I have a bad feeling about this.

Newsom has repeatedly shown the world that he does not prefer to do anything the "peasants" must do under his rule. The man is an elitist snob, with absolutely zero reason to assert himself that way. He has accomplished nothing good with his life, aside from making himself rich.

Sounds like trump. You should love him.

Do you mean that gazillion dollar boondoggle of a high speed rail that will go between LA and SF? The one that Nancy Pelosi's husband made a ton of money from? The one that NO ONE will take.

If you want to build a high speed rail that will actually get used, then build it between LA and Las Vegas. If you have ever had the misfortune of driving the 15 freeway northbound on a Friday or Saturday to Vegas, or southbound on a Sunday then you know what I am talking about. It is a parking lot.

Commuter trains were profitable at one time prior to 1960. There were all sorts of private passenger lines that ran in this country. Then as cars became more prevalent those private passenger train services went out of business. Sometime after that the government started Amtrack.

I don't know if there are any commuter train lines now that are profitable.

The only trains I have any experience with is in Utah, specifically Salt Lake City. I do know that the light rail system that runs all through the Salt Lake City metropolitan area is almost entirely funded by taxpayers. No one ever checks to see if you have paid or not. Downtown SLC is a free zone.

"SLC's light rail isn't particularly cutting edge. "

You'll get no argument from me on that. I just started a new job a few months ago. They said I could either pay $24/month for parking downtown or they would give me a rail pass for free. Seeing that I work from home 4 days out of the week I though $24 was excessive to park my car 4 times a month. I have never taken public transportation to work ever in my life. I could drive to work in about 30 minutes in light traffic. In rush hour traffic it would take maybe 45 minutes to an hour. By train it takes me about an hour and 20 minutes.

If the train wasn't paid for by my employer I would drive because that is just too much time out of my day. However, I do have time to read on the train. I am just about finished reading Glenn Beck's book "The Great Reset: Joe Biden and the Rise of 21st Century Fascism". It is a good book that scares the pants off of me because it explains why we are in the current mess we are in. It was planned. By 2030 (the date set by the UN with their Agenda 2030) we will be living under a global fascist regime where a global government and a handful of international corporations will decide everything for us. "We will own nothing and be happy" they say. We will have a device (that the WEF is currently working on) that will decide our social credit score in real time. If it is low we get nothing. It we do everything they tell us to do, we get to buy groceries.

I don't travel very much, because of that taking a train anywhere is not in the picture. It's just something I don't ever think about unless I am talking to you on ImgFlip.

"so are the roads. people without a car in SLC are paying for those too."

Yes, but they don't have to be paid by taxpayer dollars. I don't know at what point things like building roads became the responsibility of the government. But the governments (Federal, state, etc) took that responsibility and prevented most private roads from being built.

You brought up a valid point. People who only use public transportation have to pay for those roads. Yes, and I have to pay for roads I most likely will never ever drive on. That is why roads and highways should have been built by private industry from day one.

The private sector has always been faster, cheaper and much more efficient than the government.

I know you are Mr. Public Transportation and you think everyone should be using trains and buses to go everywhere. But I am not. I don't believe that public transportation will ever be the be and end all of transportation. Not in a free society anyway.

"any good alternatives in mind?"

We have those alternatives in place right now. People can either fly or drive between LA and SF. And that seems to be working very well right now. If there was a need for a 3rd option that was economical to operate and to use as air travel then the market should decide that, not the government.

The problem with your meme about China is that a lot of their rail was make-work projects. China built entire cities that no one lives in just to give people jobs. China is also an authoritarian state. Public transportation seems to be something all authoritarian states love to impose on the people and with good reason. Authoritarian states have extremely high poverty rates and the average person cannot afford a car.

Unfortunately we don't have any free market examples other than the fact that private passenger rail all went out of business. Or so I thought until you listed those passenger rail services that I have never heard of. It is the consumer that drives market forces and the consumer preferred to drive or fly, not to sit in a train.

I am not from the Northeast. I haven't heard of the 20th Century Limited. Apparently it wasn't as famous as you thought. Was it more famous than the Orient Express in Europe?

"what do we have to be patriotic about?" Well the only thing that we should be patriotic about is freedom. We used to be the freest nation that ever existed. But we have been giving that freedom away ever since the Progressive era. It is almost gone. The Constitution -- which is a document from We The People to the government telling the government what we will or will not tolerate from them -- is hanging by a thread, a very, very thin thread.

It is not WHAT America produced that we should be patriotic about. It is WHY America was so productive that we should be patriotic about. A mostly free market is what made us so productive and made us lead the world in innovation. It is what caused mankind to advance in 200 years what it used to take mankind to do in 2,000 years. A free market means a free people. Take that away and the people are no longer free. We stopped being a free market economy long before I was born and I'm 64 years old.

"I don't know at what point things like building roads became the responsibility of the government"

Transportation is meant to be utilitarian, and you can't just An-cap a solution to the problem. Freeways are easy to build, but extremely difficult to maintain without causing major productivity issues due to sheer size and importance.
A private company could build toll road and charge drivers for it. However, as time passes, maintenance is required. If they fail to maintain the road, it becomes basically a wasteland of blacktop no one wants to drive on. If they maintain the road, that's a whole lotta delays for many years.
The best part is that the state or another private company could take away customers from the toll road via building a far more profitable and lucrative *gasp* train service. Not only is said train service not exclusively to car drivers, it's also far easier to build and maintain.

As a result of toll roads failure to profit, especially with the malicious way toll road usage is charged, they maintain their status as a government utility. That hasn't stopped people from trying to profit off of them. Governor Ron DeSantis and the Floridian republican legislature have basically made every freeway in Florida into a toll road. When the company known as Brightline started planning out train tracks that paralleled Interstate 4 between Orlando and Tampa, the government wanted to have most if not all of the profit made from that service for every passenger taken off of I-4. Basically a hefty tax from a """"""pro-business"""""" Republican on a small company to help subsidize his shitty roads when he could be taxing billionaires.

"China is also an authoritarian state. Public transportation seems to be something all authoritarian states love to impose on the people and with good reason"

public transportation is not tied to the state of democracies in respective nations.

Autocratic nations with decent public transport:
China
Russia
Belarus(?)
Morocco

Autocratic nations with terrible public transport:
North Korea
United Arab Emirates
Egypt

Democracies/Free nations with terrible transit:
Canada
United States

Democracies/Free nations with decent transit:
United Kingdom
Netherlands
Japan (?)

"we don't have any free market examples other than the fact that private passenger rail all went out of business"

coincidentally, the government built freeways using railroad tax dollars, forcing them into bankruptcy. i don't think that's free market.

"and you think everyone should be using trains and buses to go everywhere"

not necessarily true. i believe that people who desire a comfortable, affordable alternative to flying and automobile travel should have that alternative.

"People can either fly or drive between LA and SF. And that seems to be working very well right now."

unless you're poor. people who drive between the two destinations end up wasting several precious hours staring at the boring road ahead of them. people who fly have to deal with post-9/11 security hassle that ends up making the time spend in the airport longer than the flight.
Furthermore, both methods of transportation move the least amount of people when compared to a high speed train capable of moving 1000+ per consist, with 30 minute intervals between each train. This is why there are shortages in the United States. Logistics firms don't have the best options when the railroad companies screw themselves over, forcing them to rely on far less efficient trucking operations.

"I haven't heard of the 20th Century Limited. Apparently it wasn't as famous as you thought"

it was famous back before either of us were born, that's for sure. now the knowledge of which is practically exclusive to train nerds or anyone who reads the history of Grand Central Station.

"Was it more famous than the Orient Express in Europe?"

potentially yes and no. the reason we think of the Orient Express today is because of Agatha Christie's timeless novel.

"They said I could either pay $24/month for parking downtown or they would give me a rail pass for free"

the reason parking is expensive downtown is because parking lots take away valuable space in cities, especially in the west.

"By train it takes me about an hour and 20 minutes"

light rail is particularly not fast, and freeway infrastructure is built to be faster. however, keep in mind that it's still possible to be more productive on a train, as well as being a more affordable option. if the freeway was removed, and replaced with valuable real estate, the train would easily beat out automobiles.

I was joking when I said that you want everyone to use public transportation. I know you would like to see more trains and fewer cars. I'm more happy with my truck than taking the train but I don't hate the train either. I hate it when they're late. I hate the fact that people choose the train as their method of suicide.

There are 2 commuter train systems in Utah. The Frontrunner that just goes between Ogden and Provo. SLC is right in the middle. Then in the SLC metro there's the Trax lines. Trax is a lighter

i'd argue that the Frontrunner could be a lot faster/have express service akin to the CalTrain system in San Francisco. yeah, trains do have their delays, but even then, that's usually occasional compared to freeway pileups.

"I feel like I don't have control of myself and I am at the mercy of the train system. But I feel that way about planes as well. Whereas in a car I feel more on control of my life."

we all have our personal factors. i'm always consistently worried whenever in an automobile, be it me driving or driven by someone else, due to statistics concerning automobile fatalities, especially since someone i knew lost a family member to one.

My father-in-law lost his life in a car but it wasn't because of traffic. He was driving home on a country road and fell asleep and hit a tree. Fortunately he didn't hit another car and no one was with him.

The Frontrunner slows down when it gets in to the Salt Lake City limits. At least on the part of the track that I take.

Have you been on the Frontrunner before?

Speaking of trains slowing down back in 2000 I had the opportunity to take the "Chunnel" from London to Paris and then back. In France the speed limit is higher than in England. So when the train comes out in France you can feel the G forces as the train speeds up. And when it comes out in England it feels like their slamming on the brakes.

The older I get the more I worry about traffic accidents. I think it is mostly because for about the last 6 years I didn't have to get on the freeway to get to work. My last job was about 10 miles away and it was all surface streets. And now this job I take the train the one day a week I go to work. I think I've just gotten out of the habit of freeway driving. So when I do get on the freeway it feels awkward.

I have never been in a serious accident. I've been in a few fender benders and it was always someone hitting me when I was just sitting at a traffic light waiting for it to turn green. I feel like a fairly confident driver and I always look ahead and try to assess any possible problems in the traffic ahead.

However I am getting close to retirement and when that happens I want to live in the country where there isn't any traffic. Because when I get old I don't want to be the cause of any problems on the road where there is a lot of people. Plus I've always been a country boy at heart even if I grew up in the suburbs near a large city, most of that being in the Los Angeles area.

"The Frontrunner slows down when it gets in to the Salt Lake City limits. At least on the part of the track that I take."

Generally, trains slow down closer to the larger cities since they were built around junctions with a lot of curves and switches. I remember my train from Pittsburgh to Philadephia slowing down a lot when it approached Harrisburg. The route it follows up until Harrisburg is generally rather mountainous, and includes the famous Horseshoe curve.

"Have you been on the Frontrunner before?"

Admittedly, I have not. I've not left the eastern United States very often with exception to the trip to San Francisco I was part of when i was 11. The only short-distance commuter trains in the United States I've been on is the SEPTA regional rail. I also have taken many Amtrak trains. Admittedly I should've also tried out metro-north in the New York City metropolitan area.

"So when the train comes out in France you can feel the G forces as the train speeds up. And when it comes out in England it feels like their slamming on the brakes."

Sadly, there's another train i haven't been on. What i do know of the Chunnel, however, is that there are altitude shifts since i read a book about it. These altitude shifts are surprisingly steep.
It's worth mentioning that since 2000, there have been upgrades the railway lines in the England section between the Chunnel and London, as well as changes to the Rolling stock. Those changes could make the trip more comfortable and faster, but I can't confirm.

Oops. I tapped the Post Comment button by accident.

Anyway I have to take both the Frontrunner and Trax to get to my job.

I feel like I don't have control of myself and I am at the mercy of the train system. But I feel that way about planes as well. Whereas in a car I feel more on control of my life.

If there was a big earthquake (we get those in Utah, just not as frequent as California

If I was downtown when a big earthquake hit, and I survived, I would be stuck in SLC. It would be a very long walk home. If I had my truck, and it survived also, I could drive home. It's a 4WD so even if the roads were messed up I still have a chance of getting home without having to walk.

So it is more of a security issue with me.

Sorry . . .

eyyyyy
oyyyyy
ueeueeueeu

*laughs in german* Nein, würde er nicht.