Let’S Get Rolling On High-Speed Rail Links, Says Green Party

Copied from:
Dodge Says Single Currency "possible"
posted on Vive Tuesday, May 22 2007

Railways

"Forget bullet trains. The U.S. is decades behind global standards, and will need $250 billion over 20 years to catch up."

We in Canada have "faithfully" followed the US "lead" for 40 years now, at least since Diefenbaker caved to US pressure and shelved the Avro Arrow project.

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"When you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change."
-Max Planck

This is yet another fine idea from the Greens, I cannot see it happening any time soon any more that Federal electoral reform will, but they are pushing the right buttons from my point of view. Here in SW Ontario, and I suspect across the country, all but the trunk lines have been torn up, abandoned by CN & CP because they “lost money”, in most cases attempts by short line private enterprises to take over the lines were blocked. The few that do exist seem to be doing Ok.

Some of these corridors remain in public hands however many have been sold off piecemeal to adjacent landowners which is VERY short sighted. These corridors that existed for many many decades will take millions to reacquire along with the associated studies, environment hearings ect ect. We are just now realizing that we need rapid mass transit between communities and whilst the focus may be on large cities or outlying towns and smaller cities will also need to address the issue of individual vehicles versus more efficient and less polluting methods. These former rail corridors may well be the future routes for modern high speed transportation between towns and cities, once sold off it will be very difficult to reestablish the corridors.

Many communities that were previously shipping their manufactured goods by rail are now forced to ship by truck increasing the pressure on the already overcrowded roads, millions are being spent on acquiring land and building additional lanes on our main highways, I wonder if we should not be rethinking our approach on that and bringing back the network of railways that existed until the last decade or so.

In the meanwhile improvements to our main rail corridors would be a great investment for the future and provided they are run efficiently (by whom I don’t know) to be competitive (the truckers may not like that) may well do more to reduce our “emissions” than some of the other proposals currently being proposed.


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When you are up to your ass in alligators it is difficult to remember that the initial objective was to drain the swamp

Won't fly. We need to kill the car first. We heavily subsidize the single occupant car transportation system. We would need to stop doing that, as we cannot afford to do both.

And that will never happen.

We are building a brand-new super-duper interchange in my neighborhood to invest in and support car culture for the future. We have people roped in trees, hanging signs off overpasses, marching in the streets trying to stop it.

They will not stop it. It will be enforced and strong-armed into reality. Too many people are going to get rich from it.

So the rich can ride in their SUV's, paying $5 / litre, and thumbing their noses at us bums on our bicycles.

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“The war is not meant to be won, it is meant to be continuous, the essential act of warfare is the destruction of the produce of human labour”

Well, i wouldn`t say let`s kill the car. Unfortunately, we need this individual carriage. I`d say we should change the existing car into something that pollutes less and gets better MPG. I`m sure with a little R&D, we could surely come up with something. Currently our government caves in to big oil. That`s the problem. People still require the freedom to get in a car and go if they have to. But still, we can proceed with high speed trains, mag levs, and the like. I`d surely use a high speed train to go places! I get a kick out of those Bombardier commercials. Sure, Canadians are 'proud of Bombardier projects all over the world' but we just don`t do it here! What a shame!

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Dave Ruston

"We heavily subsidize the single occupant car transportation system."

And don't forget the subsidies to the oil companies.......

What suckers we are!

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"When you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change."
-Max Planck

"The first priority is to build separate lines for passenger and freight traffic," -
so says the leader of the Federal Greens, and others applaud this as great
idea. I do not think it is a great idea, neither do I think it is a "priority". There
is a considerable cost to building separate lines for passenger and freight
traffic, costs include land acquisiton likely some through expropriation, costs
of construction. Who should build this, the "public sector", or if Harpo seizes
on this idea, will it be a so called P3- "private public partnership",

Rather then "constructing new lines" ... why not use legal reform to require
that on certain railway corridors at certain times of day, the higest priority will
be for
passenger useage, and have the various railway companies enter into an
enforceable contract thereto, complete with more stringent requirements to
maintain the "track" to a higher safety standard, and to employ better "traffic
management systems', and safe-fail systems to reduce accidents.

...then put the money saved by NOT constructing separate lines...into another
"green" line item in the federal budget. I am not too impressed with this idea
of Federal Green party leader, not as well thought out as I would have liked, I
would prefer to see "her plan" compared to other plans "x, y, z", and the
relative merits of each.

Didn't say kill the car, I said kill the existing subsidy of the infrastructure.

We cannot afford both a modern fully realized train system and a high speed super-highway system.

You can have your personal car, but it should be a battery powered smart car if your driving it alone, and you won't be able to go over 80kph because we can't afford to keep the roads in that condition.

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“The war is not meant to be won, it is meant to be continuous, the essential act of warfare is the destruction of the produce of human labour”

Yah, ok, I DID say kill the car. MEANT kill the existing heavily subsidized support infrastructure that SUPPPORTS the personal car.

But that's too wordy.

So kill the car.

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“The war is not meant to be won, it is meant to be continuous, the essential act of warfare is the destruction of the produce of human labour”