now is $6.7 billion, forcing the city in January to ... approve a five-year extension of a general excise tax surcharge --- to help cover the overrun.

“It’s a disaster. In my view, we are worse than how we expected,” said Panos D. Prevedouros, a professor of civil engineering at the University of Hawaii, who has twice run for mayor opposing the project. “We were saying at the beginning we would be lucky if it could be done for $6.4 billion, and people thought we were close to lunacy. We are sitting here today, and we are now computing about $7.1 billion cost.”

“People are very angry about it,” said Mayor Kirk Caldwell of Honolulu, as he drove through the streets of his city. “But we are now heading toward eight miles completed. It’s like we are pregnant — we can’t just stop and tear it down.”

“What is happening is what most of us predicted would happen,” he said. “The way I look at it, it might hit $9 billion. They haven’t hit the hardest part yet.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/21/us/hawaii-struggles-to-keep-rail-project-from- becoming-a-boondoggle.html

Trains cost to much to build.

Trains cost to much to maintain.

Trains can not even pay for the labor need just to run them through ticket sales.

You can't fix stupid and thats what you have to be to think trains are the future under progressive's control!

They do this because property and rental values are not within their budgets.

Meanwhile places that are over 2 hours away from New York City see property values crash and are becoming depopulated as people move away as jobs disappear. They need to be closer to the city for work now but that eats into how much money they get to live on because living expenses eat into income more the closer they are to work.

The reason this is happening is that we are seeing a depopulation of suburbia as factories, etc close We are seeing a re-ubranization.

How will high speed rail change stuff for the NYC area? Imagine if I live in cheaper Philadelphia but commute to NYC in half an hour/45 minutes? Imagine I own a food catering business and now I can cater events in NYC? Vice versa. I can now live deep into upstate New York and commute to New York City. More people move upstate New York to take advantage of the cheap property and better living conditions while working in New York.

Property values and the economy rise in formerly depressed rural areas and rents are lowered in the urban areas.

http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-1125-startz-high-tech-highway- 20151124-story.html

New York is on three islands, and the places where everybody lives in Westchaster and up the Hudson, or along the Connecticut or New Jersey coasts, are all old ports, they all have disused dock facilities. All that the City has on the waterfront most places is a bunch of roads. High speed hovercraft can tool along at 80 mph. People simply need to commute to a parking lot in their coastal town, park where parking is cheap, and get on a hovercraft ferry that can get them downtown New York in 30 minutes.

Westport CT, for example, is 67 miles from downtown as the wolf (or road or train line) runs). At rush hour it takes over 2 hours in a car, or 1:15 in a train. But it's 50 miles as the dolphin swims, and the East River isn't even used for shipping traffic, so it isn't as though these are crowded waterways.

A huge amount of pressure could be taken off the trains and the roads, without having to build rails or roadways. Hovercraft are not particularly expensive to build or operate, and they can carry a lot of people. If you put the docks in the city near the subway lines, you have given people a fast way in.

Find out what you need to operate it non-profit, incorporate it into the MTA, and get on with it.

The waterways are unused, and they don't get blocked by snow or traffic jams. The docks are mostly unused. Hovercraft are really fast, and they don't care about things like ice or shallow water or bad docking facilities - you can run them up a ramp.

They don't take large crews.

It doesn't have to be a "luxury service" but can be a general service.

We had a Cold War to pay for (which included Vietnam) amongst other projects (some successful and some not).

The "Cold War" was based on the CIA created administration in 1948, signed into law by Harry Truman. The USA has gone down hill ever since and has NEVER won anything other than making America a poor nation.

The real question is ;is there a need for it ?

Well Tom you might want to ask a different question, How many jobs will it create? is it a means to an end? White elephants have been built before in the name of nation building, how about thinking about it in terms of freight, not just passengers, the way to make railways profitable is to get utilisation rates up. Fast trains compete with airlines by being able to offer quick point to point service, obviously you don't build them where there is no population but tourism is a big market

I have nothing against it for the most part. They just need to stay away from private property and don't steal the land through imminent domain.

Also don't steal the "investment" funds for it through taxation. If it's such a great idea real investors using their own money will get on board.

If it's such a great idea real investors using their own money will get on board.

Just like real investors, using their own money, built our Interstate Highway System?

Just like real investors, using their own money, built our Interstate Highway System?

Government beat them to it - and almost certainly built many economically unjustifiable stretches of road.

Moses was removed from power around the time money for such things dried up.

And he never got to enter the Promised Land either. A dollar short and a day late, for three millennia and counting.