Florida Passenger Rail Predicition

[Blazeman]

http://www.citylab.com/commute/2014/06/the-triumphant-return-of-private-us-passenger-rail/372808/

[FrankCampagna]

Many, many things wrong with the article. I remember the original Auto Train.

[Ed Kapuscinski]

I'm doubtful. Florida tends to elect people who hate "socialist" transportation.

And passenger rail travel does not make money almost anywhere in the world.

[Blazeman]

Well, five years later, things are moving along on many fronts.  Not just moving, but in place.

https://www.progressiverailroading.com/passenger_rail/article.aspx?id=57722&utm_medium

[Maletrain]

Well, when CO2 emitting automobiles are banned, trains are going to look real attractive for a trip to Florida. How many times do you want to stop along I-95 and wait for your all-electric car to recharge?

[learmoia]

Well, when CO2 emitting automobiles are banned, trains are going to look real attractive for a trip to Florida. How many times do you want to stop along I-95 and wait for your all-electric car to recharge?

Or.... I could travel on my flying pig..

[Maletrain]

Or.... I could travel on my flying pig..

Nope, Pigs emit methane - much worse than CO2.  And just think how much methane it would take to "jet-propel" a pig!

Seriously, the days of fossil fuel driven personal vehicles are going to come to an end much sooner than a lot of people are thinking.  For us geezers, maybe not in our lifetimes, but the writing will certainly be on the walls by the time we kick our buckets, unless that is really soon.  And, it takes a lot of time to change infrastructure to accommodate changes in fuels and transportation mechanisms, so starting today is already too late to avoid serious disruptions to lifestyles and economies.  There will be political resistance, but it will be just like the other changes that we are all being forced to accept.  For instance, I went to the store today to buy some oil-based paint to put a hard surface on a door, but my state no longer allows stores to stock such paint, due to VOC reduction laws.  Other paints are claimed to be "just as good", but that is really just a political cover for getting the ban in-place.  The same will be done for all the other changes that will become legally required.  The "alternatives" will not be as good, but those are all we will be allowed to have.  Just the cost of human over-population.

[peteski]

But global warming is just a myth, and fake news!   And if there is a global climate change, it is just a natural Earth cycle.   

[Maletrain]

But global warming is just a myth, and fake news!   And if there is a global climate change, it is just a natural Earth cycle.   

The point is that, even if it really is mostly a natural cycle, it is scaring the **** out of much of the public, so politicians are pledging to "control" it.  Good luck with that.  In the previous inter-glacial warm periods, sea level came up substantially higher than it is right now, with no help from humans.  So, it is not unlikely that it will eventually get 10s of feet higher than it is right now in this warm cycle, even if we were not here.  But, we are here, and we are messing with our environment in major ways.  If we are responsible for pushing the climate to be substantially warmer than it would have been, then maybe that is really a benefit to humans because it may have prevented the next ice age from initiating.  If so, the price we are going to have to pay for that benefit is flooding most of our coastal cities at some point in the future.  But, there are other theories that say we may just be pushing a natural pendulum farther out, and it will swing back harder to give us another bad ice age.  We really are not capable of predicting ice ages in the current situation (or even the past, unperturbed situation). 

So, anyway, expect people to react to any change with dismay and an attitude of needing to fix it so things stay just like they are now forever.  Which is a hopeless goal with current knowledge and technology.  Starting about 14,000 years ago, the sea level rose about 325 feet in about 2,000 years, for an average rise of about 2" per year.  Think about all the coastal archaeology sites that wiped out.  Think about what humans were thinking then.  Imagine Al Gore's many-times-great grandfather running from cave to cave yelling "Put out those fires, they are heating up the earth, the ecosystem will change, all the woolly mammoths will die, we'll be screwed!"  Somebody probably got the idea to build an arch. 

[MVW]

I suspect that during the next decade or so there is going to be a huge surge in interest in reviving passenger rail travel. Once people are confronted with the real cost of burning fossil fuels (federal and state governments provide more than $20 billion a year in production subsidies), the age of the automobile will be largely over.

BTW, that $20 billion a year subsidy would likely be enough to pay for laying more than 1,000 miles of track. A year.

Jim

[Albert in N]

   Trains start to make sense with the 737 Max 8 groundings and the bottle necks on Interstates caused by decaying infrastructure and highway funding diverted to tax breaks.  I live in the DFW metroplex with population growth outpacing aged highways. Toll roads were to be the solution.  Yes, tolls go up with demand so the working poor cannot afford the toll lanes.

[Steveruger45]

I don’t think the day of the automobile will ever be over.  Probably it will be over for the internal combustion engine in a decade or two when battery or fuel cell technology catches up to give you the current gas powered car range and refill time, but not the car itself.  Driving is perceived as a form of individual Independence and people just love to drive.

[peteski]

The point is that, even if it really is mostly a natural cycle, it is scaring the **** out of much of the public, so politicians are pledging to "control" it. 

Actually, I think that a good portion of that "public" (especially in USA) is not scared at all.  And plenty of politicians are in denial too (but this is almost crossing the forbidden subject line).
BTW, I believe that climate change (accelerated due to human "assistance") is real, my last post was in jest (as the smileys indicated).  Someone gave me up-vote for that post - I wonder if they realized that it was in jest.

[Doug G.]

Climate has been changing since the earth came into being. It is silly to talk about "fighting climate change". A sure loss if there ever was one.

Doug

[peteski]

Climate has been changing since the earth came into being. It is silly to talk about "fighting climate change". A sure loss if there ever was one.

Doug

Well yes. I went back and clarified my views.
But I will use the stinky model paints for as long as I can. No water-based stuff for me.